Tabletop Review: Citadel Bases Painting Guide (Warhammer: The End Times/Warhammer 40,000)

Citadel Bases Painting Guide (Warhammer: The End Times/Warhammer 40,000)
Publisher: Games Workshop
Cost: $1.99
Page Count: 32
Release Date: 12/5/2014
Get it Here: The Black Library

Today’s entry from the Games Workshop Advent Calendar was about painting the bases of your miniatures. I’ll admit that this is something I need help with. I generally like my bases black or painted to look like grass, ground or snow. I’m not the type of guy who fashions entirely new bases for my figures with rocks and bits of leftovers from other miniatures. Sometimes I have a scenic base and just paint those for a particular figure. It comes down to the fact that after I paint a base, I’m generally not happy with it. It I paint a base for snow for example, inevitable I’m using it on a lava map or dungeon tiles and it just looks out of place to me. Whereas basic black always works. So I picked up this guide hoping to see if it could teach me to do something with my Citadel Texture paints or other materials to make bases come to life. AT worst I was only out two bucks, right?

This thirty-two page guide covers how to paint bases in eight different ways. Each one uses the same format: take a texture paint and spread it on with a spatula, go over it with a wash and then drybrush it with a different colour (non-texture) paint. Okay, that’s pretty simple. I’ve either been drybrushing or using a texture paint, but never together and certainly not with a wash. Hey, I’ve only been painting for a year. So I found all of these tips pretty helpful. The only problem is that all eight examples given are more useful for Warhammer 40K rather than fantasy or modern settings. Your options are Ash Wastes, Cities of Death, Old World Soil, Jungle Loam, Dark Earth, Fenrisian Snow, Arena Sand and Crystalian Dust. I would have liked something on making your base look like part of a dungeon floor, something lava oriented. Maybe even something like a riverbank or great plain. Unfortunately all eight types shown look exactly a like save for the colours used and so why this was somewhat educational, all I learned was to combine the two steps I’m already doing for my bases instead of doing one or the other. The Snow and Dust options were the only ones I actually think I’d try out. The others didn’t really look like actual land surfaces or earth to me. So informative yet also disappointing. It is what it is. If I hadn’t started experimenting with Texture paint on my own, this would have been really helpful but as it is, I kind of just blundered into these techniques.

There’s also a quick segment on Grass Tufts which was cute. They never look good when I do it, but it was worth reading the refresher. This was pretty much “Use PVA Glue, add one or two tufts and let sit for a few hours.”

The Bases Painting Guide is really rudimentary. Even as a novice painter there wasn’t much to learn from this guide. However, it was only two dollars and I did learn a few things. I appreciated the visual examples in addition to a written description and I came away with a few ideas for doing some new stuff to my bases. If you’re brand new to painting, this is probably well worth getting but for veterans, it’s a definite pass. I enjoyed the guide for what it is, but I do wish they would have focused on some different terrains other than post-apocalyptic ground bits. At least what is here is pretty in-depth and explained well enough that newcomers will quickly learn how to make their bases look like more than a little square or circle on which their miniatures stand.


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One response to “Tabletop Review: Citadel Bases Painting Guide (Warhammer: The End Times/Warhammer 40,000)”

  1. […] purchased have been the Dark Angels and Crimson Slaughter dataslates. I also picked up the base painting guide, but the dataslates were terrible for the price point and the base guide was helpful but again, […]

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