All your Base... Space Hulk themed

Hey everyone. Its been a while. I meant to put this up for over a week now.. So here we go finally. I know I did a post about my space hulk bases before but with Space Hulk out and since I am working on more deathwing I figured I would do a all your base segment on making space hulk bases or at least how I do it. Its going to be similar to the older post but with WIP shots.

Alright so firstly you need your bases. Since it is deathwing they are terminator bases. But you could do this with any size base in theory. What I used to get the grate effect was plastic screening for doors. Why the plastic one? Well the metal screen doesnt bend it will just kink. Also the metal one can cut or rip your skin so the plastic one is safer. Anything will work for grating though if you don't have window/door screening you could use stitchery canvas which most art supply places should have. That also works very well. As in the picture lay the screen down and then apply a small amount of pva glue all over the base and push it down onto the screen. Less is more! This is because the glue will bleed through the screen so do this on a glass or glass like surface as they clean easier and you can get the screen off the glued table part easier.

Alright After letting it dry for at least 8 hours or more (I suggest a full day) you are ready to trim them off. The best way to lift the bases is from the screen that way should it be stuck to the table a bit from the glue (and by the way you should periodically lift the screen from the table and clean any glue off the table to be safe). If you grab the bases them selves you could pull them off the screen if not careful. Then with a xacto or hobby knife (a scissor or razor could even work.) cut around the outside of the base to free it from the screen. A cutting mat is preferable. As you can see with the picture above you do not need to make it perfect. Any excess screen can be clipped flush with hobby clippers. Should some screen lift from the base you can make spot repairs with superglue.

Alright after you trim the screen flush with the base its time to add some. Plasticard works great for this. Cut some strips of card longer then the base and glue it to the base. Once dry clip it so it is flush with the base. Add as much or as little as you would like. You can even add extra bits like unused rhino doors to represent a door blown out or ammo crates etc etc.

Once your done its time to paint. Start with a black base coat to every part of the base. Be sure it gets between the screen to the base itself below but do not clog the screen with paint. After that drybrush the entire thing with boltgun metal. be careful not to get too much down on the actual base. After that paint the accent parts whatever you want. I suggest some plasticard strip be painted some color to make the base pop and not look monochromatic and boring. After that semi drybrush some bestial brown over areas to give a weathered grime look (this is a space hulk after all). Add some blood spatter if you want then wash the grimy areas and a bit of the non grime areas around the grimy section with devlan mud. This will make the grime. Once that is fully dry give a nice heavy wash of badab black over the rest of the base with a bit of an overwash into the grimy areas. This makes the metal really pop and show the grating. it will also cover an bolt gun drybrush that got onto the bottom of the base.

And that's pretty much it. Don't worry about the pva glue clogging the screen it wont as long as you do not add way too much. Remember less is more. Well hope you enjoyed and this is just my way of doing it. There are other ways out there. Take care.

All Your Base... Batch painting

Hey everyone. I thought i would share how I normally do bases. So here is a picture.

Now unless there a special character or some special kind of unit I do bases in batches. How I determine how many to do is simple as it's based on the squad size. These bases are for a group of 20 shoota boyz. I normally do the bases first. The only exception are slotted or peg models in which case the bases are done last but even in this case I usually do them by squad size.

It can certainly feel like a grind doing 20 or more bases at once. Sometimes ill do them in batches of 5 at a time but I will get all the bases done before I work on the models. If I were to make a rubbled bases I would test fit a model first but it would be unbased just clipped to make sure it will fit. But doing bases in batches makes them go decently quick especially once you get into the "zone".

I prefer putting models on bases after it is based so it looks like they are walking on the desert or whatever the base is instead of looking like there sinking slightly into it.


Well that's that for batch painting bases. More Basing to come in the future.

All Your Base... Martian desert

Hey everyone. Been busy but I did make some progress hobby wise. Here is another All your Base installment. This time it is my attempt at a martian desert type of scheme. The results work although there is probably a better way to do it. But this was quick and easy.

Alright so after flocking the base I gave it a base coat of bestial brown. Any darker brown will work but I went with bestial because it has a kind of reddish quality to it.

I then heavily drybrushed the base with scab red once the bestial brown was fully dried. I tried to cover practically all the brown with scab red leaving trace amounts of brown.

The final step was to drybrush red gore on top of the scab red. This was a light drybrush that I did only until I saw a slight difference in color on some of the flock. You could probably go beyond this with a mix of red gore and blood red or some sort of orange but I left it at this stage because I did not want a more extreme highlight color. I did the sides of the base with Graveyard earth.

