At the request of our esteemed host Kiyo, I am proud to bring you...
Urban Bases for Dummies
The complete beginner's guide to making rubble-strewn bases.
Ever wanted your minis to look like they're fighting in the rubble of a ruined city, be it Mordheim, Skavenblight or a bombed-out imperial world on the eastern fringe? Well, now you can! In 10 easy, illustrated steps I'll walk you through the entire process, hopefully ending up with something like this:
The aim here is to make a guide that anyone, including the complete beginner, can understand and follow. Some of the steps may seem obvious to some experienced modellers, but they're in there to make the guide accessible to someone who might never even have ventured into the bland and unstimulating world of pre-coloured flock and PVA glue. Hopefully I succeeded. Thanks!
Before we start, you'll need a base, some sand, PVA glue, some old plastic sprues, a pair of clippers, and of course a selection of brushes and paints. A well-stocked bits box is also a plus. The most important thing however, is filler or spackle, commonly referred to as Polyfilla. You'll want the cheapest brand available though, as it'll dry slower and thus be easier to work with! This is the magic ingredient. Go fetch some now!
Right, now you should have everything you need. Let's get this show on the road!
Step 1
Pour some filler onto the base, like so:
Step 2
Spread it out with an old brush (other tools could work as well, I suppose. I've just been doing it with a brush) in the shape that you want. The consistency of the stuff is somewhat like mashed potatoes, so it should be easy. You should end up with something like this:
Step 3
This is the fun part, adding stuff! You'll want to add some rubble to get the whole 'urban' thing across. Produce this by cutting off (roughly) similarly sized bits from your old plastic sprues. I've found that just under a centimeter in length works well. Don't bother cleaning the edges of the bits, it'll look fine anyway. When you've got a few, stick 'em in the filler and watch the magic happen! There are two things you should keep in mind when you're doing this. 1: don't overdo it, and 2: bricks look best in patterns. Don't just throw them down randomly, it looks better if some of them are lined up as it'll give the impression of a toppled building.
You can also stick other bits in there as well to spice things up a bit. I call my piece "Rat Finds Snack."
Another thing you need to do is decide where the mini will go, and press it down into the goo to make impressions of its feet/claws/boots/whatever. You want to make sure that when this stuff hardens, there's room for your trooper to stand there. If you're doing a lot of minis, some sort of numbering system might be in order. In this case though, I'm doing a Tau Crisis suit in mid-air, so I just made room for a plastic flying rod.
And now, YOU LEAVE THE THING ALONE OVERNIGHT! It needs to harden!
Step 4
It should be firm in consistency now. Not rock-hard, but close enough, yes? Good.
Spray the whole thing with black basecoat.
Step 5
Using the aforementioned old brush, cover the 'ground' part of the base with slightly watered down PVA glue. Make sure to get some in there around the plastic bricks. You can add a bit on top of them as well, but like before, don't overdo it! If you've got some feet/claws/boots/whatever-impressions in your base, make sure to keep the glue away from them. If sand gets in there it's not the end of the word, but it sure is annoying to have to bother with removing it.
When you've got the glue on it, you turn the base upside down and stick it in your basing sand. Shake it around a bit, pull it up, and hopefully a sight somewhat like this will greet you:
Step 6
Paint the entire base with black ink! You might ask why we bothered with spraying it before, and the answer is that the ink wouldn't cover the bare plastic bits (like the bricks) which would then have to be painted manually with regular black paint. And why bother when you can just spray it?
Step 7
When the ink has dried completely, paint some of the base with scorched brown. You can use as much or as little as you like, depending on your preferred rubble-to-dirt ratio. I like about 50/50.
Also, if you've got some bits on the base, now is the time to paint them. I've got a zombie arm, which has been painted with dead flesh (notice how unreasonably sloppy the paintjob is, and marvel when it somehow comes out well anyway!).
Step 8
When the paint is dry, fetch your drybrush and a rather dark grey, and drybrush the whole base, including the brown bits, the bricks, any bits... everything!
Step 9
Repeat the above step with a medium grey, focussing on raised areas and stuff you want to draw attention to.
Step 10
Finally, do a light drybrushing with a light grey, concentrating on the edges of the base, and very highly raised areas (compared to the rest of the base).
I also painted the flesh parts of the rat at this stage, as I wanted them to stand out a bit from all the grey.
Paint the edge of the base in the colour of your choise. I like Charadon Granite from GW's Foundation range, but it's up to you, of course. And viola!
Now you just add your miniature of choise (pre-painted, I recommend) and you're ready to go fight in the name of the emperor, hive mind, warlord or space pope (Tau players will know what I'm talking about).
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A note of caution: I've only used this technique with plastic minis so far. I don't know if it's strong enough to bear the weight of metal minis. If not, I recommend pinning the mini to the plastic base with a piece of wire. This is simply done by drilling a hole in the foot of the mini, drilling another down through the base, and gluing a piece of wire in place going all the way through. No problemo.
...guide satisfactory, Kiyo?
Edit: in case you like to paint your minis after they're glued to the bases, just use shabby glue and you can snap them right off afterwards. If for some reason you can't just do that, you could even cut or saw them off without ruining the look, since the lowest part of the mini will be hidden by the filler on the base anyway.