How Do I Make Urban Rubble Bases?

Hi everyone! My friend Son of Dorn really likes how I do quick and easy Urban Rubble bases for my Raven Guard space marines and I agreed that it would be a great idea for a tutorial. Son of Dorn writes at Most Perturbatory and contributes to Apocalypse 40k. They're both great blogs and you should check them out!

I start with an old CD case. Who uses these anymore anyway? All they're doing is sitting around your house taking up space. You have all the music you'll ever want to listen to downloaded from limewire or, you know, purchased legally on iTunes if you have a soul and agree that compensating artists for their work is right. Anyway, I break off some pieces of the CD case with a pair of pliers to save my fingers a little pain.

Next, I glue the plastic shards down to Ye Olde GW infantry base with some plastic glue. I like to glue some of them so that they are sticking off the bases a bit to break up the monotony of perfect roundness. Fight the power, amiright?

Don't worry about those bubbles you see in the plastic. The top surface of the shards is nice and flat...like a cool spring pond, where I'm skipping rocks over some good joke material. If you wanted to get super fancy you could use a hobby drill to put a few holes into the shards at odd angles to make it look like bullet holes. What I did next with this base is honestly a little further than I normally go, but I think I'm going to be pleased with the extra effort. I took a minute to glue down a piece of sprue in a random location to spice things up a bit. Then I drilled a hole in the foot of my space marine and inserted a piece of 18 gauge steel wire with super glue on the tip to ensure that little guy will probably never come off of the darn base.

A side note; I really like to use this gel super glue. It takes a little practice getting just the right amount from the tip (haha), but it never runs anywhere and its really easy and convenient. Oh, and the 'Extreme' version from this brand held together a metal Thunderfire Cannon where JB Weld failed.

Now I drill a hole in the base where I want his foot positioned. I coat the metal wire with some super glue and coat the bottom of his foot with plastic glue. Then I put it in the hole.

I've attached his legs to the base because it gives me a little something to grab onto for the next step. I coat the areas outside of the shards with Elmer's glue (or PVA glue if you're European) and get ready to get a little dirty.

Now I dip the whole base into this plastic container full of potting sand that I bought from work.

I give the side of the base several hard flicks of my finger to knock off the extra sand back into the container and I wipe off some of the excess that has made its way down onto the sides of the base where I don't want it. The base ends up looking like this.

After all the glue has dried and I've put together the rest of the model and primed it, I paint the base using the color Mechanicus Standard Grey. Then I wash the base with Nuln Oil. After the wash has dried I do a heavy drybrush of Dawnstone and then a light drybrush of Administratum Grey to really bring out that broken concrete look. Here is a picture of an almost completed model with an Urban Rubble base. Sergeant Sacrifice strutting his stuff.

Well thats it y'all. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.