Theming Your Army and How I do it

As I have said before I started playing Warhammer 40k with 2nd Edition back when I couldn’t paint properly and when we would ‘theme’ an army I would just be painting squads all different which would give me no basis for what the army was about. With that being said I had an eldar army which had orange fire warriors, bone banshees and green scorpions but it didn’t feel like an ‘army’ to me. So I did what everyone with more money than sense did and purchased a new eldar army to paint up as a single force.

Now when you would see it on the table all fit in together as they were from the one craftworld but from there that is all that was done. This was back when you would base all your figures with green flock and nothing else. Since then I went to Chaos Marines where I went to a slannesh themed army with all deep purple marines and from that I converted the majority of the army to have bones, arms connected to legs or the odd one with their ‘blow up skeleton’ but apart from that there was a break through of the basing by using a grey rock base which as with the green flock, didn’t add anything to it.

Now since then I had a break and gave most of my figures away but since I’ve been getting back into it I’ve been trying different things so I’ve been laying down various type of flock from cork to kitty litter to rock which has been showing figures like my Tau having more of a depth and helping with the theme.

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With my Tau I’ve got for a swampland theme which if you look at the bases there are a lot of stones, mud areas and some greenery which add a whole element to the army which I have never had before with my figures. Also with the abundance of Resin Bases out there I’ve been using those to get some other textures that I haven’t been able to have before with my figures.

With the deciding on a theme I always would come up with a corresponding fluff for the army and the basing theme then, on an army like Tau who have their armour scheme set to blend in with their surroundings, So with the theme decided I have an army that will fit into their surroundings.

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Now for my marines I’ve gone with something different since I’m doing Knights of the Blood and that they are a ‘Renegade’ chapter I wanted them to have more of an industrial feel to them since my ideas have them on their ships traveling until needed. Again I have gone along the lines of Resin Bases from Back 2 Base-ix mixing up their industrial and checker plate to give the feel I wanted on it.

Now as they are marines you can’t really do much armour wise to get them to blend in as Marines generally have the ‘here I am fear me’ look so you would see a wall of Red, Yellow or Blue coming across the battlefield at you.

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So what do you do to theme your armies? Do your bases add to the theme or are they an afterthought?
Let me know in the comments.

This post is part of the From the Warp Collaborative Post: Basing around a theme. See all involved by clicking the image below.

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