An Old Midlish Rhyme
The wind from the North sings of heroes of Olde
The wind from the East makes our blood run Cold
The wind from the South smells of Spices and Gold
But the wind from the West tells of warriors Bold.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Squaring off

I've been pondering basing again. There are some good points to the 80mm wide bases and some attraction to the idea of 1 base = a unit, buutttt..... its also quite limiting. Of all the 25mm ancient basing systems I've experimented  with over the last 5 years, the one I like the best for itself as opposed to the game that it enables, is the one using 40mm square bases with 2 cavalry or 2,3 or 4 infantry per base. I do have some cavalry who will need to go a bit deeper, 60mm for the galloping Garrison horses, but I like the look and feel and its fairly flexible. For example, apart from adapting to multiple rule sets, you can do road columns which are not convincing when 80mm wide. The plan will be to do 4 base units as a standard organization


This happens to be 15mm standard for many rules which  won't help if playing some using standard 25mm  basing but that won't matter if both armies are mine. It does mean I can make impetus units out of 3 bases or if using 2 bases can match Ron's units for playing on a hex grid. I just tried it today using Comitatus and it worked great, well some units were on 40's from earlier experiments, others were singles on a 20mm frontage and I fudged the rest.  Getting ready for the game got my enthusiasm levels up high enough to finish 4 more Persian Clibinari and rebase them with the existing ones to finish that unit.

I also got a start at refurbishing my old Valdurian Royal Horse Guards to serve as Guards for the Queen of Marakanda.  I picked these Rohirrim lads up at the Minifig stand in the wargames tent at Aldershot the summer of 1974. My first metal cavalry. To keep up their status next to all those RAFM & Garrison horses I need to remount them, they've borrowed some PB horses here.

Anyone need 10 x S range 1/2 armoured horses?

First time in battle in decades and another victory to their credit.

5 comments:

  1. I was briefly tempted by 40x40 bases but 80mm frontages is where it's at for me!

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    1. If I thought most of my game would be on hexes the 80mm would probably have won.

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  2. I'm re-basing my 18th century troops on square bases.

    Line infantry is on 40 mm squares in two ranks of two musketeers.

    Cavalry is on 47 mm square bases (to fit properly in my display cabinet) with two figures.

    Irregular infantry is also based on the 47 mm bases with 4 figures in a loose 1/2/1 "diamond".

    Artillery will not be on square bases. And skirmishing jagers will be based on pennies.

    One of the things that I like about the square bases is turning doesn't alter the shape of the unit . . . and, as you say, it looks so much better on roads.


    -- Jeff

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  3. A lot of my horse & musket troops have been on square 4 inf/2 cav bases over the last few years. I think its my over 1st choice for every thing but single figure skirmishes.

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    1. I'm using Bloodaxe figures, which are rather chunky and the horses won't fit on 40 mm bases (but 50 mm don't fit well in my display cabinet) so it turns out that 47 mm squares work beautifully.


      -- Jeff

      PS, thanks for fixing the verification thing.

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