Real Ground for Your Bases

Mud and ruts

Mud is the most common basing material for vehicles and infantry, and the easiest to overdo. Real mud has layers: wet and dark in the ruts, lighter and cracked on the ridges, splashed on anything nearby.

• Mud Road: 341 photos (3,265 MB) of an eroded dirt road on Maui with red and yellow mud pools. Vehicles get stuck on it regularly, so the ruts are deep.
• Dirt Roads: 206 photos of country roads in the Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine. If you base vehicles for an Eastern Front or Cold War table, this is the ground they drove on.
• Muddy Paths: 276 photos of wet paths through woodland, good for infantry bases.

When you copy a rut, look at the edges. Mud pushed aside by a wheel forms a raised lip, and water collects in the lowest part.

Dry ground and cracked earth

• Abandoned Marble Quarry, Cracked Mud Filled: 160 photos of a dried mud pool with wide shots, close-ups and textures. The crack patterns are a good guide for a desert or summer base.
• Mud Lake: 177 photos of a salt lake in Otago that dried out and turned into a mud swamp.

Grass, tufts and pebbles

Static grass and tufts look best when they copy how plants actually grow: in clumps, with bare soil between them.

• Tussock Grasslands: 346 photos at 7174 × 4788 from New Zealand's South Island, including close detail shots of tussock and rocks. Tussock is a natural model for the tufts sold for basing.
• Dry River Bed: 367 photos of a floodplain with exposed pebbles and grass growing through.
• Pebble Valley: 224 photos of a pebble river bed, from aerial views to close-ups.

Forest floor and moss

• Wet Green Mossy Pebbles: 61 photos of round pebbles covered in bright wet moss at low tide.
• Dried Fir Needle Covered Pebble: 71 photos of river pebbles under a layer of dried needles from a pine forest. It is a quick guide to the colors of a conifer forest floor.
• Mossy Bushland: 234 photos of high-altitude forest where the moss grows long and almost hairy. It works well for fantasy and alien-world bases.

Frequently asked questions

How do I scale ground features for a 28 mm base?

Measure against something in the photo, such as a footprint or a tire track. A 30 cm boot print is about 5 mm long at 28 mm scale. Most pebbles in a river bed become fine grit at this scale, so use sand and small ballast rather than large stones.

Which packs help with vehicle weathering as well as bases?

The mud and dirt road packs show how mud splashes and dries, which is useful for the lower hull as well as the base. For rust and paint wear, see our weathering reference collection.

Can I photograph my finished models and share them?

Yes. Your painted models and your own photos of them are yours. The license covers unlimited projects. You cannot share or resell the Fotoref photos themselves.

Do you have larger terrain, not just bases?

Yes. For ruins, rocks and hills, see wargaming terrain reference. For full diorama scenes, see diorama reference.