28mm Macedonian Thorakatai & Homemade Basing Materials

These two stands of Thorakatai based up as soldiers for Hannibal at the Gates. These ten figures are part of Warlord Games SPQR line and are one piece resin figures with separate shields (with spears cast on them) and metal main hand spears/javelins. I have been very pleasantly surprised at how much I've enjoyed painting the SPQR resin figures. They take paint well and are nicely detailed. Additionally they don't have all of the assembly hassle that most plastic miniatures have.

The box comes with twelve figures, but I only painted ten at this time as that's all I needed for these two units. To complete the division I'll also need to paint up three stands of Thureophoroi which I haven't even purchased yet, so they'll be done much later. These ten figures put me over 100 figures for the year. I'm on a much more productive pace than last year for sure. I think this is 100% due to my painting regularly, three days a week on my Twitch.tv stream.

I get a lot of questions on my stream about my basing process and materials. One item that I use on most bases are jagged rock pieces. These look intentionally 'fake'. I've tried all manner of real rocks and they just don't look correct on the bases. What I use is chunks of coarse cork, broken from a larger sheet of cork from the craft store.

Each piece is broken and shaped quickly using my fingernails and a sanding stick. They're lightly glued onto Popsicle sticks, sprayed black with flat hardware store spray paint, then dry-brushed in various light greys and light browns. When finished I carefully cut them off the sticks and store them in a container for easy retrieval when basing.  I can make a whole container's worth, enough for over 100 bases in about an hour's worth of work. Sometimes making your own basing materials is the best answer....doubly so when you're socially distancing yourself!