Making bases for Midgard Heroic Battles

As the release of Midgard grows ever closer I'm trying to finally get Project Pict completed to coincide with the launch.

All the troops are done and the characters are on the painting table, so I thought I'd get the unit bases made.

And I've captured the process in case anyone needs any pointers.

Stage one

First you need a base - in this case I've gone with a 120mmx60mm 2mm MDF base from Warbases. The Warbases team has a whole Midgard range listed on their website, but I like these round cornered ones.

There's no "official" basing size for Midgard - as long as you and your opponent have your units on the same frontage you can do what you like, but we've generally settled on a 12cm frontage as our preferred size for 28mm miniatures.

Stage two

Next I've drilled holes in the corners of the bases and glued some Rare Earth magnets in place. This is to try and hold the bases in place on my metal based Really Useful boxes, so you can skip this stage, or add magnetic srtip to the bases or whatever else you come up with.

Stage three

Next stage is to cover the top with some flexible steel sheet. I do this because my models have manets on the bases. Obviously if your models are based on a steel base (or pennies) you could reverse this and top instead with magnetic sheet. I bought mine from the nice folks at Coritani.

Stage four

Next I've added a little basing material around three of the edges. I've left the back clear as it makes taking and adding models off easier. I make this stuff by mixing brown acrylic paint, a little ready mixed filler, some sand and some PVA and water until I get a consistency I like. Thee are product available, but they're pricy for this kind of thing, save them for model bases.

You could do this just using sand and PVA and then paint the whole thing afterwards, but I've started doing this and it works for me - I'm not your dad, do whatever you think best.

Stage five

Paint the whole thing with some brown paint, just to disguise the metal when you have to take dead 'uns off

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I used cheap acrylic paint, you could use household emulsion or spray the whole thing. The important thing is it needs to be a pretty thin layer so you keep that nice magnetic thing going on.

Stage six

Dybrush with a lighter brown. I used a pretty orangey one (which doesn't show too well in the picture) but choose something to match the miniature bases.

Stage seven

More drybrushing, this time with a creamy colour

Bases for other troops

So far this has been about bases for ranked infantry units, but alongside this I also made some other types

This is for skirmishers. Exactly the same size  as the infantry ones above, but instead of covering the whole top with metal sheet, I instead used some offcuts to add four squares large enough to accommodate skirmisher bases. I broke these up a bit too in order to get a more irregular  shape to the unit.

Below is a cavalry base example, there are 120mm x 100mm - cavalry look better with a bit of extra depth, especially irregular sorts like the Pictish cavalry.

Again I used some offcuts to create shapes the right size for the horse bases.

All the other work is the same as for the infantry bases, except I took the opportunity to add a few large rocks to the bases, to break things up. I picked the rocks out with various grey shades.

Final stage

The last step is to add basing material of your choice - is used a mix of static grass, tufts, clump foliage and some purple "flowers" aiming for a heather look to suit my Pictish homelands.

Finished results

So how do they look with models on?

Like this:

I'm pretty pleased with the finished results and have made enough for my 300 point army - but as it's expanding I may need a few more...

Video

For those of you wanting a different medium, here's the same process but in moving picture format