Basing With Washers

 

I like to base my 15mm infantry on 12.5mm (½ inch) steel washers so that I can store and transport them safely on magnetic sheet. However, I don't like the big hole in the middle of the washer.

I've come up with what I think is a good solution: I 3d print a shroud for the washer on my old Ender 3. It gives me a flat top to the base, and it only increases the base diameter to about 14mm, and increases its thickness by 0.4mm. I can print an array of 25 of them in about quarter of an hour.

These figures are some US Marines I got second-hand; I'm not sure of the manufacturer, but I suspect Battlefront. They don't have Peter Pig's screaming faces.

I'd already started basing some of them, and those ones I'll just put into upside-down shrouds, purely to maintain consistency across them all.

I'll do something similar for the 22mm washers I use for team weapons.

 

Sabot Bases

I use 3d-printed sabot bases to ease mass-movement, and so that the minis don't just fall out due to my clumsiness, I put magnets in little sockets in the bottom of the big sockets.

The magnets I've used here are 5x1mm, and the whole sabot base is 3mm thick, with the sides slightly undercut to make them easier to pick up. They're thicker than I would like for WWII games, but I'll live with it to avoid having to move a bajillion 15mm figures individually. 

 

These long, curved single-rank bases are better visually I think, and also more flexible inasmuch as the figures can be set in a rank (as shown here) or in a file for moving along paths and the like.

"Hail Caesar" Bases

After I'd started printing the movement trays for my Hail Cæsar formations, I started the arduous task of cutting up some 30x30mm MDF bases for individual figures. It's a job that is, to be frank, a pain in the arse.

Then it occurred to me that I could be using my replicator robot to make the bases for me. Duh!

So I whipped up some bases in Blender in the sizes I wanted — 30x30, 30x15, and 15x15 mm. As long as the filament and printer holds out, I now have an endless supply of them. I might see if I can get hold of some olive green filament though, to save on painting.

The bases, as you can see, have a 1.5mm lip and are 3mm thick in total, so they match my old MDF bases. The two knights in the centre of the tray are on one of those old bases. After I've glued the miniature(s) into the base, I fill it out with a generic acrylic filler — I think the stuff I'm using at the moment is called Permafil or something, but all the brands are pretty much the same.

I've made a change in my basing ground cover too. Up until now, I've been using static grass, and it's been okay. However, now I've changed to using three shades of Woodland Scenics fine turf foam flocks: Burnt Grass as the base, and very light sprinkles of Dark Forest, and Autumn Yellow to add a bit of texture. The foam soaks up the glue, and is a lot sturdier than the nylon static grass, and I think it looks better too. I could add a few little clumps of the coarse turf foam as well, for some additional texture, but I'm not sure I can be bothered.

The knights and the two single cavalrymen on the ends have been based with the static grass, while the two groups of two cavalry to either side of the knights are based with foam flock.

Movement Trays

From time to time I like to play with toy soldiers (15mm medieval warriors, from the sadly defunct Tabletop Games in the case of the ones in the photo) and to maintain as much flexibility as possible, with regard to rules systems, I mount them all on 30x30mm square MDF bases (40x40mm for 20mm figures, 20x20mm for 6mm).

However, then pushing them around the tabletop can get a bit tiresome, and it becomes easier if they can be moved en masse.

To which end, I've been tinkering in Blender to make these little movement trays. The sizes and proportions of things can be controlled very precisely in Blender, but for something like these, which need to be tight enough that the individual bases don't rattle around, but loose enough that they're easy to get in and out without sticking, a certain amount of trial and error is necessary to determine the exact degree of slack.

These first ones are all slightly too roomy, so I'll shrink them down by a few millimetres where necessary and print another lot. Once I've determined the optimum spacing, I can just production-line the things in any size or configuration.

Next Day...

I've settled on the exact sizes I want, and I've started a production line to print as many as I'm likely to need. Hail Caesar is fairly accommodating about basing, and you really only need to be able to distinguish between large (at rear), regular, and small units, and there are a couple of other things such as pikes and war-bands needing to be in deeper formations. All pretty straightforward.

I suppose I shall have to paint the trays a grassy green or something, but to be honest I quite like the pale blue.

Brute Squad Base

 I designed and printed a 90mm x 60mm sabot base for my 15mm Brute Squad (they're actually 10mm Warmaster ogres I got on sale from a cheap bin).