That's pretty much it for this type of base. Ill have more bases to come soon as well as progress updates when I have things to report. Until next time...

All Your Base... Urban

Hey everyone. Ive been busy with Work and building my new computer so I haven't had time to post here. But here is another installment of All your Base!.. This time is Urban basing. Now i am going to make another post on here when I do more Biker bases as I do not have a picture of the finished base without the bikes on them. But here we go:

Firstly After flocking what I do far all urban bases is base coat the stuff black. I try to get everything coated in back but if some flock isn't covered that's fine. The later stages should deal with that.

And there are the bases done. What I did here was drybrushed codex and fortress gray over the black. For the yellow striping I used Iyanden Darksun foundation as it is nice and flat. Now there are 2 ways I dry brush urban. If I want it to be a non street urban base I make it very grey with codex grey. If I want it more of a urban street its a light drybrush of the grey so the black bleeds through the drybrushing. That's pretty much it. As I said when i do more of these bases ill make an additional post for urban showing the base in more detail.

One quick note. These new biker bases are great. As you can see the bikes sit fine on them. As far as I know there only available with the scout bikes but you can buy them in groups of 5 off Games Workshop's website. Well until next time... Take care.

All Your Base.. Idea

Hey everyone. Another segment of all your base. It will be quickie as its more an idea then actual how to.

I was reading the new White Dwarf with the War of the Ring information in it. In the beginning it shows the movement trays and I got an idea. Those movement trays are for 25mm and 40mm bases. Last I checked 40 uses those bases. Now I'm not saying use them in games but they can work really well in display boards. How? You can use them to create flush displays where the base is inset into the display.

Now they are rigid blocks but you can take extra 25 or 40mm bases and make them objective markers or whatever to break up the blocks.

How I would do this is find a board the same thickness as the movement trays then cut out rectangles where you want the movement trays. Then I would find a rigid under board to glue both the top board and the trays to. Flock and base then put the models on and there bases would be flush with the board.

Now this would not work for models that you would want on the cities of death terrain but it can work for other larger thicker areas like rock slabs, desert, rivers, stuff like that. I would test this out but I have no display board planned at the moment but at some point in the future I will buy some movement trays to see how they are. Feel free to let me know how they are if you own some. Until next time..

All Your Base... plasticard

Hey everyone. Since I needed to make bases for my Thousand Sons pre heresy I thought I would show the quick and easy process of how I base them. I do this for them because I want them all to look like there on some sort of stone tiled surface. They don't all match up perfectly which is fine because it gives it a more battle torn feel while still being subdued.
Alright to get to this stage I used the bases and used them to mark the circle's on my plasticard. Thickness is not important you can choose whichever thickness you like. Now after that you just need to cut them out. Keep in mind they are going to be as larger then the base surface which is a good thing.

Alright. I cut them into quarters and then glued them on. Depending how big you want your tile look you can cut them in only halves or a half and two quarters or even not at all to represent them standing in the middle of a large tile. Once the glue was dry I used my clippers to trim them flush with the bases edge and then based them black.

I went for a grey stone look but any color can work even metallic for a metal floor. I just painted a few coats of Astronomicon grey to get this color and that is it. I also painted the sides of the base. The reason I did that is it helps the graveyard earth out for the sides. That is my typical color for trimming the bases.

And here they are. I gave them a second coat of graveyard earth after this photo. I just wanted you to see how the graveyard earth worked after just one coat with the grey underneath it. I do not know if other peoples graveyard earth is really thin but mine always seems to be that way.

Alright so there you have it. Nothing particularly creative or complex. Just a quick way to do a base. Even these simple bases will add more narrative to a model then just leaving them unbased.

All Your Base... Examples

Hey all. Since I currently have no bases to work on step by step at the moment for this All your base I figured I would show some examples from a friend of mine. These are all done by my friend at Helios Raven's Nest. He also sent me a blurb about how he did them for me to share with all of you. So lets get started.

This base above was done by using extra bits. He cut them up painted them and then put them on the base. He gave a wash of red ink for more gore. Even without red ink you can still achieve a gore look depending on what reds you use.

This base is a nice example because it is a flying base. Flying bases are clear so many people including myself don't base them. I do not base them really because I never know what to do with there curved surface. What he did was first flocked and painted the base. Then he took pink insulation foam and cut square pillars out of them. He then cut the pillars tops angled to give a crystal appearance. He then painted highlighted and glossed them for a shine. Crystals can be any color so the exact colors do not matter here.

