Cross-shaped bases?

[Daeothar]

OK, I'm sure many have pondered on the same conundrum over the years, and I'm interested to see what solutions have cropped up over time.

I try to build all of my 28mm terrain at a scale of 1:50, for ease of conversion, a relative good fit with 1:48 model kits (and even 1:43 diecasts sometimes) and the scale compares well with miniatures from 28mm to 32mm.

But the one problem I have with this, is that realistically scaled buildings will always have too narrow doors and hallways compared to miniatures, as most minis are based on 25mm wide bases.

And to fit those through a door, it would have to be about 1,8m wide (irl), which obviously will never look right.

One option is to reduce the width of the bases but, considering stability, for a 28mm miniature a base should really not be less than 20mm wide, which converts to about 1,25m, and then I'm not even considering some of the more dynamic poses, some of which are hard to fit on a 25mm base as is.

Better, and almost passable, but a standard door is about 80 to 90cm wide, so such a base will still be too wide.

So this got me thinking; why should bases be round or square? I understand the desire to tart up the base of a miniature (I obviously do this myself as well), but why do we do that? Probably because of the large piece of real estate underneath the mini, which we would like to blend into the terrain as much as possible, by texturing it the same as the table we play on.

Now, there are quite a few people out there who forego this process by using transparent bases. These can be relatively thin, and with proper handling can look great, blending into the terrain.

But they're still round (or square? I have only seen them in the circular variety so far), and take up the same surface area that plastic, MDF, resin or metal bases do.

And this brings me to my solution (if you will), which only exists in my head so far: why not have some cross-shaped, transparent bases? Most miniatures are bipedal, so their feet will always fit on two opposing arms of the cross, with the other two providing stability.

With lasercutting being as common as it is these days, an acrylic solution can be made very cheap. Or, even better; a transparent resin cast variety, which will have the advantage that the sides can be sloped, easing the transition into the terrain even more.

Such a solution greatly reduces the surface covered by bases, and such a base could easily fit a miniature in a door opening, if movement makes it end up there (rotate the miniature slightly if it has to be exactly in the door opening so the legs of the base are slightly diagonal relative to the door opening)

The building can remain true to scale (which is important to OCD me), without any compromise to playability, and miniatures are still stably based.

Sounds like a win-win to me, but I'd like to hear about any other solutions out there, be they in use or purely theoretical.

[Westfalia Chris]

Honestly, I do not truly see the necessity to have doors wide enough to accommodate physical movement through them. I did subscribe to this aesthetic back when I primarily played 40k and its ilk, but these days, I'm perfectly happy to abstract in that the building is more or less "in scale" (yadda yadda 28mm isn't a scale and all that), and let figures move through in game terms, but not physically.

I think it is a novel solution, though, and I would use it on multi-legged robots or monsters. I occasionally used multiple "standard" bases (one per foot) in the past for those, or no base at all, but that was always a bit tricky when it came to ranges (and gaming with people who couldn't get their head around the "measure from head to head" paradigm).

I might see a bit of a problem with rules that stipulate base contact, mind (mainly if folks aren't reasonably relaxed about it).

[FionaWhite]

It'd help rooting out any vampires within one's gaming circle, for sure.

[Daeothar]

Thanks Chris.

Maybe I should have specified that when I say terrain and gaming, I mean modern, near-future, apocalyptic and/or scifi skirmish games, not games like 40K, Bolt Action or Kings of War.

In fact, the whole concept originated from the idea that I wanted to (correctly) model my own house, with miniatures representing myself and my gaming buddies inside, as the zombicalypse erupted outside.

The measuring and/or base-to-base issue is one to think about, yes. Although understandably, this type of game is hardly competative. Also, there are systems out there that measure from the center of the base, so that is always an option...

It'd help rooting out any vampires within one's gaming circle, for sure.

And there's that, of course!

[Daeothar]

As someone said above - the models do not have to actually physically move through the doors.

While that is true, due to movement restrictions, it can happen (and it regularly does) that minis end up standing in the door opening, or very close to it, which are the situations I was referring to, and which could be made easier by basing minis in such a way that they can actually stand where they're supposed to.

Wargaming does not readily lend itself to consistent scale modelling. I suppose it can, but you are creating a lot of unnecessary headaches for yourself.

