How to Base Miniatures: A Basing Techniques Guide for Resin Tabletop Figures

The base is the last thing most painters finish and the first thing most people notice. A sharp paint job sitting on bare grey resin reads as unfinished regardless of how good the figure looks otherwise. Getting basing techniques right doesn't take much time or kit, and the jump in quality is immediate.

This guide covers the materials worth having, a step-by-step approach that works on 28mm and 32mm resin prints, and some thoughts on matching your bases to the setting your minis belong in.

Why the base does more work than you might expect

Basing pulls double duty on the table. Visually, it grounds a miniature in its world. A figure standing on mossy flagstone belongs in a dungeon in a way that the same figure on bare black plastic does not. Across an army, consistent basing is one of the fastest ways to make a collection read as complete. Two units with similar paint jobs look cohesive when based the same way.

For wargaming, basing also helps with unit identification at a distance. A colour-coded base rim, a distinctive tuft pattern, or different scatter for different factions adds practical table clarity alongside the visual finish.

Supplies worth having for miniature basing

The list is shorter than most beginner guides suggest.

Texture: Fine sand or sharp grit pressed into a wet coat of diluted PVA is the cheapest starting point. Apply PVA to the base surface, press in the grit, shake off the excess, and leave it to dry. Acrylic texture pastes from Army Painter, Vallejo, or the Citadel range do the same job faster and with more consistent results when you're working through batches.

Paint: Three steps handle most basing schemes. A dark base colour, a mid-tone drybrush, then a lighter highlight drybrush. For earth: Rhinox Hide or Dryad Bark, drybrushed Snakebite Leather, then Ushabti Bone. For stone: Mechanicus Standard Grey, drybrushed Dawnstone, then Administratum Grey. For desert: XV-88, drybrushed Karak Stone, then Screaming Skull. You can base a full squad in under 20 minutes with this approach.

Scatter and tufts: Static grass, grass tufts, dried lichen, and leaf flock are what separate a good base from a great one. A pack of Gamers Grass or Army Painter tufts covers a lot of bases cheaply. Apply with a dab of PVA or superglue.

Adhesive: PVA for light scatter and static grass. Superglue for heavier pieces such as slate chips, cork rubble, or resin scenic elements.

Step-by-step basing technique

1. Prepare the base. Fill any slottabase slot or gap with spare greenstuff or dried texture paste. Remove mould lines from the base rim.

2. Apply texture. Brush diluted PVA onto the base surface, avoiding the feet. Press it into sand or grit, or apply texture paste directly from the pot. Leave it to dry fully. Rushing this step causes the texture to lift later.

3. Prime. Spray or brush prime the whole miniature and base together. Black primer works well for dark earth and industrial schemes. Grey suits stone, snow, or pale desert.

4. Base colour. One coat of a mid-dark tone across the texture. It doesn't need to be precise — the drybrush handles the gradients.

5. Drybrush. Two passes with an almost-dry brush. The brush barely contacts the surface and picks up texture peaks. First pass: mid-tone. Second pass: lighter tone. The texture does the visual work; you're loading colour onto the high points and the shadows sort themselves.

6. Scatter. Tufts, static grass, small grit patches, and lichen applied with PVA or superglue. Keep the area around the figure's feet relatively open so the miniature has somewhere to stand visually. Cluster details toward the edges and rear of the base.

7. Rim. Paint the base edge in a consistent dark colour across the whole collection. This takes 30 seconds per figure and does more to unify an army than most people expect.

8. Seal. A matte varnish pass over the finished base protects tufts and static grass from handling wear.

Matching your base to its setting

Fantasy wilderness: Brown earth texture, static grass, tufts, scattered leaf flock. Small rocks half-buried in the ground add depth without much extra work. A thin Agrax Earthshade pooled into mossy stone recesses adds age quickly.

Dungeon and underdark: Dark grey stone texture with a cracked-tile effect from thin cork sheet scored with a knife. Mossy patches in deep purple or green read well under dungeon lighting and add colour variety without competing with the miniature.

Sci-fi industrial: Slate grey grit, plasticard offcuts for deck plating, thin rust washes pooled around metal-painted edges. Barred wire from twisted thin wire or bought basing kits finishes a wasteland scheme cleanly.

Trench warfare: This is one of the most satisfying basing styles to work through, partly because the visual reference material is so specific. Dark muddy earth, barbed wire fragments, duckboard planks cut from coffee stirrers, and shell crater rims. Wet mud effects — gloss medium mixed into dark brown paint and applied in wet-looking patches — go a long way toward making Trench Crusade warbands look genuinely battle-worn.

Using 3D printed scenic pieces on your bases

Ordering 3D printed miniatures means scale-matched terrain and scenic elements are available in the same resin and at the same scale as the figures themselves. A small fragment of printed terrain glued to a 40mm or 50mm base often does more visual work than an extra highlight pass on the miniature.

We stock Diceverse's Craters Terrain, sized for 28/32mm play and ideal as Trench Crusade base scatter. Individual crater rims and rubble chunks match the warband figures exactly. For fantasy armies, Artisan Guild's Shattered Aetherium Ruin prints as a scenic ruin piece that doubles as large base scatter or an objective marker alongside a 50mm centrepiece figure.

Browse the Diceverse terrain range and the full Artisan Guild collection at TabletopXtra for basing-compatible scenic pieces.

Looking for something worth basing properly? Browse the full miniatures range at TabletopXtra, from modular fantasy armies to grimdark warbands ready for the table.