Infantry basing

[jefferysl]

I've just finished my first 6mm infantry company, and am not entirely satisfied with the results. I'm playing armor skirmish, with a squad being represented by 5 figures on a 1"x1.5"(40mm x 25mm) base. Here are my concerns:

1) The bases are too large. They look great "diorama" wise, but will they restrict manuever unrealisticly, especially in an urban fight? Has anyone used this size base for this "armor skirmish" scale?

2) I used metal wargaming bases. Once again, they look great, but I've found them difficult to pick up because they're so thin. I can just see some guy picking up a squad by grasping my fragile little 6mm figures. Any solutions?

3) How do you mark your units? In my scale, I'd rarely go beyond a battalion of infantry on the table, so I'd mark the units using military phonetic spelling, i.e. "ABLE 1/1" would be "A Company, 1st platoon, 1st Squad" for my Americans. What about German or UK designations/ phonetics? I know for instance that the letter "D" was "Dora" for the German military phonetic spelling…would that be appropriate? or did the Germans not use phonetic letters for company designations? any suggestions? I also saw an interesting technique used by a guy who uses micro armor for ASL. He used some kind of magnetic lable that was 2 sided. One side was marked for full strength, the other for a depleted squad.

It always seems that, when I start something like this, the #@%!!! "good idea fairy" comes around. The minis look great, and I'm really not looking forward to re-basing them, but based on feedback, will make the decision one way or the other.

[Mk 1]

You are likely to find many approaches to basing infantry among the members here. So you will get to chose from many good ideas.

I suggest taking a look through the "Show us yer stuff" thread, and the "AARs" thread, as a starter. You'll see lots of good approaches.

You don't mention what the ground scale is in your rules. Most "armor skirmish" level rules (1:1 unit scale for vehicles, 1:squad or 1:fireteam unit scale for infantry) use a ground scale of 1:1000 or 1:2000. This can also be presented as (approximately) 1in = 25yds or 1in = 50yds in the rules.

If you are using 1:1000 rules, your infantry squad of 8-10 guys is occupying an area 40yds wide by 25 yds deep. That's not too bad, except in close terrain. But with 1:2000 scale rules your occupying an area 80 yards wide with one squad. That seems excessive to me. Makes it pretty hard to give a battalion a 750-1000yd frontage.

I have chosen to base my figures on pennies. This places the squad in a circle of about 20yds diameter. Here, for example, is a WW2 Italian infantry company:


I have found pennies to be very robust. They are heavy, so they stay put on the table. They are readily available, and cheap (I get 100 for a dollar). They are a little small for 5 figures (I do have some five-figure mounts), but fine for 4.

They are easy to pick-up, although folks (myself included) will still pick them up by the figures as often as not. This is one reason I like GHQ's new infantry so much better than the other major US maker. I have a fair bit of the other guy's stuff (from before GHQ's new individual infantry came on the market), and I don't think I've ever played, nor even just taken them out to look at them, withoug crushing a few figures off of their stands. Just too bloody fragile for me.

I think it is Will (ComOpsCntr on this forum) who has a very clever technique of putting small nails or tacks on his bases to provide a peg as a grip for ham-fisted gamers (like me) to use to pick them up. You should check out some of his posts for pics.

I don't mark unit details on my infantry anymore. Used to in years gone by. Sometimes on the top, sometimes on the bottoms. With pennies, you can buy round white self-adhering labels at your office supplies store, which you can put any info you want onto and paste onto the bottoms of the pennies.

When I was putting unit IDs on, I did much like you, except without spelling out the alphabet. So Abel 1/1 for you would be A1-1 for me. One problem I found with this was the added burden of research into the small unit TOEs of every nation I wanted to game. For example, some countries will designate A, B, C companies in each battalion, others will run through Z, and so have only one A company in the regiment. Others designate the companies numerically, rather than by alphas. 1st company, etc. That level of detail is hard to dig up.

