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So, I'm a little confused on how it works. When putting rocks on bases, do people use real rocks or resin pieces that look like rocks? I've seen people drill through some rocks to anchor a model to a base, but I'm not sure how easy that would be with a real rock. If they are using resin rocks, where do I get them?

Thanks

SG

You can use ALL sorts of things. Real rocks, resin rocks, kitty litter, and the list goes on. My preferred method is using a product called Talus by Woodland Scenics. It's primarily used for ground cover and loose rock in the model train hobby, but is widely used in dioramas and wargaming. It comes in several sizes and colors, which is great for added realism.






Ghidorah

You can use real rocks for sure, but painting them is usually the best option.

This base has a real rock on it:


While these rocky bases made from:


The rock on this base was a piece of bark mulch:


In the case of the large rock on the Stormfang Gunship base, I used low temperature hot glue to secure the rock to base and the bond is great. With smaller rocks, using super glue works fine.

Even though I rarely base my minis (I know it sounds weird, but I like them not based), when I do base, I use sand and gravel mixture.

There are a few differents rocks. Some people use foam and wire cut to size, some do real rocks, and some do resin. I think a lot of the resin rocks come attached to the base a;ready.

Foam rocks you can get at hardware store and cut either use a hobby knife or hot wire.

Real rocks... grab them outside of GW sells a variety in their basing set.

Resin rocks I am not sure.

As an illustrator and sculptor for work stuff, I use Sculpey Premo often.

It is pretty easy to use to make all sorts of simple objects, like rocks and sandbags, and you can bake it in a conventional oven.

It takes paint well too

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:
Real rocks...GW sells a variety in their basing set.

I'll never understand why anyone in their right mind would pay for this. Their basing sets are so stupidly overpriced, it makes their models look cheap. Take their Citadel Under-Empire Basing Kit for example. For $46.01 ($33 + tax +$10 shipping), you get a tiny amount of shale pieces in differing sizes. Enough to base a moderately sized army.

For HALF that price, $23.30 ($14.86 + tax + $7.49 shipping), you can get 4 bags of Woodland Scenics Talus, one in each grade. One bag is twice as much product as a single Citadel kit I linked above. This is enough to base several armies and base a whole table's worth of hills and such. I have based hundreds of models and many, many, many terrain pieces for several stores as well as private stock. I had a couple of bags of differing grades and poured them into a tupperware bin and mixed them up for variation. Glue the model's base and dunk in the mix. Add a few extra course rocks for accent as needed.

I would never, in a million years, recommend Games Workshop products for basing/flocking needs. In fact, I would emphatically recommend the exact opposite (kinda like I am now...lol).



Ghidorah

A great way to get rocks is to just buy a pack of cork in a dollar store and break it up. $1 of cork will give you more rocks than you're likely to use your entire modelling lifetime (like it's 2000+ bases worth of rocks), and one advantage is that you can tear them to whatever size you want.

The large rocks on these are all just crumbled cork (the small rocks are woodland scenic medium ballast, and the sand is citadel sand):

 Ghidorah wrote:

I would never, in a million years, recommend Games Workshop products for basing/flocking needs. In fact, I would emphatically recommend the exact opposite (kinda like I am now...lol).

The Citadel Sand is actually a pretty decent deal. You get way more sand in Woodland Scenics, but the variety of grit in Citadel Sand is nicer for infantry sized models, it's only $5, and one little box will last you for hundreds of bases anyways.

I have 10+ large woodland scenics shakers, and while price per gram inch is great, never in a hundred years will I use them all, and they were $15 or something each.

Or cut up and glue together bits of sprue into natural looking shapes - easy, cheap, and avoids gluing problems.

Broken up cork and pieces of large wood chip mulch are my favorite proxies for rocks. Both look really good when painted to look like rocks and are very lightweight and easy to work with. Cork does a great job of making your sterotypical rocks with jagged edges that can be in all shapes or sizes. Wood chips are great at making flat rocks formations, like shale.

Both are really easy to obtain and/or free, depending on if you drink a lot of wine with corks and have a yard or park nearby with wood chips used for mulch

 Ghidorah wrote:

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:
Real rocks...GW sells a variety in their basing set.

I'll never understand why anyone in their right mind would pay for this. Their basing sets are so stupidly overpriced, it makes their models look cheap. Take their Citadel Under-Empire Basing Kit for example. For $46.01 ($33 + tax +$10 shipping), you get a tiny amount of shale pieces in differing sizes. Enough to base a moderately sized army.

For HALF that price, $23.30 ($14.86 + tax + $7.49 shipping), you can get 4 bags of Woodland Scenics Talus, one in each grade. One bag is twice as much product as a single Citadel kit I linked above. This is enough to base several armies and base a whole table's worth of hills and such. I have based hundreds of models and many, many, many terrain pieces for several stores as well as private stock. I had a couple of bags of differing grades and poured them into a tupperware bin and mixed them up for variation. Glue the model's base and dunk in the mix. Add a few extra course rocks for accent as needed.

I would never, in a million years, recommend Games Workshop products for basing/flocking needs. In fact, I would emphatically recommend the exact opposite (kinda like I am now...lol).



Ghidorah

the appeal of the GW basing kits is not so much the slate, but the resin pieces that come in the kits...
if someone wants the resin bits that really set a base into the Warhammer worlds, there is nothing wrong with that...
if they just want slate, then yeah, it is a bit of a waste...

cheers
jah

I use real rocks when I want to provide ballast to offset a model that is likely to fall over due to posing (I.E. I have great eagles that are a unit for my HE, that have to rank up, but in order to do that, I have to stagger the mounts on the outer ones, which makes them want to fall to the side. Rocks on the bases on the 'inside' side fixes this.)

If any of you need some real rocks for basing let me know and I can send you some of all sizes. I get them from one of my three driveways. LOL. Shoot me a PM and let me know. I can get all types of bark from just about any type of tree as well if you need or prefer that as well. One advantage to living in the country is all thats just in my yard. Im always looking for bits so maybe we could trade. Just let me know.

I finally started working on my Necron bases yesterday. Went to a crafts store and they had all kinds of different real rocks and pebbles for sale. Picked up a bag of green crystals that were a match made in heaven for Necrons.