Secret Weapon Bases

I have already mentioned that I’m a mediocre painter. When working on my Warhammer 40K army I have to find other ways to make my little plastic army look better. One of those ways is basing. Basing is when you paint or add material to the plain black bases your figures come with. I don’t remember basing being that popular when I first played 40K back in the 90s, but it is very popular now. For good reason too, a good base can make a huge difference in the look of your models.

Great looking bases don’t have to be a lot of work though. There are plenty of kits that will help you add the elements you’re looking for. In addition to that, you can buy resin bases that are already sculpted to fit your theme. My personal army is the Salamander Space Marine Chapter; they come from an inhospitable volcanic planet so I wanted bases with lava on them. Enter Secret Weapon.

Secret Weapon has a great selection of bases to choose from and they are always adding new ones. What I’m showing off are from their discontinued Lava Flow Straight Bases. The bases came in three sizes; so I could use them on my normal troops, my terminators, and on my dreadnaughts. The bases come unpainted. They need a quick rinse off and a minimal amount of flash trimming before they are ready to be painted.

Painting these bases is ridiculously easy and I usually do it was I’m painting the rest of my figures. First I start with a black primer. After that I paint the lava sections with Skull White. When the Skull White dries I cover it with Sunburst Yellow. Before I go further, this is a good spot to remember how lava works. The hottest part of the lava will be bright yellow, as it slows it begins to cool. So we want the center, moving areas to be bright yellow and the areas of dried lava to be the darkest red.

With that being said, I take Blazing Orange and cover most of the Sunburst Yellow. Also I wanted to say that I’m not exactly neat with the paint applications. If a bit of rock gets a little extra color on it, it will look better in the long run. When the Orange is dry I go over the far edges with Blood Red. It is good to dry brush the Blood Red over some of the rocky areas too. To finish off I’ll take Chaos Black and cover any areas that I’m not pleased with the look of.

Obviously I could add even more to the yellow/orange/red progression, but I’m happy with my three color version. On one figure it looks good, on an entire army, it really looks impressive. In fact the bases are usually the first thing people mention when they see my army. If you’re looking to base your figures, check out Secret Weapon, I really can’t recommend them enough.