Basing Your Miniatures: Creating Realistic Terrain

A Miniature is Never Complete Without a Base

There is a saying in the UK hobby community: a well-painted miniature on a plain black plastic base just looks unfinished. Think of the base as the picture frame for your artwork. A great base grounds your model in a specific environment, tells a story about where they are fighting, and provides crucial colour contrast that makes your actual paint job pop visually on the tabletop.

Using Citadel Technical Texture Paints

Games Workshop makes basing incredibly easy and mess-free with their incredible range of Technical texture paints. Products like Stirland Mud (for thick, gloopy earth that looks like a rainy battlefield), Astrogranite (for cold, urban rubble), and Martian Ironearth (which naturally cracks as it dries to create stunning alien landscapes) can be applied directly to the base with a texture tool or an old brush.

Adding the Finishing Touches

Once your chosen texture paint is completely dry, you can lift it with just a couple of minutes of work. Give it a quick wash with Agrax Earthshade or Nuln Oil to massively deepen the shadows. Follow this up with a light, careful drybrush of a lighter colour (like Tyrant Skull) to pick out the raised grit and texture. Finally, use a spot of superglue to attach a few tufts of static grass, some skulls, or small rocks to bring the base to life.

Shop our Citadel Technical paints today and start building battlefields your miniatures deserve to fight on.

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