The figures are based on 16mm (5/8") washers and the sockets are sized to accommodate those, and the base includes square cavities for two 5mm or 6mm dice at the back to keep track of casualties or morale or whatever. These are intended for my fantasy variant of Hail Caesar.

The STL is available free for download from Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3744480

See the dice?

Painted, flocked and finished.

Here it is with the Brute Squad in place. I epoxied some stones on either side, to make it easier to pick up and move around, and a few more scattered about just for the look of the thing.

The figures stay in place reasonably well as long as you don't fling the base about, but I've put a little blob of BluTak under each one, which holds them quite firmly in place while still allowing them to be removed and replaced at will.

Sabots for the Desert

I painted these Battlefront 15mm 8th Army figures many years ago for Flames of War when it was still in its first edition, and they're pretty crappy. They really need to be repainted, pretty much from scratch. I want to be able to use them for Battlegroup Tobruk and Torch, so I've taken them off their old multi-figure FoW bases, and put them on to ½" (12.5mm) steel washers.

However, moving a bajillion individual 15mm figures is a bit of a trial, especially when their exact formation isn't immediately relevant to the game. So, to combine the flexibility of individually based figures with the convenience of multiple bases, I've designed and printed some magnetic sabot bases in 5, 4 and 3 man groups. Those numbers will give me all the combinations I need with no more than two bases per unit. I use 3mm x 1mm rare earth magnets in them, cheap as chips from China.

If it becomes necessary, the figures can be dismounted from their bases in the blink of an eye, or remounted again almost as quickly.

Sabot Bases for 15mm Infantry

 I like to base my 15mm figures individually for flexibility, but it's usually much more convenient to move them when they're mounted on multiple-figure bases.

The solution to this issue is, of course, sabot bases, and I've tried several methods of making them. Up until now, the most successful has been laser-cut MDF, with thin card or fridge magnet material glued underneath.

However, now that I have a 3d printer, I reasoned that I could create magnetised sabot bases with a minimum of trouble, just ten or fifteen minutes design time in Blender, and about twenty minutes to print this particular three-man base. Printing a whole army's worth of bases will take a while, but I can put them on to print at night and take them off the next morning. Easy-peasy.

I use 3x1mm rare-earth magnets I bought from China. I have hundreds of them, and they cost very little — I don't recall exactly how much, but it was something like $2.50 for a hundred.

The magnets are thin enough that the sabots don't have to be overly thick, and strong enough that I can pick up the whole base by one figure quite securely.

I use two magnets per socket, because I base my 15mm figures on steel washers, which have an inconvenient hole right in the middle where it would be most convenient to put a magnet. However, the magnets are cheap enough that doubling up isn't a big deal, and it does make for a more secure hold, with one magnet on each side of the base.

I'll judge this experiment a success, and go ahead and make sabots in sizes to suit my army organizations. For the British, that means one five-man and one 3-man base per section, which allows me to split off the Bren team if need be. The most tedious part of making them all will be painting and flocking them to match the figure bases.

Bases

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3079180

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3079275

I designed some round bases, intended to be combined in a slicer with a baseless figure to be printed as one, though of course they could also be printed separately and be glued together. The links in the image captions will take you to the Thingiverse page where the files are located.

So far, the diameters available are 25mm, 36mm, 40mm and 50mm. They're available either with a simple generic undulating texture, as shown to the left, or with a rough paving texture, like that on the right.

The average thickness is about 2mm, I guess.

I neither know, nor much care, what the official critter-size bases are in D&D 3 to 5, but if that actually matters to you it should be a simple exercise to resize one of the existing bases to the exact size you need.

Note that in Cura, if you're combining a base with a figure model, you will have to go into the program preferences and turn off "Automatically drop model to baseplate", or else any figure you put on top of the base will be buried up to its ankles. Be sure to zoom right in and make sure that the soles of the model's feet (or pseudopods or whatever) overlap with the surface of the base so that they do actually print as one piece.

Cold War Project — Infantry Basing Method

GPMG group, primed but not yet painted or flocked

This is a Heroics & Ros 1980s British three-man GPMG group, with the gun mounted in its sustained-fire mode on a tripod.

I am mounting all my infantry on steel washers, the size of the washer being dependent on the number of men in the group.

For three-man groups and team weapons, I'm using 22mm washers. For two-man groups 16mm, and for single figures 12.5mm.

Single figures are there pretty much just to allow for casualty removal, but also to represent men with specialist equipment like the Blowpipe AA missile launcher.

