RPGaDay 2021 - Day Eleven

Day 11 - WILDERNESS - LISTEN - HEAVY - DESPAIR

WILDERNESS - for some reason this prompt made me think go basing - like, miniature basing. Miniatures have ALWAYS been part of my role-playing - I mean, it was the little lead Tom Meier/Ral Partha miniatures that drew me to Dungeons and Dragons in 1980. Yeas ago (decades, actually) I worked towards a uniform basing scheme for all my miniatures regardless of period/setting. It was basically brown dirt with a couple clumps of grass - initially green flock, later static grass, still later pre-made static grass clumps - or brush or flowers, just to mix it up a LITTLE bit. As almost all of my miniatures were metal I based them on round metal washers (unless required to do otherwise by a ruleset - DBA/HOTT being the main one - where everything was on thin (1/8”) rectangular MDF multi-figure base, but it STILL used the brown dirt with grass, bushes, the occasional stone. This gave them all a look of being outdoors - in the WILDERNESS, if you will… For more modern or sci-fi miniatures, I would sometimes leave off the grass and such and try to smooth out the dirt a little bit to still mesh with other miniatures.. but also have a neutral brown look, should they ever need to be used in a more urban environment - or the interior of a spaceship! 

For the longest time I could not STAND plastic bases (I wasn’t really a fan of plastic miniatures either). They seemed so thick and tall - almost plinth-like making miniatures tower over other to-scale items that weren’t on bases. Terrain had to be exaggeratedly tall to make it look like the miniatures hiding behind them were actually in cover. In some cases it made them rather top HEAVY and tippy - if it were a larger metal mini on a smaller plastic base. (Oooh! I worked into one of the other prompts!) 

What irked me even MORE about plastic bases was the guys who painted the sides of them BLACK. I always felt that bases should blend and match the environment to make the figures on them stand out. The harsh contrast of the black sides stood out and just looked unfinished to me. Why wouldn’t you paint them to match the top of the base or what you expected the ground to be. 

All that kind of changed about four years ago when I painted some Warhammer Underworlds miniatures for John. 

The miniatures had highly sculpted bases, specific to the miniature that was to be mounted on them. I quite enjoyed painting them - the base was really an extension of the miniature - making almost a miniature diorama (something I’d tried to do with larger bases miniatures before (though still keeping with the generally brown, wilderness-looking bases). I also painted them with black sides. Mostly for uniformity/consistency. I mean there were different things going on on those bases and I couldn’t decide which colour to go with and, besides, they were to be used in a board game and the boards were mostly dark and greyish and black worked as a transition between the two. 

But that was for someone else. I stuck with the same old scheme for my own miniatures. 

Then I ended up painting Finnegan’s Terminators and Genestealers for the last edition of Space Hulk. The miniatures didn’t come with bases. I decided to put them onto bases partly so they wouldn’t be so tippy and partly so they would mesh with other 40K miniatures should they ever be USED to play 40K (or any other scientist-fi game). By the time I got to painting them, the latest version of Necomunda was out and the plastic under hive bases could be bought separately. So I did them up on those. 

I used the 32mm bases for all of them, as the 40mm ones weren’t available - which means the Terminators are on the wrong size of base for 40K… but… whatevs.. the 40mm bases would have been just too big for use on the Space Hulk rooms and corridors. It required a bit of carving away of some of the miniatures and, in one case, sculpting with green stuff to make the miniature work with the bases. I painted them grey with a bit of rust - including the sides - and they looked pretty okay…

Then I actually started PLAYING the new Necromunda. I had a few of the old metal minis - and sourced more of them through eBay to use with the game. 

Initially I used the standard metal washer to base them and did them with a neutral brown… but then just looked WRONG on the interior rusted metal looking boards… so I tried picking up a few of the plastic Necromunda bases and embarked on a massive re-basing project. 

I did the bases a bit differently from the Space Hulk. Some was grey and rusted - but there were bits of yellow and black hazard stripes and splattered look and pools of spilled substances. The painting technique I used on the sculpted top of the bases, just didn’t translate well to the smooth sides…. so… I ended up trying painting them black… and that didn’t bother me at all, I rather LIKED the look of it! 

