"25mm or 20mm square basing for 28mm? " Topic

I am aware of the discussions of 25mm round vs 30mm basing for skirmish gaming, but what about 20mm square vs 25mm square, especially for fantasy?

For me, the problem of using 20mm square bases is that there are numerous 28mm figures that require the bigger 25mm square bases, and if you want to rank up your figures the 20mm square bases are often too tight, even if the figures are okay on their own. It therefore just seems easier to use 25mm square bases for all of them.

Ever since I started using some of the same figs in SBH, KoW, and Of Gods and Mortals, I've been moving towards squares for much of my fantasy figs. I use both sizes in my 28mm bad guy KoW army which uses a lot of battle masters miniatures. For my archers I use 20mm as they rank up pretty well. For the Chaos warriors however I have to use 25mm as they are really big figures. For both however, I have to alternate the miniatures side to side (archers) or front to back (warriors) to get them to rank up properly.

On the other hand, I'm collecting the minis to make a good guy army, but those are older 25/28 metal minis and might all fit on 20mm.

If forced to choose, for current sized 28's, I'd probably go with a 25mm. Luckily with KoW, SBH and OGaM, base size is largely irrelevant.

With a lot of the larger figures out there, I feel that 20mm is a little small. Even with 25mm square bases (what I use) I still have an edge of a figure base sticking off the edge occasionally.

I base my guys on 25mm circular bases. Works fine for skirmish. I use Litko trays for ranked movement. Here is an example from a game last year:

I use 20mm bases for smaller creatures, such as Kobolds, and Goblins. For larger creatures, such as Orcs, and Hobgoblins, I use 25mm bases. For larger yet creatures, I go with 50mm squares, and larger rectangles, as needed. I let the creature/model dictate base size.

I discovered, years ago, that base size really does have an impact. I originally had Goblins on 25mm bases, instead of 20mm, as dictated by my chosen, mass battles rules set (2nd Ed. BattleSystem), and I finally discovered that this allowed fewer Goblins to line up against larger Human foes. Since Goblins fight en masse, this robbed them of their advantage of fighting in hordes, as they could only engage the Humans 1-to-1, when they should have engaged the Humans at around 5-to-4, or even 3-to-2. This made the Goblins much weaker than they should have been. YMMV. Cheers!

I recall that picture. That looks an awful lot like my chaos knights and vampire about to stomp on your skeletons.

Nice tray though!

I was also thinking of putting goblins and dwarves and the like on 20mm bases. I want square bases for mass battles but useable for skirmish.