It was probably a year ago that I ordered a rather large set of resin bases from Dragon Forge - I really liked the Lost Empires range, which has some definite Eldar themes, although at the time I hadn't quite landed on a colour scheme.
Dragon Forge (Jeff) has been excellent with a few orders in the past, however he usually has a decent backlog of jobs as it's really a 1 person show, so can take a couple of months to deliver. I figured I would be better off getting enough bases in one go to keep me busy for a while, so rather than just look at enough for the guardians and wraithguard that I had in boxes, I ended up also ordering 6 large vehicle sized bases, about 30 more of the 25mm bases for future aspect warriors as well as a couple of packs of 32mm bases that should be a good option for jetbikes. About 110 bases in total. Which seemed like a lot when I ordered them last November.
Come forward to the back half of 2020 and there are minis in the wings that will need to use them. I'd been mulling over possible paint schemes for a while, and felt I really needed to do a couple to work out how little effort I could get away with - the aim with my Eldar army has been to limit detail work as much as possible. Airbrush or drybrush as the main options; wash when it makes sense to add depth, brush detail only when needed.
There are some really nice 'bone' type colour schemes for Eldar bases, albeit a few of them look pretty labour intensive so quickly ruled out. The ancient ruin style of the bases also lend themselves to the more traditional greys for castle ruins; so set about doing something of a spectrum.
The left one is the more traditional castle ruins style... something like dawnstone with an agrax earthshade wash. Even with a drybrush, it looks like dirty stone which says more historic castle than advanced space race. Similarly, using a mix including green wash looks like mold/moss. Interesting, but not advanced species. On the right, starting with a mid tone vallejo grey with an ulthuan grey drybrush is much better - this looks more like cement, and to me that feels different enough from human castle ruins to fit Eldar.
On the other end of the list, I did see some really nice sand coloured bases and the bone colours are also quite appealing. Zandri dust/screaming skull, or with ushabti bone. Lahmian medium and agrax earthshade for the crevices. On the left, the drybrush done last, on the right the drybrush was done before the thin wash so it's a slight tone darker. Quite like the look of these.
The downside of the bone coloured stone is that a dawnstone rim looks really jarring with it. While that shouldn't be the deciding issue for an entirely new army (I could just use a brown/black rim)... I have about 200 minis now with dawnstone rimmed bases so sticking with the grey is going to be the best bet.
The middle cement option looks to be it. Neutral, yet fairly bright, with some dark brown earth in the cracks to add a little colour. The red inset detail needs a different colour... worry about that later.
Scaling this up to more industrial levels... I figured doing an entire army worth would be easy, but by the time I had drilled and superglued magnets into the first 70 odd I needed a break - so this batch is 40x 25mm bases for guardians, plus 20x 40mm bases. That's enough for 15 wraithguard plus the 4 support platforms to go with the guardian squads.
Vallejo neutral grey was the winning basecoat from the test runs - it's got a slight hint of blue so looks more like concrete than natural stone, and is dark enough that I probably won't even need a wash to add shadows. Run through the airbrush after a vallejo black primer.
Everything then gets a solid drybrush of administratum grey to bring up any raised surface.
Followed by a layer of steel legion drab on any dirt/grainy rubble. To my luck - the pot I had was used for some airbrushing basecoats a while ago, which is a really useful consistency to soak into rubble areas.
A final lighter drybrush of screaming skull over everything gives a slightly dusty look, while at the same time acting as highlight on the earth areas.
Standard bases are now essentially done - quick and easy steps so far. A number of the bases also have inset details that need some extra work; a few have part of an inlaid circle/yin-yang design, which I'm colouring the inner part with corax white.
The more common decoration is small inlaid circle markers - I'd tried doing these in red or even purple on the test bases and didn't like the look. Since I was planning on doing the rune markings in a fluorescent/bright blue, I'll carry that colour over with a much darker blue on the stone markings.
Also decided to sneak in one of the single hero bases while batch painting - I think this could be a fitting option for a Farseer model with the rune design.
All the rune markings have a very thin/watered down line of blue run into them. I was worried about being neat with the first couple, but as it turns out a little bit of overspill just helps sell the idea that there is some kind of random glow.
Likely an unwarranted step, but I kept the 25mm bases in their original packet groups - there are 3 different sets of designs, which could all be mixed together to get a random combination for each squad. I'll probably grab any individual bases for the aspect warriors later on but for the moment this helps stop me from putting too many identical cast bases in the same squad.
As it turns out - the least neat rune was the more important one. Some stray blue marks on the farseer base. Actually doesn't look too bad but worst case could repaint it with future batches of bases.
The full batch of bases - which will just need models attached and final coat on the rims. The wraithguard bases at the bottom (plus a couple of spares), then 40 small bases for guardians and a bigger base for their support weapon platform per squad.
These have been quicker to do than my marine bases (where I'd have to wait for washes to dry), have a cleaner look, are easier to drill for pinning later (since the whole base is resin rather than having items glued to it) and the blue ads a better hit of colour without being too bright.
I suspect that I'll regret going with grey rather than bone at some points... but this way I've got a new army that will carry over similar colours to everything else in the cabinet and still give a neutral background if I end up using the full rainbow of colours for the aspect warriors.
And sometimes it's better to just pick a style and commit to it, rather than procrastinate.
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