 Hello everybody. If it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly. Joining me as always is certainly my base, my Peter, my Rock. What's up, Tom? How you doing? Hello, friends. That reference was just for you, Tom. Thanks. I appreciate that. Absolutely. So tonight we're gonna talk about basing in all its wonderful and myriad forms and just to answer a comment that was put in the chat by Anthony Pocastro. Anthony, I'm just fine. Don't worry. I do that all the time. That's not even a thing, buddy. That's every morning, homie. But at any rate, yeah, so we've got, let's start with some news. What do we got? I am just so out of sports. I apologize. That's fine. Well, Tom's bringing up the news, which I mean, I think we should talk about news in general for a moment here, which is just the I don't think we're like, what news are we going to have? Are we going to continue with rumors and spoilers and stuff like we got? We'll talk about it a little bit because they did continue to publish stuff this week. How long does that go on where they're saying like, here's new stuff. We have no release dates or concept of when we do because right now that may second date where the factory theoretically opens and stuff can theoretically ship. That's just that. That's all theory. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, like that may not like, I don't know how they continue to announce things. Like I think their way forward, if I were GW, would be all community-based like hangouts and content. Yeah, just community fun stuff. Share your stuff. Share your army. Get articles out and get people excited to work on what they've got. Yeah, like paint-a-sodes and like all of those things that it creates community engagement like painting contests and fan content. I've watched the community team like sending out messages of like, hey, what's going on? What project are you working at? Hashtag, blah, blah, blah. So that's what I would imagine it would be unless they continue to preview things and then just do a product dump where they double or triple up on releases for like a month to catch back up. I can't imagine that they do that. It seems like what they would do is reorganize the release schedule. Yep. Oh, that's interesting. Paul in the comments just said there's no more like stormcast until after because they are out of podcasts that don't reveal embargoed stuff. Oh my gosh, that makes sense. Because they do pre-record those well in advance and then sync them to the releases, right, where they talk about where ostensibly they would have said, okay, here's our release date for the Lumineth and so, you know, record a podcast or two where we're talking about Lumineth in some way or whatever, right? Right. And yeah, so, you know, well, it's obviously it's very much in flux. I mean, the whole world is just upside down right now. Yeah, sure, with all this kind of stuff. I mean, I think they will, the hobby hangouts have obviously been a great thing. They've been doing those for those who don't know, you know, they have been doing their daily hobby hangouts on Twitch and stuff, and those are great because now those are all available forever. So those are really good. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way forward. There's nothing wrong with that. Nobody, I hope, is asking for people to go like put their life on the line and risk their health to make some more plastic toys. And if they all have shame on you. Yeah, that's not what we're doing here, folks. The stuff will all get made. Like we don't have to worry about that, right? So yeah, but we do still have some news right now. And obviously, like I not to jump ahead of you, but the first piece of like one of the first piece of news we should discuss along that line is that this Saturday is another reveal show. Right, right. Oh, buddy, that's exciting. I'm excited. It'll be interesting to see what gets revealed, given the hold up, you know, the how they call everything off and and yeah, I don't know. I don't know. You know, speaking of reveal show, we had a reveal. We did. We had a reveal show. We covered it. Like they had a reveal show and we did our post reveal thoughts. So if you want to see all of Tom's hot taking on the Lumineth stuff that was revealed, you can, you know, you can go watch that. It's there. It was from Saturday. We did it basically right after they finished theirs. Yeah. And so we're not going to cover that again. But for those of you guys that are interested, they revealed a whole bunch of new Lumineth models. And they're interesting. Yeah, some people are really excited about that. That's great. I have a pretty hot take tinfoil hat theory pretty strongly about. Yeah, we'll see about that. Sure. So do you want to cover that tonight? Or do you want to do that for another? We can talk about it. Let's save it for the end of the news. Okay, let's see. We'll go. Well, at the end of the news, this will be your one chance to go through your insane tinfoil hat narrative thing. I mean, am I wrong though? Yes, but that's okay. But it would be awesome if you were right. But yes, you're wrong. I mean, it's what you secretly want inside is Nivvence. Sure. No, it'd be super cool. Yes, 100%. I want what you're touting here. It's not, but that's fine. Yes, we'll go to our official Ring-a-Ding-Ding segment after this. Indeed. So preview, it's pretty fantastic. So rumor engine. We had a rumor engine. It's up on the screen right now. Yes, indeed. How exciting. It's clearly a Bone Reapers Underworlds Warband. Yeah, which image do you have up? You have the... Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. I forgot to bring up the modified image. I'm very sorry. Yeah, that's not the real image. I mean, that's one real image. But there's more real images here. Sure. I don't happen to have that one handy. I'm sorry. I apologize to Mr. Mifesto who did go to all the work to create a specially modified image. But yes, clearly it's the Bone Reapers. Which could be OBR Shades Fire. Yeah. That's a possibility. It could be not OBR. I don't know, man. That's pretty OBR. Like the Gem, the Bone, and the Rune are all pretty OBR. That would be pretty off-brand. I don't disagree with you. But could it be something like Soul Blight? It's literally Volk Morton's same icon he has. I mean, I know. I understand that. I understand it's 99.9% OBR. That's fine. No, this is a good rumor engine. Look, we often complain when rumor engines are so darn vague that it's impossible for us to actually say anything about what they are. And this one is clearly OBR. And could it be a particular Warcry release instead of Underworlds? Sure, could be. That's possible. We don't know what they have for the future of Warcry, right? They might have some non-chaos. Like, death is officially in the all points now. The result of Wrath of the Everchosen was death got a very strong foothold there. So they could do- It could be something Warcry related. Yeah, they could do a Warcry expansion. So we got, what, the 7 or 8 when we get the Scions? Chaos Warcry Warbands, right? Yep. Yep. Cool. We could get four Death Warbands, right? Because we know there's a bunch of different forces of death there. Okay. Like, we could get a Warcry Ghosty Warband that's brand new and a Warcry OBR Warband that's brand new. Because, like, that's possible as well. So, yes, it could be Underworlds. It could be something like that. It could be a terrain set of traps for Warcry. I mean, it's definitely some dude's axe. But like, couldn't this be like a pendulum axe swinging or something? You're saying it's like a pit in the pendulum kind of thing? Or like an axe coming down from a statue. You know what I'm talking about? I know. Like, what if there was a terrain? Like, I just got the one terrain- No, because it's painted way too nicely and not like a single piece of stone. That's fair. That's fair. No, no, no, no. Like, they've been doing the Warcry boxes of terrain. And I just wonder if there was maybe like a trap set or something that is like death-related. I don't know. I'm obviously on brainstorming here. Sure. Like, the obvious thing is to say that it's an OBR model. Sure. Yes, it's like, my vote is either it's Underworlds or if it's Underworlds, 80%, it's Warcry, 20%. Sure. Cool. Sure. Those would be like, if you were telling me to eyeball odds, that's what I would say. And that's fine. You know, I'm good with it. Like, it's clearly a nice paint job. You can tell from the nature of the axe and how they, you know, lined it and highlighted it and stuff like that, right? It's very smooth. So, yeah. Yeah, I can see that. So, there you go. Cool. Good rumor engine. All right. Yeah. What else we got? We also have the Seraphon FAQ dropped and apparently unrendable the stilldowns as a feature. Not a bug. Yeah, sure. Not a bug. It's, you know, like it was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the Seraphon FAQ. So, what I'll say is that most of the Seraphon FAQ was pretty much what we expected. Right. Right. Like, it was just all normal cleanup for the most part. Yeah. The, like the reduction of the ripper's chief only being able to use his ability once, of course, we all expected that. Like, the Stegodon chief actually having a Stegodon as a mount as I proclaimed it should be, which is good because I had built this whole army that I'm going to paint this weekend around the concept of running a Stegochief. Right. And I am so excited about this, dude. I have the old school, I have the old school skink chief and nobody's going to be able to see him, but he's like such a funny little dude with his mohawk. He's adorable. Adorable. He's got little abs, like such a great sculpt. And he's going to be up on top of his Stegodon, his old metal 17-pound Stegodon that I have. And I made a special how to for him out of the Warcry. You know all the wooden, like spikes and stuff that are in Warcry? Yeah. I made a special how to of him for him out of that. Oh, that would be cool. Yeah, so thankfully, we're good. They also fixed the whole shooting thing we mentioned. Where like that, when can they shoot? Who can they shoot? What triggers it? Like that was all cleaned up. So good. Great. Fantastic. Oh, Paul said it's from the skink with spear unit. Yeah, I don't know. Probably. I have no idea where it's from, Paul. I have very old, you know, lizard people from like the very much in the 90s. I remember where none of these things are from at any rate. And then we got the Bastilodon thing, which restated the base rules in some kind of form that still confused the living bejesus out of everybody, which credit to the community member that made the image you shared around. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's actually the clear-risk picture. Yeah, literally a picture was worth a thousand words, right? And I have no idea why we kept this or whatever, but we did. So, you know, like, yes, if you can deal mortal wounds to the Bastilodon, that's fine. You'll melt them down and it's all good. It's not no part of my complaint. This is where I see people go wrong. This discussion keeps happening, right? Like, okay, here's the basics of the power thing, right? If that Bastilodon gets re-rolling ones to a save in any form, which there are multiple avenues toward, then it does take 108 wounds, regardless of rent. It could be rent one million. It takes 108 wounds to deal the three wounds on average, to deal the three wounds necessary to him to actually make him be able to fail saving throws with any regularity. Yeah, it's pretty wicked terrible. So, like, but mortal wounds melt them down. So, okay, maybe the answer is that's fine. He is just a monster. He's not like some superhero. You know, he's not a battle line unit that can sit on. You know, he's not Hearthgard berserkers, right? I mean, seriously. It's funny that you say that, because the reality is, with the Hearthgard, and it makes me laugh, I mean, the reality is, is that with the Hearthgard, like, he's not there. Like, that Bastilodon is not even a speed bump. Sure, if, well, assuming they have the mortal rend build. Right. Yes, yes. If they go for the rend build, instead, this just whoops, well, that's, they're not, they're not nasty. He can just charge the sight of them and assuming he has rear ones just sit there for a long, long time. Forever. Yeah. And so, like, again, my pushback on this has never been power, because I think most armies can probably scrounge up the three mortal wounds it needs, you know, like arcane bolts or something or whatever. It doesn't matter. The, I'm not worried about him as a power thing. I find, let me, let me put it this way for everybody, just to eliminate all clarity, because this is the constant cry of people who defend this ruling. Right. Yes, but everybody, people have mortal wounds. He's not that powerful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I agree with all that. I agree with all that. I find Hearthguard berserkers way more egregious and offensive than these guys. The fact that two of these things, right, costs more than a 20 pack of Hearthguard berserkers, okay? Sure. That is not correct. That is an incorrect thing in this game right now. Value-wise, those guys take almost as many wounds to move. They play through. And are far more valuable, because damage-wise, they're, they do literally an order of magnitude higher damage. Literally. They will do 10 times as much damage, right, in melee. And they also are battle line and so, and tons of bodies and valuable for holding objectives and all that. So no part of my complaint with the Bastillodon has anything to do with power. I don't care. He's not, he's not a problem at the game, power-wise. He's eminently deal-able with. My problem is watching everybody react to the FAQ ruling of like, I don't understand this, even when it's clarified. Yeah. Right? Because to explain it is so mind-bogglingly weird. Yeah. That's the problem. The problem is not the Bastillodon. He's problem less. He's A plus. Way to go, Basti. You're fine in my book. Keep all your rules. Change nothing. What should be changed is the underlying rules that's allowing this nonsense to happen. Right. And the thing I put forward on Twitter that I honestly didn't get a set like, some people were nice enough to give some answers. None of them moved me or convinced me as to why we would do this. The answer is just remove the penalties. Can't take anything below a one. Right. Yeah. And just allow the numbers to run into the negatives. Every, everything that I saw as pushback to that concept was not just a problem of that. Like there's plenty of other places already happens we allow, right? Like pushbacks of, well, that is sort of complexity of doing calculations. The only things that were interesting was you'd have to think about how that works with run. Right. If something like a run or a charge goes into