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I'm trying out painting for the first time on some minis for a campaign - picked up a few reaper minis (thurion blackguard and some bugbear warriors). I've noticed that they have a tendency to topple over.
Is it standard procedure to rebase these minis? Should I just glue them down on to a slotta base? Am I just clumsy?
Another alternative to slotted bases is metal washers. These are are especially effective if the model is a little top-heavy.
With the price of washers, it would be cheaper to use pennies or nickels as bases.
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I'm trying out painting for the first time on some minis for a campaign - picked up a few reaper minis (thurion blackguard and some bugbear warriors). I've noticed that they have a tendency to topple over.
Is it standard procedure to rebase these minis? Should I just glue them down on to a slotta base? Am I just clumsy?
I almost always paint reaper minis, this is what I do with a mini before painting.
1. Cut off excess bits of metal from the mould.
2. File down any obvious mould-lines.
3. File the base flat.
4. Wash the mini with soap and a stiff toothbrush.
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With the price of washers, it would be cheaper to use pennies or nickels as bases.
Yeah, my wife cringed when I suggested using pennies for bases but then I pointed out the alternative was spending 10 times as many pennies on bases she *grudgingly* let me use them. Something about the idea of abusing money bugs her.
Yes, yes, I know I link to these all the time and nobody likes squares except me, BUT... just to throw another option out there. When my minis can't stand up I glue them to these:
These plastic 1 inch squares are awesome.
Per unit, they cost as much as using a nickel base. I also use them during gameplay to mark off spell areas and other terrain effects. They are a little thick but heavy and solid and once you paint them obviously you can't see that they are brightly colored plastic underneath.
Most of the Dark Heaven Legends models will stand on their own with adequate filing on the bottom, however--though some of them even if you get a nice flat bottom, they are too small or oddly shaped to stand well.
There is another miniature company that does cheap custom size bases that I think are supposed to be super cheap (cents per base) but I can't remember where they are. Anyone remember?
Washers washers washers.
They're heavy, so they lower the center of gravity and make it less likely the mini tips over.
That weight gives the mini a good heft, even if it's a plastic or resin mini.
They're commonly available.
You can buy them singly at hardware stores if you just need a few.
You can buy a big box at a discount.
They're available in many sizes (from Small to Large), and the default is a grid-friendly 1" diameter.
If you put the shiny side down, they slide nicely (though I prefer the flat side down).
They're ferrous, so you can use them with Alea tools magnetic bases.
They're durable as hell.
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They're ferrous, so you can use them with Alea tools magnetic bases.
I too am an Alea fan; they got good people over there.
:)
Washers washers washers.
They're heavy, so they lower the center of gravity and make it less likely the mini tips over.
That weight gives the mini a good heft, even if it's a plastic or resin mini.
They're commonly available.
You can buy them singly at hardware stores if you just need a few.
You can buy a big box at a discount.
They're available in many sizes (from Small to Large), and the default is a grid-friendly 1" diameter.
If you put the shiny side down, they slide nicely (though I prefer the flat side down).
They're ferrous, so you can use them with Alea tools magnetic bases.
They're durable as hell.
A nickel is cheaper. Pennies even more so.
We recommend using a blade to cut off any excess metal on the underside of the figure that is a result of the casting process. If you have files, you can then file the base smooth. If the base is slightly bent, with flat tipped pliers, you should be able to bend it back into shape. Gluing these to a prepared base, such as the ones we sell, or Litko, GW, etc., or even to a washer, penny, or other flat object will help with stability on models that are top-heavy or have narrow bases. Superglue should do the trick quite nicely.
A nickel is cheaper. Pennies even more so.
Yeah, but I have many, many human-scale (Medium) minis with built-in bases that are larger than a penny or a nickel. Any likewise many that use slotta bases but would hang over the edges of a penny or nickel (which I'd have to build up with Apoxie or greenstuff anyway, so may as well use a washer).
And coins aren't ferromagnetic, so I can't use them with my Aleatools!
(Oh, and I make magnetic miniature-holders, either singly with the clear plastic boxes you buy packs of dice in, or in big things like this that hold an entire group of PCs, so the iron is an important thing to me.)
Those are great results for a first-timer!
I love Reaper Minis, but this is my one complaint about them. I've stuck my gargoyle to a penny, but I'm beginning to think it really needs a nickel.
