"The fantasy of 60mm basing" Topic

Why is it that new rules keep conforming to the old WRG basing for 25s? I find this very frustrating. I noticed that Underneath the Lily Banner is using 45mm basing with 3 figures to a base. You can't really get 3 big 28s on a 15mm per figure frontage. It worked fine in the days of Minifigs true 25s with no animation. But with the bigger figures becoming dominant with all the extra animation how come rules designers can't accept the new reality and offer realistic basing? I was very disappointed when FoG didn't begin establishing a new standard for the larger figures.

The WRG basing was broken way back in 1984 when I could not fit 4 Essex or Garrison SHC on the 60mm frontage.
Both DBM and 7th ed (and Warrior) continue to ignore this and tell you that you are just too dumb to figure out how to do it.
Warrior did make a stab at a 80mm frontage, but 99.9% of Warrior players do not use it. The percentage could be higher.
FOG is still glued to the WRG orthodoxy.

The 60mm frontage was designed for RAFM or Minifigs or Hinchliffe 25mm figures. The Powers That Be continue to think of 28mm figures as an unruly upstart variant of 25mm, the One True Scale.

That's why you use deeper bases, to stagger them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do I have to think of everything?????????????????????????????

Wewn DBM is totally and absolutely anal about base depths?

Number of figures no longer matters. So what if you've only got 3 figures on your base of 'blades' or 'knights' instead of 4? The die roll is still the same. If your opponent is too stupid to remember they're 'blades' instead of 'Auxilia' when the figures are clearly Roman legionaries or Swiss with halberds, then that's his trouble.

I find it easier to just do 3 figures for a 60mm front. Basing standards be damned.

But it does mean your "drilled" troops end up looking the same as your more unruly blokes.

I don't care if my opponent can remember anything, but I want my Men-at-Arms to look more compact than my county levy bow (you'll see I'm stuck on basing right now for Wars of the Roses).

Sorry John but FoG specifically states that you can use LESS figures per base. So while you are right in that the bases are 60mm wide, you don't have to have 4 figures on there. The real issue is that you have a huge base of gamers with 60mm wide basing going back to the era of true 25s.

I like the two stand wide, two stand deep for formed infantry base a lot. Used it for years for a locally developed game, and was happy to see Impetus use it.

The large bases allow the units to be visually pleasing, easy to move, and protect my figures from my gaming buddies who are drinking, eating, and frankly have nothing invested in them.

So I'll play FoG with these big bases, and WRG specs be relagated to the outer regions!

And I agree with autos de fe -- my regulars look regular, my fuedal and militia more ragged, and my Saxon shieldwall dense. All around a good approach.

BO

Why not just use the manufacturer's rule of thumb-bash to fit,paint to hide.

Just do Impetus :)

I to dislike the DBX/WRG conventions. I've gone with 80mm wide x 50-60mm deep for my 28mm armies (50mm deep for units such as "blades" and 60mm for more irregular troops). I use these bases for Impetus and DBA and find that visually they look far more appealing than he WRG conventions.

So yes, I'd love to see the old WRG conventions kicked well and truly into touch and think that FoG missed the boat by not doing so.

Craig

"That's why you use deeper bases, to stagger them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do I have to think of everything?????????????????????????????"

wow…
Relax, dude….

(Its not good to call someone dude. So is to use more tha three exclamation or questionmarks. Makes eyes hurt.)

"If your opponent is too stupid to remember they're 'blades' instead of 'Auxilia' when the figures are clearly Roman legionaries or Swiss with halberds, then that's his trouble."

And if they are lightly armoures Ming-chinese guys with wicker shields? There is a reason for those standards in a competition environment. I too believe that DBx could be a good bit more laid back about some things, but that is a general problem and i do not see how they would break the picture here.

KTravlos is right, I guess.

The newest DBMM no longer requires 15mm frontage for any troops with 28mm (except Horde, where the base depth is big enough to allow more).
Quite a few troop types now allow 3-4 figures per base, even for 15mm.

I've got at least 2000 bigger 28mm inantry minis based on a 15mm frontage.

If it's fantasy, then I believe in fairies!

Simon

I've found depth is more of an issue with most 28mm infantry figs than frontage, as ranking up becomes difficult – mounted are a bit different though. However, as I play FoG and the rules allow for different base depths and figures per base to be used it isn't really an issue – so I base them up to look right to my eye for the troops concerned :-)

I am more concerned with setting a new standard that wonky fixes for the old standard.

