All right, so your miniature needs to stand on something. Like any drawing of a character, it’s usually nice to have some scenery to complement the main character. In pictures, they often frame the characters as to bring the eye to the various focus points in the piece. With a miniature, it’s not quite that complex, but it does help to set your miniature off quite well. A finished base only adds to the look of a miniature, seldom does it take away. So let's take the time to go over some of the basics.

The simplest way to dress up your base is with some sort of flock. Flock is for things like grass, dirt, rocks, and snow. A good gaming store will have these to complement the miniatures, and if not, check with any hobby shop that has supplies for model trains. There are a lot of brands nowadays, including Gale Force 9 and Woodland Scenics as I have listed in previous articles. These are the most common I’m seeing as of late.

Some shops will offer special glue for putting this stuff on. I recommend you skip it and just buy some wood glue from your local Home Depot or whatever. It’s basically like white glue, just a bit stronger, and you can simply water it down to what you need.

Flock I recommend is mixed greens, brown, rocks, and static grass. Basically, mixed green is several different shades of green together and makes for a good grass or moss effect that doesn’t require any painting. The brown is for dirt and/or mud. The rocks to vary the terrain up a bit, and the static grass actually stands up off the base for longer grass that makes for nice three dimensional feel to the whole base.

Here’s a basic flocked base made by simply gluing on sand and rocky flock, priming it black, dry-brushing it Citadel bleached bone, and then gluing on some static grass in a couple of rough patches:

And that, my friends, is the first image I’ve ever posted in this set of articles… I think I may have finally figured it out. Yay for me! And yes, I know, they’re not the greatest painted miniatures ever, but they’re mine.

When you get your flock, it usually comes in a bag or sometime a plastic bottle. For putting it on your miniatures, I recommend simply buying one of those disposable plastic containers with the lids. Pour your flock into one of these and keep the lid on while in storage. Cleaning flock out of your carpet is a chore, it likes to stay in there, but it is easier to clean off of tile and other flat smooth surfaces in case of a spill. Putting it in one of these plastic containers just makes it simpler to use and more accessible than a messy plastic bag that can easily spill or rip, or one of the rather large containers meant more for making large scenic areas.

Making it Pretty

All right, so now we have our stuff, let’s put it on, shall we? You should already have a nicely painted miniature, possibly converted, all pretty and ready to go but sitting on a boring old plain base, probably even stained with some paint and ink. To add on the flock, we go back to our incredibly helpful palette once again and put a squirt of wood glue on it. Use an old brush that’s no good anymore, or one of those ultra-cheap brushes that can’t hold a point worth anything anyway, and simply mix some water into the glue the same as you would with the paint. You want it to be milky, usually; it doesn’t need to be thick at all, about the consistency of paint actually.

Carefully brush this onto the base of your miniature. Try not to get it on the feet or anything, but get it all over the top of the base. Don’t put it on the sides, just the top. Pick your miniature up, pop the top of your flock container, and put your miniature in the flock making sure to cover the entire base. Swish it around a little, make sure to get plenty of flock on top of the base. Once you feel you have enough, pull it out, and tip the base and tap it lightly to get the excess off. Now you should have all that flock glued to the top of the base. At this point, let it dry. It’ll take a few minutes, give it plenty of time. If you want most of your miniatures having the same style base, then this is a good time to get them all done at once.

That’s about as simple as you can make flocking the base, but it’s pretty boring. Let’s add some texture. Use thicker glue this time by adding a bit more glue to your watered down pool of glue on your palette. Get those rocks out and glue some onto the base. Just glue on whatever you think looks nice. Paint them if you like. A little bit of dry-brushing can go a long way, but do that after the glue dries, of course. To use the static grass, it’s the same as the flock. But a dab of glue in a couple of spots, don’t cover the entire base, and then dip the base in the static grass and tap off the excess. The static grass will only be where you actually put the glue. This is great to show more barren or broken ground looking areas and works best with brown flock or otherwise. Get the brown static grass for more scorched looking areas. You can even paint the static grass if you like.

To be Continued…

With a little creativity and some variety you can have great looking bases to complement your miniature. You’ll be surprised how much better they look with such a minimal effort. Experiment in dressing up the base as you like. I’m sure everyone here has seen some pretty amazing bases (and of course, miniatures) on web sites like CoolMiniorNot.com and others. If you have any questions on how some of those effects may have been made, feel free to ask. In the next article I’m going to cover more elaborate bases using a few simple things and even household junk, more of that wood glue or white glue, and the first real use of the “green stuff,” that’ll allow you to sculpt your very first item out of it.

Until then, I’m still looking for any submissions people might have. I’d be glad to include them in a future article. I’m not looking for any professional painters here, but people who are making their role-playing characters come alive on the table. If you’ve just begun, especially by following any instructions in these articles, I’d be especially proud to see your work. Please send a private message on the forums to Remjin or post in the forums area for this column.