I think bases have always been an important element of my miniatures, it places them into the universe and helps sell the story. This is especially true when it comes to Titanicus as the immense scale of war engines isn’t immediately obvious to read, so sometime they need a little help from their old epic scale friends.

A single infantry scale figure, building fragment or tank can be enough to provide context. I’m hugely fortunate in having been an avid epic collector and gamer since, well since when it began I’ve a good selection of interesting parts to draw on for base garnishing.

Recycling the resin

Some of the road sections and defence line used on the Ventrum’s base are from Forgeworld’s old Epic 40,000 terrain range and components I salvaged from a themed event gaming board before I decommissioned it. As I was never likely to re-use them on another board they were perfect for exactly this purpose. They were attached to the Warlord’s plastic base and filed smooth to fit the edge profile, any gaps then filled with textured filler to blend the entire base into a single scene. Some old astartes miniatures were also sunken into the filler at this stage to mask their mounts.

With the Warlord’s legs and feet temporarily pinned in place to mark out the stride I placed a single Rhino using the right foot as cover and had the Ventrum crushing the defence line as it walked.

To avoid brush marks which would break the illusion of scale I avoided dry-brushing the textures as much as possible, instead relying on airbrushed earth tones enhanced with dry pigments fixed in place with a pigment fixative.

I followed the same process for the base of the Bellator Veritatus keeping it even simpler with a base of cork covered in a variety of textured fillers to create an arid and rocky world. A variety of ochre and sienna pigments help create the final martian appearance and a simple low ruin provided the scale context. Sometimes it’s nice just to keep things simple.