It’s 4am and I can’t sleep, so here’s a quick (and basic) guide to basing. It’s weird but quite often I see armies that are quite well painted, but haven’t been based. Basing a miniature is analogous to framing a picture. A simple, yet cohesive basing scheme in an army gives all of the miniatures a common theme. For my Khador (which I started about 5 years ago) I went for a very simple basing scheme –

    Basing 1

  1. I usually wait until the miniature is fully painted to base it. This is a personal preference, but it is a shortcut too as you’ll see in the next step. The first step is to cover the base in (slightly watered down) PVA glue and coat it in Builder’s Sand. General purpose Builder’s Sand is great as it has a mixture of textures, but is still quite small. Once coated, wipe off the excess sand from the edge of the base (I usually just use my finger or an old brush) and leave it to dry.
  2. Basing 2

  3. Here is where the shortcut comes in. I apply a very watery mix of Graveyard Earth (1:1) to the base. Because it is so watered down the texture and different colours of the sand still show through slightly providing natural highlighting. Once dry I often pick out 1-2 stones with a medium grey colour (say, Codex Grey) and coat the base rim in black to cover up any stray paint (usually caused by drybrushing).
  4. Basing 3

  5. Finally, I glue some static grass (flock) in place with PVA glue. While still wet I tap the base of the miniature over the flock container to release any loose grass. I try to only use a small amount as it is more important to provide visual relief than fully coat the base.

There you go – very basic, but effective. An easy addition to step 2 is to apply two simple drybrushes of Snakebite Leather and then Bleached Bone. As I said I’ve been using that same scheme on my Khador stuff for around 5 years, and because it is consistent it helps to unify the miniatures. For the Cryx I added some patchy snow, but again because of the common basis I can use mercenaries in either army without their bases standing out.

I went for something a little different on my Legion of Everblight, but that’s an article for another sleepless night!

Owen