Monday, November 22, 2010

Multi basing for HotT

A friend of mine recently invited me to join in their 28mm scale Hordes Of The Things games and it drew me to exploring multi-basing, or diorama units.  The idea had always appealed to me, but in all my years I have yet to stick two figures on one base.  Go figure.
If you haven't tried multibasing, I really suggest giving it a bash.  The moment you place two or more figures on a base, you have relationships, and if you do it right, a narrative.  That's not often possible with one figure alone.  Suddenly, it opens up a whole exploration of what figures go together, how they interact and what does it all mean.  Deep stuff.

WIP.  Two I-KORE amazons and a Citadel Chaos Thug


Pictured above is a quickly assembled test piece for my HotT Army, to see if I liked the look and theme.  Because HotT is very loose and unrestricted with no army lists, I decided to take the opportunity to steer away from mainstream fantasy army choices and do something completely different.    Its going to be made up of evil hot chicks.

My army is going to be a coven of witches and succubi led into battle by a legendary Sorceress, her corrupted heathens, demons, fae, familiars and perverted nuns.  Basically a more Dark Ages or perhaps Conan style take on Slannesh.  Raiding my lead pile has uncovered a LOT of evil hot chicks.  My hordes base options are probably going to be zombies crawling out of swamps... because that's just plain cool.

BASES

First off, HotT recommends 20mm deep bases for blades units at 28mm and that just does limit what is possible for modern figures.  To give myself maximum freedom, I went with 30mm instead, so that two ranks forms a square block 60mm x 60mm.  Nice and neat multiples.

After exploring cutting MDF boards, which gave ragged looking to the bases, I tried using double ply plasticard- and this is the method I will be using from here on in.  To cut thick plasticard, you just need to run a blade along it and you can snap it like chocolate cubes.  When you have to make twenty or so bases, this is a blessing.  MDF requires a lot more dedication and patience, and I do not think looks as good.  Once cut, I glued two layers together and filed down the sides for a good, clean sturdy base.



The paint job here is just grey spray, badab black wash followed by matte medium heavy tints of purple, ocre flesh and snow shadow.  Everything else is just washed in blue, until I have time to do proper shading and detailing.  About ten minutes each to get it this far.  Now I can sit back, look at the colors and decide if I am going to dedicate some time to this.  I think the black/blue equipment vs pastel unwell skin colors is the way to go.

A blast of insomnia last night also produced two Slannesh figs...

Original Citadel Daemonette and converted modern Kroot
  Again, the Paint jobs are nothing fancy - just a few matte medium heavy glazes over a grey base, built up over about eight quick passes.
The Kroot demon was made with a simple Tyranid arm swap, blended together with some green stuff at the shoulders.  The head also was converted by slicing two kroot heads in half, and blending the join with a 6:1 mixture of greenstuff and supersculpey.  The sculpey in the mix helps you blend the GS into the plastic- but without effecting the setting.  You don't need to bake it in these proportions.  A nose and tongue was also added.

Insomnia can be useful.