basing question

[Lordblackwing]

All the old school goodness being posted by Spooktalker, Phreed, Obsidian and others had me digging through the lead mountain. I found most of my old Heritage, Grenadier, Asgaard, Superior, and Ral Partha stuff. I want to get them based before priming and painting and wonder what is the best way to do it. They will be used for dungeon crawls, SoBaH skirmishes, and maybe some Mordheim-esque games. So sand, grass, or sculpted? Also what do find works best for base size to fit multiple options?

[Centaur_Seducer]

Sand with pieces of rubble such as clearly visible bricks and rocks would do. Maybe some very pale tufts of grass

[Spooktalker]

Cheers, Blackwing!

You can't go wrong with sand and optional bits of Woodland Scenics talus and ballast for larger rocks. Foliage is hard to resist as it sets of figures really nicely but also tends to say outdoors rather than underground.

Check out Dave King's old school moss effect for another option you can do with just sand.

I do my dungeon bases this way:

For these D&D figs the main things I wanted was uniformity and fitting in with my Dwarven Forge dungeon. I tried a number of things texture-wise but settled on Sculptamold, which is paper mache and plaster combo I learned about from a train guy named Dave Frary (I have a physical book by him but he's got a blog at http://tracksidescenery.blogspot.com/). I whip up a tiny amount with a little matte medium for extra strength and lay it on as thin as possible (unless I have smaller integral base to massage into the surrounding field, in which case it fills gaps as well as anything).

 I also use flexible concrete patch too, however, and this stuff is one of the most miraculous things around. Learned about it ten years ago fro Necromundicon and have since learned you can water it down and use for the most intricate of tasks (including bulking out areas of conversions or scratch build). you can sculpt it with with a wet brush (as you can sculptamold). Can't say enough for what wonderful textures you can get with sculptamold and concrete patch (I'd like to due a larger post about them some time).

The colors are craft paints. I have a couple dark gray and dark gray-browns I use for the base and there's always some raw sienna in there somewhere (turns the gray's green). One of my favorite craft paints is Delta Ceramcoat Hippo Grey, and that's a staple of these bases. Ceramcoat Mudstone and other lighter tones for the highlights.  I like a general cohesiveness and try to paint each encounter together but there's actually a lot of variety to my approach and I tend to drift one way or another at any given time. You can see some are more pale/greenish/bluish and others more yellow/brown. They all tend to look pretty nice in the Dwarven Forge, though, which has some variety in it as well.

As for base sizes, if you're going to use them underground you want to consider the environment very carefully. Dwarven Forge squares are slightly less than an inch, so I would recommend round or ellipse bases no more than 24mm round. Most 25mm figures will fit nicely on a US penny. Ian at Fenris will cut any size circle or ellipse from ply and they are absolutely perfect for many things. When I've got something larger than human but not truly huge, like a bugbear for example, I tend to put them on an ellipse with one side 24mm so two can fight side by side in a dungeon corridor. For larger monsters, I try to fit them on ellipses and sometimes up to 47mm round. I got quite a few different sizes cut.


Sculptamold:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spooktalker/6778730524/

[Spooktalker]

double post 

[Lordblackwing]

Thanks guys. Had a look on your blog Spooktalker, lots of cool stuff there. I think the sand/mold idea might be the best for overall without saying specifically indoor or outdoor with the look. Now to get a day with lower humidity to spray some primer and get some paint on these old school types.

[Blue in vt]

When I went thru this process a couple of years ago I spent a lot of time looking for oexamples of bases from other painters on the web that I liked....looked at tutorials and tried to pick the pieces that I like and worked with my hobby time and motivation level...then I tried a few practice bases employing what I had learned and found the best solution for me.

So to that end I have put together a demo of my "system" on my blog...maybe you will find some useful info contained there in...

http://bluesmarauders.blogspot.com/2011/08/marauder-empire-command.html

Here are a couple examples of finished products.





Good luck with your project!

Cheers,

Blue

[Lordblackwing]

I like the look you have there Blue, but since these are doing indoor/outdoor duty I think the grass will look out of place in a dungeon crawl setting. Found some great inspiration on your blog though. Hoping the primer I sprayed today dries right so I can get painting.

[eilif]

I've got a number of quick basing methods for figures with cast-on bases.

A broken rocky look works well for dungeon and outdoor double duty.  I recommend heading to your home depot and buy a tub of either "Premixed concrete patch" or premixed "Fireplace cement/mortar" and a bag of pine bark "chips".  You may also be able to grab some pine bark in nature or in your friend's garden.

I usually bake the bark in the oven to dry it out 300 degrees, checking at 5 minute increments.  They dry pretty fast and make your house smell wonderful.

After you glue the figures to the bases, use the concrete patch or cement/mortar to hide the cast-on base. Then press bits of the bark into it.  It dries fairly quickly (faster than PVA and sand) and the bark will be stuck in place.  Paint black and drybrush in grey or brown and you're done.

Here's what it looks like:  These minis (AltArmies Sidhe and Ral Partha Knight) all have cast on bases and the base painting is with only one color of brown drybrushed over black.



I got my first batch of bark from a fellow on the reaper forum and I can't say enough good things about it. It really looks like rock, has a texture that takes a drybrush really well, is easy to cut or break apart and is dirt cheap.  Concrete patch also is a nice cheap fast drying product that has enough texture that it doesn't require sand, and the "cement" qualities of it allow you to add bits or rock or bark before it dries and with out glue.

As for what bases to use, if they will only be used for skirmishes and dungeon crawls, then 25mm rounds are my preference for most figures.   If there is any chance at all you might use them in a mass battle game like Kings of War, WHFB, etc, then 20mm squares are safest.  I've recently started putting alot more minis with possible mass-battle uses on 20 mm squares.

For plastic bases of either type, It's hard to find better deals than EM4 or Proxie.  EM4 for the classic GW height mostly-slotta bases and Proxie for slightly shorter bases that are mostly slotta-less.