Hi, Thats a lovely collection of 40mm's you have there and as a fellow 40mm collector I'd like to share my thoughts on basing as it seems we are both thinking along similar lines.
Norm has posted a link to my blog should you care to take a look at it, although it's currently mostly a painting focused blog as I build up my 40mm Peninsular Napoleonics. I recently passed the 500 painted figures mark and have a lot more planned.
First thing I notice is that we both use the same size basing of 20mm frontage x 25mm deep for infantry, I think my cavalry bases are probably also the same as yours. A couple of months back I decided to change my basing convention to standard 120mm frontages, for foot, cavalry and guns. My infantry are based as follows:
Command base of 12 figures: 120mm frontage x 50mm deep, two ranks of 6 figures.
+ two 'half bases' each of 6 figures, 60mm frontage x 50mm deep.
I currently have 15 battalions of 24 figures based as above.
My cavalry units are just 8 figures on two x 120mm frontage bases, 4 per base.
Skirmish units are 12 to 14 figures on two bases, each 120mm frontage x 70mm deep per base.
Artillery are on 120mm frontage x 100mm deep per gun and 5 crew, two guns per battery although this might change!
It might actually be easier to add an image here to illustrate if you dont mind me doing so? Will save a lot of typing
Like you I use thick bases as they are heavy figures and I want to reduce the handling as much as possible. I think your's are more aesthetically pleasing than mine!
Rules: well I'm still searching, but my plan is for simple fast play rules, I doubt I will ever get all my figures on the table together but I'm thinking along the lines of a random small force generator. I don't mind admitting that I'm very much inspired by 'Sharpe' and I live in Spain so how could I resist the Peninsular War?
Cheers,
Lee. .