"Radical basing idea: black wire" Topic

What if, instead of basing on a washer/slotta you simply glued an X of stiff black wire to the bottom of a figure? The wire would hold it upright, but you r figure would always match the terrain!

Obviously best with figures with no cast-on plinth.

Will experiment this week and report back…

Very interesting, never heard of that before, but would not a plastic transparent base do the same thing?

The clear plastic bases I've seen tend to be shiny, so are still pretty noticeable.

Try a flat spiral…it might be more stable with less snagging on terrain features.

I have had success with thick clear plastic packaging and a 1" dia hole punch. There are glues that don't frost plastic, but if using superglue coating the base with future makes "frosting" all but disappear.

I've tried the wire thing with but not quite the same. I soldered up a square of wire then soldered two diagonal cross braces. This frame was painted light green. The four figures were then glued on, one at each corner. As I use a faux fur grass mat the frame was hidden.

However, it is the system I use for my trees. These are made from wire and I leave some at the base as 'roots'. This means my trees don't have visible bases and can be adjusted by bending the wire roots to enable the trees to remain naturally upright on slopes.

I thought the wire could work for figures but thought it wasn't very strong and was fiddly to move. I felt the traditional basing I was using worked better and being steel it sat down into the fur better.

Another idea if you played small skirmish games on foam terrain tiles would be to fit a stainless steel pin into a drilled out leg. Then you could simply push the figure/pin into the terrain.

To be honest although the ideas sound good I actually think good basing set's the figures off better and is more practical.

Very early prepainted Greenwood and Ball cavalry figures had a wire soldered to the soles of the feet so that they could be freestanding when 'dismounted'.

Also try green wire (e.g., florist's wire). It *might* blend in better (except in the desert).

- Ix

Have seen this done before, works ok but snags on everything and the wire gets bent from storage etc. Once its bent, especially the stiffer wire, it never goes back to shape and looks like hell.

Rabbit