I have a different opinion on that; it has become accepted throughout the hobby's history that buildings and trees are necessarily smaller than the miniature's scale would require. Mostly, I think this is due to the fact that in days of yore, most games were large battles, as opposed to the more prevalent skirmish games of today.

And in those large battles, it was not necessary (or even possible, ruleswise) for miniatures to move in and out of buildings; they were just there as obstacles, cover and to give flavour to the table. A reference cadre, so it was readily identifiable where and when the battle on the table was taking place.

But the terrain I'm thinking of, is intereactive; doors open and close, different floors provide different fields of fire, etc. In those cases, terrain needs to be large enough to make the interaction possible.

And skirmish games in particular lend themselves really well for gaming on accurately proportioned terrain. I had an interesting discussion on this topic at Crisis last year with one of the Warmill guys. It turns out that, for use with (for instance) Spectre: Operations, they are expanding a whole range of realistically scaled buildings with functional interiors (although they readily admit that they compromised on the door proportions; they make them wide enough to move 20mm bases through). So certainly, there is a market for this kind of terrain.

It may not be for everybody though, so if you are happy with your shed-sized, resin manorhouse, by all means; stick with them. Nothing wrong with that.

But of course there are those of us who actually enjoy tackling issues such as these (with me being an obvious example). Which is one reason why I try to think outside of the box, because the currenly accepted way of going about our games will eventually change too, just as it has many times already, and perhaps, in this way, we'll stumble on an actually useful innovation.

Remember how sceptical slottabases were received in some circles? They would never work, were too expensive, not visually pleasing etc. But look at how basing looked in/after the nineties...

I would recommend you stick with the wargamer's adage: If it looks good then it is good.
The choice is yours.

And to that I say that for me, it does not only have to look good, it has to interact well too...

[robh]

But the terrain I'm thinking of, is intereactive; doors open and close, different floors provide different fields of fire, etc. In those cases, terrain needs to be large enough to make the interaction possible

We tried this as an experiment in the past with dungeon games: old packing crate white polystyrene cut to the shapes and dimensions of Basic D&D maps and painted grey.
It didn't work well  

Problems we found were:
Figure inflexibility. Irrespective of shape, size (or even existence) of the base you cannot squeeze a figure into a gap between a wall and a cupboard or table or stand behind a door etc even though in "reality" a person would be able to get there. So you end up saying "well he is hiding in that gap" and abstracting the location, which is exactly what you are trying to avoid doing.

True Line of sight. Unless you can model each character in standing, kneeling and prone poses you end up saying "well he is kneeling behind the sofa" and abstracting the relationship between the figure and the scenics, which is exactly what you are trying to avoid doing.

Space (the finite frontier). How big a table have you got? Real buildings in 1/48th scale  are big and while you may be able to fit one or two rooms on your gaming table if the action moves elsewhere you have to knock down the scenery and rebuild for the new location.

In the end it was this latter problem that stopped us from pursuing the idea, it just took too long to get everything reset and it destroyed the flow of the game.

It is something that we decided could be a viable option if playing skirmish games in 15mm or would actually work well in 6mm as you could set up a game session worth of play area on the table. Or you use a whole series of pre set tables around a hall and move the players not the scenery.

But we did not bother looking at the idea again.

[Connectamabob]

I agree with the thrust of RobH's post above. I think this is a problem that won't have a satisfying solution as long as your criteria for satisfaction is "always ever more realism".

Regardless of basing, most figures wouldn't fit in a realistic doorway anyway because of their pose. To say nothing of protruding hats or weapons (doubly so with sci-fi and fantasy, where weapons are often comically oversized). Some of the flatter sculpts might allow it... if you turn them sideways, which in turn will just have you gritting your teeth in any system where directional facing is a factor.

I think you've basically got 3 options:
1) Use realistic doors, and don't worry about figures "popping" from one side to the other without physically going through.
2) Use unrealistic "barn doors".
3) Use realistic doors, and limit you figure choices to figures that are only ever posed in such a way as they can fit through realistic doors. Or give up on figures and resort to cutouts.

I used to get really caught up in this stuff too, since I came to this hobby from a scale modelling background instead of a non-miniature gaming background. Had to learn the hard way repeatedly that there's too many such issues which are fundamentally irreconcilable in a gaming context. Eventually I had to admit my entire philosophical approach was maybe wrong.

