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Like I said (What fells like enons ago!) I use sand heres an example:

It depends which army it is. For my main army, Dark Elves, it's snow, sometimes over grey sand. Of my three Space Marine colour schemes, one has the same as the dark elves, one I'm going for with large grey stones, a dark green grass and barbed wire ( so, urban rubble-ish), and for the last, I'm going for a wasteland/desert look with a slightly red sand. For my fledgeling Empire force, maybe a red sand kinda thing, to represent red dirt, with some normal coloured static grass and some snow, since it's a force from the Nordland, in the Empire's north. Not decided on the Eldar and Night Lord forces, since they're both 1 HQ and one other unit each, so not really gotten off the ground yet.

Although I said plain dirt, I use a black ballast material I get from a model train store, since it looks like some kind of pumice/scoria. I play Salamanders, and I think it looks appropriately volcano-ey.

urban debris, rubble, rocks, and tyranid infestation.

Picked "plain dirt" for my answer, as my current army project (the Jagdmacht) are on mud bases. My small Dark Eldar force from 3rd Edition is on urban bases. My Dark Elves for Fantasy are on green grass.

This is such a great poll question. One because it applies to so many people (not one game or genre setting/system), two; the variety of choices allows for interesting information to be gleamed. Better than a yes/no question. There should always be this many options or more.

Who knew that at least 32 people on Dakka use nothing but skulls for their bases, rock on!

Quite often I go for a desert look

"Other," I guess.

Just now starting to paint my Empire army and am going with a mix of (green) static grass and patches of modeling sand (painted as "dirt").

I generally paint the base with codex grey, but then carve in bullet holes and bullet burn/skid marks on the ground. i go over the holes/marks with black wash to make it look more worn. Generally I do it on my Orks to keep things simple. However, I may re-base them and do a more desert brown color.

My "big" models like my dreadnought and heroes etc I usually do a mix of codex grey, scorched brown, khaki, and graveyard earth or snakebite leather. I add a bunch of washes too. It makes the ground look dusty, like an abandoned urban environment/ruins that has been overgrown with shrubs and sandstorms etc. This reflects the sort of Road Warrior / Outback / Mars look my friends and I have for our board at home.

-VardenV2

sand and dirt mostly but have done many others like lava

Some basic sand and grass is what I use for most of my non-showpiece models.

Each army gets a different treatment: desert, mud, cathedral(work in progress), snow and grassland. After the cathedral stuff I plan on doing swamp bases for a new gaurd army.

Blank for the moment

I have half my bases snow and half undone. I've reasured myself that I will get them done some time...

I go for a mix of small stones or flint and GW baseing sand.

Depends...on my Dark Eldar i have sand and on my Orks i have Lava.

My Vampire Counts use water basing; my Spehs Mereens have grey ash. So, other.
Also, 36 people have their models on bases made entirely of skulls? ._.

Sand and very small rocks.... occasionally some debris sticking out of said sand.

Snow.
I star by gluing construction grade sand to my bases (this stuff generally contains little bits of rock and random detritus in it as well, or at least my stuff does) and generally has a nice effect all on it's own. But I like snow.
So I paint all of that chaos black. Drybrush a couple of shades of grey on it, then wash it in badab black. Then I add the snow slurry.
Snow- PVA glue, white acrylic paint, baking soda. Mix it up, spackle it on. after it dries hit it up with a quick dab of skull white to help defend against any future yellowing and presto, snowy wasteland.
The white on the grey/black is striking, but still grim-dark. Like so many others have said, the green grassy field base is just too peaceful and pleasant for a wargame.

usually a mix of cork, ruins and sand, painted in a dark sandstone colour.

Normaly I use either dirt of somethin that resembels concert, since almost all my armies have a city figting theme to them.

Sand, glued before painting. It's primed and painted with the rest of the model, with grass added afterward. Sometimes, I go scenic on the base with added materials to make it look cool.

Used to do Sand on my Nids and a mix of reen flock and sand on ny Marines and GK. But the last few models and all from here on use Texture Paint.

Sand, Bit O' Grass

Mixture of Urban and living grass, so overgrown ruins.

I base my models like on Peleliu in the Pacific Miniseries, with dead trees and destroyed buildings etc. With an ashy feel

My friend told me to do a desert base but i thought he said dessert base, so now my models have hundreds and thousands on them.

It all depends on the army/model - I use Scibor bases a lot though...

Wrote 'other,' as I cover them in sand, paint it brown, then use tufts of static grass to make it less boring.

I base most of them to look like a desert, but the other one I do a lot of is death world ground like Krieg since it's usually orange dirt.