Experiments in Basing I

The release of the 8th edition rules of 40k has brought me, as it has many others, back into the terrifying depths of the Warhammer 40k hobby where time is wasted never to be seen again. Having a great looking army is a distant dream of mine and though it may take until the god emperor of mankind reveals himself to start his crusade across the stars, my Waaagh! will be ready and goddammit it will look good.

A few types of bases caught my eye, particularly those with cracked earth, so I picked up a bottle of Agrellan Earth from Citadel. Now what to do with it?

As a young Warboss I put my army on bases as soon as I glued them together. I thought that's how it was done. I soon found out that was not how one became the flashiest git on the table. So instead of tearing my army apart and having my boyz unplayable while they undergo a makeover I picked up these cheap wooden 25mm bases. I don't know how well they work on the table compared to the plastic ones, but as for putting paint on them, I like 'em fine.

I slapped on my slate and the small basing accessories that I got in some basing kit years ago (using liquid elmer's glue & super glue).

I went straight to this color, I got this idea from someone I played a game against, but he used automotive primer. Go with something like that, don't go with this paint; it sucks. It drips than a hungry squig.

I shouldn't have to say "After it dried," but for any young warbosses reading this I will say: always wait 'til a coat fully dries before moving on to the next one.
After the coat dried I put on the Agrellan Earth.
Here, I did not put a varnish on the painted wood before applying Agrellan Earth like I should have and almost sorely paid for it. A varnish will help make sure the Agrellan earth stays stuck firmly to it. Wood without varnish performed will in this manner in my experience, the paint above did not.Something flat and hard works better than a paint brush for this; I used sculpting tools. I spread it all over the flat wood portions and got it all the way to touching the base of the rocks and bits.

I did not wait long enough for it dry (around 4 hours) and I noticed some of the paint had shrunk more after I started the next step. The next step is applying a wash. I used both sepia colors they both look great. I used another red wash and went much lighter. This one is intended to be (but was not in practice) applied superficially to the surface of the paint flakes and not to run into the cracks as the sepias should. The red wash is for color variety.

The last step was dry brushing. I dry brushed gray onto the rocks and then oiled leather on everything, including the rocks. I might come back and dry brush an even lighter tan color for a dryer desert look. The oiled leather isn't very noticeable.

I am liking how they turned out and they definitely look better than what I did previously. It's not too time consuming which I like a lot. You get a great look out of a little bit of work. But my original idea was not satisfied and I may have found a way to make it as fast as this.

Here's all the photos in an album.
And here are a bunch of youtube videos I saw before trying this:
https://youtu.be/tWm38GgtGVs
https://youtu.be/iHWo8RG1NuY
https://youtu.be/P3zpcTHKS9U