the negative, what the heck does that mean? Yep. You go the other direction. Right. Like, yeah, like, right. Like that becomes weird, right? Or, so like I'm sympathetic to that and then I don't know how you resolve that. I suppose what you would have to say is in those numbers, like since you just, you just don't go anywhere, right? If like you'd need something in charge or run that says if the total number you can get is ever zero or less, you just go zero, right? Because we already do have exceptions in that way. Like entangling reduces your run in charge by two, to a minimum of zero, right? So like that's already there. So I just, I don't see anything about it. That's the linchpin I think should be removed. Pull the stop at one and the problem goes away. But I'll ask it again here. If anybody can tell me anything that you think, why removing that low cap? When we don't have a high cap, by the way, you can run numbers up above six, right? You can get seven, eight, you can roll a 12 to hit if you get plus six to hit. Like that's doable, right? Yeah. So I don't like if there's, if there's something I'm missing, I'm trying to approach this with the most humility because there's always second order consequences to game design decisions. I, I appreciate that and accept that. Right. Uh, I just, I'm not sure what it would really impact. So there you go. Anyway, so that's the bestie. Uh, hey, cool. Bring some water wounds. Make sure you hit him with that stuff. Yeah, that is your option. If he happens to get near a reroll one to save, stop attacking him. Yes. It's not going to do anything. Disengrave. Don't have enough attacks. Disengage. You're wasting your time. Right. Exactly. Just leave. Walk away. Just walk away. Just walk away. Okay. So at any rate, uh, cool. Like I, uh, I, and like I have no problem with the, I'll tell you what, I'd honestly love the, if, if they wanted to keep the bestilidon that tough, Tom. Yeah. Then the way to fix that should have just been one, fix the base rules and then two may say that the bestilidon is ethereal as long as he has a one plus safe. Sure. Sure. Great. Easy. I would have been okay just giving him a three plus and making it always ethereal. Or whatever. Like I want the bestilidon to be super tough. I love the idea of him being super tough. So keep him super tough. None of the problem is with the bestilidon. He's fine. Great. Good. A plus. You're a cute little boy. Okay. Cool. So there you go. All right. Uh, yeah. We had some more, um, uh, ADMEC 40K stuff. Uh-huh. So Tempest Eye releases. Yeah. I guess those are good. You labeled this Tempest Eye World One's Edge releases. Yes, I did. We got the information on those. I was happy to see, Tom, did you see that the, uh, the wiggie boys are clearly going to come in five packs? I did. Which I am excited about. So that's cool. And our big, our big horse dog, robot horse dogs are in three packs. So those are, those are excellent. Demigryphs or, uh, like Demigryphs or, um, even Dreykoths. I had to laugh because they were so excited about it and they showed the image and they were like, there's two different types of units for the flyers. Yeah. Yeah. And I swear I looked at that image for like 30 seconds. You were playing like a highlights game of like, spot the differences. And I'm just like, I don't see it. Sure. Like maybe a different gun in their hand. It is. It's a different, it's a different weapon. Yeah. And I was just like, mm, helmet. No, no, just, just couldn't spot it. So yeah. Yeah. I understand. I mean, I've got about 2000 points at my whirlwind's edge, ready to go a little more than actually, uh, a lot more than if you count like battalions and stuff like that, which I'm, I'm just talking raw points. Um, so I'm going to pause on that army until I, uh, because I've got plenty of other projects until that ad mech stuff comes out. So that's, but I'm, I'm super happy with it right now. Right. I mean, it's completely like right up your alley. Yeah. Everything that you're going to want to build. Uh, yeah, man. Those like, those Mechanicus dudes are going to end up being my, uh, balloon boys, I think. Right. Uh, my Andrin Riggers. So I'll have those if I want to bring those in with one of the boats, which is cool. Yeah. And I'll use the, um, the, uh, the robot dogs as my, as my demographs. What are you going to use the, uh, uh, what are you going to use the, Oh, and the big ship. Yeah. Yeah. That's how it's asked. What are you going to use the big ship for? I don't know. I haven't decided yet. Like something certainly I don't have a, I have like kind of a frigate, but I might use it as a frigate. Um, I might do some modifications to it and make it into a Star Drake. It has, it has dragon. It has, you know, uh, you know, uh, you know, you know, Draconic type wings. So I might put a big flamethrower on the front and stuff or big snappy jaws or something. I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. I'll, I'll decide when it gets here. Cause I think it's on a, I don't know what size base it's on. I couldn't quite tell from the, from the image. So, but yes, I definitely want to use the airplane too and modify all of them. By the way, like, I'm not going to use any of them straight. I'm going to modify the heck out of all that stuff. So, yes. Uh, yeah. Cool. Uh, we had another news item that I want to mention. Um, we didn't, we didn't mention it. He didn't include in the notes, but I didn't tell you too. So, and I'm going to share an image for us real quick. Okay. Siege Studios, um, uh, does commission work and, uh, or one of the individuals sold off one of their armies. Um, and they've been in kind of a battle over, uh, the fact that basic, like one of their buyers, um, basically, or their buyer for the army basically stole the army. Contested the charges, said the stuff didn't ship. And so it's, it was, they're a UK company. They shipped it to the US. It was originally in Houston, was the last known place. And it's floating around somewhere in the States. And so there's a lot of conversions. It's a beautiful, beautiful army. Yeah, that is cool. And I'm going to go through some of the images. I know that we're not a 40 K show, but if anybody does see, uh, this army floating around in the US, can you please report like where it was being played and by who if possible? They're just trying to, to track down, you know, and, and, uh, do kind of necessary, they're necessarily due diligence because the purchaser said that the army never arrived, even though it was like signed for by them. And yeah, yeah, yeah. So they have a big long post on Facebook about it. And since we have reach, I wanted to raise the awareness of this because like stealing stuff is not cool. And so, no, absolutely, especially not when ours, but a lot of work in this. And Siege Studios is really cool. That's a lot of great people. Amy works for them. Amy Snuggs works for them. There's just a lot of really great people in there. So, uh, yep. So we wanted, uh, I wanted to do our part to share the, the info on it. So there's a report that had been, it would have been recently spotted in the Cleveland area. So it might be in the Ohio area, who knows. So, yeah. So there's that kind of depressing piece of news today. Well, there you go. That's all right. Internet, do your magic. Let's find that army. We'll get to the bottom of this. It's very, like, it's very noteworthy because of all the conversions. So, uh, yeah. So if you are in the 40k circles, keep an eye out for it. Other pieces of news. Yeah, we could do, uh, we could do the theory craft. Uh, so it's time. It's time. Ring a ding ding. Tom predicts a thing. So Tom, here we go. Tom, obviously, like to, I think to be fair, the new aesthetic did not land with you and ring with you. Which is fine. Everybody has their own personal tastes. If you like a thing, like a thing. If you don't like a thing, don't like a thing. Just don't ever crap on other people who do or don't like a thing. Don't be rude to others who have a different opinion than you. But your own personal tastes, when it comes to liking or disliking an aesthetic of something, like a model is not wrong. That's just your personal taste. So for Tom, it didn't land. But it, but what's great about it not landing is that it sent Tom down this weird road of research where his, Tom's, you just got your doctorate, obviously. So congratulations. And I think everybody knows that. But obviously you, you've done like in doing what you got your doctorate for, you spent years literally in the depths of like detailed research and stuff like this and being able to draw things together and, and find underlying, especially when it comes to like symbols and words and common languages and language connections and stuff like that. And really understanding these things at a deep level. And so you got to apply your professional career to a hobby obsession here. Is that fair? That is a, that is fair. All right. So walk us through this, Tom. Have you got images? What would you like to do? I do. I do. So I'm going to, I'm going to start sharing some images. All right. So this started because for myself and for a lot of people, I think the bowl imagery and the hammers and the hats and all that was a very jarring like aesthetic. And so Vince and I like, we did a lot of time talking back and forth. He was trying to nail down like what exactly about it is not okay. And so I spent a lot of time like reflecting on the design language, right? And so design language has to do with like what is chosen and why it's chosen and how those pieces are put together. And in, in, in digging into the design language, I made some really interesting observations that I think actually may point to some hidden lore pieces that hasn't been revealed. And I wouldn't expect them to be revealed in the book. This would be something like one of those things they hide in plain sight and then reveal like years down the road, right? As part of a narrative campaign. Like for example, the, like the, like the, what I would invoke when I began to go down this rabbit hole is the story of the eternity king. So the story of Malekith, right? Yep. And how like the clues were always there if you were reading all the Ellen books in the eighth edition that like Malekith, like it wasn't that he, he was rejected. It's that he basically chickened out, that he was the true king and all that. And then like that became revealed in full, in full grandeur. In the end times. And some people would say that was a retcon. Some people would say the seeds were there for the whole time. Who knows? Doesn't matter. It ended up being the, the, the actual history. But when you look back through, you can see the, the crumb trail, right? Through all the lore where it like, where it was seeded and it was present there, but nobody had really like assembled the case. And so I'm going to assemble the case for what I think is true about the new Lumineth that probably won't be revealed in this book. And it may take years for them to reveal. Okay, here we go. So what it started with was the mountain room. Okay. So the mountain room, Rune is this like much contested. Like, so the mountain room is associated with the bowl. Like the big mountain bowl. I forget what he's called the, the spirit of the mountain yada yada. And let me pull up an image of that real quick for us. And then I'll kind of cycle through some other images. Okay, here we go. So we have this image and here's the image of the Rune. And it struck me as I was staring at this Rune that I was like, I could swear I've done that before, right? I've seen this before. But so then when I went back to like, you know, like as in during a hobby time. So I'm like staring at this Rune and staring at this Rune and staring at this Rune. And that's from the chest of the new. Yeah, it's on the staff, it's on the staff. It's on Teclas' belt as one of the four like. Yeah, because it's one of the four elements. Yes. Right. And I was like, and I dawned on me that like, this doesn't feel elven, right? It doesn't have any of the hallmarks of the elven runes. Let me show you. All the elven runes have like squigglys, right? Like they have, there's a lot of like flowy like marks to the, to the design language of elven runes. And actually the other three runes on Teclas' belt all have this design. Sure. Of like the curvy flowy squiggles, you know, of some part of the Rune. Like there's almost always straight, rigid, but there's almost always curves to everything. You can see it all the way down like these, whether it's the Rune of Assur down here. Or, you know, like just all of them. Yep, I got you. So then I was like reflecting on this. I was like, this, this feels like a dwarven Rune. And like as I was making that observation, I was like, I've seen this before. And then I realized that it's on the dwarves. And I was like, that's weird. It's all over the firesliders. But I dug through the dwarf books and it's not in any of the dwarven normal Rune language. Okay. So it's not in any of the standard runes. The closest in the Kalazad language that it would be, it would be some modified version of the Angkor Rune, which means realm or domain, which would be appropriate, right? Like in the original Kalazad, I don't have an image of it, but the Rune that means domain or realm is very similar to this. But this looks like a modified form and this looks very similar to the elven Rune as well. Again, a modified form. And it would make sense if it was realm or domain. But then I began thinking about all of the disparate elements that we're looking at, which involve like the runes, we have hammers, we have big hats, and then we have bowl imagery, we have huge, huge horns, and then I saw this meme. Okay. And it's really funny, like first of all, but what struck me was that like the hat is identical. Like it's certainly scaled up, right? Of course. But like identical is a stretch, but I get it, yes. Aesthetically, it's very similar. Tall hat, bull hat on top. Yep, got it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. And obviously it made me laugh because there's some truth to what is being echoed here. Right? And so it's like it sent me down a rabbit trail into Timurkan, digging through their Rune language. And in their official page, it wasn't there, but in one of the art pieces, and again, I don't have the art piece, I posted it up on the Facebook group, in one of the art pieces. Do you have a different image you can shift to so we're not sitting here looking at this? Okay, yeah. Thank you. We'll jump back here. So I think it's funny, sorry. I know you don't want to get your ratings messed up, whatever. Nobody said anything. So where are we at? So in the Dwarven, the Timurkan book, in one of the images of a forge, you can actually see the makings of the same Rune on the forge of this mountain realm Rune. Yes, it's