Freshening the Dead

Recently, with the return of Nagash and the general undead vibe going around, my thoughts have turned to adding some new bits and pieces to my undead army. It's been a few years since I worked on it, and I have a hankering to add some new units. I have a lot of old lead sleeping uneasily in their cardboard graves, awaiting the call.

With that in mind, I've been looking at the basing scheme on my existing undead units. I'm not entirely sure I still like it, but I can't make up my mind. The black does frame the miniatures nicely, but maybe it's time to update it to something a tad more realistic and earthy. I'm considering breaking one of my own cardinal rules here, and going back over old work, but it wouldn't take too long, a couple of weeks. It's more a pain in the arse. I'd rather do that though than paint new units to match a basing scheme I don't think still cuts the mustard. I've been looking over them for a couple of days, and I think I can't see them anymore. Is the flock getting a little tired looking? Would more of a dark earth work better with some tufts etc?

Or are they totally fine as is, and I'm a madman for even thinking about it?

Here is where you come in, dear reader. To re-paint the bases, or not? You tell me. I've scattered some samples from the army so you can see the existing scheme. I leave it you, as I'm 50/50 right now...

Genestealer Cult - Urban Bases

With the first hybrid finished, it's time to look at the basing scheme for the cult. I wanted something very different from the swamp bases I've used for my last project, the fimir, so I went for ruined urban. After a search in the old internet, I found a nice set of resin bases from Dragon Forge, you can see them here. Mostly concrete with grates, manholes and so on.

As the scheme for my cult has quite a few colours I want the basing to be pretty neutral, and you want get much more neutral than grey. Having said that, I didn't want the bases to be just mid-grey with a white drybrush, there has to be some points of interest, so once again I turned to the mighty interwebs to instruct me. I found a nice tutorial from Third Eye Nuke on urban basing which had a couple of choice tips. You can see it here. Craziest of all was a highlight of silver as the top highlight on the concrete. 'What in the hell?', I said. 'Holy monkeys, it really works!', I said a second or two later. Here's the scheme I went with.

Base coat of light grey, I used the old Fortress Grey from Citadel. I based the grate with a 1:1 mix of Mechrite Red and Boltgun Metal. Wash all with Reikland Fleshshade. Wash the grate and recesses and such with Nuln Oil. Drybrush with Fortress Grey. Stipple flat areas a touch. Same again with Skull White. Drybrush with Necron Compound. Finally, work Typhus Corrosion into recesses and points of interest. You can use pigment here too, but I just goddam love Typhus Corrosion for the grainy texture. It's a weathering/dirtifying magic liquid, so it is.

I'm pretty happy with the result, and it takes no time at all.

Basing - Hellcannon Swamp 2

Today basing fun is still much in evidence. I've finished sculpting on the swampy detail to Crom's hellcannon base, and it's turning out pretty well. The card provided a great guide for the recesses and the bog pools. I've left some areas quite bare, and these will be where I'll be adding swamp grasses, moss and other foliage once the base is painted.

In other news, I managed to bag myself a model I've been after for some time. Every so often a real bargain crops up on ebay, the chaos dreadnought below going for the most reasonable sum of £4.99. Har de har! GET in that Dettol!

Basing - Hellcannon Swamp

It's all basing at the Mumblings right now. My continuing army house keeping has me making a hellcannon size base for Crom to sit in. Initially I wondered how to get a nice clean edge on the recesses for the bases to sit in, but after some ruminating and rummaging I settled on using 5mm thick card to cut the depressions into. This will also serve to give me the outline of the bog pools. After cutting it to size I bevelled the edges so the greenstuff can slope down to the edge of the base more naturally. I gave it a thick coat of PVA to stop it soaking in any moisture, the last thing I need is for it to warp when it's being painted. You can see Crom's three little attendants at the back there too. I guess I could have modelled them into the base, but I thought it was better to have them removable in case Crom eats them.

Next the whole thing needs some sculpting done to turn it from a bit of card into swampy bog. More on that soon.

Fimir - Floating Stone Plinth

Right at the moment I'm modelling up some bits and pieces to round off the two thousand point fimir army. Some, like three move trays are killing me, but one is done now, thank the powers. Some more hounds, another marlwyrm, a large base for Crom and so on.

I took a break from painting moss on move trays to do something a little more interesting. I've been meaning to build a 50x50 base for the meargh for a while now, both to increase her stature when she masquerades as a daemon prince and to give me an option to mount a hero on a disk. I've gone for a stone slab, pulled up from the swamp and powered by a wyrd stone. It's almost modelled here, I need to add more trailing mossy stuff to the underside and work the tilting marker stone into the base. I'll be putting a 25x25 piece of adhesive steel sheet on the top so I can attach either the meargh or another character as need and whim dictate.

Basing - Tips and Tricks 1 - Crushed Shell

Recently I was asked to throw up some basing tutorials, so here we go, such things I have learned about basing as you may find useful. I'll be doing a few of these, I imagine.

1. The Porridge
I've already posted on this, you can read about it here. However, there's one element of the mix I didn't discuss, and that's crushed shell.

It's fantastic stuff for mimicking shale, mixing in to a basing mix as I'm do and for using larger pieces on bigger bases.

You can also but it on-line I imagine, but it's easy to make. Get thee to a beach, get a shell or two, and when you get them home, wielding a hammer, pulverise it. Make sure to wear goggles, and do it somewhere where flying shards of razor sharp shell aren't likely to take out the cat/child/postman. Take the resulting debris and marvel at the marvellous bits of basing material you've just made.