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The nickels did the trick with a little bit of sand. Very stable now.
Anyone have any advice for painting the pathfinder red dragon mini - I noticed there was a reaper staff artist's WIP thread but it only got as far as painting the wings a bright red.
I've got it based on a 60mm iron halo Valhalla base (the company Geraint recommended) and primed black so far.
give em a cane hehe
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The nickels did the trick with a little bit of sand. Very stable now.
Anyone have any advice for painting the pathfinder red dragon mini - I noticed there was a reaper staff artist's WIP thread but it only got as far as painting the wings a bright red.
I've got it based on a 60mm iron halo Valhalla base (the company Geraint recommended) and primed black so far.
Ace, I've never used one of their really big bases. I hope it works for you.
Some good advice on the reaper forums here.
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The nickels did the trick with a little bit of sand. Very stable now.
Anyone have any advice for painting the pathfinder red dragon mini - I noticed there was a reaper staff artist's WIP thread but it only got as far as painting the wings a bright red.
I've got it based on a 60mm iron halo Valhalla base (the company Geraint recommended) and primed black so far.
Ace, I've never used one of their really big bases. I hope it works for you.
Some good advice on the reaper forums here.
Heh, his dragon looks a lot nicer than mine. Yellow primer was a good idea, my red is looking very flat over top of black primer.
http://throwawayimage.tumblr.com/post/5164013320
[edit]
Higher resolution
I still need to find and paint the eyes and clean up the claws, horns and the belly, and then paint the base.
The carvings in the base are pretty snazzy.
New Zealand coin are!
And coins aren't ferromagnetic, so I can't use them with my Aleatools!
Yeah, but their magnetism is upside-down compared to North America, so they'll actually repel the magnets I want to use!
Yeah, but their magnetism is upside-down compared to North America, so they'll actually repel the magnets I want to use!
They spin the wrong way, too, and it makes me dizzy, so I can't play table basketball with them.
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Picked up some more reaper miniatures and have them primed.
An Ettin
The Back of an Ettin
Avatar of Aurelius
Reverse of Avatar
:) trying to find a coin big enough for the ettin
Yar.
I almost always rebase my minis. I also hate slitted plastic bases. Sometimes a mini will have a good base, and all that I have to do is file it down to make it flush.
Personally, I am willing to fork over a bit of extra cash for a good base (not just functional, but looks good too). I am a fan of Gale Force 9 Magnetic Bases. You can get them in a multitude of sizes, and as squares, circles, hexes, or even pill shaped.
There are some good suggestions in this thread. GF9 is just another option. ^_^
~P
So I'm trying to rebase a bunch of Dark Heaven Legends minis and am having a slight problem. I would like to put them on one-inch square bases to make them all nice and tidy and in order to be able to do more interesting things with texture, flocking and grass, rocks, etc.
The problem is that if I simply put them on top of a (slotted or unslotted) base, they end up being rather tall, since their own base gets added to the height of the normal base. Reaper does sell this sort of base, but that's more than $2 per base, which seems excessive. The problem of simply putting the bases on a very thin square of plastic or metal is in making the edges straight, even and nice-looking.
I have not found any company that seems to make plastic equivalents of those Reaper metal bases with the exception of Wargames Foundry, which sells these. I'm just wondering whether this is the only available way to get a base like this.
I know that I could, in theory, remove the bases from the DHL minis sawing and drilling, and then pin them to a standard base, but that seems like rather a lot of effort, and this kind of base would make that unnecessary. Do other people really remove the bases from their DHL minis and then put them on regular bases, or is there some obvious solution I haven't thought of?
I haven't found any stores around here that carry Wargames Foundry stuff at all, let alone those bases, but I have found an online merchant that sells them, so I can just order them from there. But is this the best option?
Cut the slot off of the minie and glue it to a Nickle. Its heavier than a washer and solid. It is actually legal to use currency like this, since you're not passing it off as anything else.
Invest in some "green stuff". A little goes a long way. Spread it over the nickle and texture it to suit the mini. You can even add things like ferns and logs with surprisingly little skill.
I'm not doing this with minis with a slot. I'm trying to do it with DHL minis like this.
Honestly, Elrostar, I've always just glued my DHL minis onto a base, pre-sculpted base and all. It does make the minis "tall" but with a little extra greenstuff or sand also provides for a really interesting looking base.
