When I first got back into the miniature wargaming hobby in 2019, the standards of basing miniatures was far improved from the classic Goblin Green bases in 2019. Many miniature wargaming companies (including Games Workshop, AK Interactive, Vallejo and many others) now produce excellent ready-made basing products. However, if you want to save a bit of money and have fun with a bit of DIY, here’s how you can achieve a great quality base with the minimum of fuss.

This is the standard I regularly achieved. Personally, I like the way it creates a good balance between large and small terrain textures, it doesn’t look like the mini is walking over a field of sand, or a field of large boulders.

Firstly, the core of my technique is simply following the guide in this video from Tabletop Minions…

The key difference is instead of mainly just using baking soda, I created a custom mixtures that also used some slightly larger hobby stones. While I used these ones from Army Painter, you could very easily just ones from your garden if you want (though in that case, make sure you bake them first to kill off any nasties).

I then mixed them with baking soda into a small tupperware container, in a mix that ended up looking like this…

Once that’s been applied with superglue to the bases, left to dry, I just do a black base coat, then a coat of light grey, a dark wash, then dry brush with light grey again. If you want to do mud/dirt bases you can use the exact same technique but use a light brown instead of grey and you’ll get a result like this…

There you have it. Quick and easy, and imho a very nice result. Enjoy!