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Hello

I have three armies (Necrons, Marines, Daemons), and I'm looking to rebase them all. They are all in various states of completion pre-basing. Necrons are largely painted and based with sand. Marines are all undercoated. Daemons are all grey plastic (my newest army). All were affixed to the bare bases with poly cement.

What's the best way to go about re-basing them? I'm interested in getting some resin scenic bases, or if that's too much cost or hassle then rebasing them on their current bases. Is it a case of removing them all from their bases? Should I paint them all first then look at rebasing? Does anyone have any tips or links to cool tutorials?

My issues:

1) Necrons have thin legs and I fear breaking them.
2) Is basing models on uneven scenic bases tricky? I picture them all leaning and looking wobbly unless I can find level ground.

Apologies for the basic questions, I'm a modelling noob :-)

Cheers

If they were fused to the base your going to have to cut the base off if you want to maintain the model.

Dremel!

Really, to answer your questions in a serious light (as if I wasn't serious about dremeling your models off their old bases)...

1) With a poly-cement, do you mean something like rubber modeling cement that could possibly be cut through with a sharp exacto knife? If you can't cut through it, and you don't want to strip the model completely (sometimes stripping will break apart glue), your best bet is going to be to cut that chunk of base off with the model still attached to it, and clean that up the best you can. I'm serious about using a dremel.

2) If you can't file the old base off enough to have the model stand un-wonkily, use spackle to build up the ground around the model.

if you damage the base: it's a non-issue honestly. a bit of plasticard or green-stuff and you're singing your way to a recycled base. the only thing a base really can't handle is a crack on the side. the rest is meaningless. I used slotta bases, covered the holes with plasticard if I felt fancy, or just globbed on glue and sand and slate till the hole was invisible.

I've learned since to always always always do the base first--and since i'm lazy and don't bother painting model separately because I'm not even that good of a painter anyway--super-glue the legs onto the base, wait for that to set, and slowly build my way up.

gluing grass and tiny doodads onto bases is a non-issue, it's when you're adding sand or whatever medium to cover up the plastic that's the real problem. I add grasses and brush at the last step once the model is done.

Rebasing is a little tricky, but doable. I use super glue on my models, and the bases usually come off with little trouble with a quick pull. Only time that I really have trouble is when it's a large flat foot glued directly to the base.

When the base is off, I go ahead and toss them in Simple Green overnight. It weakens the bonds of most glues (including super glue) and will outright remove PVA glue, and I think it should work on poly cement. I could be wrong, though... Also, like poda_t said, it's incredibly easy to rescue a failed-looking base. So don't worry too much about preserving it. Even if you destroy it completely, bases are dirt cheap on eBay and shouldn't be a problem to replace.