It has been a while since we did a blog post about anything other than what has been happening or upcoming events. I thought that I would share my Ice bases I made for my Nords from Para-bellum games. I am expanding that army now in our very own slow grow event I thought I should do a bit of a tutorial on how I made my Ice Bases for my Conquest Nords. I feel the Nords lend them selves well to the ice bases as northern raiders should, the more I looked in to it, there was plenty of snow, tundra even a sculpted long ship that all look fantastic, not so many Ice bases and I really wanted to do Ice bases.

Step 1: The Bases

Conquest bases are a square base with a round insert, in conquest as we no longer remove the models I glue them down.

I glued in the round inserts with plain old superglue. These bases are 66mm square, and monster bases are much bigger.

Once the glue is dry and everything is secure it is time to take care of those dimples, and gaps around the round inserts

To fill all the bases I used Builders filler, a two part filler. In my case I use a product called Turbo Builders Bog, from my local big box hardware store. This stuff can be sanded, cut and generally you can do anything to it. It bonds to just about anything as well. I have applied it with a putty knife and then sanded a couple of high spots I created.

Step 2: Base Colours

From here we start of build the colour and depth of colour on the base. First step is texture Paint

I use the Vallejo Brown earth texture paint, it has a good amount of texture and covers really well.

Once this is dry I under coat light grey. In this case I am not going to post this as it is the cheapest rattle can from a hardware store I could find.

Ice Base Colours

We start to get to the colours and depth of colours now. There are 4 paints I use for colours, the first two are Acrylic paints from the Scale75 range, then I follow up with a some contrast paints.

The Scale75 paints used are Caribbean Blue for the light colours under the ice, and Navy Blue to deep water under the ice.

Once I have applied a base coat to nearly all the surface I start to wet blend.

The end result is pretty good, with light to dark gradients.

Once this is all dry, it is time to add the next layer of depth. This starts with a dry brush of white. I can hear it now, I am not normally a dry brush person but for the contrast colours to add a bit more depth and tone I need the white to enable this.

I used the AK Interactive Gen 3 White for this.

Once that is done, I apply Contrast paints by Games Workshop, in the same manner as I did with the acrylics,

The Terradon Turquoise adds nice bit of green to the base and the Aethermatic Blue also adds a little bit of green to the light parts of the base.

And we now blend them on the base. I found this works pretty well. However Like the base above I sometimes add too much Terradon Turquoise and it doesn’t mix as well as I would like it goes far too dark. The lesson here is be sparing.

Step 3: Adding Ice to the Ice Bases.

Once we let everything dry, it is time we start to add all the icy elements, It would not be Ice bases with out Ice would it.

We start with the ice coming up from the surface, this I used the AK Interactives Resin Ice.

This is a three part resin Kit that can help create ice pieces. Like these below

The resin finished clear and you can break it up by hand, the Ice Surfacer gives the resin that crazed ice look you get when you look at an ice cube, just a bit finer. I made a number of batches of this up and poured it into old plastic miniature packs to cure, and painted the surfacer in from there. I keep a bit in a plastic tub, it doesn’t matter if it breaks down further I always need different sized pieces.

From here I glue a few bits down on the bases

I would normally see how the models are going to fit before I do this but in this case I know the bases are for Characters, and they will sit in the middle so this will work fine.

Now we come to adding real depth, There are a number of ways you could do this however I don’t really want to mask up the sides of the base to create 2 or 3 mm of depth, you can and I would suggest it would look fantastic, but for practicality sake I went pretty thin.

For this I use a UV cure resin by Greenstuff world

It is pretty thick and can cover a fair surface, I push it in to any gaps and make sure it is on the entire surface.

Once applied I stick it under a UV lamp for as long as it needs.

Step 4: Ice surface Texture for our Ice Bases

To give that really frozen cold frosty look I am looking for, there are a few options. But for simplicity for this guide I used a product from Greenstuff World called Liquid Frost

It is pretty thin so just put enough on the base that can be spread all over. It looks cloudy and slowly as it dries it starts to form that frosty look.

As you can see the texture detail from the Liquid Frost is quite good. You could use just a strong solution of saline water. However having worked with the Liquid Frost for a number bases now, it is a little more consistent than my early home made Saline water solution. If you add extra Liquid frost near the edge you get some nice crystals forming to look like Ice as well

Step 5: Snow.

From here I am going to add some snow effects to the top of the ice, I will push it up against the ice shards to make it look like snow drifts.

For this I am again using a Vallejo product Diorama FX Snow

I have used heaps of different Snow textures over the years, some look good, some not so good, this one is pretty consistent and I like that I can move it around and make it look like I want. It can take time to dry depending on how thick you make it, but the effect is good.

Final Ice Bases

With the Snow Dry we can see how the final bases look. Paint Black around the base and we have a finished Base

Once we add Miniatures to them the Ice Bases really add to the miniature.

I hope you all find this useful. I guess the only thing left for me to do is to get on with the Slow Grow Painting. Only 3 Characters and 5 or 6 units to paint.

Upcoming for the Monday Knights

Don’t forget we have an Alpha Strike Tournament coming up on September 14th you can find more details here.