Even though I hate the game, at least WAB has what is essentially 80mm frontages for it's heavy infantry.

I think that the old WRG standard did get it right by allowing for the representation of your regular infantry types (or your "normal" infantry) as having four figures on a typical 60mm frontage… It's just that the 60mm isn't really working any more, but I still want 4 figures on an element for heavy infantry (as I believe the OP seemed to indicate. He didn't seem like he was asking how to fit figures on a base so that he could have fewer figures. I think that's a no brainer).

Eventually, I think that manufacturers will either grip to the reality that a lot of players LIKE to have their heavy infantry (or cataphracts) represented by 4 figures, and thus start to slim down the figures a bit (I've noticed that I can get 4 of Tom Meier's 30mm figures on a 60mm frontage, and I can get 4 Mithril 32mm LotR figures on a 60mm frontage) or they should make them smaller… It's this chunky, fat limbed syndrome that really needs to stop, and people need to learn how to properly proportion a figure…

OR… The game manufacturers should finally get on the ball and widen the element frontage. Don't they realize that then WAB players might start using similar basing conventions…

Of course, all of this will be rationalized away by someone.

Then Simon your 28s must be wedged in incredibly tight with each other.

Judge four yourself. The recent pikes are 15mm frontage.

bigredbat.blogspot.com

" I was very disappointed when FoG didn't begin establishing a new standard for the larger figures."

LOL, how do you propose to do that, via the 'base size police'?

Ancients, unlike every other period of wargaming, does at least have some de-facto base standards, even if they are DBx. 60mm frontage a problem? then just put fewer figures on?

Or base your troops how you like, but make sure you do both/all sides, or use sabots. Lots of options.

As I keep asking, who will be incharge of setting and ENFORCING this so=called "new standard"?
WRG was the de facto standard for years, simply they were the Big Dog and no one wanted to lose sales of rules due to being non-compatible. Along came WAB, which had a different fanbase, at least originally.

Back in the foggy mists of time, with the WRG
"standard", at least Roman Legions looked formed. Peltasts looked loose, until that cursed "regular loose
" or whatever they called it crammed 4 peltasts (!) on the same frontage.

60mm will remain the standard of the WRG games and their clones until all the dinosaurs with their "true 25mm" armies are dead.
Or, until someone with no ties to the WRG past or to WAB publishes a SUCCESSFUL game with different basing. It will have to be a darn good agme and sell a lot of copies, just to break the mold and show the dinosaurs the light. That light may be an asteroid, though.

It doesn't seem to me that 28's have got much bigger, recently. Some of the recent ranges such as Warlord, Crusader and the 1st Corps Successors are smaller 28, and the Polemarchs I'm painting are marginally smaller than their Foundry equivalents.

Only the Aventines are a bit larger.

Simon

Not a problem if you use the One True Scale of 15s! In basing new and old 28mm figs for FoG-R(yes, I am mildly schizophrenic) I have found the depth for cav to be more of a problem so I special ordered 60mm by 50mm bases from Litko. I hate rebasing!

If "the rules" stipulate frontage to men, any variation ought to easily be allowed for by having the narrower conform to the wider, i.e. no narrowing up to cheat by cramming more combat value. This OP seems like making trouble where there isn't any.

Let's see, 60mm, that's three Art of War infantry bases, or, three of my minis individually based: I can play your game by grouping my bases into lots of three then….

1066.us

"Or, until someone with no ties to the WRG past or to WAB publishes a SUCCESSFUL game with different basing"

Any game which requires me to change basing goes straight in the bin. If other people feel the same way, this might be barrier to success.

I took a look at your pictures Simon of your pike and trolled down to the Triarii too. Looks great. But having experimented with this kind of basing the figures still seem overall too tight and in many cases with the more dynamic poses (I notice both of your examples are passive pikemen and spear) sometimes impossible to base. Let's see some dynamic 28mm Hastati 4 to a 60mm base!

And Martin, your response above is the obvious reason why the 60mm basing doesn't change. The unwillingness of gamers to rebase, if necessary, is the problem.