actually on one of the Chaos Dwarf forges. It's one of the anvil of the Chaos book. So it's not in any of the Rune lists. It's ever been published, but it's present on some of the other Chaos Dwarf iconography. That was really interesting, because the Chaos Dwarf iconography, Chaos Dwarf stuff shows up in fireslayer stuff, like the Rune master guy, his beard, it's been very classically described as Chaos Dwarf-y. Yep. Sure, absolutely. And then I got to thinking about it, and I'm like, man, yes, the hat thing's funny, and all the other imagery in the bowls. And then I was like, it doesn't have any of the other distinct elements. Yeah, yes, we have a big bowl monstrosity, but it's not like we have any lamasu, right? Like, because this is a lamasu, the classic lamasu, right? Right, sure. Well, when you look at lamasu, they're celestial beings bearing human heads, bowls, bodies, sometimes with horns, ears of the bowl, and wings. And then we have Teclas. Sure. And originally, I was like, yeah, this is like a sphinx, and that's what we kind of talked about it, but it's not. Historically, sphinxes didn't have wings, and they certainly didn't have horns ever. Lamasus, on the other hand, did. Arguably, this is a beardless lamasu. Sure. And so then... Which one might argue that the Mesopotamian lamasu had the beard, because that was in fashion at the time? That was culturally appropriate. Elves don't have beards, folks. Sure. So their lamasu would be beardless, okay? Their lamasu would be beardless. And so then I'm like, wait a minute. Like, we have way too many correspondences to be accidental. Okay. Like, when you get to that point, and I began thinking like, like looking into the lore of Hashot, which is the god of the chaos dwarves. Yes. Described as the father of darkness, mm-hmm. And the more I dug into, like, what happened in the lore from like Tamerkin, Hashot himself was... He came, like, how he, the cast dwarves came to worship him is a mystery. But it was during the age of like, cataclysm, I think they called it, and what actually, what's described here, for the father of darkness, is that during what was called the time of chaos, Hashot came to them and delivered the dwarves from the rest of the chaos gods and offered them succor and protection. Okay. And what we learned in the lore video on Saturday was that the elves basically they, like during the age of chaos, they did mess up a bunch of stuff, chaos invaded, and they went to make amends with... They ruined their realm, they ruined Haish with their own magic, that's why. They ruined Haish with their own magic, but it was like in the midst of the age of chaos. Yep. And they, and they sought to like, make amends with the realm, realm personified, and they began like submitting to the realm and submitting to those disciplines and stuff like that. Anyways, I think they made a mistake. Okay. I don't think that Hashot, or I don't think that what they communicated with, I don't think is the plain per se, I think it's Hashot. Sure. So your argument here is when you look at the iconography, the runes in play, everything like this, what it's pointing to is this chaos dwarf iconography, this Hashot type iconography, and we know from what Phil Kelly said in the talk that they supplicate themselves to the realm itself, right? Yeah. And that takes the form of the four elements. Right. And so your argument is either all or at the very, and he said that the mountains themselves are sentient, right? Right, right. These big mountain spirits are sentient things, and they test the lumineph often violently, right? Yeah. Yeah. And if they pass, then they bestow upon them boons, right? They bestow on the boons. And so interestingly enough, here's another piece of this I hadn't mentioned. I'm still trying to track down in what lore book this was said, but some people can test that Hashot isn't a cast god itself, but rather a spirit like a demonic or greater demon or spirit of a volcano. Well, what's interesting about that theory, so just I'll bolster your case here in some way, right? Is that in general, like, so I'll say two things, pro and against, because obviously this is all for it. The elves have a history of doing psychotic, dangerous, deadly things to prove themselves, right? Whether it be the Phoenix Guard or the Phoenix King himself, right? And walking through flame and burning themselves, coming out the other side with boons or white lions, literally wrestling the giant white lions of Trace, which was, you know, super deadly and could kill them. And many white lions did not survive that test, right? It's just as many Phoenix Guard did not. And so, like, it's not that the elves don't have a history of this sort of behavior. At the same time, one would expect that, you know, order type, these kinds of boons. The gods that will generally give boons for that kind of activity, right, for complete supplication and weathering extreme hardship and proving yourself is the chaos gods, right? That's their, that is their MO, right? And not only that- Move yourself and you will get the boons of chaos. And not only that, it specifically calls out in Hashit that Hashit, unlike most other chaos deities, didn't corrupt, like physically corrupt. Like it wasn't physical mutations, right? Were the blessings of Hashit. And so actually, like, Hashit remarkably protected most of the chaos wars from such corruption and such corruption only began to slowly crap it in after millennia of influence, which is like the horns and like the teeth and stuff like that. And so what I would argue is, like, and in the books, it says that they had forgotten what had actually transpired to bring about the servitude to Hashit. And so I am arguing that, like, the old world chaos wars are millennia down this road that the elves have only started a millennia or two ago. Sure. So that you have, like, Hashit or some minor chaos gods like this or something like that, some malevolent force. Yeah. That is using the same, the same tricks here and is basically rebuilding the elves. And so what this would, now, here's what I'll say. Right. Obviously. Can I put some points on something else too? Go ahead. Go ahead. When you go into the lore of the war cry warbands, you'll notice that they don't worship gods, they worship concepts. Yeah, sure. Like deceit, trickery or all those things and that it's behind those other things that are being worshiped. Do the actual chaos gods lie. Yes. Right. Only the upper level chaos people who've really, like, gone down the road a long way actually know and call the true chaos gods by name, right? Right. And what I would argue is that I think that this is like one of those, that's maybe what's going on here and that we would probably only find out years down the road. So I'll say two things about this. One, I think this is, you know, a lot of what we, the big C, what we call coincidence, right, and just repetitive design languages, right? Like to apply Occam's razor. Okay. The simplest answer here is there's a limited number of assets they have. And by the way, the mountain rune is just like the Masonic symbol, right? And so, you know, they just reuse that because that's an art asset they have and it means this thing, the mountain, and they, the mountain figured into this so they just kept reusing it, right? And the idea of this creature being what it is, you know, Kalinor or whatever, the spirit of the mountain or whatever. Or the zenith or, I'm sorry, he's the spirit of the zenith or whatever. You know, it's just that. It's just them using some of the same signifiers and design language, right? Because again, there are human beings behind this and they just, human beings tend to echo their own past creations, right? Now, let me point out that like, the kind of the Assyrian vibe of the Middle Eastern moving to East of the dwarves may have just been brought in and all of these are elements of that kind of vibe and feel like the pants of Teclis, right? So it could be the kind of the cultural thing that they're trying to import. Yeah, sure. Now, what I will say is this is a cool idea. I would love this to be true, right? This is one of those great reveals. Like this could be a great story turn three years down the line, right? Where it turns out that what ends up happening X number of years into AOS 3 or whatever it is, right? This can be far in the future. They could pull this card and be like, and they could flip it like they did with Malaketh and say actually it was like this the whole time, right? As the elves suddenly realize that they're, that they're, or five years from now, or some great time when they want to publish a new version of this book, right? And the elves realize that they've actually been worshiping and empowering a minor chaos to get it the whole time. And then this gives them like a card to pull on. So it could be that somewhere in like deep buried it and in Phil Kelly's notes. Is a sticky note. Is a sticky note, yeah, that just says like, yeah, maybe I do this someday. Yeah. Right? Like the easy explanation here for this is not that they have like a master plan to go this way because. Oh, no, no, this is the breadcrumb trail that's been left that maybe or maybe not and it could just be a random set of breadcrumbs or there could actually be a pattern in a path. Well, sure. And my argument is the smart way to write lore like this is to do the J.K. Rowling thing, right? Where you just throw out a bunch of random stuff. And then you pick what you want at the end and go, ta-da! Ta-da! And everybody's like, wow, you're such a genius. You had this all plotted out. It's like, no, I just threw out 50 threads and then went back and pulled on six of them, right? And you forgot about the other 44 I didn't use, right? And so if you put enough of this little stuff around, right? Then you just, it gives you room to play later. Because I doubt that like, I'm sure that Phil Kelly has some kind of notebook full of like, here's some cool stuff we could do in the future, right? Like, I'm willing to bet that exists, either on a whiteboard or in one of his notebooks, right? Where he said, here's some cool stuff we could do with AOS and the Mortal Realms, where these things could go. And this probably, you know, is on like a sticky note somewhere or on a page. Like maybe elves are secret chaos worshipers accidentally. And the interesting thing is that like, we know Hashit is alive and active in the lore. The Fire Slayer's article that came out in White Dwarf in the Solar Summer, showed that he is actively corrupting part of the one main clan. What surfaces? So like he's being written about his corruption of Vostar in like actively currently. And by like the, by Phil Kelly and the other lore writers. So he is being thought about, Hashit. Now that said, the question is, is like, which direction does this go? Because like we know that they design models first and then they design the lore. Yeah, right. And so like most likely it's the visual language that got chosen. And it just happens to overlap like 100% with chaos work. Sure. Like aspects of chaos work visual language. Who knows? For me, this is absolutely true. Of course. And the point being is that this gave you a good hobby idea. Right. This is like Hashit heresy. Yes. And so your elves are going to be more classic looking high elves and be convinced that this is the truth. To them, this is the truth. And they need to be rooted out and destroyed. Mm-hmm. No, it's a cool idea for a Don Army. I love the idea. No. So sorry, sorry, Bolwarshaverse. You're all heretics, apparently. You're all heretics and need to be eradicated. Mm-hmm. Well, that's fine. Cool. There you go. All right. So, good stuff. All right. Cool theory. That's the end of Ring-a-ding-ding. Tom predicts a thing. So we're all excited. Let's wait like five years. And as I said, if this ever became true, like my God, would this be this? This is you pointing. This isn't just you pointing to like left field. This is you pointing to like the red 87 Honda Civic in the parking lot outside. And then they just crack and break that thing's windshield. Right? Like, I mean, that is a call upon calls. We'll see. Sure. So, but yeah. So what that means is that I'm probably collecting this army and then basically doing a heavy convert of the entire army. Sure. No, it's cool. Look, if it gives you a good idea. Yeah. For if it like if it gives you a good idea. Right? Yeah. Like the narrative in the story. And so what I'm likely going to do now is do an entire cities of Sigmar slash Lumineth converted army with all shared themes, right? Much like I did my wards. And it's a culture in a group that is preserved, like a group that's preserved their culture with a bunch of like counts as city models and then also the Lumineth. Yeah. So yeah, cool. There you go. Good stuff. Yeah. I'm excited. No, Barton, you, you Martin, let me just clarify something. Thomas speaking narratively. He's not insulting anybody who likes these models. You can like models. I'm totally cool with that. That's fine. He's saying your army is in fact heretics. Like his general of his army is accusing your elves of being heretics and being correct. And it's the reason why my heretics or my Lumineth are going to kill all the heretics. Sure. Are going to fight her Lumineth. Yeah, I get it. It's because they believe that those Lumineth are our secret haship worshipers. