Interceptors and Bases

On my last post I mentioned my addition to my existing Daemonhunters/Grey Knight army - an Interceptor squad. I haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like putting these together and getting paint on them. It was my hope that my youngest son and I would play a doubles tourney this weekend at the Memphis Battle Bunker. Since we won't be able to make it, I don't feel as rushed to get these done. I've got a couple of WIP picts below. The two I'm showing are the Justicar and  a model that I wanted to reposition to make him look like he is in the middle of landing/taking off.

In addition to clipping, repositioning, and green stuffing, I like to spend time dressing up the bases. On all of these I've used sand as the "base" basing material. Once the model is on the base, I use a watered down white glue mix and paint the whole base. (I think it looks more natural and blends the model in with the table to cover the whole base instead of leaving the sides uncovered.) I'll push the base into my container of sand to make sure it gets completely covered. Then I take it out, shake off the excess over the container, and let it sit to completely dry.

With my Justicar, I wanted him to be coming down a hill while swinging his hammer. I used pink insulation foam to create the rock he's standing on. This is the material a lot of people use to build gaming boards. It comes in large sheets. I have a bag with lots of small pieces I use on bases and terrain. I glued the piece to a base and then added sand to it. The picture below shows the next step for these models. Since they weren't being glued directly to the base, I needed to pin them. I drilled a hole in the feet and superglued a piece of craft wire inside. I drilled holes through the pink foam and through the bases. The wire was run into the holes and held in place under the bases with green stuff.

After the glue dries, I move on to bigger items. I use kitty litter as rocks on the bases. I'll put it on with watered down white glue, but I make sure it is a slightly thicker consistency. After that dries, I use sprue frames that I've clipped up into small pieces as rubble. To put these in place, I use the glue at almost full strength. You can see the kitty litter in the photo below. The bottom right model has some of the cut sprues on its base.

At different times during the basing process, I add bits from my bits box. On these bases I have skulls, bones, and a tank hatch. Throughout the process, I make sure I don't add anything until the glue from the previous step has dried. If I don't, material will come up with my brush as I add more glue. At the end of the whole basing process, I usually add a really thinned down layer of glue to the looser material (sand, kitty litter) to give it a more solid hold to the base.

I've leave you with a few shots of previous models I spent time with on their bases. These are a Librarian, Grand Master, servitor, and a dreadnought standing on a Chaos temple/ruin floor.