Hardcore base traitor

I am a traitor. Yes, it's true.  After dedicating many hours to gluing sand to hex bases in honour of olde skool righteousness, I have, dear reader, fallen in one night to the charms of the "modern lipped base".

Faced with a very short amount of hobby time this weekend, I decided to push on with my c100 kill team charlie project by running off a few more resin bases.

Yep.  I make my own resin bases.  Hardcore huh?

Since I made only two moulds for the original hyperbole base, I realised it would take a fair while to base all my c100 figures up.  Hmmm.  The only route to getting this project done was to bite the bullet and make a mould that could churn out a whole mess at once. This meant blood.

My deep dish bases are made by hollowing out a plastic base- very fiddly, as a single slip can snap the rim. Or, az the case was, a finger.  Carving out nine of the bloody, and I mean literally bloody, things was a big decision. Better than manually casting bases one at a time though.
So, ten bases, three blades and a huge vertical cut on my right thumb and my new mould was complete.  A quick foamcore box, pinkysil 2 part silicone and a can of mould release and voila...
1x 40mm, 9x 30mm, and 5x20mm bases from one pour.  My master is reusable, so I can run off another silicone mould and do two lots very 10 minutes.

Silicone mould, resin bases(black), resin cappers (white),
Citadel Chaos Dwarf, C100 Space marine (converted)

So you can see the bases I made are hollow and deep, with a wider mouth.  As you may know from my previous rants about bases, this is so I could sculpt base detail on a ten cent coin to be cast separately.  These 'cappers' just snap in.  It saves making lots of big moulds for base styles I rarely use.
My gripe with plastic lipped bases are they are too shallow, which makes them hard to pick up- especially on heavy metal figures. I deepened mine by gluing a disc of plasticard to the masters and sanding them down to a smooth edge.

However, (and here is the beginning of the end for my Hex cult membership), the first batch came out so well I immediately saw the potential that the deep dish gave me.
I could rebase minis really quickly- I need only clip off the sides of the slottabase and I could transplant the whole base decoration onto the lipped version onto a ball of 5 minute epoxy putty.  (Note the poor little chaos dwarf in the above picture suffering this fate).
  The second feature was that preslotta bases could be glued in and their feet would be level with the lip.  Hmmm... this could be good indeed.


My skirmish rules Skulldred (see links) plays best when figures have the larger bases, since figures get into base contact a lot- scratching was occurring on my fave gaming figures.  Lipped bases seemed a good idea.  I decided to base up some of my new chaos Dwarf ebay acquisitions as a warband and see if I liked it.

[Insert suitable Top Gear style pregnant pause...]

I liked it.

Works in progress.  Citadel Chaos general (Earl Harkness from McDeath), Bederken Dwerg,
Citadel Minotaur, Citadel Perry Bros. Chaos Dwarves and the orc from the White
Dwarf Boxed Set

I ended up getting all the above bases out of the first mould.  A ball of 5 minute epoxy, and twenty minutes later I had all these guys done.  Procreate stick putty is brilliant for making rocky textures- check out the chaos dwarf on the raised stone.  That took, literally, ten minutes to make and cure.



All that remains now is to save up my pennies to get some clear resin and a black resin colourant- and I can make nice, pretty, chip resistant black bases.  Lovely.

So that's it. Hexes no more.

Once the feeling of treachery wears off, that is.