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not as disparaging any player. Correct. Okay. You can collect what you collect and like what you like. That's fine. But for me and those that don't appreciate the aesthetic, they now have a narrative that they can latch on to and build their armies around. There you go. Also collect Lumineth. But now have a narrative world to inhabit for themselves. Sure. All right. Cool. So let's do some pick of the week. Tom, what would you like to share with everybody, buddy? Yeah, I am going to pick a Kickstarter actually. And it's going to be intimately related to what we're talking about today. Sure. Which is basis. Season of War, which is done by Jordan. Um, let me pull his stuff real quick. He is doing, and I think I've mentioned this maybe in a prior week, if I'm going to mention it again. So it's Jordan Duncan. He, Vince, you recently judged some of this stuff, right? I did, yeah. So he took, when I did the ADEPTICON at home Army judging over the weekend, he got second place, which I did not realize this was a thing, until afterward. Like I judge his army, I looked at it, I looked at all of them. He got second place. And then you were sharing this with me like two days later. And I was like, wait a minute, these bases, and this army looks familiar. I was like, who's the people who did this? And I scanned down to like who actually did this. And I was like, oh, it's the same guy. He used his bases for it. That's cool. They look great. And so these bases, one second place. It's a little more than that. His paint job one second. His paint job. So these are their base toppers. And so for those that haven't used base toppers before, they're not pre-molded bases, right? But they're going to go on top of your normal like black GW bases, the blue right on. And they are, they're like pre-sculpted resin. And he sent me like a baggie of these and some of the other stuff that goes on top. Like the columns and stuff. Like the columns. And they're beautiful. Like I think the language I used on Twitter was like super sexy or something. All of those lines. I've already backed this Kickstarter because it's fantastic. And it's exactly what I'm going to use for my Luminuff bases. And I would, I would, for anybody that's interested, it's super affordable bases end up being under a dollar each. And which is really good for like sculpted stuff. And I like, I can't recommend this stuff, this, the quality of these highly enough. So I'm in these, and these will do different and present different aesthetics than like rollers or other stuff that we're going to talk about today. So it's a Kickstarter. And it's in Canadian, which makes it cheaper. If you're in the US, sure. If you're in the US, we have a very favorable exchange rate right now for the Canadian dollar. And so I want to encourage you to check them out there. It's not like he doesn't have these done. He already has these done. That's the point. He's used them for his own army. And now that they're going to be widely available for sale. So we'll post it and we'll check it out. And you're going to likely see a lot of this, because like I said, when I do my Luminuff bases, I think I'm going to use these for all my L's. So. Nice. Nice. For me, my pick of the week, I'm going to shout out our buddy, Haywo Twitch, who's restarted his sort of beginner series. Okay. And he just put the first one up, which is Why Play Cities of Sigmar, and it was really good, as well as he put out the introduction video, which is fantastic, like the sort of introduction to Age of Sigmar. I'll link that down below. Haywo always does such an amazing job on his vids. They're always, you know, funny and hilarious. And he just, he's great at what he does. He has all the wit and skill to make good quality videos that I lack in both regards. So do check it out. They're absolutely wonderful. So we'll link that and we'll link the Kickstarter down below. Tommy, what are you working on, man? What's been on your desk? Well, dwarves, actually. I have a ton of these guys that I am still pounding away at, and I am almost done. And so I'm moving into some of those later stages of like painting the glow effects and working on details. And once I get these guys done, I have about the 40 hearth guard that I need to finish the basing and stuff like that when I talk about basing today. And once I finish all of those things, then I just got some stuff in the mail. I got my final five thunderers. So that's right, folks. I apparently didn't have enough because I just got five more. Good, good. And so I'll build those. And I don't know what I'm going to do is the answer. I, once I finish this project, I'm still probably a couple of weeks out from getting all that done. But once I get that done, I will either push through and try to complete all of my dwarf stuff that I have prepped. That's what I've been working on the last couple of weeks. Or if I don't do that, I may just jump headfirst into, it depends probably on how quick I can get these base stoppers. And I'll jump headfirst into the Lumineth army. For first, the cities of Sigmar stuff. And then once the Lumineth models come out, hypothetically, whatever they do, I already went out and picked up right for, our game stores are offering curbside service. So I went out this week. It's been so funny to order curbside models. I pulled up to our drive-through for our game store. And I knew that I've been watching three boxes of white lions that have been on the shelf for five years at one of my local game stores. And they've just been untouched. And so I finally pulled the trigger and went out and ordered three of these boxes, like the three boxes of white lions that they had. So I had all the conversion bits I'm going to need for my stone wardens, which will be fun. Yeah. So I'm kind of gearing up, finished winding down this army of dwarves and then gearing up potentially miles. Yeah. So people ask like, you don't like this army's aesthetic. Why are you going to get the army? And the answer is that you don't like anything of the army. Like a lot of the core Lumineth look good. You just want to make minor modifications to a lot of them, a head swap or a weapon change or something like that. Things like the archers and the spearmen, I don't know that you have any challenge with at all. Maybe you'll still head swap some of them just more classic helms in some cases. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like all head swap, all of the archers, there's no question. I may even put like shadow warrior heads on them. I'm not sure yet. It'll be a shadow warrior or a sister Vavilorn for those. But like the updated elves for the most part, like especially when it comes to the troops. Right. Right. There's no issue there. No, they're great. And like I don't, I'm not really excited about painting a bunch of like Mohawks again. Sure. But I've painted like hundreds at this point. So I know how to do it and I know how to do it well. So we'll see is the answer. I don't know exactly what the conversions are going to look like. The other question is we have no idea what model count looks like. This could be an elite army. Realistically, it probably will. You'll probably feel the loss of every elf. Like if it's like if I were to guess, this is probably going to be a low model count elite army. And at that point then like that changes the math because on conversions, you can do more elaborate conversions on each model. So we'll see. Yeah, yeah, sure. So that's the answer there. It's not like, yeah, there was just certain elements of it that didn't appeal to you. Yes, I get it. Okay, cool. Right on. So my hobby time. Oh, I spent a busy, I've been a busy, busy bee this week. So I'm prepping up all of the serif on for the great paint them in within 24 hours this weekend. So that's a lot of prep because I get everything zenith old and then I do a quick agrax wash and then a quick dry brush just to get them all ready to go. So like I've got my big carnosaur here. I had to get him. He's all ready to go. Obviously the little chair and stuff is separate. I'm going to use the little guy that the little skink freeze that comes on top as a, but because I'm not using him because I'm using the Krocgar build or whatever. Got all my salamanders, you know, so all in all I've got, I'm prepping up 50 sorus, 40 skinks, three stegodons, five sorus cav, three sallies and their handlers, two priests, a slon, two sorus characters, the sorus character on carnosaur, and the sorus eternity warden and a slon if I didn't say a slon. So that's a lot of stuff. And yeah, I've got my paint scheme all ready to go. So I'm just, you know, just getting them all prepped at the same time in between all of that. I've also finally settled on the paint scheme for my sisters of battle that I like. This isn't going to look good on here, but she's going for this sort of magenta evening sky uh, I guess thing with like bright shock of magenta hair. There's no way it's going to zoom on her, but that's okay. No. Uh, and so just working on that, and I actually really love how that's turning out. I don't know how I would find the wherewithal to do a whole army of this, um, but we'll see who knows who knows. So that's fun. I'm excited to see how it comes out. Yeah, she's coming along. So I'm hoping that I'll have time to finish her before I need to start this army project. If not, I'll finish her up afterward. Not a big deal. So because I mean, obviously once I get into this, it's going to be just this all weekend. So, uh, and so the, because I have to do the whole army in 24 hours, 24 hours of time counting down, I will like sleep somewhere in there and not take that time off the clock. Like I'll pause the clock for that. Yeah, it's actual time, 24 hours of actual invested time in the army. Correct. No, start the clock, stop the clock. Correct. Like straight 24. Yeah, it'll be 24 hours over like Friday and Saturday, basically. So, yep, um, and obviously I'll have to pause to do the reaction show. So, you know, there's going to be at least one interruption in there somewhere. Uh, yeah, but, uh, other than that, since I'm trapped in here, I thought, why not get a 14th army painted? You know, I mean, let's, you got to be reasonable, right? So there you go. Uh, okay. Cool. So Tom, let's talk about basing because this has been, this is obviously, oh, by the way, all the bases are already done. You can't, nobody can see them, but they're behind me. Can you have, can you pull up an image from your Twitter of the bases or do you want me to? No, I'll show that. I'll show the image. The reason, but this is part of what made me think about it was, um, I, like, you didn't basically, you put this huge video up on basing, or not a video, but like image of bases, right? Yep. And, uh, and I was like, those are elaborate. Sure. I'll, I'll bring up a single image here of them. Okay. And so I, I realized that, like, my basing approach has differed dramatically over the ages. Um, and so, uh, yeah, like I figure we could talk, we could talk through what that looks like. And, um, obviously with the Kickstarter landing and the base toppers, it's an option that a lot of people don't know about it. And so I wanted to mention it and just talk about the value of it or against some of the other stuff. So here's, here's a sample, this is a better sample, Tom, than kind of the picture of all of them, because it's a little more zoomed in. So this is like three different bases, a steganon base, a cavalry base, and a 32 mil base. Yep. Yep. Yeah, good. Yeah, so just like, and these are all ready to go. Like all those bases for everything I mentioned, I sat there this week and cranked them out, right, last weekend, sorry, I cranked them out all day Saturday, so I got all them done in one day. So that was like 150 bases, let's call it. Sounds about right. You know, all of them look like this, by the way. Yeah. All of them. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and you have a lot going on in these bases, like you do beautiful, gorgeous bases. You have a philosophy of basing that involves like putting entire buildings on your base. Like that's very common events. Sure. But I do that too. Like, I'm like, I have a gun hauler here who's just like, raring to, you know, using some of that miniature, you know, 3D printed or resin cast, whatever it was, drain for dwarf stuff. So like, there's a lot of different philosophies, basically, to how to go about this. Well, let's talk about that, Tom. That's, that's, I think that's exactly where I want to start with basing. Let's, let's start with the base X. Okay. The puns. All right. So let's talk about sort of the principles. So why, why base? Let me ask that. Yeah, absolutely. That's, you started with my first principle. Yes. Why not just have a, and to answer the question that it was just asked, yes, I do have, I did, in doing these jungle bases, I did record a full tutorial for it, both the creation of the painting. So all that'll be coming out at the end of the month. So the, why base? That's a great question, Tom. I'm glad you asked. The answer is because the mini isn't done without it. Like that's really the simplest answer. But I can give you a better answer because people might find that non-compelling, right? Sure. That's not really a value statement. Yeah. The reason you don't just leave the miniature on black plastic or MDF or whatever you happen to have them on. Yeah. Is because your miniature exists in some kind of place. Some universe, right? And by completing the base, you actually set the world that that miniature lives in. And the environment, the world that they occupy, is it high tech, low tech, high civ, low civ, war torn, not war torn, bloody and brutal or not. You can communicate so much with a base, right? People, when you base a city's army on cobblestones and well manicured things and have elements of a city, you immediately get the idea that these people are representatives of civilization and that they defend a city and they live in that city. If you take that same army and you base them in wilderness wasteland with skulls and ruins, instantly that army tells a whole different story. Just by existing on that base, right? So it's your chance to actually define the universe of your minis and save the world that they occupy and complete the narrative of your miniatures. That's, I think, the most important thing. And one of the common pushbacks to this is, but what happens when I take my minis and put them onto a game mat or table that doesn't match that? And my answer is a strong, who cares? That's always going to be the case. There is no one that matches everything because there's a thousand different tables out there, except for like a clear base, which is nothing and I hate. And two, that's just nothing. It's uninteresting because it's not telling a story. Correct. It's a nightmare to like measure from and move around. And two, 99% of your model's lifespan is spent sitting on a shelf, not on a gaming table, playing a game. It's true. And so what they look like there, and for you, and when you display them on your display board or whatever is what's relevant. It's the thousands of hours they are not sitting on the table that's relevant, not the two hours they are. It's true. Yeah. It's true. So I mean, that's why. Do you have any other thoughts on like why you base? I mean, no, I don't. I mean, I think that covers it for the most part. Let me offer, may I offer one more? Okay. Go ahead. It's fun. It's a fun chance to be creative in a weird, messy way. Oh, no, no, I have one. I have a really good one. Okay. It's about color balancing. Sure, sure. That's a good one too. Yeah, absolutely. As for me, and like I ran into a very unique problem with my dwarfs about my oranges. I had these huge mohawks, right? But and I had sometimes beards occasionally, but not often. Right. And occasional little sprouted glowing bits. And so I had really top heavy orange. And then like no other heavy orange anywhere else on the wall. And so what basing with on lava bases did is it pulled the orange down and it can immediately balanced out my mini. It's really, it's a really fascinating because if you were just to look at my minis without their bases, they aesthetically are super top heavy. Your eyes immediately go to the