Crowd-Sourcing a Basing Decision. Your thoughts?

I've decided to go with 20x10mm bases, minimal flocking and a colored label at the bottom, explaining what the unit is.

The Russians look good already. What I need to do now is choose a color scheme for the Germans' labels.

I'm looking for a mix of legibility and attractiveness. Please tell me which scheme you think is the best. Top panzer is #1 and bootm panzer is #5. (Note that #5 panzer still needs to be flocked.)

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?

1942 Soviet Tank Brigade

Cue "Katyusha".

Here's a Soviet tank brigade from early 1943. The figures are O8 3mm and each stand represents roughly a half company.

This brigade contains:

7 T-34/43
1 T-34/41
3 T-60
4 GAZ Trucks
4 Infantry
2 SMGs (tank riders)
1 82mm Mortar
1 76mm ATG

Again, I've based these figures against their color scheme, so it's brown/yellow/light green bases versus dark green vehicles and brownish infantry.

Urra!

The People's Revolutionary Industrial Council and Syndicate takes the R5 Refinery

The People's Revolutionary Industrial Council and Syndicate is an armed workers' movement on Smade's World which fights to take direct control of the means of production away from the Noble Houses and Corporations which currently run unobtanium mining and hyandwavium processing facilities.

Following a surprising string of recent victories, the PRICS have recieved off-world support in the form of the New Vistula Legion. The Neo-Poles hope that by supporting the revolutionaries, they will gain a foothold on Smade's World and a small but lucrative chunk of the handwavium trade.

Here we see the rebel column of Commadante Ima Ben-Dayo as it forms up in front of the recently occupied R-5 refinery:

The column's infantry is equipped with serviceable extruded plastisteel body armor and small arms. It's backed up by a large Plasma Infantry Gun. Re-purposed heavy trucks with hastily applied armor panels carry the company. Ben-Dayo's trucks are also equipped qith heavy mortars, thrown together in liberated machine-shops and mounted on their roofs.

The column also contains a squadron of rail-gun armed "technicals" and a re-purposed heavy construction mecha, armed with seriously up-graded industrial plasma cutters.

Here's a close-up of the column:

Finally, here's the R-5 refinery from another angle. It was made out of parts of a deoderant stick, a plastic pinbox, chunks of balsa wood, beads and many bits of plasticard, tubes, and greeblies.

The PRIC miniatures are all from Oddzial Osmy's Modern range except for the Mecha which is a Risk "graffiti" piece. When I pulled it from the game, I noticed that the Chinese factory that put the casting model together had obviously stuck its legs on backwards. I had to cut them off and turn them around.

3mm sci-fi set-up

Here's a quick set up for a battle showing my new terrain system and some of my 3mm sci-fi miniatures.

The system is built on half-meter square, 10mm thick "foamies" that can be linked together. One side of the foamie is flocked spring green, the other yellow. My old canvas modules have been dismounted from the frames and cut up. They are pinned to board with tacks and stick-pins disguised as rock piles and vegetation.

Here, you can see me holding the foamie with all the terrain pinned to it at a 90 degree angle compared to the floor. As you can see, this stuff is on there pretty firmly...

 

 Here's a top down shot of the foamie with miniatures and buildings in place....

 

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 A shot of the R-5 handwavium refinery. The Lafitte Regiment's Fire Support Squadron currently occupies it. In the background, we can see a Lafitte titan guarding the road. It's screened by two squadrons of heavy mecha.

 

The Lafitte's titan is a monster. One of the heaviest and best armed in the Human Sphere. In reality it's a 28mm Tau power armored trooper repurposed from Games Wankshop. You can see some 2mm Germy power armor troopers on its base, put there for scale. The heavy mecha are Ground Zero Games 6mm infantry walkers from their "Not-Votoms" line:

 

Two companies of local House Penn-Taylor militia hold a trench line to the north of belt of Ramen Trees.

 

The Lafitte's anti-mecha squadron, made up of four troops of Stalker mecha, hide just below the crestline of the hill. Behind them is their HQ unit, mounted in Sloth command mechas.

 

Titans from the Third Combined Arms Combat Team, preceded by two companies of IFV-mounted infantry and a recon troop, advance on the woodsline.

 

Shot of the Laffite titan from the rear, showing its escort squadron, with Sloth-mounted HQ:

 

Another angle showing the 3rd CACT's main line of battle:

Assault Gun Brigade in Ambush

Here are some pictures showing German assault guns set up in an ambush position along a road in northern France. The figures are all O8 3mm and the terrain is homemade.

Two companies are deployed forwar along the tree line while one company is held back in reserve with the engineers and recon  in a small hamlet. Here's an overhead shot and a view of the main defensive position, from the front.

3mm German Infantry Kampfgruppe, 1944

This is another of my holiday projects: a 1944 German kampfgruppe. This one is built around an infantry regiment with support from an assault gun brigade and a field artillery battalion..

I'm doing a new basing system for Blitzkrieg Commander here which is a half-company per stand. BKG works best at 1 HQ unit per 6-8 combat units and I enjoy using it to conduct division-sized actions on my coffee table. An infantry stand is thus about 50-100 troops - or half a company. Tanks represent 6-10 vehicles and crewed weapons around 3-5 weapons. 1mm = 10 meters and 10cm in the BKC rule book = 1 inch of table space.

Here we see the full array, with the two infantry battalions in line and the assault guns to the left, back:

This is one of the infantry battalions. Three rifle companies, a machinegun stand, an 81mm mortar stand, a 120mm mortar stand and an infantry gun stand, led by a headquarters:

Here we see the regimental support units: a CO, an extra HQ, a 75mm ATG, and an engineer stand. The KG also has an attached 88 FLAK gun and 2 additional 50mm ATGs, picked up from somewhere (they're stock OoB if I add another battalion and ditch the 120mm mortars to get an falschirmjaeger regiment). They're waiting on their horse-mounted recon unit, which should be done tomorrow (yes, I just noticed that I gorgot to flock the 75mm ATG...:

The assault gun brigade. These will get another two infantry units to make up the escort company. One of the company's armed with Stug III F8s while the other two companies have Stug III Gs. The brigade has been promised Stug 42s in place of its F8s, but these haven't arrived yet. An engineer and a motor-cycle mounted recon platoon accompany the HQ:





Finally, here's the artillery battalion, armed with 105mm cannons. They are accompanied by a halftrack-mounted FO and a 20mm quad anti-aircraft battery.

All figures are by O8, distributed to me with excellent service by Picoarmor.