Here is a nice example of base combination. A square type base and a round base to give a small diorama quality to it. For purposes of gaming you could just do all measurements to the beginning of the round base and ignore the square one for purposes of charges or range for weapons. Also you could potentially work the dead terrain feature underneath your model (depending on what it is) to keep it as one base for those really rule oriented gamers. What he did was take a spare marine and a spare skeleton model and fused the two. He then used wires to give the effects of ripped apart armor. Paint and add any blood effect and your done. This could also be done with imperial guard or any race really. The base behind this one was done with pink foam cut randomly to resemble rock. Also some scoring was done for a more eroded feel. It was then based black and dry brushed codex grey and then fortress grey followed by a light touch of white. He added pins to the models feet and pressed them in with glue to secure the model to the foam.

Lastly a ripper swarm base. The nice thing about ripper swarms and other swarm bases from GW is that there is a decent amount of space to allow a simple base job to add narrative. He flocked the base and painted the skeleton model separately. He then attached the skeleton to the base and coated it with red ink. Afterwards he positioned the rippers to appear like they just finished feasting and were moving on. A note here: rippers and scarab swarms are a special case in which you could make a base that would take your eye initially away from the models themselves. That is ok because these bases represent swarms of tiny creatures. It adds a lot to the base regardless of if your eye is not drawn to them directly from the beginning. Sort of like " hey its a dead guy.. oh rippers are coming" type of thing.

So there you go. 4 different examples of bases that are not hard to do and would not take away from the models themselves. More to come in the future of this and other stuff. Until then.

All your Base.... Materials.

Hey all it is another installment of All your Base. This time I'm talking about materials. Now I'm not talking about what we can buy from games workshop or whomever like the broken up stone, static grass, flock, sand, snow effects etc. This is some random stuff that we can all get easily or already have. At the end ill talk about one or more others not pictured.
Alright a group shot. What we have is an empty sprue that we should all have. The rest is from a chemistry molecule set. It is one of the poorer ones that was going to be thrown out.

These can be used as pipes for cities of death. Aside from terrain you could use clumps of these to represent rocket pods or what not for units that can take missile launchers. They have a variety of uses. One thing to note is that they are harder to get paint and glue to stick too and glue in place. But once you do it looks great.

Alright these guys also have some uses. The fan like things on the bottom can be used to represent turbine blades in rubble. They could also be used for orky bits. Those white pipes are flexible if you need a thick power cord thing that can move or can be used just like the other pipes. Te red thing however can be used to represent mines. Eldar or Tau can do that easily as it looks in line with there tech. But really any race could. Or maybe something to put barbed wire around. Just need to use your imagination.

Lastly the empty sprue. If your in the hobby you have these. You can grind them up for rubble or cut them up to represent iron bars in rubble. Melt them a bit to represent a melta hit somewhere on a building. Twist them to represent stressed metal. They are very handy. Can also be used as orky bits for vehicles.

One thing i did not take a picture of was screening like for windows or screen doors. They can be purchased in large quantities. They come as metal or plastic screening. I recommend the plastic one. It is easier and safer to use. This is what I use for my terminator space hulk basing.

Well I hope that helps spark some ideas for people. There are more things of course that you can use these are just examples. Until next time.

All Your Base

Hello any and all this is the beginning of my basing posts. Before I talk about a simple desert scheme base I wish to discuss what I mean by simple effective bases.

What I mean is that the best is flocked or otherwise appropriately prepared for painting and then either painted or if just static grassed then left alone. That is about it. Just some simple things and paint. What this does is tie the model to its narrative. However there is one rule of basing in my opinion. The more detailed and nicer the base then the model must be that much nicer in general. Why do I think that? Well the point of most bases is to accent the model. If you have a simple painted model on a "pro" base then the base is going to take the eye away from the model and the model then becomes the accent. That works for certain advanced things like camo models but that is not what im talking about.

Alright my first installment is this Meganob. He will be done in a desert scheme. There are 2 reasons I started with this model. First it was what I was working on and second its between a slotted and unslotted model. Meganobz and models like that (terminator chaplain etc) are pegged. I usually like to do these models by first gluing them to the base then basing the model. I will show an exception when i eventually rebase my terminator chaplain. Also this is a nice neutral basing theme that works with any army scheme really. So here we go:

Firstly this is the meganob (sneak peak for the legends of war event). Painted to my ork scheme but on this blank base it looses its narrative.

