Basing can completely change a miniature, transforming them from hovering over an abyss (unpainted black base) to interacting with their environment. You can go all out or keep it cheap and simple. Cheap and simple is where plasticard comes in. An 0.75mm thick A5-sized sheet cost me about £1 from eBay and all you need beyond that is a base, some super glue and a hobby knife. A ruler also helps keep your lines straight. The A5 sheet should easily cover enough bases for, say, a Frostgrave party. The frozen city gives you plenty of basing scope to play with and one of the obvious choices is flagstones.

Start by cutting rectangles out of the plasticard sheet using your hobby knife and ruler. Do try to avoid any sacrifices to the blood god when using your knife. I found it a pain to go right through but having made the first incision it was easy enough to just snap. I used 2 different sizes of flagstone for variety.

Glue the plasticard pieces to the base using super glue. Don’t worry about it hanging over the edge – we’ll sort that later. Keep a small gap, maybe 1mm, between each piece and cover the base. Using the knife again, cut off any overhanging card.

To add a weathered aesthetic to the flagstones, round off the edges between pieces and gouge out scuffs and damage. Don’t be neat. Plasticard can be quite tough, so again, be careful. You should get something like this:

It’s ready for painting. Grey primer will save you time (I use Halfords):

Adding a wash of GW Agrax Earthshade to bring out all that weathering you just hacked into the card:

Give the whole thing a rough drybrush with GW Mechanicus Standard Grey. No need to be neat. This will go over some of the Agrax Earthshade but that’s fine as it will help bring it all together once the highlights are on:

Another drybrush, but lighter this time, with GW Celestra Grey:

You could leave it there but since mine is for Frostgrave, I added some GW snow flock in the cracks between flagstones and painted the side of the base black:

It’s that simple. Plasticard is also receptive to drills (as opposed to slate bases which aren’t so fond) so it’s easy enough to pin your minis on there for stability.Tufts and static grass also work in the cracks between flagstones, or you could try scattering things like loose stones or treasure. Or skulls. You can’t go anywhere for tripping over dessicated skulls in these worlds of fantasy.

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