The only problem with washers as basing material is the extremely inconvenient hole in the middle. I cover that hole with a piece of 80-90gsm printer paper, torn into an irregular shape to give soft, irregular edges and glued into place with liberal amounts of cyanoacrylate (superglue). The superglue penetrates the fibres of the paper and, when dry, gives you quite a tough, plasticized material, more than strong enough for this purpose. Make sure the cyanoacrylate has soaked the paper directly over the hole as well.

The figures are glued in place, either before or after being painted, again with superglue.

Lots more superglue (liquid, not gel) is flooded all around the figures, and then baking soda is spooned over everything. The baking soda combines with the liquid superglue, curing it almost instantaneously, and results in this rough plastic-like groundwork around all the individual figure bases. This blends the square figure bases in with the communal base, and it means that you don't have to faff about with any other groundwork materials like pumice gel or the like. The excess is just tapped and blown away.

The last stage would be the application of very fine flock — I like coloured MDF powder, which gives you an irregular cover that isn't granular enough to overpower the very tiny figures, but the more convenient ready-made option I use is Woodland Scenics Fine Turf — the Burnt Grass colour seems to me to be the best basic colour — with the very restrained addition of Coarse Turf to represent small bushes.

Bases Galore

These just arrived for me today — a box full of laser-cut MDF sabot bases, from a guy I know only as Catweazle, in Australia. I sent him some vector files for cutting the bases, and he sent me this lot in return. Score!

I haven't sorted them yet, but I imagine that this should be as many bases as I'm likely to need any time in the foreseeable future, unless I really go berserk and start playing gigantic mega-games.

Laser-cut Sabot Bases - a Followup

Click here for Part 1: First look

Here are some of those laser-cut MDF sabot bases from Ponoko in use, after painting and flocking with the same static grass I used on the figure bases.

I've glued light black cardboard beneath; it's sturdy enough to take a bit of wear and tear, but thin enough that it doesn't appreciably add to the overall height of the bases. Plastic card would be usable, but the benefit of cardboard is that it can be glued permanently to the MDF with PVA.

It's thin enough too, that the magnetic sheet I use for storage can still grab the steel of the washers the individual figures are based on.

It's not a strong attraction, but it's enough to keep everything in place against a normal degree of jostling.

For a more rock-solid connection, I can glue a very thin steel shim in the bottom of each cavity, and use a 1mm thick rare-earth magnet to hold the figure in place. That's a strong enough attraction that the whole base can be shaken quite vigorously, and the figures will remain in place. It's a lot of trouble though, and I'd only do it if it was really warranted.

Here's one I've prepared with some steel shim and magnets.

I don't know the exact thickness of the shim, but it's thin enough that I can cut it with a regular pair of scissors. It's just glued in the cavity with a drop of liquid superglue.

The magnet is 10x1mm; I got a batch of them very cheap from China a while ago. I use them mainly for holding figures to the bolts I use as painting holders, which is why this particular one is so grubby. I have some 3x1mm magnets as well, and they're quite strong enough for this purpose, but the wider surface area of the 10mm magnets makes everything a bit more stable.

With the magnets holding everything together, I can pick up the whole base by one figure (if I wanted to be that cavalier with my paint-job) without any risk of everything falling apart.

Note that there's no real reason, except aesthetics, to cut the shims in a circle. A square will do exactly the same job, and is a lot less trouble.

Of course, I could glue the magnets directly to the base of the sabots, but I like to have the option of using them unmagnetized if that takes my fancy. I'm a fan of flexibility in use wherever possible.

Laser-cut MDF Sabot Bases

 I'm a fan of basing my 15mm WWII infantry individually or in small teams on steel washers — I use magnetic sheet in a box for storage and transport, so the figures don't jostle against each other and knock all their paint off.

Individual basing gives you a lot of flexibility about figure placement on the wargames table, but especially in larger games it can be a real pain in the Gentleman's Personal Area to move them all around. That's where sabot basing comes to the fore, allowing me to move entire squads as one until it actually becomes important precisely where the individuals are placed.

 These sabot bases are designed specifically for German sections in the Battlegroup rules, consisting of two teams each: one seven-man element of riflemen, and one three-man element manning the section LMG. I mount the LMG teams as one single figure and another group of two on a larger washer; hence the difference in hole sizes in the LMG team sabot.

