Howdy Scummers! Sliding down the slag heap on the heels of Dan and Campbell’s discussion on basing I thought I’d walk y’all through my process of making bases for my gangers. And yes, all the Necromunda kits come with perfect good options IN the gang boxes. I know this, but I was making terrain before the Zone Mortalis tiles came out and back in 2018 I started doing this so my gangers matched my terrain. (I wanted to title this “How to Base Everything, if you think the bases GW gives aren’t good enough and you want to complicate your life”, but I thought it was a little long.)
I use a Cricut diecutter to make a large amount parts for my terrain, including all of my floor tiles, and because of that, I leverage it to make my basing.
My first step was to measure the tops of the bases and draw them in Adobe Illustrator. When I need to make bases, I grab my materials, .020” styrene and Plastruct Diamond plate, load them into the Cricut and cut all the tops I need. I generally cut one of each with which I make two bases. Next I grab a ruler and slice the plain styrene top in 2 pieces and use one of those as a guide, placed on top of the diamond plate to cut it, to get perfectly sized pieces. Then I glue them on top of the base.
Next, I grab a floor tile that I’ve cut and glue it to the plain styrene side. Then I flip it over to trim the detail to match the curve of the base. If you don’t have access to a Cricut, you could put a piece of paper over the GW tile and do a pencil rubbing on that to get a template to recreate that design in styrene.
Next, I pull out some rivets, and for these I use .050” rivets made by Tichy Train Group. I trim the rivet off the sprue (very carefully) and lightly stab the rivet with an X-acto. I dip it in glue and place it carefully where I want it. For this, I match what I do on the rest of my floors.
For this base example, I’m making a base for my Goliath ‘Zerker, which needs something for him to stand on. I used a piece of Evergreen ¼” I-beam which I twisted and hacked at the ends to add some damage. I added a chunk of wire and it’s good to go.
While my method relies on the Cricut to cut my circles you could easily use a Fiskar’s circle cutter to do the same thing. If you want to learn more about using a Cricut for hobby stuff, I have a couple videos on YouTube going over the process of setting up a file and the machine to cut styrene. And as always, I’m on Instagram @40khamslam where you can keep up with all my Necromunda Shenanigans.
And that’s all for this week! Stay tuned for more updates as Dylan works on his Goliath as part of our Tale of Four Scumlords series! Got some ideas about your own DIY Necro bases? Do you prefer the old Sector Mechanicus Bases? Want to guess how many rivets Dylan buys at a time? Drop us a line at Necromunday@Goonhammer.com.
