Civilian Crowd Bases [3", XPS, Fantasy]

[Bloodbeard]

Normally I post my stuff in my blog over at the fantasy section. But this is a full tutorial, so seems fitting here.

 Bases and cobblestone
 Here's a tutorial style post on how I made my crowd bases for Guilders. In the game the crowds are represented by a 3" round base. There's no rules as to how many miniatures should go on it, but I've made room for three.

When painting these I've drybrushed some different greys, picked out a few individual stones on each base and then added small bits of static grass.

Here's a guard totally unable to find that hiding thief!



Materials
Cardboard, XPS foam (1 or 2mm), paper, Green Stuff World pinroll and pva / wood glue.



Step 1
Cut a 3" round circle and draw it onto the XPS foam.  Cut those out with some scissors.

Step 2
For stability, I want to make inserts for the miniature bases. They're all based on 25mm bases, so draw three on it's large 3" base.



Step 3
Cut out those 25mm inserts with a fresh hobby knife, needs to be really sharp. This leaves room in the middle of the crowd base for another miniature, if a player character enters and hides in the base.



Step 4
Glue. Lots of glue on the 3" bases, but on some thin cardboard and put pressure on it while drying. I placed a ton of books on top, we don't want them to warp too badly.


 
Bonus Step
Mess up some 25mm round bases with a knife (for better grip) and glue all those 1" discs to them. We don't want any waste!



Step 5
Time to bring out the Green Stuff World roller. It'll keep the presured texture made in the XPS foam.


 
Step 6
Mod Podge is amazing! It's some kind of varnish / glue thing. I've mixed some black into mine, so that it now dries a very dark grey. This will seal and harden the foam very well. I can't recommend this stuff enough for anyone working with foam.



After a nights work I have a bunch of finished crowd bases and a lot of 25mm bases for future miniatures.