I designed the bases layout in CorelDraw, exported the file to SVG, and had the bases cut by Ponoko. They have a making workshop here in New Zealand, and it took about four or five days from submitting the design to receiving the sheet of MDF.

File submission was pretty straightforward, though I did have to make a change and re-submit it, because I initially forgot to set the SVG export file to convert all text to curves — I've used no text, but apparently it's important nonetheless.

This sheet is quite small, only 181x181mm, and it was not inexpensive. I thought it was pretty dear to start with, but it got worse. I had not noticed that even though I was ordering from a New Zealand address to a New Zealand-based workshop, all the pricing was in US dollars, nor that GST wasn't included, nor postage. This little sheet ended up costing me about $NZ50.00, which is far too much.

The image above shows one side of the cutting, the photo to the left shows the other — I don't know which is the entry or exit side for the laser beam.

This side, the dirtiest, is protected by a sheet of adhesive paper.

The paper peels away quite easily, and the protected surface is perfectly clean.

The edges, of course, are burned dark. For this particular purpose, that's advantageous, but that might not be true of other multi-piece construction projects.

I'll glue the MDF to thin card so that the figures don't just fall through, and add some paint and flock. I've used magnetic sheet underneath before, and though it does give the group a little more stability as I move them around, I don't think it's really worth the extra trouble; the figures don't tend to fall out all that often even without the slight magnetic attraction of the sheet.


I'm more than happy with the quality of Ponoko's work, and their service was pretty prompt and relatively trouble-free. However, the pricing is far beyond what I'm happy with, and I doubt that I'll do it again. Or at least, not until the costs get a lot more reasonable.

Click here for Part 2: The finished items

PaK36 sabot bases — WiP Part 3: The Greenery

Once the dirt layer is thoroughly dry, the greenery goes on.

I start with a layer of strand grass flock, applied in blotches so that some of the underlying dirt shows through.

Next is some bushy stuff. This is Woodland Scenics Coarse Turf.

Again, it's applied in small blotches. I've found that I need to squash it down into the glue spots and leave it until it's absolutely set before brushing away the excess. If the glue is too thin, and/or not yet cured, then the springy foam rubber that it's made from just falls away.

The gun base at the bottom of the picture hasn't yet had all the excess cleared away.

This is as far as I'll go with the infantry base, to the left.

Almost last, on the gun bases, I glued some small bits of Woodland Scenics Clump Foliage.

I want some larger bushes around the gun, but I don't want so much that it will obscure the whole thing. Unlike the crew, who would probably be much happier completely out of sight.

In this close-up, you can see some of the MDF dirt nestling in the nooks and crannies of the gun. I could wash it out, but when you're not looking at it from 10cm away it actually adds to the weathering of the gun, so I'll probably leave it.

And here's one of the guns, complete with some extemporized crew.

These are just some figures I already had painted and based, but as you see, any old figures blend quite well into the sabot base, and are held there reasonably firmly by the magnets.

Once all the glue is dry, I'll give it a couple of squirts with matte varnish, which will help all the various types of flock stay where they are. And then the base will be done.

Part One
Part Two

PaK36 sabot bases — WiP Part 2: The Dirt

Now the guns and bases are painted. The bases aren't painted very smoothly except around the edges; they don't have to be, all of the top surfaces will eventually be covered with various textural materials.

I also haven't bothered smoothing out the hard channels in the surface of the bases, as those same textural materials will soften the hard edges quite successfully without going to all the extra work.

I use a slightly dilute mix of PVA glue (4 parts glue to 1 part water) to fix the first layer of texture. The dilution allows it to spread more easily, and it also slightly increases the glue's working time.

I've got into the habit of texturing the bases in several stages, because in summer the glue goes off quite quickly, and I want it to still be very liquid when the textural material goes on so that it will soak through it. It's late autumn here in New Zealand at the moment, so that's not really necessary, but habits are hard to break.

I'm careful not to allow any of the glue over the lips of the crew cavities; the washers they're based on are already quite a close fit, so there's no room to spare.

On goes the first part of the first layer.

This will be the "dirt", over which will go other materials to represent turf and other foliage. It's not actual dirt; it's actually MDF sawdust that I've coloured with acrylic paint and re-ground to a powder, with some ground-up model railway ballast added for stones.

There's no particular reason I can think of not to use actual dirt for this stage, as long as it's perfectly dry and ground suitably fine. The MDF just guarantees a consistent colour across a whole lot of bases.

