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I'm going to try and paint in brass using Citadel Brass Scorpion.

I'm not sure whether to lay a basecoat in gold, chrome, or a non-metallic color. Any suggestions?

Black primer, thin dry brush of tin works well for brass, highlight it with brass, then some gold, then wash to blend it together. once dry, add some technical oxide for weathering effects.

I have had good luck with Averland Sunset (f.k.a. Iyanden Darksun).

I just did the honoured imperium in brass, I did black primer, VMA rust metallic as a base, VGC bright bronze as highlight

Oil wash to nihilakh oxide

10/10, would recommend

Hopefully you've primed in a dark color. Then, you have two (good) choices:

1. You can basecoat with a dark brown, like Rhinox Hide or Dryad Bark, and then layer (paint) Brass Scorpion over it.

2. Or, you can basecoat with Warplock Bronze (which is like a metallic Rhinox Hide) and layer or drybrush Brass Scorpion over it.

There isn't a "right" way, because it depends on what you're painting. Rhinox Hide will go on much thinner than Warplock Bronze, which means it won't obscure any details. But, if you're painting the side of an Shrine of the Aquilla, this isn't a problem; in this case, the Warplock Bronze look better as an undercoat because any areas that don't get hit with enough Brass Scorpion will still be metallic-ish. The nice thing here is if you drybrush brass scorpion, the first coat will be a nice, dark metallic brown lowlight.

If you want the Brass Scorpion to look brighter, you could do a base coat of Balthazar Gold, which is really more like Copper. I'm not a big fan of this though, because Balthazar Gold doesn't cover as well as either Rhinox Hide or Warplock Bronze, and doesn't look as good in the recesses. However, if you wash the Balthazar Gold with Agrax Earthshade, then drybrush Brass Scorpion, you can get more depth than you can with just doing warplock bronze (which, if you wash with Agrax, may turn out too dark for your liking).

Bottom line: experiment!