I was also starting to play 40K and Kill Team again at this point and acquiring some plastic miniatures and using more plastic bases and started with using “Sector Imperialis” or "Sector Mechanicus" bases for a lot of miniatures - especially those part of dedicated Kill Teams (these are more sculpted plastic bases - but different from the Necromunda bases). All painted with black sides - to conform to the new standard and bring SOME consistency to them 

Then came Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress and here I went completely off the rails, making my own bases to look like detritus in a ruined alien space fortress! (Also black sides) 

Non-wilderness bases have creeped into my fantasy basing as some new Skaven I started working on for Warcry, and other minis I’ve been working on for Frostgrave, I ended up trying to do with grey rubble of ruined cities. 

Most recently I even picked up some flagstone and cobblestone rollers from Green Stuff World… with some of these I started painting the sides grey, but later started painting them black - AND painting the sides of the newer bases I still did with wilderness-brown-dirt-scheme black - just so there was SOME element of uniformity between them (because I didn’t like the look of grey-sided bases next to brown-sided bases). 

I have a problem... 

I am a bit of an idiot… 

So… Wilderness… That’s my convoluted take on it… What does WILDERNESS or LISTEN or HEAVY or DESPAIR bring to mind for the rest of you?  

Necromunda Re-Basing Project: Part the Second

Instead of painting new figures this past week, I've mostly continued re-basing of all the existing Necromunda figures...



The group for this week...

Well... most of them...



Okay I did finish off two totally new minis... another ganger and a miniature I thought Amanda could use as her Rogue Doc Hanger on: Doc Sanders. The Doc Sanders is, I think, a Shadowrun miniature...? the medical kit came from my bitz box - it think it was originally from a Tempestus medic?)




Mechanicus! We have an Explorator - Jer-Ohm (from Lead Adventure Astropolis), a couple of Servitors and a very youthful adept (also from Lead Adventure Astropolis). Explorators are Cult Mechanicus tech priests



Two of the Spyrers - Abraham Ran Lo and Constance Helmawr (yes, of THOSE Helmawrs... she's officially 3416th in line of succession, though... so...).



A pair of Scavvies - Exvus and Rakkr - a right nasty pair, these two - know to eat the faces off of their victims in hopes that it might make them pretty... it doesn't seem to be working (Exvus is an old Coppelstone grenadier model, and Rakkr is an old citadel figure).



A yet-to-be-names Navigator and his astomech servitor RJ-D2 (there is actually a brain of an older navigator entombed in that bucket of bolts, whose body finally failed her after nearly two centuries of piloting void ships through the immaterium - it is armoured and sealed against all manor of hazards as well as the void!)

(there was a kid I went to school with named RJ. He was kind of short. I always imagined if he were a Robot he would be called RJ-D2 - this miniature is named in his honour)



Bounty Hunter Janis and Ratling Slopper Marty McNesbitt - who prides himself on knowing 32 different ways to deep fry corpse starch!



A pair of Enforcers, touched up a bit and re-based (the basic blue they used to be was a bit... dull...). I haven't named any of the enforcers yet, but I am going to need a Eva Suli (probably not one of these uniformed enforcers... She's the bad-ass Intelligencer with Divisio Integritas from Rachel Harrison's contribution to the Underhive collection of short stories I just finished up... It's a great collection, I highly recommend it for Necromunda inspiration!)



Rogue Trader? (mini from Hasslefree). I feel like maybe I should have done the sword as a Power Sword! You know he'd totally got a plasma pistol tucked away in that jacket somewhere...



The man, the myth, the legend: Karloth Valois! I put him on a 40mm base to really bling it up, as befits a rock-star necromancer like Valois.



Totally did his name in creepy letters on the back...



A couple of Bounty Hunter/Mercenary types. The one in Red on the larger base is the leader - Marcus - no one knows quite where he came from. Some rumours suggest that he, and indeed many of the others on his crew are deserters from off-world guard regiments that were brought here to help contain the threat of the alien cult that overran Hive Secondus. The one in green is named Simms.



Van Sarr Juve named Skeeter - armed with both stub gun AND Autopistol - he is ready for ANY occasion.


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

The Necromunda re-basing project rages on! I have finished the Delaque, Escher, and Redemptionist gangs - just need to finish writing up the posts (trying to add in a bit more fluff about the gangs and gangers)

Necromunda Re-Basing Project

Never say "Never!"

I have learned this all too well, so many times over.

I've never really been overly fond of plastic slotta bases - at least with metal figures. They were too light and I felt they made the over all model top heavy. I also thought they were a bit plinth-like - making scale creeping models even TALLER than older smaller models I had based on... well... other, thinner materials I've used throughout the years.