I don't like the idea of simply removing one figure from a base (say 4 to 3 for close order troops.) This undermines the easy ability to determine troop type. More importantly, it over compensates for the scale size increase. That is, going from 15mm to 20mm frontage is too large a change. Troops go from being to dense to being not dense enough. Probably 70-75mm front would be ideal. For some periods my gaming group has gone to 3" bases with appropiate depth. The only problem is that we are no longer compatible with others.

The whole issue is of concern only to gamers who actually play with people other than their home group. Such play seems to occur most often at competitions and conventions.

The obvious and simple answer is therfor to ban all competition and convention gaming unless he organizer provides all armies based to a uniform standard.

Impetus offers the most practical solution I have seen so far, a basing standard that is a multiple of the de facto standard, with no requirement for the number of figures per stand. This allows almost any figures to be used without rebasing by means of sabots.

The issue can be worse in other periods with each rule set having its own unique basing standard.

80mm wide frontages may solve figure sizr problems. but it creates a whole new raft of problems for ground scale. Instead of playing on an 8' x 5' table, you will need to go to something like an 11' x 7' table.

Simon not to take anything away from your wonderful work, but seems that you did have to stager your figures on the base.

John this can only happen with an edict Lord Phil and he is uninterested in it (I asked) or the HMGS come along and making a recommendation and I doubt they would.

"But having experimented with this kind of basing the figures still seem overall too tight" …yet 15mm frontage minis are on an approximately 3' per man real life frontage, which is correct for the period. Pikemen sometimes formed on an 18" frontage…

"Let's see some dynamic 28mm Hastati 4 to a 60mm base!" … there is just such a unit of dynamic hastati on my blog. I increased the base depth to 30mm, but I think they look great.

I do stagger a lot of my minis, especially in irregular or semi-irregular units, even when I don't need to. I like an irregular look.

Cheers, Simon

Hey Simon

I took a look at the picture of Aventine-Keith's assembly of a Roman army on your site. With all respect, I don't like the look here as much as your pike. The Roman pilum armed infantry are much too packed together and the bases seem highly congested to me. And the point is that this is the only way to get 4 larger 28s on a base. Pack'em in tight and stagger in ways not always appealing to the eye. Part of playing with 25s is creating nice dioramas.

The new edition of DBMM (2.0) has at least partially solved the basing problem by allowing a more flexable mounting system.

I am currently mounting three Inf figures on a 60mm X 20mm base,this makes them compatible with both DB & WAB. For those worried about telling apart troop types, this has never worked anyway. Ireg heavy Inf used to mount four per base just like Reg so you could rely on number of figures anyway. (Same for Cav, Knight, Psilio etc.). Just took a DBA Flemming army with pike mounted 3 per base and got nothing but praise for look of the army.

Mounted more of a problem esp. depth. Going to 50mm instead of 40mm would really help but recoil depths built around base depth cause some problems. Standard recoil depths would solve problem but Mr. Barker not willing to go that far.

Oddly Hordes of the Things (DBA fantasy) allows variable depeths without any real problem (greater depth allows a longer recoil but also means you may bump into more things). All Horders players accepth this as a "feature" (you cannot however recoil more than your base width – 60mm).

If WAB would go with 30mm wide Mounted bases the two systems could be make perfectly compataible.

TomT

"The Roman pilum armed infantry are much too packed together and the bases seem highly congested to me." I like them like that; it's a subjective thing.

All I wanted to demonstrate is that basing on a 15mm frontage is not "fantastic".

Cheers, Simon

The fantasy Simon is that the figures have increased in size considerably over the past 20 years and have become more animated as well but game designers are still using the same basing standards from the past. Something needs to give. That you can technically get 4 large 28s on a base it slightly beside the point.

I think my 2000 minis are rather more than "technically" on their 500 bases, but each to their own.

Simon

I put all my stuff on 90mm bases -

6 hoplite/pikes -30mm deep
5 Romans 35mm deep
6/7 Germans 40mm deep
5/6 Gauls/Spanish/Psiloi 45mm deep.

I like this for DBA/Impetus/Armati/MOA and, I imagine would work for FOG if you use less units but I haven't really gone down that road.!!
Mind you I'm pretty much a solo gamer so fitting in with others isn't an issue!!
I'm aware I have droned on about this before on TMP but I love my chunky elements.

