"Time to put an end to sabot bases?" Topic

We all have those little things that bug us in the hobby and I have one about sabot bases. So rather than just rant, I offer my straightforward solution. I'm sure for plenty of people it's a lot of fuss about nothing, but it's my fuss, so I'll own it!

There's a more detailed blog post all about it here: Time to put an end to sabot bases

The bottom layer doesn't have to be 3mm. Mine have a 2.5mm top layer to match my other bases and a thin (less than 0.5mm) bottom layer. Some are thin plywood, some are plastic, others are a thin single layer of wood.

That's a clever yet simple idea that does seem to improve the look by quite a bit.

Does look better. But the work to bevel the bases takes away from painting figures. So not sure I would bother.

You haven't put an end to them, you've properly implemented them. Love the bevelled edges – I rarely consider that.

Everything is a trade-off: with thicker base edges, you have something relatively easy to grip, as opposed to picking them up by pinching the figures between your fingers. With beveled edges, you will find it more challenging to pick them up by the base edges, unless your tabletop ground surface is soft, and it will allow your fingers to dig into it, to surround the thinner base edges.

Thanks for sharing your approach. It's a neat way to thin down the edges, but it is also a trade-off. This hobby is all about trade-off's…

Back in the 1990's, I used thin styrene sheets for my miniatures bases, about 1mm thick, maybe less. I learned that I could use a black Sharpie Marker to edge the bases, and that made them visually disappear on the tabletop (the edges, not the bases). The thin plastic bases were OK, but they were very challenging to pick up by the edges when I had multiple stands in edge-to-edge formations.

I later switched to laser-cut MDF/Plywood bases, around 3 mm thick: easier to pick up; blackening the edges is very obvious -- they do NOT disappear at all; they are more affordable, more precise, much more durable, and they never crack/snap off. I recently glued a number of styrene bases to MDF bases because I like the thicker edges more than I like the thinner, more fragile bases (I hate re-basing, but this seemed the lesser evil, overall, even though these figures now have extra-thick bases -- removing the plastic figures from their styrene bases would have severely damaged the figures, leading them to the trash bin).

Trade-off's, Baby! Pick your battles, pick your bases/style. LOL! Cheers!

I have only used sabot bases on my Zulu Wars armies. I was inspired by link .

I used card as the base so the overall height of the base was 3.5mm maybe.

I have problems getting the figure base out of the sabot base hole. The fit is too tight but anything looser looks bad. So I quit using sabots.

I later switched to laser-cut MDF/Plywood bases, around 3 mm thick: easier to pick up;

Same here, for 6mm figures i tend to use 3mm MDF. For 15mm or 10mm figures fixed to the base 2mm MDF works well as you can pick up the base by the figure.

I'd agree with advocate. These are still sabot bases--just very nicely done sabot bases, which does make a difference.

This thread suppried me as a "nasty Modernist". I have just made some sabot bases to fit some 1.144 scale Automatic grenade lancher models to make them 4 man not three.
I could get the underside of the base down to 0.3mm using an FDM printer and the "thick bit" had to be 1mm to match the prints, too me that is too thick but its easy to slope the eddges of the AGL model but beveling is easy to do but barely neccessary at this vevel.

Now I am not a painter I just use a bit of colour but I do want my figures too look like that are on the battlefield.
The thought of my models walking around on smaller versions of Nelsons Column is not for me, worse than unpainted figures! Not sure why folk are so adveres to touching figures, it worked all those years ago with Airfis platics and still works. A small price at least for me to have a credible battlefield not a sculpture park *grin".

Seriously though, think what you REALLY want for your bases and then get them printed, you could get the ultimate base that way.

Me I vary base shape a bit for things like command stands to help long range identoifuication of Modern 1/144 figures. The new technology is there exploit it.

I'm done with rebasing. Never again. All my 15's are DBX standard. The 28's are on individual steel stands and the sabot is magnetic sign material. You need to look very closely to notice that they are singles.
I have some 28's that are on round 20mm washers, intended for skirmish games but I have a landscaped sabot for 4 that is about 60mm wide, so DBX there they go.

I've used sabot bases. But, just up to the point where it becomes inconvenient. Then, disembark.

I also use magnetic bases and figs. Loads of various magnetic sheets available. Plus you can arrange figs anyway you want. I also remove figs for loses and leave casualty figs at the spot where the loss occurred. Looks more like a battlefield to me. And I don't need casualty markers on the bases.