Category: Basing

It’s all about that base

Here’s the thing: when I decided to collect a (VERY) OOP army, I wanted it to look right when I eventually got done with it.

No, not just “look right” – I wanted anyone seeing my army to think “Blimey! That’s a cracking job he’s done there!”

Now, I’m fully prepared to accept that my painting skills may not be up to the task but that’s the only concession that I’m prepared to make.

Some of the things that had been on my mind as I acquired more and more minis were:

  1. Buying minis through Facebook and eBay usually meant that they didn’t come with bases;
  2. When they did come with a base, sometimes the default diagonal slot on the base wasn’t necessarily going to be the best to position or show off the mini, particularly in a unit with lots of sticky-out bits everywhere making positioning and flexibility all-important; and
  3. There were several pre-slotta minis that were really important – The Dwarf With No Name and the GW Mail Order Chaos Dwarf, for examples – and I wanted these guys to look like they ‘belonged’ which meant being similarly based to the rest of the unit they were in.

After some intensive Google research I came up with the following:

  1. Need lots of bases? Big Cherry bases on Amazon are every bit as good as the original ones and, at the time of writing, 40 20mm x 20mm bases cost £2.49 with free postage (Prime)
  2. Need different slots in your bases? Tiny Worlds have 20 20mm x 20mm bases for £3.99 and you can choose between no slot, diagonal slot or horizontal slot
  3. Basing pre-slotta minis? I shopped around a bit and while some other companies had options that were in the right ballpark, it was the bases from Proxie Models that I went for. You can see from the photo below that they’re a fairly good match. The bases have a plastic lip with a depressed centre to fit the metal bases – once filled in and painted, those pre-slottas will be almost indistinguishable from their slotted friends! Downside: Proxie Models are US-based but I was prepared to splash out on the postage to get this right. They sell 48 20mm x 20mm bases for $4.50 and also have 40mm x 40mm versions.

I hope this helps if you’re basing your minis.

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