Horus Heresy Base Tutorial (or how I make them anyway!).

 

It is an Age of Darkness.

The Galaxy is aflame.

Brother turns on Brother.

This is M.31.

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Terra, cradle of mankind, center of the Imperium that had conquered the galaxy. Once it had been a proud shining beacon of Humanities progress and manifest destiny to rule the stars.

Now it was strangled and besieged by the warships of Warmaster Horus, the Arch-Traitor. As he sought to wrest rulership from the Immortal Emperor and bring worship of the Dark God's of Chaos to the galaxy at large.

Orbital bombardments punished the planet, focused mainly around the Emperor's Palace and the strongholds of his forces. 

Some however, were directed at civilian population centers in an effort to pull loyalist forces away to defend the targets. 

Gothic architecture which had stood for the centuries since the Emperor had unified the planet was smashed asunder, stone compacted to powder, blocks falling into the ruined streets.

Already the vast city which had grown around the Emperor's Palace was a ruined nightmare, choked in the perpetual twilight of the fog of churned dust, warriors of both sides attacked and counterattacked as they sought the end the war which had torn the Imperium apart at its very core...

*****

Recently I posted my Son's of Horus Esoterist miniature, the latest finished for the project.

I posted the link on the 30k subreddit to several likes and a question by u/sarabando about how I make the bases.

So here we go:

I mainly use cork from a 3mm tile. I've cut up several 3mm by 2mm blocks to serve as bricks and also tear up some small pieces to serve as smashed concrete (or whatever the 40k version is). I also gather a few interesting bits from the old bitzbox and my tub of builders sand (which I've dried out for use on models).

I generally start with the larger piece of cork, as I want to make sure I have a good secure place to mount the model on later, here it is with my newly converted Master of Signal. 

I check several times through the base build to make sure he fits, looks good on the base and has a good securing point.

After glueing the "concrete" down I look for the interesting ways that the bits can be added, this piece is fromma Valkyrie kit I think, but it makes a great electrical conduit for example.

Afterwards I begin added the "bricks" around the base, as well as the other doodad parts from the bitzbox. In this instance I didn't end up using the armour panel.

Pop the miniature base on to check all is well, looking good so far.

Next up is the sand. Some people use PVA but I just use paint and have never had a problem with it flaking off once sealed with primer.

I've used Screamer Pink here to show where I add the sand. Generally it's anywhere on the base which would be flat plastic, but also in-between the bricks and ontop of several of them. 

Remember that you need to leave space for the model to stand on, gluing ontop of sand hasn't worked out for me in the past.

A blast of grey primer and it brings everything together, now you can really start to see how it will look when finished.

And finally, a last check with the miniature placed on (not glued), to check it's still working. I ended up spinning the base 180 degrees for the Master of Signal, as a lot of the detail added would have been behind the miniature and lost to people looking.

This last step is important as it locks everything in your mind as to how the model will look, and if you need to make any changes you can now before painting and risking ruining your hard work later on.

I hope this helps, I'll do a painting tutorial for the Master of Signal if people wish as I've had several comments on my SoH paint scheme, let me know.

Until next time...