The only other thing I can think of as a cheap solution to your problem is to buy ordinary, non-slotted plastic bases, and turn them upside down to use the "indented" portion instead (IIRC most plastic bases are hollow on the underside. The thing is as these bases are usually graded so the top is narrower than the bottom, turning them upside down will make the bottom narrower than the top.
I've now ordered those Wargames Foundry bases, so I will be able to see how they work out. I will report, although it will be a while before they arrive since they're a special order item.
I used to rebase them with Heroclix/mage knight bases. Just the top part after popping them out of the clicker. I had TONS of those...
Though unfortunately those are a little bigger then the one inch square map we started using... So I broke down and bought some 1'' plastic slotted bases from Reaper. I've had no complaints since I started that.
Well, my recessed bases have finally shipped, so hopefully I will be able to try them out on a few minis by the end of the week. I've been trying to get some painting in before the semester starts, as I suspect I'll be rather busy teaching. Very rude of actual, you know, work, interfering with my time spent with minis.
When I have a self based mini (or I'm re-baseing a MageKnight or other Clix figure) I just cut 1" squares (or larger) out of stiff plastic.
Curently I'm using a "Garage Sale" sign that's 1/16 of an inch thick. It started out as 2'x4' in size, so it's been providing me bases for about a year now and I've still got more than half left over. IIRC, the sign cost about $3US. I've used simular signs to provide walls and billboards in my terrain building efforts.
The bases don't take long to make. Just draw out a 1" grid and cut. I use a metal cutting shears, but the plastic is thin enough that a good pair of scissors would work just as well - although they'll dull quickly.
Before I purchased the boxload of wooden circles, and the cheapo poker chips, I was making perfectly stable and usable bases by punching a 1" circle of foam and a 1" circle of stiff paper such as poster board (I was actually using an empty Kleenex box) and gluing them together and then gluing my mini to the paper side of that. I've got several minis based that way. To punch the circles I use a scrapbook paper puncher.
Having a lot of luck combing the ideas. For the reaper mini with the built in base (those seem to be getting rarer) glue it to a washer, and use some green stuff to build up the base around it. For slotted minis, i cut off the bottom, glue the mini to a nickle, glue the nickle to a washer, and use green stuff to cover up both. It gives a very weighty base using very little green stuff
My recessed bases have arrived and they're everything I was hoping they would be. I'm currently creating a light box so I can take some pictures of minis, but the general impression is that they're ideal. I had to file off some of the integral base, but not terribly much, and I then filled in the rest using fine pumice gel.
Apparently these bases are actually manufactured by Freebooter Miniatures (the German company), but the ones I bought were nominally from Wargames Factory. It's possible that in Europe they're easier to acquire from the source, so to speak. They can be bought from the Freebooter Website, but shipping to the US means that buying them that way is perhaps a bit silly. On the other hand, it only comes out to 11€ including shipping, for 50 of them, so...
In any case, I have 50 now, and I'm unlikely to need more for a while.
Okay, not so much on the whole 'taking pictures' angle after all. My digital camera has bitten the dust (screen cracked), so I'm not going to be taking pictures for a while :(
Yeah, but their magnetism is upside-down compared to North America, so they'll actually repel the magnets I want to use!
Are you saying there's a disadvantage to having magnetically levitating game pieces?
Nail gun.
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So I finally got to assemble and start painting one of my reaper dragons this weekend. This is about my 10th or so miniature and the largest one I have tried to date. Couldn't find nice base for it so I decided to try rolling my own.
https://twitter.com/#!/throwawayimage/status/194145032582856704/photo/1/lar ge
And a little later on with the base started.
https://twitter.com/#!/throwawayimage/status/194541274894843907/photo/1/lar ge
Going to add some ruins, and finish painting the dragon, and then add the rider and saddle on to the back.
Oooo. Nice. I can never get lava to look right
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I used a hot glue gun and the back of a cheap paint brush to spread it around. Should have done the base first and then stuck the dragon on :) Live and learn.
https://twitter.com/#!/throwawayimage/status/194583088427302912/photo/1/lar ge
Added a bit of rubble, next step is sand I suppose.
Presumably the dragon did the 'melt stone' thing on a building to create some lava with its breath weapon and then landed on it.