Heresy & Heroes

Hey folks! Continuing in my series of new Legiones Imperialis posts as I try and revive the output of this blog, I’m going to show you how to create a marbled base with a little bit of rubble on the side. To do this, I’m going to be basing one of my itty-bitty, teeny-weeny Contemptors (they’re so cute!) and I’ll be taking you through all the steps.

And as ever, thank you to Games Workshop for sending me this miniatures, and thank you to those of you reading this article – I hope it proves useful. Now with that admin out of the way, let’s get cracking!

So here’s our base. The Contemptor is done to a standard I’m happy with for gaming and a little has been done to the base already. I’ve put down some fine sand and some tiny gravel pieces to help represent our rubble. The tiny stones were put in place first with some thin super glue, and then sand was drizzled over the same areas before the glue dried. It’s the perfect way to give a little bit of something to your epic-scale bases.

Next up, I painted the base up with a couple of thinned coats of Grey Seer. I left the model on the base, but you could take it off if you wanted to spray it. Honesty though, as long as you’re careful, it dries so quickly, I just did like this because I had a pot to hand and it was no bother. 

Apologies for the out of focus Contemptor (if you thought my photography was bad before, Epic scale has given me some real trouble!), but you should be able to see that I’ve added a coat of Aggrax Earthshade to the rubble areas. Allow this to dry completely before moving on to the next step – seriously, it can go very bad if you don’t!

Next up, we have a heavy coat of Space Wolves Grey all over our base, and the rubble. My tip for this would be to dab it on rather than brush it on – more chaos (not that sort of Chaos), means a more organic look, so don’t try to apply it too neatly, except in terms of keeping the paint off the dreadnought.

Allow this to dry and then we move on to drybrushing. Using very small amounts of Grey Sear/White Scar (1:1 mix), I focussed my drybrushing efforts on the areas of the base with some detail, but don’t go overboardyou really want almost no paint on the brush. And for the rubble, I just used Grey Seer for the drybrushing.

Now, you want to make a mix of Skeleton Horde and Contrast Medium, in a 1:3 mix (so 3x as much medium) and you’re going to put a thin coat all over that base to help make this scene look more like a dirty warzone.

Finally, using a steady hand and a straight brush, paint the rim of the base black. You’re done!

And here’s the same basing technique done with some tiny dudes – just for something different and vaguely in focus. 😉

I’ve painted all of my Blood Angels’ bases like this and I really enjoy the effect it gives me. Sure, I was tempted by doing some Goblin Green rims and simple sand/flock green bases, but I think this looks better. If you have any good recipes for bases like this, let me know in the comments below, and until next time, Onwards!