In this tutorial we'll show you how to make your Necropolis bases look like the blasted wasteland of some far-flung alien planet. We've used a 40mm size base and chosen a cold blue palette for this tutorial, but you could easily change up the colours for a martian red, sandy yellow, or sickly green.

It's an easy way to conjure up xenos worlds for your miniatures - either as invaders or defenders! Perhaps your Dynasty have risen from beneath the frozen surface for their soul harvest, or your Deathwatch Kill Team are moving in to take out a high priority target.

You will need:

• Some good brushes for edge highlighting and base coating
• An old brush or spudger for applying textured paint
• A drybrush
• Some grassy tufts (optional)

Colours we used:

• A light undercoat (we used cheap car primer)
• A textured paint (we used Citadel Armageddon Dust)
• A spectrum of colours going from near white to blue to black (we used Citadel Ulthuan Grey, Blue Horror, Lothern Blue, Ultramarines Blue, Kantor Blue, and Abaddon Black)

Step 1: Adding texture

Add your textured paint liberally using an old brush or little spatula (we used Citadel Armageddon Dust). Let it dry fully before applying a basecoat of your brightest colour (we used Citadel Ulthuan Grey), making sure to get it in all the nooks and crannies.

In our example we undercoated everything black before applying the textured paint. This was a mistake, as it made applying the lighter base coat much harder. Far better to undercoat in a lighter colour.

Step 2: Feeling so blue

It's time to add your colours, starting with the lightest. Although you are drybrushing, the first few layers can be quite heavy to ensure full coverage. This will help create the effect of being underlit by the strange energies beneath the surface of the planet.

Step 2 continued

We started with Citadel Ulthuan Grey, then Citadel Blue Horror, then Citadel Lothern Blue, then Ultramarines Blue, then Kantor Blue. Each layer was applied slightly lighter than the previous, and stopped slightly further from the edge of each 'plate', revealing more of the lighter colour beneath.

Step 3: Doing lines

Taking the second lightest blue, Citadel Blue Horror, highlight the edges of each 'plate'. This will help sell the illusion of light reflecting off the edges and corners from the light source underneath it.

Step 4: Black on top

The final step is a very light drybrush of pure black, concentrated at the furthest edges of the base. This should just tickle the top of each mound of texture, letting the lighter blues beneath still show through to create the illusion of depth.

When this is finished, paint the rim of the base. We've used Citadel Kantor Blue in this example. 

Step 5: Adding some greenery

This is an optional step but helps give an alien world some depth and texture - tufts! We've used some Gamer's Grass Tufts and pressed them on with a pair of tweezers. Normally these tufts come with an adhesive backing, but we've added a tiny dot of superglue to help them stick to the uneven surface we've created.

Normally we'd leave the tufts at that, but we wanted to have an experiment with blending them into the colour scheme with some watered-down Kantor blue.

And you're finished!

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Pick up your own Necropolis bases here and get experimenting!