Basing the Cybernetic Horde - Tips and a look at my new hobby set up

Hullo there!

One of the concepts that can easily pass you by as a newcomer to table top wargaming and is an omission that can stick with you for quite some time is the basing of your miniatures. Its almost impossible to understate how much a base can compliment, set off and improve the look of your miniatures. This applies to both the miniature as a single entity but also to the army as a whole. With the right colour scheme and basing scheme you can create a fantastic unified look to an army that make it really "pop" as they say.

This is definitely something I did not appreciate for some time and so I thought I would show you the bases for my Cybernetic cohort in an unpainted stage as then you can see how I've put them together from pretty simple bits and given the bases a distinct look. I have to really emphasise the important of advice I've received from NafNaf of Objective Secured, Dave Weston of 40k Addicts fame and Nick Thrower of The Burning Eye. These guys really pushed me through comments (in the nicest way possible) to improve my basing and I have noticed, primarily starting with my Dark Angels, how much of an impact this has had on my overall army looks. 

I'd also like to link you to this article by Nick which deals with the other side of a cohesive army look, where he discusses ways to pick your paint scheme. I feel that if I had read this sort of article when jumping back into 40k it would have sped up painting choices if not ability and choosing the right paint scheme is really half the job sometimes!

Anyway here are some pictures of my bases at the moment:

The grilled floor is mesh I got from a craft shop. I cut squares out that I then bent over the base to give the circular impression which I just cut out with scissors. The black is just plasticard which is edged with cut up bits of paper clips. The copper wire is... well copper wire I got from a hardware store. And the little white clamp looking things came with nails in and are designed to hold wire to the wall such as running along skirting board. 

Everything else is just GW bits from my bits boxes. So nothing fancy at all! I just played around with bits until they looked good to my eye. And if they look good to me, that is what is really important, and generally it will look good to others as well. I feel you get a good "gut" feeling if something looks off. 

Here they are with just the Thallax on posed on their bases:

Even without being painted, because the components are all of metallic colours it already looks cool! I haven't put a detailed discussion of how I put these things together as I feel they are a bit too specific to my army. But I still have a few to do such as the Thanatars in the background so do let me know if you would like a step by step guide :)

Finally today we have some pictures of my new hobby set up. Its a little misleading as I have a lot of shit still in boxes but you can see that I have so much more space that I can separate my paints from the actual work area which is such a blessing:

The last picture shows a peak at something I am dicking around with for my mechanicum at the moment, though it may be re-purposed for the Alpha Legion... 

Hope you enjoyed a little look at this side of my hobby. Comments always welcome and don't forget to follow the links at the top to some other great blogs. We live and feed off your support and it makes us keep up on the content :)

Peace out,

Rob