Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Basing solutions for 3mm WWII

Over the years, I've tried several different basing solutions for 3mm WWII miniatures. The key point to all of these solutions has always been to base contrary to the figures' colors. So if I got green Soviet tanks, say, I try to make the base brown and yellow. Gray German tanks will get a green base and so on.

This basing scheme was harder for the North African desert, but even then you could tweak it.

After seeing Nogegon's basing scheme for his 3mm Turkish NATO forces, however, I've re-thought my use of flocking for 3mm figs. I'm now convinced that basing needs to be as simple as possible. But anyhow, here's a selection of my various basing schemes. Let me know what you all think.






 The base in the lower left corner was my first attempt, followed by the two bases to its right. Here, I was planning on each base being a company or battalion. Then I decided that having two tanks so close together was unrealistic. Besides, if I was going to use two castings for each company anyhow, wouldn't it be better to base them seperately and call each stand a half-company? Blitzkrieg Commander is scaleable that way, so why not? It would allow me to have even more flexible formations.

Here are two more photos of the stands:


As you can see, I've gone with progressively simpler basing arrangements on the half-company stands, culmulating in the green German stands, which have no flocking whatsoever. I think this last step might be TOO radical, however. I'm thinking of putting some fine, medium green flocking on those bases, but I'd like to know what people think.

What this shows is that one needs to be exceedingly careful when thinking og basing solutions for 3mm figs. It's easy to drown them out in the "noise" of the base's granularity, which is very realistic, of course, but a bad idea for tabletop wargames.

The most granular and "noisy" bases here belong to the Carrier company and the Stugs. The PzIV S company's base is also highly granular, but in this case, the lighter paint scheme of the panzers makes them visually pop right off the base.

Of the lot, I prefer the T-34s.

So what do you think?





2 comments:

  1. hmm like the simple half company bases,just wonder if a transparent acrylic base with labels like the T34 the clear base would allow the baseboard to show through but also allow easy movement

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  2. It's a good idea, but the problem is that at this scale, it makes the figures look like they are hovering.

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