mohawks. You don't actually ever see the model. But as soon as they go on their bases, your eyes able to travel around. Yeah, yeah. I think making, and like I said, just to just to return to my statement there, it's fun. Like it returns you back to craft projects you did as a kid, where you just build stuff because almost anything works. Like you're playing with mud and rocks and glue and just stuff you literally like you probably make, you know, arts and crafts projects with your kids with, right? Like sticks and mud and rocks and glue and stuff. I should be. Sure. Sure. So like. I make them build boards instead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fine, whatever. Okay, cool. So here are some other, I've got some principles I actually laid down. You ready? I'm gonna, these are, these are my personal principles. I want your feedback, Tom and our audience. I don't know if I'm gonna agree with these, but go ahead. Absolutely. This is Vince's principles of basings, basing, okay? All right. All right. Number two. So one was it sets the universe, the mini. That's why it's important. Yep. Number two. Mud and two tufts isn't a biome. Okay. How about mud a pool and two tufts? Like you got to do a little more for me. I got to eat different rocks, grit something like whatever. Maybe some patches of trampled grass. Something. I feel like you're calling out my neural. No, I'm calling out GW spacing actually. Which is just like their mud paste and then they stick two tufts on it and that's it. Right. Their bases are universally the most boring bases. Now they do that, I suppose, for a reason. Is there easy to replicate? They're easy to replicate and they can just make it across the whole army and fast and they don't, they don't want to, they don't want to spend time actually like doing arts and crafts projects that they don't, that they don't sell stuff for. Well, it feels like there, there really is a regional difference on approaches to this. Because like to this in boards, like for us in the US, it feels like, you know, like I'm, I'm contrasting with like the UK. It feels like the UK does not prioritize or value and I'm, this is a gross overstatement. But like the way. Yeah, just keep in mind, you've got people like Steve Foot living in the UK who are like, we're going to listen to this. It just. Yeah, there are certainly exceptions to this. But even some of the higher quality like compositions, we'll often have like naked cork, for example, and stuff like that. And so I think that, like it just doesn't feel that like the standard is different in different areas. Let me say that. That's the easiest way to say it without trying to offend anybody. Yes, that's a good way. So, the like my, my issue is with just literally the mud and two tufts. I would even have less of a problem with it if you did something with the tufts, like wash those tufts and put some, put some dry brush on them, right? A dry brush of the mud a little better, put some, just sprinkled a little bit of different sized grit, like literally went out into your yard, picked up a handful of dirt. How about just painting and sprinkled it on? Yeah, actually painting it. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Well, which leads to it. That'll be a later one. Is that asking too much? No, I don't think so. That's, that's another one of my principles. So there you go like to me, I just, I can't stand the mud and two tufts basing. I'm just, I'm not about it. Sure. So there you go. Okay. Let's see. Oh, okay. So Veilatron said, can you discuss gluing models to finished bases with super glue, even with pins versus gluing models first using plastic glue then building the base around them? Yeah, sure. I'll talk about that. Okay. That's a great thing to talk about. Here we go. Number three, principle of basing. Most of your best basing material is either free or very cheap or you already have it. Yeah. Okay. So let me give you some examples. Dirt in your yard, sticks in your yard, sand from a place where there is sand, rocks from your, from your, your driveway or the road. Okay. Coffee filters that you have and you make into little leaves and torn up pieces. Like you, you just literally take coffee filters, you drop a little ink on them and you tear them up into little leaves or things like that. Or you can use punches or you can tear them into strips of like long leaves, all sorts of things like that, right? Put a drop of green ink or brown ink on it, boo. Like you have old coffee filters, probably. Actually, you could use the used ones even, right? Because then they're already pre-stained. These grounds. What's that? Tea. Yeah. Like tea, like tea leaves. Yep. Use tea leaves. Use tea. That's a good one. A lot of people use a kitty litter, like non-used kitty litter. Yeah, that one you definitely want to be pre-used, yes. Yeah, it's like pre-used. But I've seen that on bases before and the time I saw it, I'm like, really? And then I painted it and I'm like, okay. Yeah, as long as it's painted. Yeah, absolutely. Kitty litter. That's a great one. Here's another one, which is actually my principal number six, which is old bits are good. Yeah. Like you, everybody has bits, extra stuff. Yeah. Just lying around. So like when you have extra swords, and arms, and heads, and feathers, and hats, and whatever, just like junk, just junk. Just junk. Right? Just junk. Just put it on your base. Like all that's just potential future basing junk. Right? Yeah. You just like snap off a sword blade or cut off a spear or cut off a shield or a broken piece of metal or you know what I mean? Just like anything extra. Yep. That kind of stuff, right? So all of that is just like, again, you already have that. You already paid for it. It's now free to you at this point, right? Because you weren't doing anything else with it, necessarily. Radio Free Hammer Hall. Shout out to Paul, who said potpourri. Yeah, as long as it's ground up and small. Yes. Although some of the bigger weird pieces can make interesting like logs. Yeah. And stuff like that, like rocks. They can up, they can, they downscale into that kind of stuff. If you have indoor plants, pine bark, right? If you have your indoor plants or pine bark. Easy. I discovered that Sieve Harder uses it for all of his rocks. Yeah. And like I used it, actually here. I have a board here. And I use pine bark to face all of my phone. And then just put some dap over it. And just put some dap and just spread it out and you can sand it if you want. And I'm actually going to use some of the, I'll use some texturing, like Valhalla texturing stuff as well. To give it a rocky texture. And so it creates the uneven, you get the rocky texture, like depending on what I'm going to do because this is all igneous rock. But like this would work really well for like standard like rock slab granite stuff. And so just whatever you're kind of doing, like pine bark is a wonderful tool for that. Absolutely. Which leads us to the next two things right there off of what you just said, right? Which is one cork, right? Old wine corks. Or if you just go get big things of cork super cheap like from the hardware store, you can literally get like, and go to the hardware store to get it, not like an art store. Go to IKEA or something where you can buy big packs of the stuff. You can buy giant flat packs of cork just for a couple of dollars. And you'll get huge amounts of it, right? Because it's meant to be like an industrial product. Anything you can buy from the home improvement store, which is where most of your basing stuff can come from, you can get on the super cheap, right? Because it's meant for like industrial levels of it. All right. Not for the literal eighth of a teaspoon you need at a time, right? And then as was mentioned in the comments, this is another great shout out. Sprues. Your old sprues. Sprues are a great source. They can be steel beams. You can cut them into bricks. They can be just extra detritus that are on there. You can use them to just build, or you can literally just cut them up and use them to build up space, right? If you're trying to get something up at an angle, you can stick a little cut of spray piece of sprue under there. Stick that down. Now you've got the thing at an angle or raised up. You've got some mass. Put some, some kind of paste over that boom. It's hidden. You're good to go, right? It's just a support beam. Absolutely. Like it, like so much of this stuff is so cheap, right? Right. Yeah. Somebody mentioned roots. Yes. I mentioned like go outside in the yard. Dirt roots, old roots are great. Lots of different roots. Yes, can be used for great like trees. Roots, root structures will scale into trees. You got to take them out. You got to wipe, you know, wipe them off. Don't let dirt hang on there and stuff. And then you got to dry them out a little, but it's not that hard. That's just, that's just like sticking it in the oven for a little while on low heat, done. Or even microwaving it depending. So there's just, there's just like so much that's good here. You don't have to spend money to have fun with this. Right. Ah, there's another good one. Thank you. Somebody found many people are putting good stuff in the chat. Popsicle sticks for wood planks. Cut them up. Yep. Easy. Carve little lines in them. So wire, you get wire for cheap, like in lots of it. And then what I would do is I cut, like when I was doing my, my spiders, I did a bunch of these really thin wires and then I like attached one into a drill and just held the other end with pliers and turn on the drill and it wound. Right. It all had for me and looked like braided core or spider web or whatever. Yep. You can just take basic old wire. Here's another fun one I use all the time. So if you ever, Tom, do you ever buy paint brushes? Have you ever bought a paint brush? I have, in fact. So when you buy a paint brush, you get these little like plastic tips that come on the end of the brush, right? Yep. These are like perfectly scaled pipes. Sure. For like, for your base, right? These are insta pipes. You can cut them because you can generally get like three pipe sections out of any one. Stick them on to like walls, stuff like that. You can put, drop, goo out of it, all that kind of stuff. Easy. Easy. Right. That's good. So these are, but these are things you can add to the base. So let's talk about the base. It's, are you still going through principles? No, still. Well, I mean, I can pause my principles. Yeah, that's fine. Go ahead. Because like what we're like, a lot of what we're talking about right now are things you add to your base. Sure. But like oftentimes you want to create some type of foundation for that base, right? Yep. Do we want to talk about what some of those foundations look like? Yeah, sure. Let me answer real quick here. Andrew said, do you, what do you use to cut and shape your bark and cork, just a knife? Yeah. Just regular hobby knife or, or pliers or, or, or, you know, just tear it apart and break it up. Sometimes they use bigger pliers and just kind of break it into pieces. But yeah, that's all. Okay. So you're saying you want to build it up. You want a big thing on there, right? Yeah, or like we, we've talked about the accessibility, but like we don't stop there. Yeah, sure. And, but oftentimes, like there are things that you can, like, I don't want to say this, like, yes, sand and dirt, but there are like, we're talking about core materials. And so whether you're using like paste or cork or pre-sculpted or, you know, like oftentimes you have a core and then the things that you add on top to access. Sure. And so you were talking about a bunch of these free things, but a lot of that is just stuck you out on top, not the core of what the base is. Does that make sense? Sure. So what's the core of the base to you? So oftentimes for me, I use a lot of paste. Okay. Sure. Like DAP, is that what you mean? Well, it can be DAP or like I'm, you would put me onto the Vallejo texture. Yeah, the basing putties, yes. They're great pastes, yeah. These are like miraculous. Mm-hmm. They're like eight bucks or 10 bucks or something like that. And you get like a huge 200 milliliter jar. So like it's like, I don't know how many times what you get in a GW pot, but a lot. A lot. Like 10 times or something, some ridiculous amount for like, you know, the cost of two bottles. And I use these for boards. I use these for bases. They come in a ton of different textures. This is a very common thing that I use on almost everything. Yep. They have different kinds of like pumice and stone and sand. And they all have different sizes of grit and rock and stuff like that. And they're just premixed paste that makes it so easy. Yes. I use that stuff all the time. Yes. Like it's a great core. If you're wanting to like freehand create bases, right? Like so if you're wanting to just like imagine a base, this is a great place to start. Well, what I'll say is when, you know, I talk about building up verticality a lot. Yep. And so oftentimes you just use cork to create the verticality. The problem I see is people stop at the cork. Right. And they just like prime the cork driver and they're done. Yeah. Don't stop at cork. Cork is a super useful thing that you can absolutely integrate into your basing and should. It's great. It's one of the best basing tools around, right? Like it's amazing. It's cheap and plentiful and you can have little bits of it sticking out and that's okay, but it should be covered, right? Yeah. Like it doesn't need to be covered 100%. You can have little edges of it showing here and there. The texture shouldn't be cork. You shouldn't look at it and go, oh, that's cork. Right. Absolutely. You should like put that, you know, like the Vallejo paste you just have or like as somebody just mentioned in the comments, AK Interactive also has a similar line of basing stuff. Yeah. Right. So like. And this should be good. So for example, here I have like some AK Interactive puddles. This is just like a premixed muddy puddle like resin that you can just pour out and get a little muddy puddle on your base. Jobs are good and it'll dry in a couple hours. Done. Yep. Yep. Yep. So these are like for freehand creation of like effects on your base. They're really good for natural surfaces. So rock, dirt, stuff like that. I found that I prefer because I'm like pretty OCD on consistency that I prefer some type of artificial thing being out of the base for artificial structures. Okay. What do you mean by that? It's like if I'm doing tile or if I'm doing temple, whatever, or if I'm doing, you know, like rocks that have been inscribed and things like that, I will almost always default to something like some, you know, product that you can purchase. Sure. For example. So let's talk about that. Let's move into, so we talked about a lot of free stuff. So much of what you can do, especially