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Review :: Dragon Forge Design Resin Bases Print
Written by Dan "YoungWolf7" Smith   
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Have you ever wondered whether resin scenic bases are worth the investment? I've seen some pretty shoddy castings out there myself so I'm usually on the skeptical side. Today I'm going to review the new Wasteland II series of scenic bases from Dragon Forge Designs , sculpted and produced by Jeff Wilhelm.

Purchasing

First off, the Dragon Forge Store was farily easy to navigate, although they're going to need to organize it a bit better as more products are added. The cart is all run through PayPal, so I happened to like it right away as I use PayPal for almost all of my gaming related purchases. My order was shipped promptly via Priority Mail. Another plus for me living here in the US. There aren't many manufacturers of quality resin bases here in the States, and I hate the time / cost of importing them. Buy local first as they say.

After opening the package, I found each of the sets of bases in their own clear poly bags. These photos were taken without any prep work done at all to them. They are exactly as they were shipped to me. Very little flash or defects at all. I should note that I had to adjust the contrast to show the details of the sculpt. The resin Dragon Forge uses is a very light gray and does not photograph very well without some enhancement.

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25mm Rounds

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40mm Rounds

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60mm Rounds

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Bike Bases and Character Bike Base

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Attack Bike Base


The only "major" defect that I could find in the castings were a few open air bubbles on the undersides of some of the bases:
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As far as casting defects go, that's nothing IMO. The bases stand flat out of the package. They need very little cleanup work to be ready to go. Dragon Forge does recommend that you wash them first in soapy water before gluing anything to them and I second this. I waited until after cleaning up any flash and filing so that I could wash the dust off at the same time and set them on some clean paper towels to air dry.

Once the bases were clean, I decided to paint up a couple to see how well the details stood up to paint. Often times fine details that look great on a raw sculpt can get lost after painting. I chose the 2 large 60mm rounds as they had lots of details to play with and a variety of objects to paint. Since it's the BrushThrall way to teach in hidden ways sometimes I thought I would show a nice compact way to paint bases with minimal colors. In the final color usage it might not seem that way, but 3 base colors and 3 wash colors will be doing 90% of the work. Let's get stuck in.


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Tip #9
If you're a beginner looking at brushes, consider synthetic white sable. It has more feedback when you are learning to paint.