I had introduced my 6mm Spartan hoplites a while ago.

Now, I’ve always known that Baccus (my 6mm manufacturer of choice) sells this basing pack called the “Baccus Basing System”, which includes fine sand and short static grass that are specially selected to be compatible with 6mm miniatures.

But being the cheapskate that I am, I didn’t believe that the “normal” sand and static grass will look too big/long and out of place. So I went ahead with my own way, and this was what I got with my first attempt at basing 6mm minis.

You can see that the grass is so long that it reaches above the knees, making these Spartans look like they’re wading through some thick jungle undergrowth.

I had also scoffed at buying pre-cut MDF bases, so I cut out some 1mm thick plasticard sheets to the required size and glued them together to make a 2mm thick base. Apart from this being a whole lot of work, I just couldn’t cut the sizes accurately enough by hand, so the seam between the two pieces of plasticard sticks out like a sore thumb.

After weeks of agonizing over how best to correct these problems, I finally broke down and bought a pack of 40 pre-cut 60mm x 30mm MDF bases and the “Baccus Basing System”.

Then I removed my Spartans from the old sub-standard base, and re-based them using the “Baccus Basing System”, going “by the book” in accordance with the instructions included with the pack. One slight deviation I made was to paint the base of the figures green instead of the recommended brown, as I thought it would look more natural against the grass.

And now, I hereby proudly present my re-based Spartan hoplites!

Looking at the end results, I think that maybe I should have sticked “to the book” and painted the figure bases brown. The green color seems to give a clean but artificial look.

But all in all, I’m impressed with the “Baccus Basing System”, and how easily it gives good-looking results!

After taking a look at Michael’s fantastic tutorial for creating modular terrain tiles, I just had to give it a try.

Since this was my first ever attempt at creating terrain, I thought it best to experiment on something expendable. What more expendable than those ubiquitous CDs? I grabbed hold of a couple of obscure ones that came with some digital gadget or another years ago, and “sacrificed” them

Well… while the results weren’t exactly what I was expecting, they were satisfactory enough for a beginner’s first attempt. I think the grass flock I’ve used were a bit too green, giving an artificial kind of look.

Another disappointment was the dirt road. I’ll need to work on a better blend of colors, as the ones I’ve used don’t really give the impression of a dirt road.

Oh, and we welcome our special guest models: 6mm Spartan hoplites!

I’ve recently purchased a good number of packs 6mm Napoleonic British from my favorite manufacturer of 6mm miniatures: Baccus

Now I’ve got a bunch of Line Infantry washed, prepped, primed, and ready for painting!

I hate the noxious smell of spray cans, so I prime all my miniatures (be they 28mm, 15mm, or even 6mm) by hand with black acrylic gesso.

This takes quite a bit of time, but I like the absolute control it gives me. I don’t know how many times I had to apply additional spray coats because there were certain portions of the miniatures that the spray didn’t “hit” properly!