There’s a project I had been putting off for a while, rebasing my Flesh Hounds of Khorne. When I built them I put them on bike bases but since then they are now on 50mm bases standard. I could have left them on their current bases but by putting them on the 50mm bases I would gain the ability for way more board control with the unit. Since I use them as a screen unit, a tarpit and fast objective grabbers, it was time I finally rebased the unit. Plus, this unit was based using a technique I no longer use, which was basically just gluing down snow flock. The ice method I used on the unit was terrible also.
Cutting the Bases Down
I had previously seen a tutorial on rebasing that I wanted to try out. There was no way I was going to try cutting their feet off their bases.
My first attempt was to try to cut from under the base with my hobby knife. I knew it really wouldn’t work but I kind of wanted to gauge things.
Next I tried to score the underside of the base to make snapping it off easy. That worked out pretty well but it wasn’t very fast and I had 10 of these to get done. I had done two this way but it quickly proved to not only be time consuming but a bit hazardous.
Lastly, I decided to grab an old pair of wire cutters and give that a shot. Bingo! These things chewed through the base easily and most of the time in a single cut. I would highly recommend this route to anyone else doing this tedious rebasing thing. It’s kind of hell on your hand after a while but less so, I’d imagine, than trying this the previous two ways I had.
I had to cut off some stuff on the underside and of course the side of the base as well. The wire cutter were invaluable in also removing the sides of the bases. I then primed my 50mm bases and glued these guys down.
Starting the Basing
I later noticed I had not cleaned the underside of some of the bases very well and had some gaps. I wasn’t overly concerned since part of my basing process is with snow and it would be easy to cover any major elevation changes. However, I decided to try to smooth out the transition with the sand I use for basing.
After that dried it was alright but not perfect. I had to trim down some of that sand with my hobby knife that got pushed up too high from being dunked into the sand container. Glue moves around when used in such a globby manner and then shoved down into the basing material. Sadly I forgot to get a shot of it after I trimmed down the excess
From there I did a second coat of sand to smooth the transition from the heavy handed glue and sand to the two bases. Thankfully that worked out pretty well. I have the old snow flock on there in spots but wasn’t worried about it because that would all get covered with the new snow.
Finishing it up
The hard work was done so it was on to normal basing procedures, which I’ve covered before in my snow basing tutorial and ice effects tutorial. Surprisingly I managed to knock these guys out over a few days. The first day I did all the grunt work of cutting and gluing things down. The second day I worked on the sand (wash & drybrush), and then the ice, which takes a while to dry. I then spent an hour the next day getting all the snow on there and that’s where they are at now. I’m going to take this as a chance to go over the models to see if I have to do any repair work. Once that’s done I’ll seal these guys and get a showcase posted up.
Update: I’ve since finished the basing and you can see the finished Flesh Hounds here.
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Smart way of rebasing the dogs. A little blood offering is unfortunate but I hope that Khorne will reward you. If not, at least the blood flowed. :)
I seriously ALWAYS cut myself when working on Khorne models. It’s a bit eerie at this point…
Well, at least your not running a Slaanesh army. That could be … nevermind. Lets not linger at that train of thought.
haha!
Why would you even bring that up!
Because he knows the answer and wants us to drag it out of him ;)
Hahaha, didn’t we agree to stop thinking about this? :)
That’s pretty much what I’ve done when re-basing. Some heavy-duty clippers like that are definitely the way to go.
Also, thanks for the link to the snow tutorial. I’ve been kind of frustrated by my attempts at it, and I think that will get my SW and Tau looking way better. I’ll give it a try sometime this week on Bjorn and his bros for my DreadTober entry.
The tutorial is pretty thorough but be warned that the lighting in the shots suck. At the end is a link to the finished model where you can see the snow much better.
I based mine on 40mm bases when fleshounds were still supplied on square cavalry bases and no-one really knew what to put them on. Then they switched to 50mm bases. I am annoyed really, I wish W would just stick to something and be more transparent. Likewise with the whole 32mm/25mm thing for marines. If they would be honest and say ‘well they’ll all be on 32s eventually’ then we would know where we are…
They’ve always been loose with bases. I mean, the rules basically say, “Use the base supplied but if you want to use another base then that’s OK too!” They’ve been that way since I started playing in 4th really. I agree, they should just be blunt and say, “Models A use this base. Models B that one.” We’ll never see it though.
What I gather they are doing, as they won’t tell us, is shifting a lot of models to different bases. Marines (large humans), seem to go on 32mm. Your standard sized human (Guard, Tau, etc), are on 25mm. That’s how the KDK codex shows it as well. Officially? Fuck if anyone knows.
Does the KDK show marines on 32mm’s? I didn’t realise that.
Yes the attitude has been getting more and more lax over the years. Annoying as all these things chip away at the game balance. The worst example of the ‘don’t care’ attitude has got to be the removal of any rules for terrain density and placement in 7th.
Yep. Marines on 32mm but Bloodletters on 25mm.
We play terrain pretty dense. Nobody likes a bare board around here.
Thats interesting, thanks.
I wish there were some guidelines about terrain.Personally I like to follow the old guidelines from 5th, 25% coverage, 1/3rd of which blocks line of sight completely, 1/3rd of which interferes with line of sight, and 1/3rd of which interferes with movement or provides cover without blocking line of sight.
I like a dense interesting looking board, but too much terrain can also be bad too though.
That’s pretty well how we do it as well.
Good idea on cutting the base instead of the feet. I would have gone the hard route and prob ruined the mini
I can’t claim credit on the basing idea. The article linked is where I got it from. Otherwise I’d probably have gone the hard route too. Glad I found that before I had any rebasing needs.
Nicely done man. I have been thinking about doing similar for my Thousand Sons, but the process scares me frankly.
Rebasing can be great but it’s one of those things I put off until needed. At some point I’ll put my Chaos Marines on 32mm bases but I’m in no rush. The hounds though get a bigger gain from the base change and with a tournament looming, it was time. I just put rebasing on my to-do list when I have nothing else more pressing.
But you have your basing ideas down. I am still struggling with making bases look interesting. I am just horrified at all that extra space to fill…
Play around. The big thing I feel is getting some texture going, whatever that is: sand, dirt, snow, cracked earth, etc. From there you add in small details that fit: grass, shrubs, rocks, etc.