I recently returned to painting 28mm minis. It's been nearly 20 years since the last time I painted. My friends and I in highschool played Warhammer Fantasy and Mordheim. I discovered Frostgrave several years ago and I think its a brilliant game (Stargrave is brilliant as well), but I never made the commitment to actually sit down to create and paint my own warband. These definitely turned out much better than anyting I painted when I was a teenager! I went a little overboard on the fieldgrass, which is not very thematic, but I am trying not to buy any new hobby supplies and that's what I had around. Now if I could just find a group to play with here in Portland, OR...
I have lots of WGA sprues that I picked up over the spring and summer and I've been messing around with lots of kitbashing with different product lines including Oathmark, Frostgrave, Ghost Appellago, Stargrave, Dead Man's Hand, Dead Zone, GW, and Kings of War. I plan to contine to paint and share my progress here. My next project will be some Goblin Gretchin and a Space Dwarf Stargrave Crew.
@Matt McCallum Glad you back into the grove so to speak, your works great, the colours so naturally solid. If you don`t find a close group to play, enjoy photographing them and posting here.
@Matt McCallum an amazing dwarf warband, congratulations. When I finally came back to the hobby, when my professional life finally began to stabilize, one of the games that brought me back to the hobby was Frostgrave, together with Rangers of Shadow Deep.
Thank you all for the warm welcome and the support. It's encouraging to keep going and to be more active on the forum. I look forward to sharing more of my work and seeing all of yours as well.
@Jay H. I'm not a Facebook user, but I'm hopeful I can make some connections as a couple local game stores. There are a few really good ones in the area. @Vitor Soares I do have the Rangers of Shadowdeep rulebook. It looks like a great rule set and a fun campaign. It's a good option if I want to game solo. I also picked up Five Parsecs from Home for a sci-fi option. It looks like a really deep and observing campaign game.
Anyone have any suggestions for basic sci-fi basing options? I don't think I want to use my field grass flock for everything 😉
For sci-fi I like clear bases. I prefer 2mm thick bases compared to the more common 3mm bases. It is important to not use superglue as that tends to cloud the clear plastic, there are other hobby glues that take a bit longer to dry but do not cloud the plastic.
@Alessio De Carolis those grid bases are awesome; they'd look especially great with Trader's Galaxy's Bot War minis, since it would kinda harken to the OG Transformers toy packaging!
My GENERAL default basing is coarse sand painted black undercoat, then tan, then brown ink wash then drybushed bone. Finished off with random tutfs of static grass, which are then lightly drybrushed tan. Works for any outdoors setting, and unless the models HAVE to be in another environment (such as lunar surface) I'll usually use it.
The final drybrush on the static grass is the pro tip that I got from a really good painter years back. It takes the shiny edge off the grass and makes it look more dried out.
For steel plating and other interior SF basing, I'd probably just get premade scenic bases. They really are not that pricey. Or, you could cut textured plasticard and trim it to a flat base. That's one job I'd probably pay a small amount per figure to avoid hours of fiddly work, but YMMV.
The Space Miners were done with rock flakes instead of sand and drybrushed from black to dark and light grey:
@Mark Dewis thanks for the examples and suggestions. I found this article that I thought was really helpful. Now I just need to go get some sand mixed up and maybe a couple different shades of inks or washes. Basing minis with sand
I've started my next project, 10 Goblin Gretchin, and I'll need to get them based to get them finished.
Building supply firms will usually let you fill a container with coarse sand if you ask politely. It's worth fractions of cents to them as they think in terms of excavator scoops. $100 a tonne works out to 10c a kilo. I probably haven't gone through an entire kilogram of basing sand in 20 years.