These days I feel strongly that you gotta embrace the "stage theater" approach. Everything on the table is symbol, not a literal depiction. This is an enormous open-ended field of creative challenges it its own right (in many ways more creatively and intellectually challenging than strict realism), so it's a huge mistake to think you'd be losing something or "giving up" by switching.

[nic-e]

I was thinking you could essentially put a small tab of clear plastic, needn't be thick, on each foot of the miniature. one going frontwards, one going backwards. Just enough to keep the miniature standing but too little to make any space impact.

[DS615]

I was thinking you could essentially put a small tab of clear plastic, needn't be thick, on each foot of the miniature. one going frontwards, one going backwards. Just enough to keep the miniature standing but too little to make any space impact.

This would work very well for games played on mostly level surfaces, would look good, and would be easy to do.

  The cross shaped (plus shaped) bases would also work, and is really a very good idea.  If you did a lot of gaming on uneven surfaces, you might have issues when placed at certain angles where it has no support, but for mostly flat stuff it would be no issue.
  It's a good solution, I suggest you try it with a few figures.  I can't imagine any real issue with it, but there could be something I'm missing.

For the door sizes, it doesn't matter what my opinion on how you build your terrain is, especially since you didn't ask anyone for opinions about it. 
 

[Daeothar]

Cheers guys. Glad to hear my idea is not universally panned.

nic-e; I like your take on this; it would mean even less surface area taken up by the base, but some experimentation would be required to see how stable this option would be.

I reckon that it would have to be a flexible solution, in that each miniature would require a different sizing and positioning due to posing. But I like it.

...For the door sizes, it doesn't matter what my opinion on how you build your terrain is, especially since you didn't ask anyone for opinions about it...

Yeah well, you say that...

In the end we all have to go with which we like ourselves, no matter what other people think. Me, I'm just trying to find a solution to game in realistically scaled interior areas with 28mm miniatures, becasue that's what I like.

Obviously, there are limits to what can be achieved in this scale, as laid out before. But smaller scales (15mm, 10mm for instance) are obviously far worse in this respect, just as 43mm or larger would offer more possibilites.

But I went with 28mm for exactly the same reasons people seem to cling to 25mm bases; force of habit and the amounts already invested in this scale (80% of my miniatures are (roughly) 28mm).

Back to the bases though: I think I will try a couple, just to see if the concept is workable (enough). Eventually, I'd like to cast them in transparent resin, but the very best solution would obviously be transparent plastic, because of ease of use (glueing), price and to avoid yellowing over time.

However, I think that's wishful thinking; costs of a mould would be prohibitive, and the concept would have to be widely popular and demand would have to be sufficient for anyone to invest in the making of an actual mould, so let's not get carried away

First, I suppose a couple of non-transparent trial bases would be in order...

[Connectamabob]

Could have a look at laser cut acrylic. There are services out there now that will do that fairly cheap. Just need some familiarity with vector drawing, but for something simple like this, I'll bet one could go from zero experience to done in a single evening. With some tweaking, a shape like that seems like it could be made to tessellate so you could get a huge number of bases from a single sheet.

[Daeothar]

Yup; that would be a pretty good starting point as well. And there would be a very shallow learning curve, as I'm already familiar with 3D drawing. Also, there are quite a number of creative small businesses offering laser cutting services around here, and I've got contacts at at least one of them, so that would be covered too.

But first, I'll have to do a real life prototype or two I reckon...

[arloid]

Yup; that would be a pretty good starting point as well. And there would be a very shallow learning curve, as I'm already familiar with 3D drawing. Also, there are quite a number of creative small businesses offering laser cutting services around here, and I've got contacts at at least one of them, so that would be covered too.

But first, I'll have to do a real life prototype or two I reckon...

Only laser cutting requires 2d Vector drawing skills and that my friend is a whole other type of business. Technically you can use a 3d drawing program, but I don't know what program you're using, but for laser cutting with a 3d drawing program you need some build-in support or CAM capabilities.

[Connectamabob]

This isn't advanced 2D vector drawing. It's just making a very simple shape and maybe tessellating it across a sheet. For a project like this you can literally go from knowing nothing about vector drawing to having a usable file in one evening.

[Daeothar]

That's what I thought, and meant when I mentioned the software I'm already familiar with.

Also, and this just came to mind; I suppose Adobe Illustrator would be just the program to use, wouldn't it? And I also already know my way around that one...