in natural organic bases is free, right? Yeah. Now I will say even with structures, you can often get away pretty darn near free. Okay. If you're just talking about like ruins or broken buildings, you can build broken down rocks and stuff like that just out of some cork or, you know, it's a little bit of plastic. Like if you got old gift cards, you know what an old gift card is? That's a plastic card. You can build little walls and stuff like that out of it. Boom. Jobs are good and you're done, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But you, but you want to buy some stuff. Sure. Okay. So you mentioned like this, so go for it. So one example of this would be rollers, right? Yes, sure. Are green stuff world rollers? Yes, absolutely. There are others out there. You can even make your own, but yes. Yeah. But so green stuff rollers, for example, are like we use the Greek ones for our daughters of Cane army, both of our daughters of Cane. And so it actually created consistency across both Bentonized bases. It's much better painted, but regardless, they look similar, right? And these are great for like really small runes in like carvings and sculptings and stuff like that. And they also work for like not only bases, but like boards and all that stuff. Like let's say you want to have chunks of rubble that have like runes inscribed onto, or like you want to do Egyptian stuff for like a Tomb Kings, you know, style thing. Like I have an Egyptian style roller to do all the cartouches and stuff like that. And you can actually like cut those out, by the way. And like you don't, like you don't, you can just like with all sculpting, like you can create these green stuff, symbols or whatever, and then apply them to models. Like you wouldn't have to like make it into basic. But that's one way is the green, the rollers. One of the challenges that I found at the rollers is that they create very flat bases. Yeah, sure. So hold on. Let's talk about this for a second. What do you put your, what do you use to actually roll your rollers in? Like what are you rolling them into? What do you mean? Like what material? Because you're, you're, what is the based epoxy you are rolling? Yeah, like traditionally I had done green stuff, but green stuff's really expensive. Uh huh. And so I used the white version of, what was that? Milliput, yes. I agree. This is, this is my like, this is my basing, you know, like, yeah, epoxy, epoxy of choice for rolling stuff into. Milliput white. It's different than the traditional Milliput. It's used more for like, it's super fine white. It takes the detail a lot better. It's for porcelain repair. And so it is a very fine putty basically. Yep, exactly. And it's really, really strong. And that, and, and like this, the white especially, yes, because of what it's meant for. I've had, I've had great success in using that. Now, my only word of warning with the Milliput white for everybody, which is a quick note, is that, you know, green stuff is like yellow and blue and normal Milliput is yellow and gray. So it's really easy to tell how well it's mixed together. The two sides of Milliput white are just white. And if you don't equally mix them, they will never dry. So make sure you really need that well. Yes, indeed. Yeah. So, but, so, yes. And so, you know, rollers are good for what they do. But again, it can be problematic. Like if you're rolling like an entire like cobblestone pattern, it's going to be a flat pattern. And if you don't roll it correctly, like it may get on a UNN. So it's going to look kind of weird. And so, like, you really need flat surfaces in order for those to perform the best. If you want uneven, like cobblestones or stuff like that, GW shattered domain bases are good, but those are like entire bases and they're fairly expensive. Yeah, let's say prefab bases. That's the whole thing we can talk about at the end. Yeah, like prefab bases are quite expensive. They can create that uneven, like the tier. Like I remember one set that I looked at that had like a sidewalk and a like a ground. And like a cobblestone road next to each other. So they actually had like multi-level. And so those are really neat. They look great, but they're often quite expensive. You're normally paying between like $1.50 to like $3 per base. Is that about right? Yeah, sure. They can be very expensive. This is why I was so taken by that Kickstarter is that for seasons of war is because like they let me have the best of all possible worlds. At like, I got the uneven base tier. Like I don't know if you can see these. You can't see them all because I did like the other one, the smaller one. But like the the basing is not flat. Like it is very uneven. Like and so like if you set a model on there, like one foot's going to be higher than the other. Sure. It creates a very nice uneven, but it's, but I also get the ability to like add magnets to the bottom very easily. Yeah. And I will say you can combine this stuff like you can do. So one of the things I've done in the past is like, let's take a standard base and I bisect it with a piece of cork or not exactly down the middle, but you know, some point, right? And then I cut the cork clean around the edge. So it's smooth, right? And then I lay the green stuff or the milliput or whatever on the top part, roll that. And then on the bottom part, you do mud. And now you've got the edge of a street, right? You've got like an old timey street where the sidewalk is brick and you're on the edge of the road. Yep. It's that simple and you have height variation, right? Right. And so there's some ways that you can creatively do that. Whenever I have like the shattered dominion bases for my storm cast or like what I'm going to do with the elves, like anytime I have cracks in my base, I'll often, you know, drop some glue in there. And sprinkle in like, I have some different like, like tears of grit and some of the finest stuff. You feel the dirt. So it's a combination of both the pre-sculpted things and then also the natural material. Yep. So I would highly encourage doing combinations of some of this material to really like make a lot of the stuff pop. Well, yeah, I agree. That's like another one of the principles is combinations of elements always feel better, right? The more stuff you kind of tend to put together in little tiny elements, when you have rocks, big rocks and little rocks and tiny grit, right? When you have flagstones having a few broken flagstones and then tiny rocks and mud and maybe a plant or two poking out of the middle, right? Like some, some, like a plant coming up through it. That kind of little stuff, none of that takes a huge amount of time. No. It's just, it's just each of those little elements makes it feel like it's actually sitting in a biome, like in a real world, in a place that exists. It adds, it adds just that extra touch. Right. Yep. So here's one that's going to be strange for me to say, okay? Which is, and so Veilatron kind of asked this question, views on a, hold on. Oops. All right, let me go back to exactly what you said. It's scrolled off. More elaborate bases for heroes versus troops and be clean black rims versus colored rims. Sure. So no, I haven't tried Super Sculpey Pro, but I have used DOS before, like the air dry clay. Always black rims. Always black rims is the answer. The rim of your base can be any color except, any color you want, as long as it's black. That's the answer. I will accept very dark gray and or very dark brown black. Any of those are also acceptable. It's not green, it's not yellow, it's not red, it's not anything else insane. Stop that, it's black. Ironically, I say that. I actually have models in my case that don't have black rims. Yeah, I mean, this is just the wrong answer, but okay. At any rate, yeah. So let's talk about building up, you know, taller stuff. Yeah. So here's my basic principle. And I see people accuse me oftentimes of doing huge bases. Which I do, undoubtedly. I like tall bases. You do, yes. Your Archean base, for example. But there's a rule there, okay? There is a principle I follow that I see violated a lot. Yeah, you accused me of it recently. Okay. The thing the mini is standing on cannot be bigger than the mini. Oh, okay. Okay. Now, that's not true, by the way, if you're talking about a display plinth. Okay. Right, for a competition where you tend to be on a square plinth and might have something built up and stuff like that around. That could be completely different. That's not what I'm talking about, right? So, for example, imagine I have this like sister of battle right here, right? So she's like roughly 32 millimeters tall or something like that, let's say, right? Because she has a spiky Mohawk and her stick and whatever. She's probably up to like 32 millimeters. I shouldn't stand her on something two inches tall. Sure. Okay. Sure. If you're gonna put people on very tall things, they need to be very tall. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And the only time that you can get away with, I think, breaking that rule is if you have a big flat flying thing and the flying thing is completely airborne and using the tall thing as just like to hold it up. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Exactly. Something like that, yes. Notice that this model is basically not as big as the terrain underneath it. Right. So, I'll give, I have pictures ready for this to actually like show my examples. So, here we go. So, this is my flying steam tank out of my whirlwinds edge army. I'll bring it up here so everybody can see it. Okay. It's on a big piece of building, but, and the building is slightly taller than it. Okay. Right. But it's also one kind of overlapping, right? So, it's not just directly on top. That's another problem. Like people have a big piece of rock and then set the mini directly on top. So, there's no overlap, right? Notice how the tank and the building overlap each other, right? And secondly, it's for this floating thing. So, it's meant to look like it's actually airborne. Right. Right. Otherwise, you want the mini itself to be taller than the actual thing it is. Right. An example of this. You can still get people real high up, but let's say, here's, so here's my vermin lord I did. Yeah. He's up on, and this obviously goes two ways, because it has both the quite tall and the lower thing where I had the actual scaven emerging from the sewers, where I went down into the base with the imaginary hole. Right. But here again, like he himself, one, it overlaps the height of the base overlaps with him, and two, he himself is still taller than that base. Like if you popped him off there and stood him down next to that, he's taller than that whole thing. Right. Yep. But his posture is interacting with the base itself. Right. If you want to just talk about like bringing somebody up, here's my keeper of secrets who's up on stairs. Right. So, she's much taller than the stairs. It still does what it needs to do. It gets her up. She's much taller than a normal keeper, but she like, but she still feels quite elevated. Right. But she herself is seven inches tall. This is just adds another two inches to it. Right. Even my archaion who's up on a building. A building. A building. He's taller than that building. Right. Like again, if you take him off and stand him next to it, he's like this compared to the building. This is him. This is the building. He's outlandish. Like he's truly, truly outlandish. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's the goal. He almost survived seven days in the car with me. All the way here in the year. Almost like he, he almost didn't break off of that thing. Seven days in the car. On the seventh day, the double pins that had him held in there. The vibration was just too much. Right. It was the Chicago roads got him. Yep. In general, you don't want to, when you're doing this in position, you don't want to cover your base with the, with the terrain at all. This is something that like Vince scolded me about on a recent my injury master. Yeah. Because I have him, because I have his feet interacting with this, like the grade from some angles, he's partially covered by the terrain itself. Which is fine if it's the back. Where you were wrong is he needs to be flipped facing the other direction. Right, right. Vince wants me like him angling down, but the way his feet were, he'd be like looking straight at the ground if he did that, in order for the feet to actually be interacting with the rock correctly. So I still like him the way he is, but Vince scolded me because he's like, it's too much of the models covered, which is like not even to his need, but sure. Anyways, so yeah. Yep. No, absolutely. So like again, it's, it's fine because he's taller than that rock. That's not the issue. Right. That's perfectly fine. It's the issue that part of this covered. Yeah. Look at him. Turn him so he's front facing to the camera. So if he's front facing. Exactly. Like a bunch of the model is obscured. Right. It's really not, but okay. I'm sure. Right. One leg is obscured. That's so much. A thing to avoid. I would, I wouldn't list that in my principles, but yes. In general, you want to try to avoid that. Blitzkrieg said, isn't Gotrek standing on a base bigger than him? No, it's actually not. He's taller than his actual base. Right. That model will work. Yeah. Well, he's also holding his arm up in the air, right? For base rims, how about games like War Machine where facing is a big deal, and it's customary to mark the facing on the basis. Just make them as subtle as possible. Yeah. For things where you have facing, I don't think that's an issue. Of course, you can still mark your facing lines or there on whatever. If the game requires it, or like some people on their Blood Bowl minis will use little plaques for the names of the dudes. That's all fine. Of course, that's game apropos. I'm just saying like don't make your bases bright red. They shouldn't ever be a hue. Okay. Like a thing that's on the color wheel should not be the edge of your base. Okay. Because it's naturally going to clash with whatever's up above it, and you're adding another color to the composition of your mini and naturally detracting from it. Like that's the problem. Right. If you find black too stark and you want to use like an ultra dark gray, or a very or a brown, or a dark brown, as long as it's not like some sandy light brown that's mostly yellow. That's fine. Yeah. That's all fine. Okay. More principles or do you want to talk about base compositions? