Desert & Diamondplate Basing - How To

For my Dark Eldar army, I was faced with a challenge.  Wyches had to be on slot bases since the connection point of the foot was way too weak to connect with any specialty resin bases.  I also wanted to have a base that could both work on a desert "arena" area as well as on board a raider or my pleasure ship (out of Return of the Jedi) that I'll eventually have.

I picked up a bunch of diamond plate plastic from Plastruct product code: 91682.  I started by cutting out various shapes and gluing them down to the base. I then added one layer of sand, not overlapping any of the plastic.

At this point, I wanted to make sure the sand looked like it was blowing over the edges of the decking.  I layered on a second portion of sand over the edges of the decking and raised other areas of the sand to give it depth.

 

I then primed the models and started with the decking first.  

- Based Tin Bitz

- Heavy drybrush of Dwarf Bronze

- Drybrush of Chainmail

- Washed with Devlan Mud

Now I let the ink dry for awhile and could start on the sand.
- First I drybrushed very lightly another coat of Chainmail to pick up the raised part of the decking
- Heavy coat of Khemri Brown on the sand
- Drybrush heavy Desert Sand
- Drybrush Bleached Bone
- Painted the lip of the base black (personal preference).

I'm happy with how they turned out.  Simple but effective.  I'll spend some time next stepping how I did the flesh tones.  This weekend will be a lot of work around the house but I'm going to try and build some of my beastman Wrack substitutes so the Wyches have something to fight in the arena!