Basing Your Miniatures: A Complete Guide from Sand and Rocks to Snow and Water Effects

By Carter Estes  ·  September 1, 2026

Here is the truth nobody tells you when you buy your first box of Space Marines: the base is the last five percent of the work and the first thing anyone sees. I believe that more strongly every year I stay in this hobby. A gorgeously painted squad on bare black plastic looks unfinished. A tabletop-standard squad on a well-executed base looks deliberate. Same models. Different army.

So let's fix that. This is how to base miniatures properly — from a bag of play sand all the way to snow drifts and standing water — without spending a fortune or losing a weekend.

First: Decide the Scheme Before You Glue Anything

The single most common mistake I see at the store is a hobbyist basing model-by-model, improvising as they go. Six months later they have forty models and eleven different worlds underfoot. Pick your planet first.

Ash waste, jungle floor, urban rubble, frozen tundra, alien crystal — commit, write it down, and buy enough material to do the whole army.

One piece of good news for anyone rebasing on purpose rather than out of obligation: Games Workshop did not change base sizes with 11th Edition, which launched this past June. Your 10th Edition army is still tournament-legal on exactly the bases it came with. Rebase because you want to, not because you have to.

The Foundation: Sand and PVA vs. Texture Paint

Every basing job starts with texture, and you have two honest options.

PVA glue and sand is the old way and still the cheapest. Brush a thin, even coat of white glue across the base top, dip it in a tub of mixed-grade sand, tap off the excess, let it cure overnight, then seal it with watered-down PVA so nothing flakes off in your transport case.

Cost per model is pennies. It scales beautifully — I've done a hundred bases in an afternoon this way.

Texture paints — Citadel's Technical range, Vallejo's earth textures, AK's pastes — are the fast way. You stipple the paste on with an old brush, it dries with raised grit already colored, and you're one drybrush from done. It costs more per base and it needs 24 hours to cure properly, but the consistency across a whole army is worth it.

My rule: texture paint for characters and anything I'll photograph, sand and PVA for the horde.

Rocks, Cork, and Elevation

Flat bases are boring bases. Break up the surface with a couple of pieces of broken cork bark or a slate chip, glued down before the texture layer so the sand runs up against them naturally. Two rules keep this from going wrong. Don't build higher than the model's knee, and don't put anything where the model's feet need to sit.

A Terminator tilting off a rock at a fifteen-degree angle is not dynamic. It's a measuring problem.

Static Grass and Tufts

Tufts are the highest return on investment in the entire hobby — a sheet of two hundred costs less than a single character kit and finishes an army. Place them asymmetrically, never in the dead center, and always fewer than you think.

Three tufts on a 32mm base reads as an overgrown ruin. One tuft tucked against a rock reads as a battlefield.

If you're using loose static grass instead, an applicator that charges the fibers so they stand upright is a genuine upgrade over sprinkling it and hoping. Grass lying flat looks like carpet.

Snow

Snow is the most forgiving effect in the hobby and the easiest to overdo.

Mix a snow flock with a gloss or matte medium into a paste, then apply it where snow would actually settle — the lee side of rocks, the low points, the backs of boot treads. Leave the high edges and the exposed tops bare so the earth shows through. Snow everywhere is a white base. Snow in the right places is a winter battlefield.

Do this last, after the model is fully painted and varnished. Varnish over snow will melt the effect into a gray crust, and I have learned that lesson so you don't have to.

Water Effects

Water is where people get nervous, and they shouldn't. The technique is simple: build a dam, paint the bottom, pour thin, and wait.

Seal the base rim with a collar of blue tack or a strip of masking tape so nothing leaks. Paint the depression darker than you think — a near-black brown or deep green at the deepest point, lightening toward the edge. Then pour a two-part resin or a water effect gel in layers no thicker than 3mm at a time, letting each layer cure fully.

Thick pours crack, cup, and yellow. Thin patient pours look like real standing water. Once cured, drag a little gloss medium across the surface with a toothpick to suggest ripples.

The Rim Is Not Optional

Paint the rim. Always. A clean rim in a single flat color — Rhinox Hide, Abaddon Black, or a dark gray — is the picture frame around everything you just did.

Do it with a flat brush held at an angle and turn the base, not the brush. Thirty seconds a model, and it is the difference between "painted" and "finished."

Come Get Your Supplies

We stock the whole chain at The Game Station — texture and technical paints, tufts, flock, snow, cork, glue, and the brushes and tools that make all of it faster.

If you don't know where to start, come in and tell us what your army looks like and what planet you want it standing on. We'll put the bag together with you. That conversation is free, and it is a lot cheaper than buying three basing systems you don't end up using.

Your models deserve a world to stand on. Go build them one.