"Rebasing. Is this a good idea?" Topic

A few years ago I bought a lot of 15mm Yorkists and based them up for Field of Glory. They're superglued to steel bases and surrounded by Basetex.

FoG is no longer played at our club and is extremely unlikely to be played again so they never get a run out these days.

I have enough to make a Yorkist army for Bloody Barons and probably enough to make most of a Lancastrian army too with a little repainting and a few flag swaps. Is it a sensible project to undertake though? It would seem to involve hacking my way through the Basetex with a Stanley knife (no pun intended) and finding a way to prize them off the steel bases, which of course won't bend, by somehow getting the blade under the figure.

Once I start it will mean doing the whole army and I don't want to start in the morning and in the evening find I've only got a dozen bases done and I've ed up a perfectly well based army that I could've used for the occasional game of DBA / DBM / DBX unless I continue to the finish.

What do you think? Give it a go or leave it alone?

Alan,
Go for it. Bloody Barons is an excellent set of rules and I am certain your group will be playing them for many years. Try soaking the bases in Simple Green. Very shallow so no part of the painted miniature comes into contact. After 24 hours I bet you will have no trouble getting the basing material and the miniature off the metal base.

Hi Alan

I too base my armies on steel bases only I use PVA and sand which is even harder than Basetex. Any re-basing I've done has been slow and painful.

I did read somewhere that placing figures in a sealed plastic bag, or Tupperware box, in the freezer enables you to easily remove the figures. It's all to do with the different rates at which the super glue and steel contract thereby weakening the glued joint.

I've never tried this myself but it might be worth a test base or two.

Good luck.

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Martin Stephenson
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They make a dissolver that I get at a model railroad shop to cut the super glue. basetex: no clue

Do you actually need to rebase? I find find most rules work with most basing schemes, even if you have to use markers sometimes. Rebasing should be a last resort.

What do you mean, the steel base won't bend?

Take two pair of pliers, the base will bend just fine. I've bent pennies and steel washers in half with pliers in each hand.

Personally any game that REQUIRES me to rebase my figures doesn't even get consideration. That being said, most games play fine without rebasing IMHO.

Damon.

I recommend against rebasing. Better to change rules slightly so the bases you have already will work.

Or buy a new army with new bases!

You can get basetex off by standing the figures in a tray of water for 24 hours. This also works well for removing wood or card bases.

Rebasing makes sense if you:
*intend to play against opponents who base according to the rules (you didn't mention if this would be a solo project)
*you really prefer the look of the basing scheme in the book to the FoG basing scheme.

Re-basing can be a real pain, but if either or both of the above outweighs the pain of doing it. If you don't care about the look, and you are just doing this yourself, you would be able to do as Martin says and adapt the rules to your basing.

Have you tried Bloody Barons yet? If not, it might be a good idea to try them to see if you like them before going through the effort of re-basing.

Cheers,
Timotheous

Collect enough mini's for two armies, then you never need rebase!

Leave it; steel bases and superglue are not to be trifled with! Better to sell and start afresh.

I base everything on steel and I am part way through rebasing an army. You just need to exercise some care. I cut away the filler I've used in place of basetex then as soon as I've got a cast edge of a base visible I work a knife edge in. With a little pressure you can crack the glue join and then pull the figure away. You then then easily trim away any excess basing material that stays stuck to the model. I've always been able to recover the steel bases for future use.

Earlier this year I rebased 204 25mm ECW cavalry. There were no breakages. I was able to recover the all bases.

I've never rebased.

Regards,

J. P. Kelly

Never fun, a bit like flagellation but you come out purer on the other side. :) The key is committing as you have to get it done at one shot. If you stop somewhere in the middle of the project it languishes with the rest of the pile.

For stubborn super glue on steel, 30 minutes in the freezer makes the glue very brittle and easy to crack off with a little bend or twist of the base.

Good luck.

DM

Thanks for the advice guys. I just want to use these figures. I based them up for FoG when it looked like it was going to be the new "big thing". Now nobody plays it here because the general opinion is that it's boring and fiddly. That doesn't bother me, I found the game dull too but I don't see the point in the army sitting in a box and not being used.

I want to play a set of rules that is specific to the period. A Coat of Steel look nice but there's lots of counters and cards so it isn't really suitable to set up and put away on a club night where time is limited. Tree of Battles would mean rebasing so I gain nothing there. Hail Caesar aren't specific to WOTR and rulebooks that are over 100 pages long simply bore me. I can't be bothered. Impetus are fun but not period specific. We do play Peter Pig rules at our club and enjoy them but I would certainly want to give Bloody Barons a good read through and play a few test combats before rebasing. I could use the figures as they are but a thin line of longbowmen in front of an even thinner line of billmen looks wrong. The PP method of using square bases bulks the formation out and looks much better.

Ironically they will be getting one of their very rare run outs on the 9th of September when we are using DBM to refight Flodden as it's the 500th anniversary of the battle. (The livery jackets will be the wrong colours but on this occasion so what?) Perhaps even more ironically I won't be using them, I'm going to be one of the Scots commanders, better to be a foreigner than fight for a Tudor!

