Experiments with Basius Pads

Introduction

I've only backed a couple of Kickstarters in my life so far.  This isn't because I'm against the concept - far from it!  Rather, I have so much hobby stuff already that it takes something a bit out of the ordinary for me to become really enthusiastic about committing to something that probably won't arrive for the best part of a year.

Last October, I did indeed see a proposed project that grabbed my attention.  This was Basius II, from Wargames Bakery.  I paid up, held my breath and waited.  Just before I went away for my summer holiday this July, I received my 2 pads.

Mine is by no means the only blog article on Basius pads, but here you will find my own initial reactions.  For other opinions, a quick, somewhat arbitrary search reveals these other reviews:

• The Figure Fanatic
• Tactical Suicide
• De Bellis Futuris (original Basius I pads, not II)

The Basius II Pads

So, what are Basius pads?  They're inverse relief push moulds for making bases.  You prepare a base by putting some form of putty on a firm backing, push it into the mould, pull it off again and let the putty harden.  Sounds simple, right?

Each pad is a resin rectangle just under 7" (18cm) square.  They come in a number of different themes (19 in total, such as Forest, Victoriana, Plaguelands...)

Basius II pads: Urban and Dungeon (the "clean" sides).

and they are double sided.  It seems that every pad has one side that is relatively clean & tidy, whilst the other side is much more cluttered.  This gives a huge range of options for the model-maker; the number of unique bases which can be cast is effectively infinite.

Basius II pads: Urban and Dungeon (the "busy" sides).

Experiments in Basing

1. Milliput, used immediately

So, I dived straight in without giving it much thought.  My first attempt was to use a layer of Milliput on a steel washer.  I wet the moulds slightly (with water) and pressed the bases in.

Milliput bases, pressed immediately.  Note that part of the bottom, right base stuck to the mould and had to be repaired with Green Stuff when it had hardened

 These are the results.  They may not look too bad, but the detail is a bit soft.  It's also important to note that despite the wetting of the mould, they didn't really come away cleanly.  This accounts for the lack of crispness in the base detail, but also meant that I needed to clean the Basius pads of excess putty straight away.  Not recommended!

Interlude. Release Agent

At this point, I wondered if the sticking putty was due to my use of water on the moulds.  Instead, I ordered some release agent and waited for this to arrive.  Release agents such as this are readily available from online suppliers; they're widely used when moulding pottery and many other things.

Big bottle of mould release agent.

A liquid release agent is very simple, I believe.  It's a solvent (such as white spirits/turpentine) with paraffin wax dissolved in it.  You paint the release agent onto the mould, the solvent then evaporates and a thin coat of paraffin wax is left on the mould surface.  The casting material won't stick to the paraffin wax, or at least that's the theory!

2. Green Stuff, used immediately

For my second attempt at basing, I used most of my very small supply of Green Stuff.  Once more, I pressed the moulds immediately and even though I had used the new release agent, I still had difficulties separating the new base from the pad.

Green Stuff bases, pressed immediately.  Note the mark on the edge of the left hand base where I used a tool to separate it from the mould.

The detail on these is even softer than on the Milliput bases and the bases were hard to remove.  Again, this method is not recommended!  At least it didn't leave putty all over the mould.

3.  Green Stuff, left to cure

Whilst contemplating my lack of success in the first attempts, I actually went and found some instructions online.  These suggested leaving the putty to cure for quite a while before attempting to press it into the mould.  The timing of this is really a matter of judgement; the aim is for the material to have lost all stickiness, but still be somewhat malleable.

Green Stuff base, left to cure.  It's a pity that I didn't have enough putty to make the entire base!

Several hours later, I returned from the computer and realised that there was a little bit of already-mixed Green Stuff left over from my earlier attempt.  I thought it worth an experiment, so I slapped it onto a 25mm washer and pressed it (again, using the commercial release agent).  This worked pretty well, though there wasn't enough material to make a complete base.  OK, now we're getting there!

4. Milliput, left to cure

I was now out of Green Stuff, so I decided to try Milliput again.  As well as having some to hand, this is a much cheaper putty; if it worked then it would be great!

Milliput bases, left to cure for ~2 hours before pressing

After leaving the Milliput to harden for quite a long time, I prepared the moulds with release agent and went to press the new bases.  This worked much better than the first attempt; the putty came away from the mould more easily (and therefore with less damage to the moulding) and the detail was reasonably crisp.  It's still not perfect, though: there wasn't quite enough putty on some of the bases to reach the very deepest parts of the mould.

Conclusion

I think I'm getting the hang of this.  Basius pads (or indeed, any press moulding) takes a bit of experimentation and practice to find the best combination of materials and technique.  It's not quite as easy as it might seem!

So far, I've only tried quite small (25mm) bases and I've only used parts of the pads with relatively little depth of relief.  I suspect that changing either of these parameters will make the task more difficult.

However, despite the apparent negativity of that last sentence, I'm actually pretty excited about having these pads.  Yes, they're quite expensive and yes, they'll take some getting used to before I can produce perfect results.  But I'm up for it; the creativity that such terrain pads could unleash is considerable and I'm sure that the technical hurdles aren't really that great.  For someone like me who builds a lot of models, these could be very useful!

