As with the other Mark above (of who's gaming I am the greatest fan), I base my infantry on US Pennies. These are about 19mm in diameter, so about the same total area (for spacing between figures) that one might get from a 25mm / 1-inch rectangular strip, although covering a more narrow frontage.
I most often use ODGW's Mein Panzer for my ruleset. I have also done games in recent (or not-so-recent) years with JagdPanzer 2nd Edition rules. Both rulesets primarily use infantry based as squads of 8 – 12 men.
I know more about Mein Panzer, so I will restrict my comments to follow are more specific to these rules. You can chose for yourself how you base your figures, but the basic stand will represent a squad. There are also "crew" or "half-squad" sized stands for specific purposes, such as HMG crews, command stands, etc. So you want a way to base both full squads and half-squads. But how you do that is up to you. I use 4 figures to represent a full standard squad. I use 2 figures to represent a half squad. Easy enough.
But that's all since I started using Mein Panzer rules. I've used half a dozen other rulesets in the past, and tried nearly as many approaches to basing my infantry.
I still have some infantry based on rectangular card stock stands. My continental French infantry are based that way. Fortunately I based them 4 to a stand, or 2 to a stand for heavy weapons / support units. At the time I put that force together I was using rules that called for fire-team basing (half squads), so the basing was two 4-man stands and a 2-man stand per squad. But that just means I have twice as many rifle squad units as I need for my French infantry company, and having more than I need is no great burden. (See my 6mm Recent Work thread for the refurb'ing I did on some of my extra French infantry stands.)
Here is a pic of one of my French rifle platoons at game time (some years ago). There are 3 rifle squads and a half-squad command stand occupying this woodline, along with a more recently-based 25mm AT gun.
They are covering the withdrawal of the rest of the company from a village, where they have been ousted by a coordinated infantry-and-armor attack by Italian forces. The Italian force was built more recently, and their infantry are based on pennies.
So the rectangles work perfectly well for me, and mix just fine with other bases under the Mein Panzer rules.
Mein Panzer is my favorite ruleset. Infantry and armor mix in these rules better than any other rules I've played. In other rulesets I've found that infantry plays at a much slower pace than armor, incentivizing players to ignore infantry in favor of vehicles. Not so with these rules.
I find that games flow very well when each player runs about one re-enforced company, which depending on the nation and the specific re-enforcements comes to about 18 to 25 stands. Gamers who are quite familiar with the rules might manage 30 stands or more, so could get up to perhaps 2 companies. The rules scale up to larger games quite gracefully, as the turn mechanism is very productive for multiple players per side, keeping everyone involved all the time. For me a 2 player game is two re-enforced companies squaring off, while I can put together battalion-sized and larger games by assembling a group of gamers.
All just my own observations. Your tankage may vary.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
