Bases & Beaches, (pic heavy) Options

[ToothlessHogg]

So after another unplanned break from the world of miniatures (damn you world of warcraft!) I've started kicking off my new army with some basing (and just for something to do in general). Mostly I'm pretty happy with them but I always believe that no matter how nice something is, theres always room to improve. Please take a look and post any suggestions on how to improve the various base styles below. I'm still thinking about which way I want to go with my army's basing so I'm playing around with a lot of styles for now (all are 40mm bases):

Water Bases:





Forest:





Stone/Slate:




Snow:



(I made the mistake of using GW brand snow, though in my defence i got it for free )


Lava:





Also, being the type not to accept failure easily, I've taken another stab at the beach terrain concept, this time using a different medium and also and underlying structure for the waves to I have more control over the form:



This time I had the common sense to make up a small sample before making 6 feet of beach only to throw it in the bin . The sand I used was just a temporary thing I had lying about, some old blend of pebbles I had from another project. I'm going to be using a light yellow sand to give a nice contrast to the blue. Does the water look ok? Should the waves be more dramatic / more frequent? For the final piece I'll be having about 6 inches of water, 5 inches of sloped sand and 1inch or so of coastal land & grass to blend in with the terrain board.

On a secondary note, does anyone have any suggestions for beach fortifications? I'm really not a military buff so I'm not really sure what sort of thing looks practical for a fortified beach, and it would be leaning more to a sci-fi setting anyway so I'm not sure if it would be relevant even if it did look cool. If you know of any miniature examples or a guide for making them I'd be most grateful for a link.


Any suggestions or comments in general on the above would be appreciated, I'm always looking to improve

This post has been edited by ToothlessHogg: Mar 7 2010, 09:27 PM

[ToothlessHogg]

Oh, also when it comes time to base my army, I'm pretty torn as to which way to go. Its a chaos space marine army, mostly on small GW infantry bases so its a bit limited in space for anything fancy, but in terms of what I like from the above I'm torn between Water, Forest and Lava bases, but I'm not sure how practical they will be on smaller bases. Heres a sample mini of the army style - quartered black and red with gold trim:






Which base style do you think would complement the army colours best? Feel free to suggest something outside what I've done above too, I'm willing to try anything out.

This post has been edited by ToothlessHogg: Mar 7 2010, 09:29 PM

[YoungWolf7]

Either the "Lava" or the "Snow" would work. Personally, I would like to see the snow without the snow. Just blasted rocks. Reinforce the Chaos feel w/o distracting from the mini itself.