Have you considered using 2 bases as a 40mm square base?

I'm with Lion. Steel is the easiest in the world to rebase. Two sets of pliers to opposite corners, bend, pop.

Have you considered using 2 bases as a 40mm square base?

Ha! I got a stifle for my last posting. You do kind of wonder about stifles don't you. It hasn't affected me one jot, I couldn't care less but in the future I may post that vital bit of info that he's been looking for and he won't see it. What's the point? Unless somebody is grossly offensive when of course you don't want to read that kind of stuff, who does it affect? Only the stifler. It doesn't seem very sensible to me.

Anyway, yes I did consider it but then I'm using 6 or 8 figures to do the job of 3 or 4 if I double up on bases. I am very tempted to rebase but I can't do anything until we fight our Flodden game so that'll give me time to give Bloody Barons a closer look. My concern with dipping the figures in anything is that Basetex is partly green paint and I don't want to give their legs a green wash. Freezing them may be the way to go, I think getting the Basetex off would be the major hurdle.

Thanks again for the input.

As FOG-basing is compatible with DBA, Impetus and some other games, and bases can easily be squared, I would definitely not rebase.

If you go that route, good luck. I hope it pays off for you.

BB plays perfectly well with a 40mm stand. Your main problem with BB will be identifying the captain stand which BB requires to be distinctive, preferably with a standard bearer.

Don't rebase – buy and paint two new armies with the BB basing. 8)

Seriously, I have no idea about difficulty in getting figs off steel bases with basetex, but an army on WRG bases is likely to be an asset even if you never play FoG again.

If you are the only one collecting, then dont rebase. Most of the time basing is not that important.

How much difference is there in basing schemes? If the new scheme is slightly larger, just make a sabot for them.

If you never get stifles, you are not working at posting very much. So easy to iritate folks on here sometimes. I dont stifle and dont worry about picking them up. i dont believe a single person I like talking to on here has stifled me. The rest? Who cares/

owen

" is extremely unlikely to be played again"

You realize that, about 48 hours after the last figure is rebased, the club will discover a new set of great rules that uses the same basing as FoG?

don't rebase.

1. they are currently based for the vast majority of 15mm scale rules – and this basing is likely to continue to be used for the 'major new competition' sets that follow.

2. its more fun to paint a new army than it is to rebase an old one

and 3

they are only 15mm scale, how hard will it be to do the same army again in a new base convention anyway. 28mm maybe, but in 15's? just paint more, its fun.

I agree – don't rebase. FOG/DBM base sizes are pretty standard and as others have said you can always modify the rules slightly if they call for other sized bases.
The Tree of Battles uses the same basing convention and they are free:
link
Simon

Yeah, leave 'em be. Do base sizes really matter that much, I mean how often during a game do you have to refer to a rule regarding the size of the thing the figures are standing on?

I have no horse in this race, but rebasing sounds like dull busywork.

I'd leave them as they are. The FoG basing works with many other rules sets, and I doubt Bloody Barons is that fussy about basing.
I've found that it's easier to use multi-based figures for rules that expect single basing (just mark casualties), than it is to use single based figures for rules that expect multi-basing (they always fall off sabot bases).

I'd leave them as they are. The FoG basing works with many other rules sets, and I doubt Bloody Barons is that fussy about basing.
I've found that it's easier to use multi-based figures for rules that expect single basing (just mark casualties), than it is to use single based figures for rules that expect multi-basing (they always fall off sabot bases).

I'd never rebase 15mm, too fiddly. In fact I wouldn't play a set of rules that couldnt use DBM standard bases.

In 28mm I've rebased my DBM cavalry to the "25mm frontage" for SAGA, now done it as standard as the horses of a lot of 28mm figs are just too big for the old DBM standard.

I also rebased some DBM LI/LC stuff as I pulled some figueres to use in SAGA, put them on round metal bases and made new 60mm frontage magnetic bases they can sit on for bigger games

I also rebased all my HI to 20mm frontage (gave me more stands – bonus :-) )

Thanks for the responses guys.

I decided not to rebase. What swung it was the current basing being pretty much a standard size or an easily multipliable fraction of base sizes for other rules. For instance putting four billmen bases together in a 2 x 2 arrangement makes a correct sized Impetus base. It also does seem like a lot of work and it's supposed to be a hobby, not a job.

I haven't given up on Bloody Barons though. I may give it a go in 6mm. That would give me WOTR armies in three different scales but you can never have too much stuff for this period. DBM basing would work for BB but as I said earlier it wouldn't look right IMO.

Unfortunately it's sometimes a necessity. for example if you change clubs and they use different rules….

It's all a bit of a chore and often a struggle but worth it in the end.

I've found that the trick is to do the whole lot at once!

Darrell.

Darrell Hindley Figure Painter:
darrellhindley.co.uk
Just Add Water II Blog (Painting etc):
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La Journee Blog (Hundred Years War):
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Gewalthaufen Blog (Late 15th Cebtury Blog):
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