Ok so this is the basic start for many bases. I added some flock and some rock bits. The rock bits are optional but can add some 3d to the base which can be nice. Be sure to give it ample time to dry and then gently tap off the excess prior to painting.

For earthen toned bases you do not need to base it black. You could but its just an extra step. I based it with bestial brown but any dark brown would work here.

After I let the bestial brown dry i liberally dry brushed the base with bubonic brown. Alternatively a khaki or dirty yellow can work. The point is to set up for the final layer without covering the base coat.

Alright so here is where we wrap it up. The final color is bleached bone dry brushed only on the areas of bubonic brown without covering all of it. After that I painted the sides of the base with graveyard earth to give it a clean look. Any color can work here some people use different colors to mark squads. Other do the color of the armies armor color. I like to choose a color not associate with the model and preferably not the base. Now you could add some patches of static grass here I just chose not to.

You might notice some bits of flock stuck to the model. They are not glued there. Thatll happen when you flock a base with a model on it. You can blow them off or pick them off I don't bother. They will fall off in transport and in game play. They are not overtly obvious and if they are you can just brush them off.

Well next installment will be at some point along with the next outnumbered. until then.

Status report

Hey all. Just thought id make a little update post. Now all i did for this picture below is make him a new base and started some minor touch ups on his helmet. I may do a little more touch up on him in the future. He is a Dark Angel Deathwing Interrogator Chaplain.

I got some more BFG stuff to paint so I think I will work on them and bases for my Crusade Thousand Sons. Depending how fast I can base and paint the 8 escorts and 3 cruisers I may be able to get started on the actual crusade terminators soon.

I want to post some Tactica that I use when i play games but I do not know what exactly. I may do something on general things. I also have another idea in mind so stay tuned some tips and tactics to come aside from just progress reports on what I'm working on.

Oh just so any followers are aware. I play Dark Angels and codex marines. I have some Tau and a few chaos. I have played with my tau and i know a good amount of how to play chaos marines. I am also working on Orks for that challenge. So if you have any army specific questions especially about any Space Marine army except space wolves feel free to leave a comment with your question. This goes for the other armies listed above. I will do my best to answer them with my opinions in a post. If no one does that its fine I will still do what I have in mind as well. Until then.

Sewer Rats Stratagem

More square base fun stuff. This time some extra bits and flock and you have a sewer rats stratagem.
It could also be used as an objective marker to represent an entrance to something or some such.

I Started working on the Vindicator proper. I will try and get WIP shots as i finish parts of the vindicator.

Space Hulk bases

Here is a group shot of my Deathwing with the teleport homer. I don't have any WIP shots of how I did it but as per request I will do a little how to on how I made the bases including how I painted them.




I got my idea from Games Workshop's Space Hulk terrain article. But when I looked around I did not have any crochet sheets around unless I went out and bought them. I did however find window and door screening and I went with that. I went with plastic screening but i would imagine the metal would work also if not be a little more stubborn to work with.

using a very light spread of PVA glue I glued the bases to the sheet and then after letting it dry I cut and clipped the screen around the bases until it was essentially flush with the side of the base. I then glued down plasticard and some little tube things I had right on top of the screen.

For painting I have the entire thing a base coat of black. I then drybrushed the screen and anything else I wanted with bolt gun metal. For the yellow I used Iyanden Dark Sun foundation because I liked the dull yellow color but that is up to the person. I then dry brushed bestial brown to age parts of the screen and other metal parts I wanted aged. I then used the new citadel washes to complete the base.

I washed Devlan mud over the aged rusted areas sloppily so it went over onto non aged areas. After that dried i washed the entire base with badab black including the yellow parts to give it a grimed aged derelict look.

Hope that helps. If you google Space Hulk Terrain or Space Hulk Bases you will come across other how to's.

Coming soon will be how I make my Crusade era Thousand Sons heads.

What to do with the Square bases?

Hey all just thought id post a little something. If your like me and you dint play warhammer fantasy then you probably will have plenty of square bases left over from the warhammer boxes in which you get your bits for conversion unless of course you bit ordered.
If you also play warhammer fantasy then you could probably find some uses for them but as I don't play warhammer fantasy i had a bunch of bases sitting around. So I did a little something with one of the chariot bases:
It can easily be used as a strategic assets for city fight or apocalypse or just used as a small piece of terrain. Its not much but it something to add some spice to a board. Now you could also use them for objective markers in any style from forest to space hulk. You could also use the small square bases for mine fields.

Ill post more in the future on how i used the small square bases. Feel free to comment! Share how you use extra bases be they round or square.