One issue I discoverd when marking unit identifiers on the tops of the stands ... some gamers will specifically target your command squads in the hope of causing your morale throws to fail. That's not an entirely illegitimate tactic, as in war troops are very much encouraged to target enemy commanders, and some armies were particularly prone to dislocation when units lost their COs. So, as with real armies in wars, I don't want to advertise exactly who is where in the hierarchy.

Another problem was the lesser flexibility. Build a company ... fine. But always use every piece in that company only as a part of that company? Restricts my gaming. Often, my scenarios don't give each side full TOEs. You might get a dimished battalion, with three companies each with only two platoons and a total of 5-8 surviving squads in one of my games. I can build that from a full-scale company plus a couple extras. But not if they're all marked as Alpha coy units.

So now I just identify the HQ / command units. In the pic you can just make out a platoon leader squad, by the three slashes painted onto the rear edge of the base. Its pretty low visiblity stuff. I can see it, but the other guy has to see it well enough, on enough stands, to figure out how to decipher my code.

Just my $ 0.02 worth. Not suggesting my methods are perfect, but they seem to work for me.

[Timothy OConnor]

You're right, they're probably too big. Like you I had the ?!@$?!?! bright idea to use larger bases initially. I started with 1.25" x 1".

Ended up with 1" x 1" for infantry since I base my vehicles on 1" x what-ever-looks-best bases (eg most modern tanks look good on 1" wide x 1.5" deep bases.) The consistent frontage looks better, especially when a stand of infantry is operating in close cooperation with a vehicle stand.

And like you I did enjoy the look of the wider bases. At the time I was doing a fire team of 4-5 figures per base. So, while the rules operated at the stand level (individual figures were not counted) the "figure ratio" was 1:1. Thus a squad had 2 stands and a platoon about 7-9 (1 platoon command stand, 6 fire teams, and maybe a couple of platoon M240 stands.)

Then I changed to 1 stand = 2-4 squads or about 20-40 men. All that mattered was that a player could recognize what a stand represented which GHQ's poses make very easy to do. So, now I do 4 figures per 1" x 1" stand and vary the type based on the type of platoon represented. Pure rifles get 4x riflemen, platoons with SAWs and GPMGs replace a rifleman with a prone MG figure, and platoons with integral AT weapons replace a rifleman with a kneeling AT figure (eg RPG, ATGM, etc.).

Some stands that represent special platoons only get three figures (eg a MANPAD stand gets 1 rifleman and 2 SAM figures while a mortar stand gets 1 RATELO and 2 mortarmen.)

At a distance older eyes and even kids can figure what a stand represents by seeing the very distinct GHQ poses (at 6mm it's just impossible to tell if a firearm is an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, or an LMG).

For basing material I use Litko's 3mm thick wooden bases and custom order them with rounded corners. They look great and the thicker base means rifles and figures don't get bent as much. A very good friend of mine bases his on pennies and I noticed that they often get bent during a wargame since it's almost impossible to pick up the penny w/o touching the figures.

[Ducknucks]

On a similar line (kinda..) can some one give me an idea as to how to fit Pz Grenadiers in to half tracks. Is it one stand in each half track? the picture on this web site looks like it has seated infanty in it as well as action posed.

[kilroy]

I found these neat little plastic counting discs that have a little metal ring around them, at a local school supply store. They aren’t as heavy as pennies, but they are only slightly larger, and if you can find a blank sheet of magnetic rubber. (You know, the crap they make refrigerator magnets, and those business signs you see slapped on the side of pickup trucks all the time.) if you cut the sheets down to the size of the inside of a GHQ Tank transporter case, each of your infantry stands will stay in place during storage and transport, instead of rattling around like dice. Also, the infantry secure / glue better to the plastic than they do to pennies. And you can fit a couple companies in each box.

[Mickel]

can some one give me an idea as to how to fit Pz Grenadiers in to half tracks

A little careful use of a sharp knife is often needed. Knee-cap a few of them and chop off some toes, then they should go in ok. It's a tight squeeze sometimes.

I use roughly 3/4"x1" for five lads and 5/8" x 3/4" for four. So much easier in metric...