Basing Dilemma
So a friend is trying to convince me to come to some tournament in October. It's interesting and I drew up a couple of army lists while musing on the subject. I'm still thinking about it, but it has thrown up an issue.
The army list I'm likely to take (if I go) makes use of penal legion troopers, in a Catachan guard army. Now I've got those penal legion troopers I just finished, and plan to do some more Catachans at some point anyway (now that my painting is subtantially better than several years ago) However, I have previously done Catachans on grass bases, whilst the penal legion are on black gravel.
Now sure, I could change the bases on the penal legion easy enough, but I like them as they are. I think the contrast to their orange fatigues works well. And there's no reason to think Catachans couldn't go on black bases - in fairness, in the middle of a jungle the floor is more likely to be fallen twigs and leaves anyway, rather than the immaculate lawn appearance I have previously applied.
So I'm left with the dilemma of whether to start painting up my guard on the black bases, and thus to paint any new catachans to that, or whether I should paint them to match the old catachans. I say match, the difference in painting standards will be enough to set them quite visibly apart anyway. If I build up new stuff on black bases and bring the old stuff out to fill occassional gaps in my army list, sure they'll look a little out of place - but no more so than happens when I use unpainted figures now. (Or cadian models for that matter)
The final thing leaning me towards green is the fact that my battle boards are that colour... but I can always flip them over to the side I painted black, with vague ideas of cityfight/battlefleet Gothic. The green side looks better, but I can save that for fantasy.
Anyway, I'm thinking black bases as the most likely option (allowing me to make use of what I paint for Winds of War in future guard armies, without looking *too* out of place) but do chip in your two cents let me know what you think. Those are the only two options by the way, I don't need any more suggestions for contenders, I have enough of a dilemma as it is :oP
The army list I'm likely to take (if I go) makes use of penal legion troopers, in a Catachan guard army. Now I've got those penal legion troopers I just finished, and plan to do some more Catachans at some point anyway (now that my painting is subtantially better than several years ago) However, I have previously done Catachans on grass bases, whilst the penal legion are on black gravel.
Now sure, I could change the bases on the penal legion easy enough, but I like them as they are. I think the contrast to their orange fatigues works well. And there's no reason to think Catachans couldn't go on black bases - in fairness, in the middle of a jungle the floor is more likely to be fallen twigs and leaves anyway, rather than the immaculate lawn appearance I have previously applied.
So I'm left with the dilemma of whether to start painting up my guard on the black bases, and thus to paint any new catachans to that, or whether I should paint them to match the old catachans. I say match, the difference in painting standards will be enough to set them quite visibly apart anyway. If I build up new stuff on black bases and bring the old stuff out to fill occassional gaps in my army list, sure they'll look a little out of place - but no more so than happens when I use unpainted figures now. (Or cadian models for that matter)
The final thing leaning me towards green is the fact that my battle boards are that colour... but I can always flip them over to the side I painted black, with vague ideas of cityfight/battlefleet Gothic. The green side looks better, but I can save that for fantasy.
Anyway, I'm thinking black bases as the most likely option (allowing me to make use of what I paint for Winds of War in future guard armies, without looking *too* out of place) but do chip in your two cents let me know what you think. Those are the only two options by the way, I don't need any more suggestions for contenders, I have enough of a dilemma as it is :oP
You could mix the two onto one base somehow? Although you could leave any Penal Legion you do with Black bases to make them stand out, with any Catachans having Jungle bases of somekind, which is pefectly feasible to have such varying terrain on a Death World (or any world!).
ReplyDeleteI'd prefer to have a consistant look across the army. I could maybe make it look more jungle like on anything with a larger base (sentinals, heavy weapons, valkyries) where the floor is black but I can add a bush or two (or even a tree on the valk base) to tie the look together.
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