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I have recently started to finish more of my Tau army (That is, painting and basing now that all the modeling is done) and I was wondering how to do custom bases. What I mean is, I would like to base my units on a fluff-appropriate place, which is essentially rocky with painted-on lava cracks running on it. My first thought was to use Styrofoam, but I have no idea if it would work or not. So, here are my two questions.

First, can Styrofoam be used for basing? Nothing terribly fancy, just painted up to look more custom than just tossing on some basing material. If it does work, then what kind of glue could I use to put it on the base and the model on the foam? I'm currently using Testors plastic cement, which probably doesn't work on foam quite so well.

If it doesn't work, on the other hand, what other material could I use in its place? I picked Styrofoam at first because it already has a sort of rough texture, so I basically just need to paint the base up to make it look rocky.

If you can get thin cork tiles that would be optimal solution. It is easy to carve cracks to the cork and the surface has naturally a stone like texture, which is easy to paint to resemble cooled lava stone. It is also easy to glue and is durable.

You can of course do this with foam, but it is more fragile and you have to create the texture yourself. I would go with cork.