Flight stands: some love them, some hate them. They can add a certain dynamism to a miniature, placing a jump pack bearing soldier into the air, assuming a degree of imagination. Today, I’m looking at another way to fix your flying miniatures to their bases without the clear flight stands, but keeping the feeling of motion and idea that these guys can fly. I’ll be working with Adeptus Mechanicus Pteraxi and fixing them to Ryza-Pattern Ruins*. The clawed feet of the Pteraxi make them ideal for this as they give the impression of gripping onto ledges and corners of the terrain.

Dry fitting is key to this process. You’ll have to try moving, twisting, and turning the miniatures around the terrain to find the best fit. Since they’re not specifically designed to be glued to scenery, it’s important to get as much contact between miniature and terrain piece as possible. This will keep them more stable and less likely to fall off.

The Pteraxi below uses both the flat top of the wall against the flat of its back foot, along with the side of its back foot against the adjacent vertical. The side of the blade at the back of the front foot is also glued against the flat of the wall. The glue can take a little while to dry, and the miniature is likely to move, so it’s worth securing in place as best you can while drying. I leaned it against a paint pot to keep it in position while the glue dried. Once dry, the joins felt solid, so I moved onto the next one.

The next challenge was cutting the terrain down to size so it can fit on a base (arguably, you should do this before gluing, but I make this up as I go along). The Ryza-Pattern Ruins are way too chunky for a craft knife or clippers to chop, so I opted for a razor saw – you can probably see where I tried going through with clippers on the photo above. This saw from Green Stuff World comes recommended. One piece of advice: don’t be heavy-handed. The blades are long and thin, so likely to bend if you don’t treat them delicately. That said, they go through the terrain a charm.

It’s a bit messy right now, and the saw cuts are too clean, so we need to add some battle damage to make it look more authentic. This is where the clippers (I can’t recommend the GW ones enough – they’re fantastic) and hobby knife come into their own. You’ll see in the picture below that I just hacked and chopped jagged bits into the pipe. I also drilled a few 1mm holes to represent stray bullets. A couple of other touches that help bring the whole piece together, and distract from the fact that I just chopped right through a pipe, is applying GW Typhus Corrosion randomly about the pipe and wall, and a drybrush of GW Ryza Rust over the metal. That takes us from a chopped-up section of wall to a snapshot of a war-torn world.

*Note that Ryza-Pattern ruins are no longer produced. I got mine from a copy of the Warhammer Conquest magazine, but the same idea can be applied to most Games Workshop terrain.

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