Thanks Ruckdog. The Africa setting will be pretty neat. I'm going to rethink my basing technique, hence why I haven't based these yet. I'm not impressed with the medium ballast I used earlier. I might try the Citadel texture paints but jeeze are they expensive.
Yeah, the ballasts and standard basing grits make the DW land models look like they are navigating a boulder field!
The best solution I've found for basing textures with DW land minis is to use "Fine Basing Grit," which is basically fine sand. I think GW and GF9 both sell versions of this. The result looks something like this. I used the stuff raw on this landship; if I had to do it over again, I'd probably paint, wash, and drybrush the sand after application to the base, which would probably tend to tone down the texture a little bit more:
If you look at the pics in this post on the blog, how this material compares to ballast; I used it on the FSA units, as I painted them first and, like you, didn't like the result.
http://www.manbattlestations.com/blog/2014/11/29/a-dystopian-wars-tanks-giving/