Here's the first "dirt" layer complete on all the bases — the two guns, and an extra for a command group, if required.

Something I didn't expect is that the MDF "dirt" appears to be magnetic. I don't know why, maybe it's the ferric oxide in the pigment I used to colour it? It's not important in any case. Once the glue has dried, it will brush and blow away quite easily.

Part One
Part Three

Re-Basing the Desert Rats

Figures glued to ½" washers before finishing off the groundwork

These were the very first WWII 15mm figures I ever painted.

I bought them when Flames of War was brand new and exciting, and based them for that system, but I became disenchanted with FoW — partly due to its own shortcomings, but mostly because of the way those shortcomings were being gamed by people who were obsessed with winning rather than having fun. Anyway, I haven't played FoW for many years.

Here they are as I originally based them.

Empty sabot base behind a full one.
Little flocked plugs can be used to disguise empty sockets.

My current practice is to base figures individually on 12.5mm (½") washers, and then to use MDF sabot bases if I should ever need to use them for something like Crossfire or Flames of War or whatever. What I'm playing most regularly these days is Bolt Action, which is not without its own flaws, but then again, what rules are not?

Where the washers fall down for basing is when I'm dealing with individual prone figures. They don't really fit elegantly on a ½" washer, and larger washers extend out too far sideways, not to mention being too large for my MDF sabot sockets. I haven't yet come up with a really satisfying solution to that issue, and I'm currently sidestepping it by avoiding using individual prone figures wherever I can.

More magnetic basing

One of the things I've come to appreciate about thick bases for micro-scale stuff, besides the fact that it makes handling the elements very much easier, is that the thickness of the base makes it possible to apply identification information to the rear. I print out the labels on my laser printer, and glue them to the base edge with superglue gel.

This magnetic strip is about 1.6mm thick, which is just enough to display 5.5pt text. My old eyes still need glasses to read it, but it's legible. I guess if I were to bevel the rear edge of the base, it would provide more height and thus allow larger text, but this size seems OK.

These figures are GHQ's individual Afrikakorps. Apart from the expense, I do like GHQ's infantry, except for one thing: they mould things like this tripod-mounted MG34  with a filler wall beneath the barrel. I realise that it makes casting in one piece very much easier and more reliable, but I'd rather get the models as two-piece castings for assembly, and not have the ugly wall between the base and the gun barrel..

Magnetic bases for micro-scale infantry

The mortar team (on the right) are better camouflaged than I thought.
Figures are GHQ Afrika Korps individual infantry.

I like to glue tiny magnets under all my micro-scale vehicles to keep them secure on steel trays in storage and transit, and it has the dual benefit that I can quickly and easily attach them to steel bases, if basing is required.

I've struggled to find an easy way of doing the same for infantry though. I've tried mounting them on sheet metal bases and storing them on sheets of magnetic 'paper', and that does work, but metal bases that are thick enough to handle easily are too heavy to transport easily en masse.

A little while ago though, I picked up some self-adhesive magnetic strip. It's a fairly stiff, slightly soft material that cuts easily, but is firm enough to stay flat in the small pieces needed for basing micros.

The type I found is 12.5mm (½") wide, which is perfect for the basing system I use, and it's cheap too — I think this pack cost me about five bucks. Three metres of tape (one pack) will do me 150 3-5 man infantry bases, or 240 2-man teams. That's pretty good value for money.

I'm keeping my eye out for some wider stuff (20mm wide) for mounting artillery on.

I've just stuck the figures straight to the double-sided tape on one side of the magnetic strip and landscaped over the top of it — I don't know about the longevity of that solution, and it may be necessary to revisit them in the future, but for the moment it's quick and easy, and seems to be holding quite firmly.

6mm Spanish - test base

A few of the 6mm H&R Napoleonic Spaniards I got recently were already painted, so I thought I'd make use of them to test out a proposed basing option. Here they are, along with trusty 28mm Sergeant Measureby, for scale.

The base size is 40 x 20 x 3 mm, which lets me mount two ranks, each of two strips of infantry without having to separate them and glue them individually, which is, in this scale, a pain in the arse to be frank. I did consider 20 x 20 mm bases, but most of the time they'd just be more fiddly than they're worth on the wargaming table. 40 x 40 bases were another option, but I'd have to base the troops in at least three, and probably four ranks or else they'd look lost in the middle of a vast plinth. I'd consider 40 x 40 mm bases for units that never go below three or four ranks (pike blocks, for example), but I prefer two-rank basing, which I can stack for attack column formations as needed.

