Experimenting with multi-basing

[Dolmot]

Hello. I'd like to discuss one of my latest projects. The story is that I have the Arkham Horror boardgame and I thought it would be fun to have some proper miniatures for it. Coincidentally RAFM had its spring sale and...you can guess the outcome.

Now, I've given a lot of thought to basing when there's no single set of rules to dictate it. In some cases I believe the miniatures look best with fairly minimal basing. On the other hand, it would be nice to have the AH stats readily available. Then again, the monsters shouldn't be carrying their stats all the time if I ever decide to use them in other games so here's the idea:

First, buy some of those fancy 30mm (or larger) display-style bases. Next, buy a pile of steel & magnetic base bottoms from Litko. Then glue the steel bit into the base's recess. Finally put the mini on the magnetic base bottom. Here's what you get:



Note 1: The 7/8 inch base bottom is a tad too small so I added some putty. Litko has an option for custom sizes but I went for stock ones for speed, price and simply testing it.

Note 2: I bought some of their extra-thin plywood bases, intending to use those and then magnetic bottoms under them. However, it would have become slightly too thick to my liking and the magnetic bottom seems to stay in shape well enough, especially with the added sand.

Right, then it was time to paint them and try the statline thing:



Note 3: Hand-painted block letters don't look that good to me so I tried a rough imitation of Lovecraft's own handwriting.

There you go. Thin bases which can be used by themselves, but they also fit perfectly on 30mm display bases and those good old 25mm round ones. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture but the match is very good as the top of a 25mm base is more like 23mm when you take the slight slope into account. 23mm is also the size of a 30mm base's recess. Similar matches can be found in larger sizes. I'll return into that as the project advances.

How's the grip? This way it's easy. The plastic base doesn't weigh much, after all.


This way it holds, but only barely.


Fortunately it's not a natural move to grab this kind of bases directly. In fact, it's next to impossible. Should be good enough for gentle boardgaming.

Now, what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? No idea? Also, I'd like to hear your opinions concerning the statlines. Each monster has a name, three stats, a homeworld symbol and occasionally some special rules (most likely marked as single letter abbreviations - I'm not going to write them completely!) . Here I've used the same colours as in the game counters but that's not the only option. It could work using just a single colour as each stat has different symbols after it. What would look good and still remain playable? Different colours on black? (Off)white on black? Black on offwhite? Here's a quick 'shop job to illustrate that idea:


Whew, that's a lot of babble. I'll shut up now. Questions and comments are welcome. More monsters should be coming soonish.

Oh...sorry if you were browsing at work and your boss doesn't approve male monster nudity...

[Sendak]

First, like your paint!

Practical, artistic, versatile, and I'd call it 'winner'.

Thanks for spreading good ideas around the old parlour!

[blackstone]

Nice idea and nice photos! I never use slotta bases myself but I do give all my minis a magnetic base. If I played a game system that demanded a certain size slotta/base I'd do something like this too.

[Voogla]

great idea putting the stats on the bases, I always wanted to use actual minis with my Arkham Horror copy, but had a dual system in mind, drawing the monster tokens with the rules and that using the minis on the board, using the tokens as reference for the stats. Only thing is that you still have to draw the monsters somehow...
Still good idea, and you are probably miles ahead with painting, I have not even started yet