I've absolutely HATED black sides on bases. I especially hated them on plastic bases. Why, when one spent so much time making the top surface of the base so beautiful with a grassy scene or desert with scrub, would you paint the sides of a plastic base BLACK (instead of green or brown - to match the top of the base or your table terrain)!? As most plastic bases are black, it just looked to me like you forgot or couldn't be bothered to paint them. It looked unfinished and lazy. I also found the contrast jarring when looking at them on a finely manicured tabletop - especially in close-up photos.

So, this past week I decided to rebase all my Necromunda stuff (and a bunch of other skirmishy-rpg-sci-fi minis) on to plinth-like, plastic bases with black sides...

(Go on, laugh. I'll give you a moment...)

I think it all started when I decided the Genestealers and Terminators for Finnegan's Space Hulk game should be on bases - I mean they sort of had integral bases... but they were odd-shaped and in most cases not nearly large and stable enough to keep the dynamic miniatures upright under most conditions. So I picked up some 32mm Nectomunda bases to stick them all to. This required some considerable carving for most of the Terminators, and, in some cases, a bit of converting with green stuff. In the end I was pretty happy with the results.

Actually, now that I think about it... It may have been John's Stormcast Eternals that I painted for his Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire game that were the first cast, scenic bases I painted - that inspired me to try out the Necromunda bases for the Space Hulk figures (I also later painted some Sepulchral Guard and Ironskullsz Boyz for him.... and I'm STILL working on the Dwarf and Skaven lots... I should just NEVER say I'll paint stuff for other people... that IS a Never I really SHOULD learn to say!!!)

Last year I assembled and painted Drukhari Kill Team for Amanda. I wanted to make a dedicated Kill Team that stood out and looked a little different from the rest of the Drukhari. I also was starting to feel like my standard dirt bases with scrub or grass tufts would look more odd and out of place in an urban setting than an urban base would in and not-so-urban setting Kill Team might be played in (as there would likely, with the exception of the Death World Forest, still be structures of one kind or another). I had liked how the Terminators and Genestealers turned out and I just don't like putting plastic figures on metal washers (like I have, until now, done with all of my individually-mounted metal figures). So, I thought I'd try them on Necromunda bases. I was rather pleased with that result and, as an added bonus, because the bases ARE so tall, I could paint the names of each of the warriors on the back sides of the base, which I knew would help out Amanda immensely in identifying which model was which Wych.

I liked how they turned out so much, I did my own Adeptus Mechanicus Kill Team on necromunda bases. When I got to doing the Sicarian Ruststalkers and the Tech Priest Dominus commander, they didn't have 40mm necromunda bases (they do now!) so I broke down and picked up a set of sector mechanicus bases - which were even more detailed!

I've also helped paint a lot of Finnegan's Genestealer cultists (and the Magos)...

And so, along the way, I've gone from despising to grudgingly accepting to rather liking... and looking over my collection of Necromunda miniatures, all on their rather boring, generic dirt bases... well.. I decided they needed some "sprucing up" and I went out and bought some more Sector Mechanicus bases and some more Sector Imperialis bases and some more Necromunda bases - for a bit of diversity - and over the last week or so have been busy re-basing the lot of them... I tried to spend a bit more time on these to really make them "pop".

Is this all in accordance with The Plan...? Oh, HELL NO! But, then again, I DID include four weeks to "finish up" some Necromunda stuff... and I AM working on Necromunda stuff... so I'm not TOO far off. I just won't likely finish up the Van Saar and Orlock gangs as I'd originally hoped to (or the additional Escher gangers) - they can just be shifted to the Q1 plan for 2020!



Here are some of the ones I've finished up so far...



Okay, I also redid the entire Delaque gang...



...including two completely new gangers (well... new to me!)

I'll probably do a separate post with more detailed pictures of the Delaque Gangers - with some more background fluff...



I will point out that I made use of the thicker bases to add names to the backs of all my Delaque Gangers. I will likely do the same for all of my gangs.



A pair of Redemptionists. The Deacon is on a larger base because I just decided that all my champions would be on the larger bases.



Cawdor Gangers



Three mechanic/technician types from the Astopolis 2 Kickstarter.



A pair of Imperial Adepts.

 

An assortment of hive Scum

 

Old School, Rogue Trader Era Marine

 

Necromundan Guardsman (deserter now working as a Rogue Doc in the under hive).



Two more from the Astropolis Kickstarter - I'd use them as a Navigator and Guilder, respectively.

The ground detail on all of them is a bit exaggerated. In reality, those floors would be a workplace safety officers worst nightmare...

