With my first game of WFB looming rapidly on the horizon I picked up a pack of the plastic movement trays that GW produces. They’re ok, for models with bigger bases, but I wanted to create my own. I’ll be playing Tomb Kings, and as such, will be using minis with smaller bases. Now, anyone who has seen the TK minis will see how spindly they are. This can prove to be a bit of a pain in the arse when it comes to moving them around, and I didn’t want to be wasting time arranging them properly everytime they marched around the battlefield.
Dutifully I went to JoAnne Fabric and picked up some mounting card. I already had foam card at home so I already have everything I need. Initially I was thinking of using just the foam card but realized that the skellies would practically be standing head and shoulders above the other minis. Hence the thinner and stronger mounting card.
With the mounting card, draw around your base. Do this for your frontage and your depth, depending on what size unit you’re fielding. As I will be making this for a unit of 10 skellie archers, frontage will be 5 with a depth of 2:
Once you have your base measured up, cut it carefully from the sheet of card. Keep the lines as straight as possible. This one became my ‘master’ so I can use it for making more bases whenever I needed. From here we draw around this again onto the mounting board. Then we draw a bigger box around it. This extra spacing will be where our lip runs around the edge of the base:
Cut this from your sheet of card. You now have your base which encompasses the 10 bases, plus the lip around the edge. Everyone following this ok?
Now, to the foam board. Trace around the larger base you just cut. then, lay your original template (the 10 base one from step one) on top. Make sure the spacing around the edge is roughly equal then trace around it. Then you’ll need to cut (very carefully) this centre piece out. You should end up with something that looks like a licence plate holder:
Get some all purpose clear glue and glue your foam card license plate holder to the mounting card base. You should be looking at something similar to the picture above. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect, we’ll be messing with that in a moment. I stuck my unit in it, just to give it a test fit:
Now, grab yer scalpel, or other sharp knife. We need to trim the edges down to give a more natural appearance, thus:
You’ll see now why it wasn’t a big deal if it didn’t all look totally straight, as you’ve changed it now anyway. You can be as zealous or reserved as you like here, it’s all down to personal preference.
We need to texture it now and you can do that one of two ways. First is to mix sand and PVA wood glue and paint this all over, or, if you want a quicker solution like me, you may have some ‘pumice’ which is available from most hobby stores. So, brab a brush and liberally slap it all over the outer ridge:
And you should end up with something like this:
The final stage is simple. You paint them! Paint them whatever color you need. As mine need to look all desert like, I start with a basecoat of Snakebite Leather:
Then a drybrush of Bubonic Brown and then finally Bleached Bone yields these results:
Thats it! you are done! I made 3 straight off, so I could put 2 units of skellie archers and a unit of Tomb Guard in them. They’re looking pretty sweet, and help give the army a uniform look.
Hope you liked this tutorial. More coming soon!
Paul
When Cannons Fade... 