Zomtober 2014 - Week 3

<-- Week 2 is this way

Introduction

It's another Sunday in October, so here's another entry in the Zomtober challenge.  Once more, I'm presenting a duel between a survivor and a zombie - or is he?

The Duel

Today's confrontation is between Rebecca and "I'm not a zombie" zombie (INAZZ).  She's a straight build from Wargames Factory's "Survivors: The Women" kit, while he is one of Studio Miniatures' plastic zombies.

It looks to me as if Rebecca has been taken by surprise: she was just about to step forwards over the kerb when the guy appeared on the road to her side.  Rebecca has dropped her mobile phone (it's on the man's base), has whipped out a couple of weapons from somewhere and is in the process of spinning round to confront her assailant.

But is INAZZ a zombie at all?  He doesn't look very healthy, but maybe he's just cold, hungry, disoriented, drunk or has a bad cold?  His tee shirt says that he isn't a zombie - but since when did you believe anything that was printed on a tee shirt?

Both of these models are decorated with home-made tee shirt decals and have been fixed to resin urban bases from Escenorama.  You can read my mini-review of these bases here.  I haven't yet written an article about the tee shirt decals, but I will do so really soon - I promise!  Just be patient for a little longer, please...

Conclusion

So, who will win this duel?  It looks to me as if Rebecca is about to land a flurry of blows from her meat cleaver and katana on the unresisting INAZZ.  If he's a zombie then that's well and good; he'll go down.  However if he's really another survivor then will she have the presence of mind to realise this and halt her attack?  Or is she just reacting instinctively, too startled to do anything other than lash out?

Week 4 is this way ==>

Escenorama Urban Bases

Introduction

Normally when I'm basing miniature figures, I use either the plain base that came with the model or I use a 25mm washer and some filler.  Either way, I then decorate the base a little with (usually) sand, gravel and a little static grass.  That's fine for most rural or wilderness scenes, but doesn't really portray town or city streets very well.

Many months ago, I purchased a mixed bag of bases from one of North Star's occasional sales.  At the time I had no particular need for them, but they were cheap enough for me to buy "just in case".  In other words, they were a bargain!

The Facts

Now that I'm building some zombies and survivors as part of the Zomtober 2014 challenge, I've retrieved this bag of bases from storage and examined them a bit more closely.  So, what can I tell you about them?

Firstly, these are resin bases, made by Escenorama of Spain.

There are 3 different sizes of round base in the mixed set that I bought: 25mm, 40mm and 63mm (?).  I'm not sure if the latter are nominally 60mm or 65mm, but careful measurement suggests that they're somewhere in between.  As might be expected in such a variety pack, the smallest bases are more numerous than the bigger ones.

There is a very good variety amongst the bases.  Both of the largest ones are of different designs, the 40mm bases have several forms and I've discovered 10 distinct patterns amongst the 25mm bases.

What I Like

• The number of different patterns is very impressive and should allow me to produce some quite unique models.  Lots of variety!
• They're cheap - though since I bought mine in a sale that's perhaps not a completely fair comment.  Your mileage may vary, as they say...
• Resin is easy to drill, glue and paint, so they present no great technical difficulties.

Nit-Picking

• This may be a bit fussy, but there are a few tiny air bubbles on some of the bases.  More significantly, one or two bases still have some of the rubber mould attached to them; they've torn the moulds when they've been released.  That's not so much of a problem for me, but it will degrade the quality of the next casts from those same moulds.  Of course, it might be that the manufacturer binned those damaged moulds and made fresh ones anyway, in which case there would be no problem at all.
• Some of the bases are very slightly distorted, as if the moulds have flexed a little as the item was being cast.  I don't think that anything will be noticeable once the bases are sanded, painted and finished, but it might annoy a purist.
• Another really petty point: the discarded items on the bases (crushed cans, sports bottles) are a bit over-scale.  They're larger than they should be for 28mm figures.  Looking on the bright side, it'll certainly make these features stand out when the bases are painted!
• Although they're all different, there are a lot of manhole covers on these urban bases.  OK, I suppose that they add interest to what might otherwise just be featureless paving or tarmac, but other things could do that as well.  Perhaps the odd damaged piece, a pothole in the road or something like that would be nice?

Things that are less good

I haven't really got much to say here, but I feel that I need to put something otherwise this review will look a bit unbalanced.

• The depth of the bases is a bit uneven - some are much deeper than others.  Also, they have a distinct "wasp waist" around the middle of the rim.  I've had to use filler on the ones I've used so far, just to give the bases smooth, sheer sides and while that's not a difficult task, it's an extra piece of work that maybe shouldn't have been necessary.

The Bottom Line

These are perfectly acceptable accessories that will paint up well and add a lot of interest to suitable figures.  The full price may put some people off and the quality of manufacture is good rather than excellent.

What happens next?

This should be obvious, really!  Some of the 25mm bases will make an appearance as part of the models I build for Zomtober 2014.  You should be able to see the first of these in next Sunday's post, so stay tuned.

I'm less sure about the 40mm and 63mm bases.  I suppose that if I was using these for proper military forces then they'd be good for crewed weapons such as heavy machine guns, mortars or small anti-tank guns.  However I'm pretty much only using this style of base for individual skirmish games.  I suppose that I could use them for multi-based hordes of zombies or rioters?  The larger bases should be able to hold 10 or 20 shamblers easily enough...