That's it for now. I have LOADS more in the works - some completed minis just being re-based. Some other gangers and scum and hangers-on that I hadn't finished but are getting new bases... that I might hopefully finish before I have to start in on the Hellboy part of The Plan...


Coming soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

A brief look at October's games. (There weren't that many....)

The complete Delaque Gang in detail.

Other stuff...

Pages and other Nonsense

I'm trying out the pages gadget for this blog. The first one, which you can find over on the left there, is a rambling bit about how I base stuff. I'm thinking I might do others like "Dark Age Armies" to showcase all the dark age armies I have for DBA. Maybe I'll do ones for other periods... "HotT FAntasy Armies"... "Great War Armies"... etc...

As I had finished up september at 700 painted foot and three months left I thought I might try for 1000 painted foot by painting 100 figures per month for the next three months... 25 figures per week... I could do that... It'd get the Pre-feudal Scottish completed, probably the picts and a few other Dark Age odds and ends I have to finish up along with some Hordes of the Things fantasy armies...

Unfortunately I've been a bit sidetracked by a super-secret sculpting project. (Shhhh! Nothing to see here, move along).

We shall see.

I WOULD like to at least finish the Dark Age Armies by the end of the year so I'd be ready to run a Dark Age DBA campaign in February.

Giant Robot Madness

So… a few weeks back I stumbled upon a blog (which I now can’t find) that had stumbled upon a pretty sweet deal on some 1/35 Ma.K. models (Mascinen Krieger) and so… um… I bought some (worked out to about $50 CAD for 24 of them)…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


24 Melusine PKA Ausf M made by Hobby Base (I picked them up from Hobby Link Japan.

This was a bit of a serendipitous find as only a couple weeks previously I had bought a bunch of AT-43 plastic robot models that Fantasy Flight Games was dumping super cheap (again in the neighborhood of $2-3 per model)


Um… I think they’re called Red Blok or something… they’re for AT-43… I’ll use them with Savage Worlds or something…

Anyway I like the looks of them they had a clunky soviet look to them and I thought could potentially be passed off as some sort of Weird War Two super weapon… and I’d been wondering what I’d use against them… well MaKs of course!!


Here’s a shot for scale… from left to right we have; a T-26 from Army Group North Miniatures, the Big Bad AT-43 Red Blok thinige, a panzer crewman from Bolt Action Miniatures, a MaK, a Sentinel® from Games Workshop® (pictured here entirely without their permission), a Russian tank crew from Bolt Action Miniatures (standing in front of..) another (smaller) AT-43 robo-armour thingie, and finally a KV-2 from Army Group North Miniatures…

The primary question is how to base them….?


Left to right; Option #1 (washer), Option #2 (60x60mm Mdf base – same as the Sentinel® from Games Workshop® (based that way entirely without their permission), Option #3 (slightly smaller metal washer), Option #4: (80x80mm MDF base – the new standard for all the 20mm-1/72 stuff I’m using for Blitzkrieg Commander/Cold War Commander/Future War Commander.


Things to consider:

Cost – the big washers are expensive I need 24 just for the Ma.K.s I’d like to re-base the AT-43 stuff to something similar for some continuity

Storage – the bigger the base the more storage bins I’ll need…

I’m kind of leaning towards the 60x60mm MDF base. It’s what the Sentinel® from Games Workshop® (based that way entirely without their permission) and the smaller 28mm WW2 tanks are on… It isn’t TOO ridiculously bigger than the models and I can probably fit 15 of them in one of my storage bins.

The 80x80mm were only really considered because I could then pass them off as even BIGGER beasties in some Blitzkrieg Commander/Cold War Commander/Future War Commander games…

To repaint or not to repaint… At some point I probably will… for now… They’re actually pretty nice looking, so I’ll probably leave them be (I’ve got enough other stuff to paint right now!!). I wasn’t sure how to count them, as with other prepaints, in the purchased vs. painted tally. If I never do paint them it’ll forever be a purchased with nothing to ever count against it in the painted category. I think what I did with some of the WW2 diecast tanks last year was I decided NOT to count them, but if I ever did I would count them as purchased and painted… a bit fiddly but whatever…

Oh, accounting…! Why do I bother!

Weird War or Sci-fi… I had intended to possibly use these for Alternate WW2 sort of gaming, but have also considered just using them for a straight-up sci-fi skirmish campaign. You’re probably thinging “why not use them for both?” – and I probably WILL use them for both… but I’d like to determine a primary use as it would determine what sort of paint job I might give them… if I ever get around to repainting…

Meh… enough blathering, I think I’ve figured it out – now back to painting…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Based robot warriors? Or maybe some SYW French cavalry…? Never can tell around here these days!

