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So, I am working with my growing Tyranid army, and there seems to be a disproportionate amount that tip over. Now, looking into weight, what are some rather creative and beautiful ways to fix this problem? Ive looked into rocks, and I rather stink at shaping foam. Any other ways to make terrain or anything else to keep these guys level as they roam the board?

I use nickels under the base.

You just tape them?

I flattened some lead fishing weights and superglued them to the bases. It worked. :]

You can glue nickels, or small washers to the bottom of the bases.

I have seen people use magnets, the benefit to this is they are now magnetized for your display board.

I have even seen people use green stuff to fill in the underside (but that's crazy expensive.)

Lots of ways to do it.

Depending on the base, I use off center pennies or washers. Superglued to the base on the bottom, of course.

Penny glued to the bottom, felt cut and glued to cover the bottom of the base.

Washers and stuff, works as well and you get more of them than if you used coins.

The hollow cup shape of GW bases is more stable on uneven terrain than a flat disk, so I try and avoid using disk-shaped weights that fill and smooth out the bottom, like a nickel or washer would. They're also more of a pain to install on slotta bases, which either require the weights to be cut or the underside of the slot to be shaved down. Lead shot or pellet gun ammo, on the other hand, doesn't require any cutting to fit, is easy to tailor, in both quantity (and, thereby, weight) and position, and, being a mass of smaller units, has a texture that grips any terrain that projects up under the base. The lead pellets tend to be a bit more expensive than the shot, pound for pound, but come in smaller packs that are more economical for those of us not planning on weighting scores of models. As an added bonus, they can be squished or melted together to form more substantial chunks of lead, which make great paint agitators.

I like to use shot/bb's from shotgun shells. you have to use bird shot but just put them in a tub of some sort and put glue on the base, stick the base in and there you have it. it adds a good amount of weight to the base and i dont have any issues with them falling over. even the precarious ones are really steady.

Edit: i should really read what the person right before me says before i go off on a tanget. sry hunger.

 oadie wrote:
The hollow cup shape of GW bases is more stable on uneven terrain than a flat disk, so I try and avoid using disk-shaped weights that fill and smooth out the bottom, like a nickel or washer would.

I concur

I glued nickels on some of my Daemon bases and found them tipping a lot (especially the standard bearers).

 oadie wrote:
As an added bonus, they can be squished or melted together to form more substantial chunks of lead, which make great paint agitators.

Won't the lead agitators rust? Just curious; I use 8-10mm plastic beads, but tbh they aren't always heavy enough in thicker paints.

I have used roofing lead in the past, it was the perfect thickness for being placed in the bottom of the base.
It keeps the model level at all times, especially when you have a metal backpack on a model. It keeps my wolf priest perfectly level.

I'm thinking by the way you were mentioning rocks and foam in the opening post. I'm thinking weight of basing being used to create a firmer base.

Lead weight balls can be used above the base as well. Make a little pile behind your horrmagaunt for instance and paint them up as little tyranid egg sacks. (use hot glue to anchor them down and you have ready made goo as well.)

For some of the larger models like zoanthropes, or winged hive tyrants. I like to use other pewter models for the basing. I planted my winged hive tyrant over an eldar avatar, and he hasn't moved at all. Or my doom has pewter skeletons on it. I looked a lot at the privateer press minis for my basing options on the bigger guys. Some great variations there for things your nids have eaten.

I've also used various tyranid bits, as well as judicious amounts of green stuff to make up little worms or heavy slug guys, then glue those to the base as well.

My other army is eldar, so I've been painting up the spare minis I have from that army to base on, but choose another army that has a great backlog of pewter figures and you can model those to suit your needs. Marines, there are tons of pewter guys out there. Chop one up and green stuff in some innards coming out, then glue him to the base. Lot's of fun creative options. Or Necrons in pieces crawling along the base?

 Chi3f wrote:

Won't the lead agitators rust? Just curious; I use 8-10mm plastic beads, but tbh they aren't always heavy enough in thicker paints.

Lead doesn't rust. That dull gray you typically see on a piece of lead is how it corrodes. Pure, unoxidized lead is a shiny, silvery metal. With lead, your biggest concern is heavy metal poisoning, which can very easily happen when you're using it as an agitator in paint, and you lick your brushes to get them straight. I would recommend glass beads, or steel shot.

As for weighting bases, washers work just fine for me. I have also used various putties and epoxies with mixed results.

I stick small nails under cavalry bases and washers under round ones but you may need to use a dremel to carve off the plastic which protrudes; I then fill with Milliput which is much cheaper than greenstuff. I then sand it to a marble-like finish (no, really). I appreciate this is OTT but I like to finish my models properly and I'm also old enough to remember when they were all metal and weighed a lot more than the models these days. I don't like the lightweight feel and hormagaunts and the like overbalance too easily without weighting the base. It also means that if they fall, usually the base makes contact with the ground first so they shouldn't suffer too much damage.

I used to stick historical miniatures to pennies but on my interpretation of English statute, this is criminal damage to the coin and however trivial it might be, I work in an unforgiving profession so I decided that wasn't such a good idea.

I have to say I never thought of shotgun pellets and doubtless they're rather easier to come by in the US than here.

For my Hormagaunts I've used small nail (cut in two or moe segments) on the base,covered with a thin layer of putty to smooth the change of height. Then textured and painted as usual.

I take refined gold and melt it down into a lining for my bases so that they still maintain the hollow (albeit shallower) recession of the bases, while being weighed down quite well.

I use lead chunks (either cut off from an ingot, fishing weights or shotgun pellets depending on what I have handy at the time). You can mush them into shapes like rocks without much difficulty or smash them flat and hide them in the recess under the figure.

You don't have any real concerns relating to heavy metal poisoning with metallic lead - and even less of a concern once it is encapsulated in paint or epoxy to hold it in place on top of or under the figure. With the exception of gold - you won't find a more dense material that is readily available.