About basing terrain.

Oriax · Post by **Oriax** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 3:50 am

My goal is to build a Normandy/Dutch countryside with fields, boccage, a river, a town and some houses along the roads.
I am basing my countryside houses on bases with room for a tree, fence and such, and have roads as individual pieces. But I was wondering about how to base the city-houses, with or without roads? What would be most practical, and how do you do it?
By the way, how broad do you think the roads should be? I havenâ€™t based any vehicles yet as I donâ€™t have decided on a game system, although I am leaning toward force on force, so the basing will just be something practical.

Thanks for your input, tomorrow when I have better light Iâ€™ll show you some houses!

Thomaso827 · Post by **Thomaso827** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:04 am

I base buildings in block sections, generally 2 or 3 to a wooden base that leaves a small bit of room around the buildings. The area in front and back is big enough to put a unit in (my primary game is Piquet Point of Attack: Blitzkrieg, so a unit is 3 or 4 bases of infantry depending on if I'm using squad, platoon or battalion level play). I just started working on Middle Eastern buildings for Force On Force gaming, but so far I dont see any problem using the European blocks I have already done for the Cold War module. As far as streets go, main streets should be large enough for two tanks to pass by each other, while narrow streets probably just a little wider than a tank, and alleys just large enough for a troop base to squeeze through. I plan to use 15x20mm bases for 3-4 figure fire teams, so an alley needs to be around 15mm wide. I use JR Miniatures road sections for 6mm scale, but I suspect most roads for the scale will be about the same width. With the block sections, I can place a village of 2-3 bases, a town of 4-6 or a city of 10 on the table pretty easily, and using the other game scales from the Piquet system, I can change this to only 3 or 4 for a city if I'm using a battalion level game. I think these areas would work for most game systems. Distances will look a little large for scale, but you need the space to move the bases around in. For basing my tanks, I use 20x30mm Litko bases, so main roads need to be around 40mm wide.

Tom

Oriax · Post by **Oriax** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:08 am

Thanks, very quick and very useful answer!

Oriax · Post by **Oriax** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 6:07 pm

Here are some of the houses, not finished, but you will get a general idÃ©a of how I am thinking about the bases of the countryside houses.

Sorry for the quality, but the sun decided to call in sick today.

Bigger picture on my blog.
Thanks for watching.

Thomaso827 · Post by **Thomaso827** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 8:48 pm

Those look great.

Tom

6mmwargaming · Post by **6mmwargaming** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 8:13 am

Very nice looking buildings and bases. I'm trying to decide on building bases at the moment. I currently use square or rectanguar bases but I want to move away from that to something else like trapezoids and such so I can have roads in towns in different angles. And also still allow them to work together to build up a town/city. Roads have to be wide enough for you to fit your fingers/bases and thats priobably wider than real life!

I've also been thinking about the base edges and I'm trying more to integrate things ilike walls, hedges and building edges into the base edges so there is no extra bits around the outside of the walls, buildings etc (if that makes sense). eg I prefer to have the wall flush with the base edge so it is part of the base edge.

Cheers
Kieran