Basing 101

Been a bit since my last article, and I thought I would add to the knowledge base here with a couple of things that I have learned (mostly through trial and error) in my time over here.

You've got your minis to the point of art and now, you want to add some basing.



Before we go any further, I would like to point out that I paint primarily to game, so I'm not really going to go into large display bases, but rather a quick, down and dirty method for basing for gaming.

Anyone who plays Warhammer or 40k has at one time or another read the articles included by GW in the books about working on your minis. In those articles, they talk about basing by simply spreading some white glue/pva on the base of the mini, a quick dip in flock or sand, and viola a gaming ready base. To me, after putting in hours or days on a figure, what you get by this process is, well, unprintable. The sand or flock is two thin, and the base shows through.

I use a similar method however, with one change - multiple layers.

First step is to gather together your basing materials - for gameing figures I use primarily sand, flock, small rocks, and static grass. The sand I use was custom delivered to my location by airmail about 2 years ago

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So, we've got the sand and glue together, and the next step is to slather a thick layer of glue on the base, being sure that it gets in and around the feet of the miniature.

Once you do that, dip the mini in the sand
and let it stay there for a few moments. Carefully lift the mini out of the sand, and set it aside, leaving the excess sand on the base. The trick here is to let the mini dry, then dump the excess sand back into your sand container. Then, just as when shampooing, repeat the above steps, until you are satisfied with the look of your base.

Alternatively, you can make an emulsion of sand and glue just mix the sand and glue together until you get a slurry that is just spreadable and spread it on the base of the miniature, just like paint being sure to fill all the cracks .

Once everything is dry, you should have something that looks like this . The layers are what gives the base a more natural appearance in my opinion, and at this point you can leave the sand in its natural color, or conversly wash it to give it some color. I usually was the sand several times prior to adding either static grass or flock, depending on the color I am shooting for - both of the following miniatures have been done using the above process, with the difference in color in their bases resulting from a different total number of washes - the monk got four washes to the base, while the gunner got only two.