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah, go for it. I'm reading through the rest of the comments. I'm just catching up. So you don't, like in general, the more that is going on on the base, the better. In general, you can get too busy. But in like often you want to have at least like three distinctives minimum. And so one example of something in general you do not want to do, I've been able to get away with it largely, but in general this is not something that I would promote. It's like, so for example, for my lava bases, if you'll see, I literally just painted like a bunch of different colors, lava colors, and then put the crack on and use a very stereotypical basing for GW. And it's worked largely for the models and it's nice, it's fine. Because it's interesting and there's texture and it looks like a lot of work went in when it really didn't. But it's fairly boring. Right. And so what needs to happen is that there needs to be some differentiation between like there needs to be some detritus or there needs to be some raised areas or there needs to be skulls or find something that's appropriate in world and pull it off. Yep, exactly. The idea is to have different elements on there because the world outside is actually quite varied even walking down a city street, right? So you want different textures and you want different things that draw and interact with the eye. So an alternative of this that I'm working on right now is you probably can't see this really well. But I'm going to do that same like broken pattern, but I'm going to have that running in between like raised elevations of rocks and then in the midst the rocks are detritus, like things that dropped off the model. Yep. So that's just two examples from the same model line for me of different ways I kind of went. Yep. I think that and that's it's a great better way to use it when you talk about like you want blood or flowing lava or something like that like having that not be the whole base but be an element of the base is so much stronger as a composition, right? And again, you can use that use it strategically to balance like to color balance your models. Right. Yes, you can if you like if you that's principle number nine. If you have like if there's colors that aren't quite balanced, you can add that color through like little flower tuffs or stuff like that, or just painting it on in some way down on the base, put on a little crystal. So like a lot of people like little glowing crystals, there's tons of stuff you can do for that. So for crystals, one of the things I like to do for my basing elements. Yep. Is I actually just I went and got a bunch of Hurst Arts molds and I just use Magic Cast 305 and I'll do a bunch I'll just spend a day and do a bunch of casting of those and you can have like they have a bunch of like what I want to describe them as dressing and accoutrements sets. So barrels and candelabras and crystals and mushrooms and stalagmites and other sorts of elements like that and you just cast a bunch of those out and then you've just got tons of them to add on your basing forever. Put them in a box and you know pull them out as needed. Yeah I have I still have a giant plastic case over there in my like basing holder full of barrels and crates and you know old broken barrels and whiskey bottles and you know every every other thing like that. So it's just good good detritus you can you can toss around to imply civilization. Yeah. People made things and so I you know I think one of the constant challenges here is this is why I hate 25 mil bases. Oh there's just no room. Because there's just no room often the miniature will just take up too much. So understand that when we say all this stuff like it has to be fit to the scale of the base versus the mini on a 25 mil base there's only so much you can do. So my best advice is like keep it simple with a tiny plant or a couple different types of grit so it's broken up in some way. But there's just not much you can do. Yeah and that's okay. That's okay. Right. Just try to try to sprinkle in a little bit of different texture or like and so if you can't go for many elements and there's not space for elements textures is also important. And so like the way that I have accomplished that in my lava bases is I use different types of pumice. Right. Sure. Yeah. Fine. Absolutely. Mixing different types of that sprinkle some sander rocks over some part of that grind up your extra cork because when you're making using cork for your bases you always get little tiny extra pieces that you peel off. Just save all those in a little ziplock baggy and then take those and just crush them in your hand like this and sprinkle them. Boom. Big rocks. Especially if you have the paste like you have paste you sprinkle that in and it will just set into the paste itself. And then you prime over top of it and it's fantastic. Yep. Easy peasy. Scatterbreak asks what do you think of the steel Legion drab that GW uses for their base rims? I hate it and it's wrong. That's my answer. Most of everything GW does with their basing is incorrect. If I was king of the world over there there would be some house cleaning in the way with the bases are done. Like tomorrow you would see in a completely new aesthetic. Immediately. Yes. Hurst arts. H-A-H-I-R-S-T. Yeah they were doing crafting like home crafting of terrain before it was cool. Oh absolutely. And they have so many amazing things. Hundreds of molds. They're all silicon molds. You do a plaster pour or you do like the dental stone pour. Yep. Or you can use like I do magic cast which is resin. Which is a two part epoxy resin. And you just pour it in scrape it off let it set done. Yeah. As they will tell you because the resin heats up it will have the chance to over time wear the mold out. Yeah. The trick is is that that's if you're actively making a lot of terrain not using it how we would use it. Like I do one cast or I do like five casts out of each mold a year. Right. Right. The resin doesn't actually. So many things out of it by so few casts. Right. Because like each mold will have like 20 or 30 elements. Right. Exactly. And he does like a couple of those casts and then he just has a bunch of basic material for forever. But it's like you're building a dungeon right. Like you're gonna like a lot of those like you would use a mold to build one room like because you have to do like floors and ceilings and stuff like that. Oftentimes you have to do like lots of pours on the same mold multiple times a day. And that's where it will begin to really wear. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. Because the resin gets hot as it as the as the chemical reaction happens. So the the other element here that I so here's a Vince's personal thing and we are Tom. I already saw what you said and somebody kind of asked about this earlier. I hate flying stands. I avoid them like I don't think I've ever used a flying stand not once. Vince hates them with a you know, passion for thousands of suns. It's funny because I literally like the one flying stand you use when you did up my one frost Phoenix just broke. Yeah, sure it did. It just you know and it's been a couple years and it went and that makes me sad. But I like in general like I've actually used quite a bit of flying stands and I actually or I use the acrylic rods. So for example, this is an acrylic rod. Yeah, stronger than the flying stand. Yes, way stronger than the flying stand. And as long as you can accommodate it in the model itself, I use it for the ships, which you can. It's like 100 times more steady both for transportation and you also don't have to glue it. Yep. So like for for transporting it actually works quite a bit easier as well. So somebody W. Soreness is there a 3D print based hopper? Yes, there are some out there. There are some STL files both for the individual elements as well as for entire based hoppers. I know people like print bases. Yeah, the whole base. Yeah, which is fine. I mean, that works as well too. If you have a 3D printer, I just I recognize that not a lot of people have 3D printers. Right, exactly. I'm not going to tell you that part of this is about how to how to make the most of your bases with hopefully the most minimal investment going out and spending three to $500 is is and then and then starting a new hobby or more sure. Depending. I was going like at the low end. Yes. And in general for bases like I for 3D printers, like I some people will view this as heresy. I try to stay with the only big things. And so in general, when I've printed small things, I've been disappointed. Sure. And the detail on bases is just fine enough that I've been disappointed when I've painted like when I've printed small basing things. And so in general, I recommend for at least 3D printing, like I'm OK with terrain. You can get away with it a lot better. But for actual bases themselves, I've not been a fan of that. Unless you have like a like a resin printer. And then you're just you're in a different ballpark. I've not done any. And you don't need like supports as much either on something like a base. It's just different. Yep. All right. So speaking of flying models, I have some more samples. So here's my mega boss on mawcrusher. He's up on the arcane ruins. I hate that model. The war chicken. I don't like how you've you've sculpted them. But that's just because I don't like how he sits on top. Not the like not the head. The conversion doesn't matter. It's how he sits on the stuff. I'm not a fan. But there he is. So there's the war chicken. The flaming rooster. He's ready to go. He's up on the arcane ruins. And then this is my Saint Celestine, who's also flying. Who's on a very tall chunk of building on like a 40mm base. But she is even taller by far, right? Because her wings are so beyond massive. And then there's doves and stuff also flying. And again, none of that is like she's not on a flight stand. There's lots of different ways you can you can get, you know, flying minis up on things, right? So, all right, war chicken, go away. Yes, I love my war chicken. What am I feeling like? I haven't done the second mawcrusher yet. He's just sitting on my shelf because I don't know what I would do with the second one. Oh, I know what you do. Do you want to know? Sure, man. What do you got? You pick up some of the bullheads from the new L stuff. Oh, I already have a giant bullhead I was going to cut it off of for the from the from the beast of chaos endless bells. Oh, okay. That's the correct size. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, because like if you're the Barnard Buster's, right, right, like do you have a bull? Yeah, I got to have a steer. Yeah, I thought about that. But I just, I mean, I didn't think it though. I couldn't figure out the whole image because I don't like the wings and what they are there. Anyway, I have you seen some of the conversions? There's somebody that's done like 20 versions. Oh, yeah. All the different ways they have the wings. That looks great. Yes. So I'm anti-flying stand. Yeah, I am a hesitant user of flying stands. And what I mean by that is I like them on my injured rigors. I've had to reglue a number of them. So like even the way that these like the curve flying stands with like they cup on the top, it's rather having a ball that glues in and breaks. They actually have like a divot that the model sits in. And so it has like a higher contact ratio. Even those have broken on me and like I have to reglue. So like that's not abnormal. But I'm a big fan of anytime you can do like the acrylic rods and run them in the models. I'm a huge fan. Sure. Somebody asked what I do for crystals. So there is a Hurst Art mold. I think it's in the done that has crystals in it. I think it's in the dungeon dressings when I don't know the number. But if you look up like one of the cave dungeon sets, there are crystals in that one. You can also just go to like little craft stores that have things like this. These are like little gems. You can see those in there that you get from like little stamping stores and stuff for that. And those are just like little clear diamonds. I'll just put those on there and paint them and they're perfect little crystals. You can get big bags of those and stuff from from craft stores. Yeah. So that kind of stuff. You can also, by the way, just cut them pretty easy out of green stuff or milliput or something. They're actually a very easy shape because they don't need to be perfect. You just make yourself a little green stuff snake or something. Let it partially dry and then you just cut it like a pencil. Like once, two, three, four, five, six. And if all the sides aren't exactly even, who cares? Crystals aren't actually as perfect as we like often sort of, you know, imagine them to be and then you just shave the top. One, two, three, four, five, six, done. And it's kind of easy. So that's what I do for my crystals. Yeah, there you go. Here's some other principles of basing for me. Number seven, the skull pack is good. That's a worth investment. One of the best investments I've made. I made the use of mine and used basically an entire skull pack in the formulation for my cadaver as well. Sure. By the way, here's actually a good example. Can you guys see that very well? It's okay. I mean, none of these things ever show too well on camera. Sure. But can you guys tell the different colors that are present in the model? No, it looks great right now. And putting more light on it actually just makes it worse. Okay. What I'm trying to show here is I'm trying to show that, like, not in the skulls, but actually in the texturing. Yeah, sure. You used two multiple different pastes. I used multiple different pastes. So a lot of people look at, like, they saw a lot on a different model that I hadn't primed yet. And they went, oh, look, the snow looks pretty on that. Yeah, that's not snow. It's just white basing pastes over brown basing pastes. Yeah, that's a rough gray pumice instead of the, or I'm sorry, not the rough gray. That is the fine pumice instead of the rough gray. And so the point being, what I'm trying to show is that I use different pastes on top of each other. You can see some of that variation here. Maybe I'll try to get a picture of it so you all can see. That's fine. But yeah, the other thing I was going to say is that I used a lot of skulls in this model. Yeah. So I like the skull pack. I should also state that other companies do make this kind of stuff. Like Green Stuff World has a skull thing as well as other packs of different things that you can put on there. They've got actually a bunch of different selections as well as like their UV light curing resin, which is a new thing that's out there. They also make like a spider serum, so you can do spider webs, which is pretty cool, although they're not very durable, just as a warning. My number eight principle of basing is nothing unpainted goes on the base. Right. Everything that's on the base should be painted in some way. Even tufts and grass and stuff like that. Now, that doesn't mean you've got a primer from scratch and stuff like that. As I've said many times, if you're going to stick some tufts on, I've got no