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Was talking to a fellow hobbies about painting up some WHFB miniatures and he suggested painting the sides of the bases black/neutral colour and then doing the top of the base with a range of other colours. What is the received wisdom around this? Was thinking if the miniatures are all in a unit, would this not make it look odd (or does the different colour around the side cause the eye to just focus on the base)?

Painting the border of the base gives a clear visual line where the model stops being the model's setting/universe and where it returns to being a model. If you paint/texture the sides of your bases like the tops then it ends up looking off, sort of like all your models are standing on uniform square mounds, but if you leave them black the eye sort of slides off the 'this is a model' base bits and the tops give more of an impression of a flat surface.

It isn't a perfect illusion, but painting the sides of the base seems to draw too much attention to the fact that it's a base to me, and distracts from the illusion of the model. It's like doing something in a movie that splatters the camera with something, it reminds you there's a camera. Or a base. And that this is fantasy, whereas if you hide it the suspension of disbelief is easier to preserve and the model looks more natural and less model-like.

I like to black rim my bases these days. It sort of acts like a frame for the mini. Even when the baseing matches the table, it can still look off. And when they don’t match, it just gets weird without a border.

When I recently painted a few new skeletons to add to my old army, I used my new style. Contrast with the all-green look.

I try to go for a rim colour that compliments the base colour.
My urban bases have grey rims, my desert bases have tan/brown rims.

I find that the plain black look makes them stand out too much, and in my opinion, makes the base look unfinished.

I used to paint all the rimes black, and then I saw some minis that had rim colours that complement the colours of the models, and I thought it looked pretty cool, making the colours pop a bit.
With The Bloodstorm, I use black rims to denote models from the daemonkin book and red rims to denote models from the CSM book.

Depends on the look you are going for. I like painting stuff bright and comic booky, and spend time on my bases so I like for each model to look like a little statue. Of course, some people like things to blend in and make cool looking dioramas.

For my 40K Orks I do bright glittering white ice berg/snow bases and use dark gray (Mechanicus Standard Grey - beautiful shade) for contrast and to make a distinct line. For the Ago of Sigmar set I did, I themed my armies red and blue, and rimmed my Stormcasts with bright blue and Khorne with bright red so it looked like a board game with two distinct armies.

I am doing this for my 30K army, largely because GW did it for the Heresy minis on the box and I liked the effect there. I'm still undecided whether or not I like it on my guys though.

My orks are walking on astrogranite and long beard grey dry brush along with rocks, dead grass and debris. I use mournfang brown for my rim. Kinda like they are all on a stained wood pedastal.

It's an entirely personal decision. The general consensus though is to not texture the sides of the bases - it's tough to get the stuff to hold, looks a bit odd, and makes your minis look like they're all standing on piles of dirt. So a clean colour around the base is pretty common.

Some people view the base as part of the miniature - I view it as part of the field/table. As such I don't even use slottabases because they're a bit tall and ungainly. I do simple bases which blend in exceptionally well with my particular choice of gaming mat. I feel the miniature should look as if it's walking on the table, not standing on a large black disk.

Again, personal preference.

I use Renedra plastic bases which are more-or-less discs, available in numerous sizes to fit my 40K models. When placed on my gaming mat the bases disappear quite well which to me adds to the look.



I find (as someone stated above) that black or coloured bases completely ruins the immersion for me (in the same way that I don't like characters based on gigantic stone plinths or boulders).

@Elbows
I really like your basing on those Eldar. Even though you said they were mostly for a particular table, they could fit very easily into just about any table. I also like my basing to very simple and generic to not distract from the table setup as best as possible.

For my Black Legion I wanted something contrasting the black armor as well as something that looks pretty desolate. I went an astrogranite texture paint for the top of the base. My original idea was to go with a lighter color gray for the sides, but I am not so sure I like the effect.

I am considering going with a more neutral gray that would blend in with the astrogranite better. However, it might blend in too much. Before I do this I think I am going to try to dry brush the texture to see if that lightens it up to work. I may still go with the neutral gray sides to contrast with a lighter gray top surface.