"And Martin, your response above is the obvious reason why the 60mm basing doesn't change. The unwillingness of gamers to rebase, if necessary, is the problem. "

Indeed, although it doesn't preclude doing new projects on a different base size, or going for the sabot/multi-base approach. It partly depends where you are starting from, how big your existing collection is and whether you are willing to do more than one side. Rules which don't specify base sizes, but just make suggestions, are fine too. It is ones like The Great Game where you 'have' to have two imperial riflemen on a .63" square base and four zulus on a 3.1" x 1.7" base or the game doesn't work which drive me nuts (and TGG really doesn't work if you don't use the right base sizes).

Now I _have_ rebased some figures, mainly 6mm Napoleonics, but after doing it for the fourth time I swore never again, ever.

I'm increasingly using grid based rule systems, so base sizes are a complete irrelevance – a variant on using sabots I guess. I've always thought DBA would work better on a grid.

Strategos/Lost Battles is a pretty good grid based Ancients system, no set bases sizes.

I must say I love a grid-based ruleset, myself; takes away most of the sting of different basing systems.

Simon

I have just come across this and wanted to say that Simon – BigRedBat's basing looks quite good with 4 across a 60mm width.

And how ironic the last post resulted in him releasing his To The Strongest ruleset!

Here is a great example of Simon's basing from his blog:

Ah very nice …..but those bases are two ranks deep.

In single rank if a figure has a footprint that goes over the 15mm x 20 mm dimension you would have to ensure that there are no clash points in any of the elements.

This is also a problem for 15mm cavalry on 30mm deep bases where you might end up with them all angled at the same 18 degrees from the front just to form a column.

Duplicate

I must say it was interesting to see this old thread.

Over the past five years I have gradually come to care less about the old 4 to 60mm standard. I still use it for pike but for looser-order units, such as legionaries, I prefer big vignettes 120mm or 180mm wide by 50 or 60mm deep, with lots of animation. The unit below (minis painted by David Imrie but mostly based by me) has around 2 dozen minis on a 180mm wide by 60 mm deep base.

I'm going to gradually rebase my old legionary units in this style. I'm also experimenting with moving away from rectangular bases in general… now that I play almost entirely on grids I don't need my units to be "geometric" any more.

And this is why 25/28/30 is the devil's spawn. Proper wargamers do 10mm

There is absolutley no problem with the traditional 60mm frontage for 25mm+.

DBA 3.0 now allows you to mount only 3 figures per Blade element and use 30mm depth if you prefer. As frontage remains the same no need to remount.

I generally do Spears 4 per base to make a shieldwall look. But no one cares if you use only 3.

Why force everyone to remount from the 60mm frontage? Just mount whatever number of figures looks good. Converting old Warhammer figures is easy as they are already on 20mm bases so just glue (or magnate) 3 onto a 60mm wide base and your ready to play.

TomT

I do not want to rebase miniatures, and like to try different rulesets so have come up with a couple of ideas

60mm bases – use Number of figures -1 (it's in DBR). So 4Bd will have 3 figs, 3Kn will have 2 etc. Personally I will still go with 2 figures for LH and Sp

80mm bases. If your army is based on 60mm, keep a set of sabots and then you can play someone with 80mm based. DBA 3 uses the Base Width as the measure, so just have to increase size of mat to 4'x4' instead of 3'x3'

4" bases (no I am not smoking something). Bases are now transport trays or something similar so individually based skirmish figures (SAGA for instance) can be used. Keep the regulation number of figures as there is enough space now. You could even just stick your 60mm or 80mm based on. Mat size is now 5'x5'. This is a great HotT option as lots of people have individually based miniatures for D&D or WarSrewdriver or whatever it is called today.

One of these days I will finish painting enough figures to put one of these ideas into practice

John

I agree that there is no problem with the 60mm frontage – just put fewer figures on the base if you can't pack in as many as the rules suggest.
The reason there's no push for change is that there isn't a problem, except in the minds of a few gamers who bang on about this from time to time.
60mm base widths are fine for ancients.

Just out of interest, why do the number of figures matter?

Impetus style basing has changed everything for me. I am passed counting figures like the WRG days. Ace at the time.
Pack them tight or have them loose and do whatever feels right.

Yes indeed Colin. Funnily enough not only do I find that I care rather less about the number of minis on a base, these days, but I've also started to move away from geometric bases towards more naturalistic shapes.

By far the simplest solution is to buy the ONE TRUE SCALE figures! Problem solved.