Making more interesting flying bases

Hi folks,

I wanted to show off some of the flying bases I've made for different flyers. I used them as a way to exemplify the theme of the army's basing, which at the same time allowed me to disguise the flying stem somewhat.

Crimson Fists stormwing - the CFs have a rocky, grey basing theme and so the obvious bits of scenery to use were big rocks. I took some of the spare scenery rocks we have and cut them to a more suitable size. They were attached to the oval base with PVA and textured using paint/filler. Once everything was dry I cut down the flying stems to the right height to embed them in the rocks about 15mm then proceeded to cut out the cross shaped section from the polystyrene with a knife. Once this was done I sprayed the whole thing minus the transparent stem black. When dry I used PVA to place the transparent stem in the slot and, when that was dry, mixed some decorating filler with abaddon black and used it to fill any gaps between the stems and rocks. Once I had filled the gaps I used an old toothbrush to add texture to the filler so it would blend with the rest of the rock. Once all was dry I touched up any areas needing it with abaddon black, drybrushed eshin  grey, dawnstone and then administratum grey around the edges. I finished off with removing any excess filler from the transparent stem and painting the base rim rhinox hide. Magic.

Whitescars Stormtalon - This was simply a case of adding a small amount of texture to the base then attaching aquarium plants.

Eldar Crimson Hunter - The base was covered in greenstuff which was shaped and cut to form curved patterns. I then added a piece of foamcard cut to resemble a webway gate, which had sime greenstuff blobs (AKA gems) and guitar wire added for texture. A few bits of debris, an old paint lid cut in half and the end of a wraithcannon added to the base before painting. Lastly, the ventral flyer was adapted to take an inverted standard flying base stem, which was inserted into the top of the gate.

Dark Angel Nephilim - this base was simply made by adding trees to camouflage the stem and then the base was decorated with static grass.

I have several other flying bases and aim to modify them as below:

Blood Angels - grass theme - add a tree to conceal stem

Tau - desert theme - add a stack of rocks to hold the flying base

CSM - There is a wrecked dreadnought sarcophagus on the base - add smoke effect with cotton wool to hide stem

Grey Knights - wrecked cityscape - use building corner to hide stem

Orks - swamp - add in diseased trees overgrown with climbers.

These bases are really good fun to build and I'd highly recommend people to have a go as they're the only/largest bases in your army that can be entirely dedicated to scenery without obscuring any models. Cheers.