RPGaDay 2021 - Day Eleven

Day 11 - WILDERNESS - LISTEN - HEAVY - DESPAIR

WILDERNESS - for some reason this prompt made me think go basing - like, miniature basing. Miniatures have ALWAYS been part of my role-playing - I mean, it was the little lead Tom Meier/Ral Partha miniatures that drew me to Dungeons and Dragons in 1980. Yeas ago (decades, actually) I worked towards a uniform basing scheme for all my miniatures regardless of period/setting. It was basically brown dirt with a couple clumps of grass - initially green flock, later static grass, still later pre-made static grass clumps - or brush or flowers, just to mix it up a LITTLE bit. As almost all of my miniatures were metal I based them on round metal washers (unless required to do otherwise by a ruleset - DBA/HOTT being the main one - where everything was on thin (1/8”) rectangular MDF multi-figure base, but it STILL used the brown dirt with grass, bushes, the occasional stone. This gave them all a look of being outdoors - in the WILDERNESS, if you will… For more modern or sci-fi miniatures, I would sometimes leave off the grass and such and try to smooth out the dirt a little bit to still mesh with other miniatures.. but also have a neutral brown look, should they ever need to be used in a more urban environment - or the interior of a spaceship! 

For the longest time I could not STAND plastic bases (I wasn’t really a fan of plastic miniatures either). They seemed so thick and tall - almost plinth-like making miniatures tower over other to-scale items that weren’t on bases. Terrain had to be exaggeratedly tall to make it look like the miniatures hiding behind them were actually in cover. In some cases it made them rather top HEAVY and tippy - if it were a larger metal mini on a smaller plastic base. (Oooh! I worked into one of the other prompts!) 

What irked me even MORE about plastic bases was the guys who painted the sides of them BLACK. I always felt that bases should blend and match the environment to make the figures on them stand out. The harsh contrast of the black sides stood out and just looked unfinished to me. Why wouldn’t you paint them to match the top of the base or what you expected the ground to be. 

All that kind of changed about four years ago when I painted some Warhammer Underworlds miniatures for John. 

The miniatures had highly sculpted bases, specific to the miniature that was to be mounted on them. I quite enjoyed painting them - the base was really an extension of the miniature - making almost a miniature diorama (something I’d tried to do with larger bases miniatures before (though still keeping with the generally brown, wilderness-looking bases). I also painted them with black sides. Mostly for uniformity/consistency. I mean there were different things going on on those bases and I couldn’t decide which colour to go with and, besides, they were to be used in a board game and the boards were mostly dark and greyish and black worked as a transition between the two. 

But that was for someone else. I stuck with the same old scheme for my own miniatures. 

Then I ended up painting Finnegan’s Terminators and Genestealers for the last edition of Space Hulk. The miniatures didn’t come with bases. I decided to put them onto bases partly so they wouldn’t be so tippy and partly so they would mesh with other 40K miniatures should they ever be USED to play 40K (or any other scientist-fi game). By the time I got to painting them, the latest version of Necomunda was out and the plastic under hive bases could be bought separately. So I did them up on those. 

I used the 32mm bases for all of them, as the 40mm ones weren’t available - which means the Terminators are on the wrong size of base for 40K… but… whatevs.. the 40mm bases would have been just too big for use on the Space Hulk rooms and corridors. It required a bit of carving away of some of the miniatures and, in one case, sculpting with green stuff to make the miniature work with the bases. I painted them grey with a bit of rust - including the sides - and they looked pretty okay…

Then I actually started PLAYING the new Necromunda. I had a few of the old metal minis - and sourced more of them through eBay to use with the game. 

Initially I used the standard metal washer to base them and did them with a neutral brown… but then just looked WRONG on the interior rusted metal looking boards… so I tried picking up a few of the plastic Necromunda bases and embarked on a massive re-basing project. 

I did the bases a bit differently from the Space Hulk. Some was grey and rusted - but there were bits of yellow and black hazard stripes and splattered look and pools of spilled substances. The painting technique I used on the sculpted top of the bases, just didn’t translate well to the smooth sides…. so… I ended up trying painting them black… and that didn’t bother me at all, I rather LIKED the look of it! 

I was also starting to play 40K and Kill Team again at this point and acquiring some plastic miniatures and using more plastic bases and started with using “Sector Imperialis” or "Sector Mechanicus" bases for a lot of miniatures - especially those part of dedicated Kill Teams (these are more sculpted plastic bases - but different from the Necromunda bases). All painted with black sides - to conform to the new standard and bring SOME consistency to them 

Then came Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress and here I went completely off the rails, making my own bases to look like detritus in a ruined alien space fortress! (Also black sides) 

Non-wilderness bases have creeped into my fantasy basing as some new Skaven I started working on for Warcry, and other minis I’ve been working on for Frostgrave, I ended up trying to do with grey rubble of ruined cities. 

Most recently I even picked up some flagstone and cobblestone rollers from Green Stuff World… with some of these I started painting the sides grey, but later started painting them black - AND painting the sides of the newer bases I still did with wilderness-brown-dirt-scheme black - just so there was SOME element of uniformity between them (because I didn’t like the look of grey-sided bases next to brown-sided bases). 

I have a problem... 

I am a bit of an idiot… 

So… Wilderness… That’s my convoluted take on it… What does WILDERNESS or LISTEN or HEAVY or DESPAIR bring to mind for the rest of you?