This size base will allow 6 cavalry abreast, and probably two guns to represent a battery, though I may yet go to individual guns on 20 x 20 mm bases..

A 3mm thick base looks pretty massive for figures this small, but it makes the individual bases handleable without having to smush the figures up. These tiny troops are very easy to bend or break at the ankles, so utility triumphs over æsthetics for my purposes. Another advantage of the thicker base is that I can glue printed paper strips with unit information to the back, if I so desire.

On the workbench

I'm in the process of re-basing some of my old Battlefront 15mm WWII British infantry on to individual bases for gaming with the Bolt Action rules. I've mounted them all on 12.5mm (½ inch) steel washers, so if I need to use them in another rule-set, such as Flames of War, I can put mount them on magnetic squad bases easily enough.

One thing about using 15mm figures for skirmish wargaming, especially with my increasingly decrepit eyesight, is that the figures are small enough that I have to make an effort to see which ones are modelled with which weapons.

In an attempt to make life a bit easier for myself in this respect, I've added colour-coded markers to the base of each figure, denoting their primary weapon load — in the case of the three pictured here, orange means a submachine-gun, pale blue a pistol, and white a rifle. Others include red for a light machine-gun, purple for an anti-tank rifle, and black for other man-portable AT weapons such as PIAT, bazooka, panzerfaust or panzerschrek. The little coloured doughnuts are tiny glass beads — highly reflective, and easy to distinguish from a distance. The paint on the base edge, as well as distinguishing the model's weapon, indicates its rear quadrant, on the off-chance that that might become important.

--------------+++++-----------------

Newly-arrived today are some early-WWI British infantry and a single solitary 18 pounder field gun, from Peter Pig.

They're very nice little figures, and Peter Pig's service is top-notch: I ordered them just six days ago, and they're already here in New Zealand all the way from the UK. That's the fastest turnaround I've had from any overseas company anywhere.

I'll be basing them on washers, just like the WWII figures above, and as well as fighting various small colonial actions, they can stand in for VBCW militia and the like.

Leveraging new synergies in buzzword-compliant micro-basing paradigm

From the front

From the back

I've been in the habit of basing my micro-scale infantry on 0.5mm sheet steel for two reasons: first, so that I can store and transport them easily on magnetic sheet, and second, to keep the bases as thin as possible so the figures don't loom over everything around them.

I still like the first idea, but I've changed my mind about the second, for reasons of playability. A thicker (3mm MDF) base makes the unit easier to pick up without inadvertently bending the teensy-tiny figures, and it provides an area at the back of the base to glue unit identification text.

I've moved away a bit from the idea of a tabletop wargame as being a kind of moving diorama, and more towards the figures and vehicles being playing tokens. I wouldn't go quite as far as having everything represented by cardboard squares, like in Squad Leader and the like, but  the usability of the models for gaming purposes has become more important to me than their intrinsic beauty.

And in any case, it turns out that the thicker MDF base doesn't really stand out a hell of a lot more than the old steel base.

I'm not sure what to do about the storage/transport issue, but maybe gluing some very thin steel sheet under the MDF will do the trick.

Also, cutting MDF cleanly in these very small sizes is kind of a pain in the arse.

The figures shown here are Heroics & Ros 1/300 WWII German Fallschirmjäger and Panzer Grenadiers.

Base texturizing on the cheap

You can spend an arm and a leg on various flocks and powders and sand and stuff for texturizing figure bases, or you can spend nothing at all for as much stuff as you need to keep covering bases until the sun goes out and the universe descends into entropic stasis.

Go to any cabinetmaker or carpenter and ask them if you can have some MDF sawdust. They will probably look at you like you're crazy, but never mind about that.

MDF, when it is sawn, disintegrates into a fine, slightly clumpy powder that is perfect for texturing figure bases, and it doesn't look as out-of-scale as sand usually does. It can be coloured just by stirring some paint through it, letting it dry and rubbing it through a sieve, but its natural creamy-tan colour is pretty good for representing sand and dust.

I've coloured the MDF dust green, but that's all I've done with it, and I haven't contoured the base at all -- just glued the MDF dust straight on to a flat, painted bit of 3mm MDF. The variable sizes of the dust clumps make decent small surface rocks. If you wanted more depth and/or variation in colour, you could seal, wash and dry-brush it as well.