Based Up

After a week of staring sullenly at figures laid gently onto their armor, I spent Thursday happily gluing Terminators back onto their bases.

Pre-painted resin casts.

Detail shot with both varieties of floor.

I built the master copies of each 40mm base from the inside of a bunch of Rhino doors.  Each of the sides is made from the edge portion of a Fantasy movement tray.  I was trying to communicate the idea of a hallway in a space hulk without blocking off much of the model.  The edges create just enough of an illusion that when someone cares enough to look closely, I believe that they'll infer what they're supposed to.

Once the masters were built, I turned them over to a friend of mine to be cast.  The turnaround time was just about a week, and I have to say, I'm pleased with the result.  On a few of them, you can see where the mold started to degrade a little bit after several casts, but he managed to get more than enough quality bases finished to complete the project.  As an added bonus, even the miscasts will be usable because of the simplicity of the design.  A little puddle of superglue can become a fluid leak.  I can also add pipes, hoses, and dead Tyranid bits to further accentuate the bases, while also providing splashes of color to add to the visual interest, and confusing you into thinking they're not all essentially the same.  And all this out of a bunch of people's random scraps!

Vargheist bases all painted up.

Group shot.

Painting was simple enough.  I primed black, then airbrushed with Blackened Steel from the Reaper Master Series paints.  I exercised just enough patience to allow that to dry, then set about trying to pose them.  I ran into much more trouble than I expected for a couple different reasons.  First, Terminator stances tend to be extremely wide.  I suppose there's a reason why they're on 40mm bases.  This leads immediately to problem two.  If you try to put Terminators facing into what would be a wall to make them fit easily, it spoils the illusion.  It ended up taking a little bit of finagling, but I got each model in a position that works.  There's a little more work to do as far as getting them all flush, but they're definitely fieldable again.

Try to pick the master from the copies.

Now try it double-blind style.