Basing scheme

  

After a comment asking about what basing recipe I used, I thought it might be interesting to do a more detailed step by step post on basing.

I first used this scheme for my Italian Wars French army and the idea was to give a sense of Southern European ground - slightly sun-bleached rocky soil with patches of different grasses. I also think a paler basing scheme makes the figures stand out better. I used the same scheme for my terrain and that rather committed me to keep using it for other armies. Not a bad choice for my Late Romans to inherit but maybe less suitable for Normandy! 

Another objective was to be a reasonable match for my table. I bought my terrain mat some years ago from Antenocitis Workshop. It was called “Mat O War” and is a sort of very stiff synthetic felt - no chance of getting it to drape over hills! They told me they got them from Ireland and that it was made by compressing (presumably with some heat) the type of fibres used for static grass. They did two versions, a pale sand and the multi-tone green that I bought. The bad news is that I don't think it is available any more - in fact the Antenocities website no-longer seems to exist. 

The mat was an exact (as far as I can tell) match for their “DECORPLUS 2mm Gamer Grass Mix” and I originally used that for basing - the Kallistra static grass I use now is brighter, a single colour and more green so I dry brush a bit of yellow ochre to tone it down so the figure bases and scenery still match fairly well with the mat. 

As a final step, in preparing the figures for basing, I paint the cast figure's base with my base earth colour. This means I don't have to texture and paint right up to their feet when they are glued to the element base so makes the process a little easier.

My bases are 2mm laser cut MDF from Minibits or WarBases with self-adhesive 0.8mm magnetic sheet from Magnetic Displays. I stick the MDF base on the whole magnetic sheet, cut it off with a bit of excess then trim the magnetic sheet more closely with a sharp knife before sanding the edges to give a more or less seamless finish. Recently I've also been giving the underside a dusting of Halfords white primer to give a nice clean base for the unit name labels - also, for those without labels, it makes them less prone to sliding off hills.

I attach the figures with neat PVA adhesive. When that is dry, I fill in around the bases with a water-based filler. A coating of watered down PVA helps this adhere and I use a wet (old) brush to push the filler into place.

Next I paint the base with slightly diluted PVA, add a few small bits of rock and rounded sand grains (around 1mm) then sprinkle with fine sand, shaking off the excess immediately. When the PVA is dry, I brush off the bits that haven't fully adhered. I take particular care that there is nothing stuck around the edges.

Originally I used Humbrol Dark Earth as the base colour but I wanted to use the same mix for scenery and that would have been rather expensive so I bought a big tub of discontinued brown emulsion from B&Q. The colour isn't much like the Humbrol but that doesn't seem to matter to the final look. Being water based, it doesn't wet the textured surface as well as enamel paint diluted with white spirit so I usually need to do some touching up once the first coat is dry. There are usually a few bits of sand stuck by the emulsion around the edges so I remove those at this stage.

Dry brush acrylic yellow ochre, fairly heavily then more lightly with yellow ochre + white. Around the edges, I try to get an effect of vertical streaks rather than a simple dry-brushing and finish them off with some pale olive green - a match pot of emulsion. I find this helps the bases disappear into the terrain cloth and disguises the height of the base somewhat.

The larger rocks are painted with Vallejo London Grey then dry-brushed with Pale Grey. No real logic to this but it makes them stand out nicely. Although I try to be as neat as possible with all this, invariable a stray bit of basing paint gets on one or two figures, requiring some touching up.

The tufts are MiniNature 737-22 and the static grass is "Spring Meadow Flock" from Kallistra. As mentioned above, I dry brush over the Kallistra grass with yellow ochre to tone it down a bit.