I’ve used lots of different ‘piratey’ bases (see here and here) for my Warmachine Privateer army, but a sandy beach was one I hadn’t attempted until I was working on the last unit of Thamarite Cultists. I could’t find any good tutorials on this, but I decided I’d give it a go.

Beach Style Basing

Step 1: Since I was using Warmachine rounded-edge bases, I decided to fill the inside of the base with Milliput. For these kinds of modelled bases I always work with the model off the base. Before the Milliput dried I pressed the base into fine (but not too fine) sand.

Step 2: When this dried I used a watered dow PVA mix to liberally coat the base and again dipped it in the sand. I’m not too concerned about uniform coverage as walked on sand is rarely smooth.

Steps 3 and 4: Repeat Step 2.

Step 4: Attached the miniature to the base. As always time spent pinning them on now will save heartache later on.

Step 5: Undercoat the miniature. I decided to undercoat these guys black, which was better for the miniature, but would mean a few more steps in painting the base.

Step 6: Paint the miniature. This is easy and should only take a minute or two, right?!

Step 7: Paint the base. I tidied up any mess from the earlier painting using Chaos Black. Next I used two watery coats of Khemri Brown to get rid of most of the black. A watery coat of Iyanden Darksun (a deep yellow colour) was applied next. I then drybrushed the base with this yellow colour. Next I mixed it 50:50 with Bleached Bone and did a light drybrush. Finally there was one more pure Bleached Bone drybrush. Take some Chaos Black and tidy the edge of the base.

(I painted the base and then the miniature, but that was the wrong way around as then you need to be very tidy when working on shoes, etc.)

Step 8: Add Seaweed. I grabbed some moss from the back garden and left it to dry overnight. I mixed a very watery PVA mix and then dipped the ‘seaweed’ in it and added it to the base.

That sounds like lots of steps, but when your basing a whole unit there is very little hanging around as (certainly with the painting) once one step is completed on all of the miniatures you can go back to the first model and start the next step. Easy and effective.

Owen