problem with that. Tufts are great. They're super useful. You should use tufts if you want to. But the tufts should have painted them. Take some wash, get a nice old crappy brush, shove that crappy brush down into the bottom of the tuft and around the tuft after the glue is dried. Get that dark color down in the base. Dry brush the top a little bit. Boom. Now it looks like a painted element. Just that easy. Yep. Yeah. Always want to touch everything with a paintbrush. Right. Because things that are acrylic painted will just show very different. There you go, Tom. Yep. That's nice. Yep. Yeah. So in addition to skulls, you can see the different variations in color in the white. And there's some transparent and some dark gray. And then what you're actually seeing there is you're seeing the different types of pastes that I use so that there's multiple textures even amongst the stone. The igneous stone that I'm doing there. And then obviously you can see all the skulls. Lots of skulls. Skull packs are good. Skull packs are good, yes. Highly useful. Absolutely. And you can see how I use some of the bits here by the way where you can see excess, not only skulls, but there are occasionally there are heads that for like helmets that were able to be integrated into the base itself. So yeah. Yep. Yep. So that's, yeah. I'm trying to think of just, oh, do you want to talk about just like pre-printed, pre-made, prefab bases? Because that's another thing that's out there now. Yeah. And that's what I talked about. Like we talked about that in the midst of when I was talking about toppers. Like sometimes you can buy like the prefab stuff, but it can be expensive. Sure. Like GW has obviously their line of the various pre-made bases, the shadow domain, or the sector mechanical stuff or whatever it is for for the, for 40K. Secret weapon minis. I don't know if you've seen, but they're launching their completely fully painted prefab bases. Right? Yep. I, we would be remiss here if we didn't also mention. Hold on. Let me grab them. Here we go. Gamer's grass makes a whole line of like prefab, completely prefabbed bases that are actually come painted and everything like that. What's interesting is you could continue working on these. Yep. Right? Like there's no reason you can't take this and add more on top. And paint some more on top of there. I use paste in the shattered dominion bases in between. Right. For they're really badly sculpted like ground and like rocks. I, I worked paste into those areas where they're supposed to be ground. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So you can, there's no reason you can't take those prefab bases and then continue to still add on top of them. Right. Put, make it your own, your own, in the same way with the, the rollers, you shouldn't just stop with the roller. You should add some dirt on top, some other things on top, throw a skull on there or whatever. Right. Like do, do some of those extra elements. I think it's the same thing here. When you do the prefab base, whether it's painted or unpainted, you can then continue adding on top of it. Right. So the door is already open behind me. That's, that is the open door. The door, the doorway itself is right there off camera. So that's fine. I'll get yelled at later apparently, even though she doesn't remember, she gave those to me, but that's fine. Um, uh, they did come from my wife. It was a very generous donation. A lot of my basing supplies were my wife going, do you need this stuff? And me going, yeah, sure. I'll find a use for it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. Cool. Uh, I'm trying to think if there's anything else in the, in the photos that I had prepped up. I wanted to talk about, oh, we should talk a little bit about water elements. So here, like you mentioned, this is my tree lord, where I have the, uh, the water stream running through the middle that he's standing over and lots of different flowers and rocks and stuff like that. Um, you know, water elements are fun. You can use, there's lots of different water products out there. I mentioned the AK interactive puddles earlier. That's a simple one. You can do just like magic water or woodland scenics. Makes a little water product. All of that's perfectly fine. If you're just using a tiny amount, if you just need a little bit of puddle. Yeah. Good old fashioned gloss varnish mixed with like a drop of ink. Little puddle. Good to go. I still use the trick that you showed me, like years ago, which is all of the, like the plastic pack stuff, like the flat plastic. Yep. Um, your clay packs. The clay impacts. Yep. I would, I would cut out sheets of that plastic. And then I would like cut out like puddle like surfaces. Yep. And then glue those down, like glue those raw to the black base. And then I putty, then I, uh, then I pasted around those puddles. And then you have like placid, like surfaces, non-textured surfaces. That once they get primed, they look like pools of water. Yeah. And if you, if you do ever want to make waves or something like that, snow effects make actually really excellent, like little wave crests in water. You can just use all your stuff for snow and make the white foam of crashing waves. So it's easy. So you don't even, you don't have to get anything special for that. You just use the existing stuff. So yeah. The final thing I want to mention is floating bits. Floating bits are fun. So this was my, uh, this is my Medusa for my daughters of Cain. And, uh, or one of them. And there's a bunch of like floating rocks with the lightning that she's casting down into it to raise it all up. The lightning is literally just paper clips that I cut and glued together. That's all that is. Uh, and then the basing bits are just, you can take little rocks and you glue them to various elements, just touching little corners each other, touch the lightning, touch it to a part of the miniature. If you spread it out and have just like little corners holding it all in place, it will feel suddenly like it's floating. Yeah. Right. Like it communicates that very effectively and efficiently. And it's so fun and cool to do like floating base elements. Um, I imagine an entire army that is utilizing lightning like this. Like you should redo a storm cast army. Sure. Where they're all like showing up and dropping the lightning, like the casters are shooting it out and like, yeah, all of them have lightning coming down. Yeah. Yeah. I do like a short thousand point or 1500 point fours of storm cast, which would not be many models. No. And but just integrate. It would be three drake, three, three star drakes. Boom. Done. Three star drakes, three battle line. I'm in. Can you imagine like the lightning arcs between their like wings? Oh, sure. And stuff like that. Like that would be just, it would read so easily. Yeah. It'd be pretty. Absolutely, man. If we'll look, if we get a new, uh, storm cast book at some point and that, and that like three star drake battalion actually becomes in any way good. Right. I'm not going to be able to resist. I'll do a three star drake army. Like I've wanted that forever. I just wanted to do something cool. If I'm going to invest 1500 points into three models that are going to lose games constantly, like I should at least get a cool effect out of it. That's all I'm saying. That doesn't feel like I'm asking for much. No. And just imagine like doing those lightning effects, like all, like it would just look amazing. Yeah. And like you could do them breathing lightning. Yeah. That's the breath weapon. My claws, spears, my teeth, swords, my wings, a hurricane, my tail, a thunderbolt, and my breath death. Yes. Correct. Oh, absolutely. All right. Cool. Anything else you want to say about basing? That's pretty good. I mean, that's a lot of stuff. No, we, we covered a lot. I think in the end, there's a lot of opportunity to tell some really neat stories. Yeah. I think the right answer is don't miss the chance to make your models be one, much more visually compelling, to live in a world in the mortal realms in a place. Tell a story, tell a narrative just by existing on their bases. And three, remember that you don't need to spend a lot of money. So much good basing stuff is free or darn near free or super cheap at a hardware store. Or if you can't get out to hardware store right now, you can search around your house and just use old stuff. Like if you're trying to base sci-fi stuff and you've got old pieces of technology, like most of us do, right, like old mice or keyboards or cables, you can just cut that stuff up and it makes awesome like 40k sci-fi ruins, sci-fi detritus. So final thought for me would be basing is never going to win you a competition. Like a painting award or whatever? Right. Sure, but it will lose you. But it will lose you awards. Yeah. Right. Especially when your basing just isn't up to part of your competitors. Right. Because what's going to happen is that it's not that they won on their basing, but if their basing just looks better than yours and everything else is being equal, they will win and you will lose. Sure. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. And the other thing is that like bases can be like, Vince, you always talk about the three inch mark or the 10-1-1 rule. The 10-1-1, that's what it is. Yes. Oh, that is a really good thing. Hold on, we do need to cover this. Okay. This is a really important thing. Thank you, Philosopher X. Gluing before or after painting, like on the basing? Yes. My answer is I find the way that works for you. Right. So I do all of my stuff separate. I do the basis separate. Like I have those 150 bases sitting behind me and then all the models are just down here, right, on just like temporary holder bases, like old squares and stuff is what I use for. Right. And then I glue them on. If they're, in the case of these guys, a lot of these things are metal, so they're just getting glued down and I'm just going to have to like deal with that, man. For most of my serious armies, I pin them because I have pins going into the feet, so they're all pinned into place. In either case, I always set them down with Loctite gel glue, okay? Like the Super Gel, because this will hold stuff in place. If you can pin, do pin. For pins, I just use a bunch of old paper clips, drive them up into the feet and drive. You don't need generally more than one pin, drive it down in the base. They will be stuck there forever. They will not come free if they're pinned down in the base. If you can't do that, then a good dollop of the glue will do you. If you don't like that idea, or you don't want to mess with that afterward, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing the whole thing. I would put the basing material on, like I'd glue the fig down and then put the basing material around his feet, build all that stuff up, and then prime and paint the whole thing like that. I wouldn't try to do the basing paste and grit and sand and stuff after the models painted. That's a recipe for disaster. No, but in general, you won't be able to, like some effects you won't be able to get, and so you just need to be sensitive to that. It's really hard to do the color like crackle paint. You have to have layers of paint and stuff like that down in order to make that actually read right. You just need to think through what your steps are. So my preference is always do the base completely separate from the figure, paint them both to done, and then put them together. But again, your mileage may vary. It depends on what you're doing is my advice. Sometimes I pin, as you can see here, and sometimes I just put them down, and then I glued them down, based around, pasted around, and then primed everything and began painting. Right. Yeah, so let's jump, let's close on the 10-1-1 rule. Okay, 10-1-1 rule. Because you do painting competitions, and this is where kind of the rubber meets the road, right, about like, about how basing is going to influence your model. Yeah. And tell us what the 10-1-1 rule is. So the 10-1-1 rule as a paint judge is you should draw my interest from 10 feet away. Like I should look over at your army from 10 feet away and go, oh, that looks neat. I want to check that out, right? Yeah. The one-foot rule, at one foot, you should have me excited, right? Like at one foot I should go, oh, okay, there's a lot here I want to look at. Right. And at one inch, I should be able to look close to your army and be amazed by the details that I didn't see up until this point. And a lot of that can happen in things like basing, right, where I notice elements of your base. Not always, there's plenty of stuff you can do on the mini too. Right. But this- So basing is an excellent place where you can do, where the one inch will often sit. Like you can freehand and stuff like that, and that's important. Don't misunderstand me, but like hiding elements in your base can be a great like grabber at one inch that really rewards the observer for leaning in. Yeah, like a little while ago, somebody asked about what about having hidden elements on the model, right? Like having a little sneaky hiding somewhere or something like that. Yeah, or a little animal. Yeah, I love stuff like that. That's fantastic. It doesn't need to be visible. It can be a discoverable element. That's just fun, right? So example of this, like I showed this model a couple of times, right? But what most people haven't seen is that if you zoom in, there's a set of dynamite underneath the arch that's been attached. Nice. And so there's a story going on here that's going to be like hidden throughout that those that look can actually begin to discern what's going on. Yeah, so you can add little fun story elements. Yeah, I agree. Yep, cool. But have fun. Like it's a chance for fun. Be a kid again. Play with mud and glue and, you know, make your army something that's cool and unique and yours. It's a chance to make, to bring you into the model, just like your paint scheme is, right? The basing is the same way. Right. So yeah, there you go. All right, cool. Good stuff. That's basing. Hey, everybody, if you liked this discussion, hit that like button. That's really helpful when you do that. So please hit like. We really appreciate it because it helps other people find this show. And that's totally awesome. And people need content right now because we're all just sitting in our houses. So let's hit that like button. And I really appreciate that. We'll be back, of course, on Saturday to do the Reveal Review Show. So check that out. We'll go live shortly after the, whenever they finish is when we'll go live. I don't know if they'll do another hour and a half or how they'll set it up. We'll see what this turns out at, but we'll go live shortly after that. But as always, I very much appreciate you watching. So thank you very much. And as always, we'll see you next Wednesday.