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(Posted on LO as well for maximum assistance potential.)

Okay. So I'm starting a Wood Elves WHFB army, and I want to use water effects on a majority if not all of the units in the army. This is my side-army, the one I'm going to spend the most time on converting and painting, etc.

Long story short:

-- Water effects need a recessed area, for what I'm doing.
-- GW/Citadel bases are not recessed.
-- I can't find any comparably-sized or square recessed bases.

So.

Should I manually cut every little square base out and build a new base at table level, as in this tutorial: http://www.brushthralls.com/basing/swamp-basing-2.html

Or... would it be feasible to just flip the square bases upside down and work with them that way? Would they be too unbalanced? Would I have to fill in the gap between the table and the top of the base with greenstuff (here --> \____/ --)? Or just weight them?

I don't want to use any incorrectly sized or shaped bases, but cutting or melting the bases seems too tedious. Has anyone tried this before?

Help!

Question: Why do you need a recess?

I'm thinking he probably wants the wood elves to be somewhat submerged in the water.

If you make the bases flush (flat-edges, probably easily achieved by filling with GS and gluing on extremely thin plasticard to make the edges completely flat), it should probably work (notice that the bigger bases will require a lot of filing, as they have excess plastic on the underside of the base. Also, don't try making the edges of the bases angled, as that would technically make them illegal for gaming purposes). Or, you could try a technique that I've been using for my swamp-based Necrons (just note that this will make the water raised above the bases, but it looks very cool):

Measure out the dimensions of the square bases, and then make a "mold" of sorts out of thick plasticard, raising the edges to where you want the water raised to. Once you're finished with the mold, grease the crap out of it with some petroleum jelly or something similar, and then base the very bottom of it with GS, gluing whatever you want to be seen under the water to the GS once it's dry (rounded pebbles look good for underwater purposes, as it only makes sense), including the figure. You can feel free to take it out of the mold, and paint it up to whatever standard you have. Now, get a hold of some clear resin. Make sure the mold is greased like a mofo, put the GS base with the figure on it back in the mold, and pour the clear resin into the mold. Wait for it to dry completely before you even touch it (it takes a while). Hopefully you greased it up real good, because taking the resinated model out of the mold is the real pain. Once it's out, you can simply glue it to the base.

Again, this technique makes the water raised above the base, but it's very awesome to be able to see all the detail right through the side of the water. That, and the water level can be as high as you please (it gets harder to take it out of the mold the higher the water level is, and also note that it looks better if the water level is the same on all the figures). From here, you can ink the "water" any color you please, and also experiment with further minis on raising the level of the dirt, so you can see kind of an underground cross section (though this requires a bit more basing work, putting a dirt texture on the sides of the raised ground).

Hope that helps.

If you want to submerge your woodelves, why not just chop off their feet?

malfred wrote:If you want to submerge your woodelves, why not just chop off their feet?

So that they'd be immersed in blood?

That too.

malfred wrote:Question: Why do you need a recess?

That's a good question... I wanted to go for a deep swampy look, and as far as I was aware it took a recessed area to use water effect in that way. Then again I've never actually used them, I've only read tutorials.

I'm interested in a look similar to the images on the bottom of these two pages:
http://www.brushthralls.com/basing/water-bases.html
http://www.brushthralls.com/basing/swamp-basing-4.html

Is there a way to control and use the water effects without there being a recess? If there is a suitable bypass then perhaps this is the best route for the majority of the army, and I can leave the fiddly base-carving for just the lord and heroes..

Chrysaor686 wrote:I'm thinking he probably wants the wood elves to be somewhat submerged in the water.

...

Hope that helps.

Holy. Yeah that would definitely be an option, and a sexy one at that, but it's probably too work intensive for a whole army.. I've never even worked with resin before, I wouldn't know where to start! But that might be mighty fine on a central unit.. I'll just have to find me some more information on that route before I'd be comfortable trying it.

Yes, I wouldn't mind if I could get some of the models a bit submerged, but I guess the most important part to me is just the illusion of 'swamp', and the best examples of that involved the extra base-chopping, so I figured that was the only option.


Is there an option where I can bypass the chopping off feet, not hack up the bases, and not bother with resin? Can I just use the water effects in some way on the surface of the bases without edges and still get the swamp effect I'm looking for?

Try using PVA glue (if you live in the state's I think its called Elmer's glue over there). Paint the base the colour you want, wrap some tape around the bevelled rim of the base, fill to desired level, let it dry, it dries completely transparent and looks like water. I use it for puddles etc all the time. I'm not sure about adding paint to it though, haven't tried that yet.

You can add paint or ink to either water effects or PVA glue, in sparing amounts. I'm doing a water effect for an eldar reflection pool that will be an objective marker for my army and will add a smidge of blue ink to the resin for a natural look.