Midgard Heroic Battles : Making the movement trays

As I had a fair number of movement trays to make for my Midgard : Britannia forces, I thought I would log my procedure here. This is not a particularly difficult process (especially if I can do it), but I wanted to log it here for completeness sake and as a reminder for how I achieved what I did for future reference.

Here is a picture of a finished movement tray with the first unit of Roman legionary figures... 

Roman Legionaries - based 10 to a movement tray - representing a full century of contuberlanes

When movement trays are purchased from Warbases, they come unassembled. I have already posted a picture of the un-prepped bases in their box (re-added below for completeness sake below), but I have also photographed the stages of how I assembled them etc. and shown the process in order below.

Here they are in the delivery box...

As they appear in their basic form...

After the component parts have been glued together...

The glue I used was from an old tube of PVA that I found in a cupboard that was used to do arts and crafts with the kids back in the day when they were still at school - so it is likely several years old, but it still appears to work...

Once the bases had dried (I left them overnight to be sure, but they most likely only took an hour or so), I then spread PVA glue over the top layer of the movement tray and added some sand to give the feel and appearance of ground texture...

I then inked the sand mixture with Winsor and Newton 968 : Peat Brown Ink to give it an earthy look...

and highlighted it by heavy dry-brushing with Miniature Paints' 62 Sand paint to complete the look...

I also painted the insides of the figure slots with Citadel's Base Rhinox Hide paint to blend them in a little better...

Finally, I added a little flock and some tufts of grass and flowers to finish them off...

Here is a picture of a finished base with added magnets to hold the UK penny mounted figures...

For completeness, here are the magnets I used - you have to be careful to insert them with the correct polarity upwards to enable them to hold the figures properly...

And the finished movement trays with added figures...

The next few posts will hopefully feature the stats for all units that will be in use for the two forces, and then details of the two starting 300 point units.