Nuthin' Much

Not a whole lot to report here...

I am still alive. Haven't played any games over the last week or so and what little time I've had to devote to hobby stuff has been spent re-basing moderns to slowly bring them up to the new basing standard.

I've mostly been working on Modern Africans (and equipment that could potentially be used by Modern Africans) as a friend expressed an interest in trying out AK-47 Republic. Might also give Cold War Commander a go again.

Of course as the new basing scheme has more figures per base I'll have less elements than I began with so I may end up painting a few 20mm moderns before this is all through.

After the dust settles on all this re-basing nonsense, I think I'm going to finish up some British and French Seven Years War stuff.

Basing… Again…

Or RE-basing, I should say….

I’ve been thinking about re-basing my 20mm WW2, modern, and future war stuff for some time… the current impetus is my desire to try out Bruce McFarlane’s HOTT WW2 and Modern HOTT variants. More on that in a moment, though….

I’ve also been re-basing a bunch of 15mm WW2 stuff so they all have a common base frontage – mostly for the same reason. It hasn’t been so much work as only a few things that need rebasing. All the infantry and tanks were already on a 50mm frontage, some of the smaller guns and vehicles were on smaller bases and had to be redone.

There are a couple problems with the 50mm frontage… First is that it isn’t one of the suggested base sizes in DBA/HOTT, so will require some tinkering to figure out what “100 paces” and I’ll have to make new measuring sticks just for that lot. The other is that the deeper bases are all deeper than the base frontage (~63mm deep – I’m using the standard base sizes for Flames of War), which causes some funny business when units are flanked and have to turn to face…

I COULD have re-based the whole shebang to 60mm frontages and everything would have been just ducky. But that would have been a whole lot of WORK… (just to “try out” a game) and also from time to time I get thinking I’d like to sell or trade off the last of the 15mm stuff and I figure it would be easier to do so if it were left on a base size that would be most useful to other people (i.e. the FoW crowd)…

As for the 20mm stuff it’s, more or less, ALL going to have to be rebased. The question is what frontage to use…? I’m considering 60mm or 80mm.

Now, I’m not JUST doing this to play the HOTT variants. Whether they work out or I go back to playing Blitzkreig Commander, Cold War Commander, and Future War Commander. I’ve wanted to do this for a while - get everything on at least a similar frontage and, if possible, only a few different base depths – for maximum uniformity…

Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I can potentially foresee:

If using 60mm it would be the same frontage as 28mm DBA/HOTT. I could therefore use the same measuring sticks, terrain and game boards. Also some of the Modern tanks and vehicles are currently on 2.5” bases and would only require shaving ~3mm off one side to make it 60mm (it’s not as difficult as it sounds - I’ve tried it). This would make for a bit less work and wastage of basing materials.


The downside of 60mm is that some of the big sci-fi tanks won’t really fit at all and some of the bigger WW2 and modern tanks and guns that do fit are still on proportionally much deeper bases.

80mm is double the “suggested” base widths as 15mm figures – so everything’s pretty easy to figure out. This frontage would require proportionally less deep bases – even for the big stuff. This is really one of the biggest issues for me. Having units on bases that are much deeper than they are wide just kind of looks funny to me and causes issues in the geometry of most games –especially in maneuvering and falling back and turning to face flanking enemy. The infantry would be on 40mm deep base so that the total depth of 2 stands in column is the same as one base width, which makes things loads easier in terms of the geometry of the game.

My primary concerns about the larger frontage is that they’d look freakin’ HUGE and I might need MORE storage bins!? The space required to play would be bigger but for a standard DBA HOTT game it would only need a 4’x4’ area – which is no problem at all for me… of course if I was going back to BKC/CWC/FWC I might be pushing it for table requirements. And if I ever suffered the kind of head trauma that would make me think that skirmishing with 20mm figures would be fun some of the vehicles would be on bases that are just way too huge… of course… if I suffered that kind of head trauma I probably wouldn’t mind re-basing the whole shebang all over again anyway…

I did a few samples of each size for comparison and just to see what they look like….

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


From left to right; 50mm frontage (current), 60mm frontage, 80mm frontage.


60mm Froantage with 4 (SS on the left) or 3 (paras on the right) figure. I think if I went with the 60mm base widths I'd stick with 3 figures per base...


French Somua tank on 80mm (left) and 60mm (right) frontages. A lot of the WW2 tanks would fit on a 80mm square base – much reducing the number of units on bases deeper than they are wide.


