Base-stravaganza! Swamp edition

  Now that the first batch of gremlins are assembled, it's time to talk bases.  Personally, I was rather proud of how well my lava bases look on my 40k army, so I wanted these to be even better than that.  Especially with a few models as you need in Malifaux, why not go hog wild(and yes that was an intentional pun).

  I would love to say that I came up with all this myself, but I didn't.  This is basically a compilation of every swamp basing tutorial I could find online and me picking out the things that I thought I had a chance of pulling off. Normally I would give credit when using someone else's guide, but in this case, that would require me listing sooooo many things. So if you're reading this and you think I was inspired by something you did.  Thank you.  I probably was.

So to begin with, I went about modifying the bases that came with my original models so they would be sunken in and water tight.  Step 1 was to cut out the top part of the base

Now that I'm left with just the ring of the base, I had to give it a bottom.  To do this, I grabbed the top of a "to go" container from the sushi place I normally go to.  I put a bead of glue all around the bottom of the ring, and placed it on top of the clear plastic.  Then allowed it to dry fully.

Look mom.. I'm recycling!

Using my exacto knife, I simply cut the ring off of the plastic.  

This is a view of the base upside down.

I had a couple idea's for bases.  1 using corkboard as rocks/ground.  The other to make sort of raft/dock looking base on top of the water.  The dock was made in the exact same way that my outhouse was made from one of my previous projects, just some superglue, popcicle sticks, and brown wash.

I glued the corkboard in place in the new bottom of the base before taking them out to be primed black.  

I've seen some people actually put sand in the bottom to provide some texture, but I hastily globbed brown paint in the bottom.  (sorry no picture) and it was good enough for me.  

Then I drybrushed it with a brown and puke green.  

After a quick trip to the hobby store, I bought some "savanna grass" and "plants"  These were glued to the bottom of the base.  I also threw in a spare skull I had laying around.  

Note to self, maybe saying you have extra skulls laying around your basement isn't a good idea.  

Now for the step "that really tied the room together Dude."  Woodlands Scenic Realistic Water.  This is why we made our bases water tight.  I mixed a few drops of brown wash into the realistic water mix and poured it into the bottom of the base.  

I did the empty base that will be under the raft first.  I figured if I didn't like how it turned out, it would be an easy one to "do over."

And here's the final product with my first finished Malifaux model, my warpig.

For me and my skill level, I feel pretty good about how it all turned out.  Hopefully the bases will draw peoples attention more than the models do and my mistakes are more easily overlooked.  

More Malifaux to come soon.  It nice to be excited about painting again.  I was getting a little worn out of the space marine sameness.  

And now for something completely different....

  I think part of the reason I've not been painting is because I'm sort of burnt out on warhammer/40k.  So I think it's time to change things up ever so slightly.

  Ok so maybe it's not something COMPLETELY different.  Malifaux is a weird, steampunky, magical, Victorian era, alternate world of craziness.   The fluff and background story are nothing really mindblowingly new, but it's well written and does draw you in.  There has been a bit of a swell of support here locally so now is as good of time as any to jump.  (There is actually a league to go along with this new influx of interest that I'm hoping to join in on, but we'll have to see.)

I've decided to play Gremlins, so I bought myself the So'mer Teeth Jones starter box.  New plastic versions are coming out VERY soon, but the metal ones were on sale, plus this will let me get a variety of different sculpts and looks as I will probably end up buying the new plastic version when they come out.  The gremlins play style is to summon more models in during the game, so for example, you might pay for 4 Bayou Gremlins to start the game, but you could end the game with more than that.  (Think Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts in WFB)  

I took some pictures of the assembled models, but well.. they're a bit blurry.  

yup.. it's in bags.  

I have some really neat basing planned out for these guys using "realistic water" and some modified sunken bases, but that's for another article, another time.