I first stripped off the minis from one of the sets of 3 temporary bases and remove the double-sided tape from those. That can be thrown away as it’s useless now.

I used to go through a rather laborious process of gluing the minis to the bases with Aleene’s Tacky glue and then carefully putting pre-mixed filler all over the base, waiting to dry and painting with the Burnt Umber Crafter’s Acrylic, but I’ve found a much quicker and actually much cheaper way.

I use Brown Acrylic Frame Sealant from Screwfix. If you go down this route make sure you don’t get Silicone as that won’t take paint! I slavered a thin layer of this onto the base and it acts as all three of the stages above, glue, filler and paint! You do get a bit of shrinkage as it dries, but not enough to cause a problem.

After getting those in the right place I applied the front rank and standard bearer and then after more adjustment the skirmishers.

Then a heavy dry brush with Beasty Brown and also painting the edge and the unit marking area with the same.

The dry brushing will mess up the edges and unit marking area, so that needs tidying back up with Beasty Brown. This also is a second coat which is often needed around the edges anyway.

After this the static grass is applied. These are home-made self adhesive tufts of 2mm spring meadow static grass. I use something like this to make those in bulk from time-to-time. They are just pulled off the backing paper with tweezers and put where needed. They can even be moved if I’m not happy with them. Even months after being stuck in place.

And here they are all done. Just a quick spray with matt varnish and they’re ready for battle.