Today I’ll tell you a bit about how I’m rebasing Lizardmen for Age of Sigmar.
One of the first things I bought on ebay were Lizardmen. I managed to pickup a handful of plastic saurus and thirty skinks from the old WHFB 5th edition starter kit for about five euros. I painted most of them and gave them a very basic swampy base. When I looked at them recently I decided I wasn’t quite happy with them after all. The lizards are all in the same monopose and when they are ranked up in a unit of 15 that becomes painfully obvious.
When Age of Sigmar came out it made the switch to round bases, although you can still play with squares if you like. Although I didn’t rebase my old armies I was going to re-do these Lizardmen anyway. I generally find round bases visually more appealing and making an eyecatcher out of the base helps to draw the eye away from the old monoposes too. I stuck to a jungle theme as I don’t think these miniatures really fit the new celestial lore of the Seraphon well.
The lizardmen are now on 32mm bases. I started by lightly sanding the top and gluing on the rocks in the middle. The rocks are carved down cork. The pieces of wood are home decor items from the thrift shop.
The first layers of paint for the cork rocks are a heavily thinned down cheap black. Cork tends to soak up your paint and I think it’s a waste to use your GW or Vallejo for it. Once dry, I drybrushed them with Vallejo Neutral Grey and Stonewall Grey. At this point they look like rocks already, but they’re a tad bland. Some washes with Biel-Tan Green, Agrax Earthshade and Druchii Violet bring in colour in the recesses. I follow it up with another drybrush with the two greys, together with some random stippling of greens and browns.
I made the tiles on the bases from milliput, some of them with spare Lizardmen icons glued on. Basecoating started with GW Terracotta, progressively mixed lighter with GW Tanned Flesh, Dwarf Flesh and Elf Flesh. For the pieces of wood I started with Vallejo German Black Brown and drybrushed them a few times with increasing amounts of Vallejo Leather Brown mixed in. Halfway I washed them with Agrax Earthshade and as a final highlight I put some GW Balor Brown along the edges. For the base I used German Black Brown again and dappled it with various sorts of green.
The plants are all fake decor and aquarium plants cut into small bits. I found these both at the thrift shop and budget stores. Another good and cheap option is to use Ebay or AliExpress. After gluing in the plants, a thin layer Vallejo Water Effects formed the final step. After the first layer dried, I applied a second layer in a few spots to smoothen the water a bit.
The Lizardmen on the new bases aren’t the same ones as in the first picture, but the 2nd row. Four of these models come from the old starter set, although I gave them some headswaps. The fifth is an old metal model. I slightly touched up the minis from their old paintjob by changing some weapon colours and painting their eyes green.
