Confession time. I have been very lax at painting and basing for almost two years. Plenty of thinking, converting, green-stuffing and so on, but sod-all by way of concrete results.
The problem is that I've long been rethinking how to base my figures, so I've dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied, lost my way and ... *cough* ... sorry, too many musicals on christmas telly.
Anyway, my figure size of choice is 15mm and the rules set of choice is from the Piquet stable. So far so good, and I've no intention of walking away from that. But one day (probably after I retire and move!) I might find opponents, and then the basing could be a bit restrictive - not to say the extreme reaction mentioning Piquet can have. Basically I want to have a bit of flexibility. Comments about having one's cake and eating it are unhelpful, by the way.
Piquet's DoB2 suggests a 3cm base width, with three foot figures to a base, but it's pretty flexible on this, as long you're being consistent within and between armies. Then there's the rules sets that use individual basing - TSATF, SC and SP for example, where three to a base would be a pain - I hate casualty caps. And ME is pretty fixed on 4cm bases.
I'm therefore rethinking basing, and leaning towards 2 foot figures on a 20mm frontage. This would allow me to use each base as equivalent to a 25/28mm figure for rules that work with individual basing. A 10-"figure" unit certainly LOOKS more impressive like this. As an aside, TSATF works well like this when using the Fastoso variant of 8 "figures" per unit. And 2 x 20mm would fit with the 40mm frontage that seems quite common.
So I'm working towards using 40mm base frontages as standard, with 4 infantry figures per base (or 2 x 2 if using 20mm bases), or 2 mounted or 1 gun on that frontage. The foot will be more fiddly to move, but I can maybe think up some decent movement bases to make this easier.
Of course that means a ⅓ increase in figures per infantry unit, so I might still change my mind as I start painting.
Heigh-ho.
Oh, and a Merry Christmas all!
