Hints & Tips

1. Your Warbases.co.uk bases are shipped to you packed in thick cardboard from cereal boxes (carbon footprint friendly). Cut these into temporary mounts for your miniatures while painting them.

2. Alternatively, mount them on an old paint pot using blu-tack. This makes them much easier to hold and saves you painting your fingers too. I've used an old 35mm film canister, but with the advent of digital they are not as abundant as they once were.

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4. As the miniatures have their own moulded bases, I like to blend in the floor level using epoxy putty. This gives a more natural look to the finished base. You can stop the putty sticking to your tools by using a little petroleum jelly, the little lipsalves you get from the chemist are ideal for this.

3. When you have finished painting your models, you can mount them on your base. The best type of glue for this is probably superglue, but if you have found something cheaper or better let me know.

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5. Once the putty has dried, you can paint the base, add scatter or what I like to do is texture the base using sand, all I do is paint the base with a slightly watered PVA glue and scatter the sand over the entire base. I usually add a stone or two to the base at this point too. When the PVA has dried (if you're impatient a hairdryer will speed this process) paint the sand with a 50:50 mix of water/PVA. This locks the sand onto the base. Paint the edges of the base too, as this will help seal it. This will make the base more durable, for transport and handling during gaming.

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You can find material for decorating your bases everywhere, for example corrugated card makes great tin sheeting and tissue paper for tarpaulins. Garden centers have slate chips, sand and gravel, polyfilla and copper wire. Petshops stock nice gravel for fish tanks. Our local beach is a great source for nice smooth stones, even your driveway harbours great potential. I always try to put something on my bases to stop them looking too plain, just be mindful of the scale you are working within to keep things a realistic size.

6. When the PVA has dried, I paint the base Goblin Green. I will then highlight the base with several coats of progressively lighter shades finally finishing with yellow. The stones are dry brushed with light grey. All that remains to do is add a few patches of static grass for the perfect finish.