British 6pdr on 60mm (left) and 80mm (right) frontages. On the 60mm frontage the base is deeper than it is wide and I think the barrel STILL pokes out a bit. On the bigger base there is no barrel overhang – a consideration for storage stands that have overhanging barrels (or any overhanging parts) are harder to fit into storage together and more likely to be damaged… I suppose it’s also an issue on the tabletop when trying to line up stuff.

The down side of the 80mm frontage here is it looks HUGE – the small gun and tean seem a little lost in the base… now this could be rectified with a bit more clever modeling – making these bases into mini dioramas. Perhaps some ammo boxes and extra crew could be added (of course that would require buying or manufacturing said sundry items… but..


German Pak 43/41 AT gun and crew on a 60mm frontage (left) and the British 6 pdr on the 80mm frontage (right). Even on an 80mm base I think the Pak 43/41 would still have some barrel overhand… unless I went with a REALLY deep base.


Jadgpanthers on 80mm (left) and 60mm (right) frontages. I think this is the largest of the WW2 tanks that I have in my arsenal currently.


Same Jadgpanthers with others for comparison – on the left are Jagdpanther and Somua on 80mm frontages and on the right are a jadgpanther and a british 6pdr AT gun on 60mm frontages. The Jadgpanther on the 80mm frontage is on a base that’s only 1.5x base width deep, whereas the Jadgpanther on the 60mm wide base is over 2x the base width deep.


Tanks supporting infantry. The 80mm frontage units (on the left) end up being only 2x the base width total depth. The 60mm frontage units end up being almost 3x the base width.

On to the Moderns…


These are Cold War Canadians, form left to right; 50mm frontage (current), 60mm frontage, 80mm frontage.

It’s in the modern stuff that the difference in base sizes between infantry and vehicles is most pronounced – for me at least. In the above example neither looks terribly wonky, though I’m preferring the 80mm (on the right) – it just looks a little closer to the right amount of stuff to have de-bussed from the APC. Below however…


With bigger APCs/IFVs this difference is definitely more pronounced. When I was playing
I said stands of Infantry were HALF platoons. Where the vehicles represented FULL platoons… of course if you lit up one IFV and the two half platoons were knocked out with it... that was a sizable chunk of your unit lost in one shot...


Same issues with the Canadians mounted in Grizzlies.


These are the largest of the Cold War tanks I have to deal with Russian T-72 (left) and American M1 Abrams (right).. they are on their current bases which are actually 63mm frontages (2.5 inches) – again they seem really deep – even if I move up a scale in gaming (where stands are companies or battalions)


On the left are 80mm wide bases (with an M113 and a blank one), on the right are ~60mm wide bases. With the 60mm wide bases the tank unit takes up almost twice the area of the mechanized unit… Where as the tank unit on the 80mm wide base would take up only 1.5x the area of the mechanized unit mounted up – and would be the same size as the mechanized unit once the infantry debussed (should have taken a picture of THAT!)


For the Russians I think both BMPs and T-72s would end up on the same 80x120(?)mm bases…


Another consideration… the future war stuff… The super heavy grav-tanks would just not fit on a 60mm front base… I could do the future war stuff on a different sized bases than the other stuff – but then I wouldn’t be able to use them together… and I WOULD like to be able to use them together, because the modern (and even WW2) stuff could be used with Future war units as troops from planets with lower tech levels… I even mix up ww2 stuff with modern stuff in brushfire conflicts where one side might be using obsolete WW2 vintage surplus while another is supplied by the latest their super-power supplier has to offer…


More of the Future War stuff and modern stuff that has already been re-based to 80mm wide bases.


One last shot – an M577 command post on it’s current base (63mm wide) on top of a 80mm wide base – the extra room could give me space to add some officer looking types looking though binoculars to make for a slightly more interesting looking general/command stand for my army…

Well just in putting this post together I think I’ve pretty much convinced myself to go with the 80mm wide frontages… What I should have done is done a couple infantry stands with 4 and a couple with 5… that’s pretty much the only question remaining – how many infantry to put on the base…?

I know, I know... I wouldn't even have to worry about this if I only did micro armour... don't even suggest it I'm not going to switch to a different scale.... but not that I've mentioned it... I DO have some Future War microarmour (battle tech and GW Epic stuff, etc) that I'm going to have to reconsider the bases for - they are all sorts of different sizes... I even thought about doing bigger bases for them (perhaps 60mm fronts) and putting multiple vehicles on a base - at lest for the smaller vehicles...