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

By Carter Estes  ·  September 3, 2026

A beautifully painted miniature on a bare black base is a half-finished sentence. I believe basing is the single highest return-on-investment job in this hobby — twenty minutes of work that makes a squad look like it belongs somewhere instead of floating in a void. And yet it is the step most people skip, because it happens after the fun part is over.

Let's fix that. Here is how to base miniatures properly, from a bag of play sand all the way up to water effects, in the order I'd actually teach it to somebody standing at my paint desk.

First, Leave the Base Size Alone

Before anything else: use the base your model came on. Games Workshop confirmed no base-size changes for 11th Edition when it landed this past June, so your 10th Edition army is tournament-legal exactly as it sits.

Space Marines on 32mm, Terminators on 40mm, Knights on those enormous 170x105mm ovals. Rebasing an army to look cooler is a fine way to get a judge's attention at a GT, and not the good kind.

Level One: Texture Paints

If you own one basing product, make it a texture paint. Citadel folded its old Texture range into Technical — twelve options now, in the clear 24ml pots — and they do in one step what sand and glue do in three.

Slap Astrogranite Debris on with an old brush, let it crack and settle, drybrush a bone or light grey over the raised grit, paint the rim, done. Mordant Earth gives you that split, dried-mud look for free.

Is it the most impressive technique on this list? No. Is it the reason my Thousand Sons detachment got fully based instead of sitting in a drawer for eight months? Absolutely.

Level Two: Sand and Gravel

The classic for a reason. Brush PVA glue across the base, dip the whole thing face-down into a tub of fine sand, tap off the excess, and let it dry overnight. Mix two or three grits together — fine sand plus a pinch of aquarium gravel — and you get scale variation that a single grade never produces.

Once it's dry, seal it with thinned-down PVA or a shot of matte varnish. Untreated sand sheds. You will find it in your carrying case for years, like glitter from a wedding you didn't attend.

Level Three: Cork and Rocks

Wine cork, torn rather than cut, is the cheapest convincing rock in existence. Tearing leaves a fractured edge that reads as stone; cutting leaves a flat edge that reads as cork.

Superglue a chunk down, blend the seam with sand, prime, then drybrush grey over black. Elevation is the trick here — a model standing eight millimeters above its neighbors immediately reads as the leader of the unit.

Snow: Less Than You Think

Snow is where hobbyists lose their composure. The rule is restraint. Finish the base completely first — texture, drybrush, everything — because snow goes on last and goes on partially.

Mix your snow flock with a matte medium or watered PVA into a paste and apply it in drifts against the boot, the rock, the windward side. Bare ground should still show through. Real snow accumulates against obstacles; it does not frost a cupcake.

Same principle for the models themselves: a few flecks on the shoulder pads, and stop.

Water Effects: Patience Required

Water is the most rewarding and least forgiving effect here. Build a dam of hot glue or poster putty around the base rim so nothing leaks onto your table. Paint your riverbed before the water goes in — dark green-brown in the deep center, fading lighter at the edges, because depth is painted, not poured.

Then add your resin or acrylic gel in thin layers, no thicker than 3mm at a time, curing between each. Rush it and you get cloudy amber sludge and a very long evening. Ask me how I know.

Tufts, Then the Rim

Static grass and tufts go on dead last, in odd-numbered clumps, never centered. Three tufts pushed off to one side always beats six spread evenly — asymmetry is what makes ground look like ground.

And then the rim. Two clean coats of a single dark color across the whole army, no exceptions. It is thirty seconds per model and it is the difference between "painted minis" and "an army." A crisp rim will paper over a mediocre paint job; a sloppy rim will undercut a great one.

Get the Supplies

We stock texture paints, technicals, flock, tufts, brushes, and adhesives at The Game Station, along with the terrain to put those freshly based models on — including our own 3D-printed pieces and battlemats, made right here. Come by, or browse online. If you're new to basing and don't know where to start, ask.

We would rather spend ten minutes talking you into the right two products than sell you eleven you won't use.

Your models earned better than a black disc. Give them ground to stand on.