Transparent Miniature Bases?

[KONNOC]

Talk to me about transparent miniature bases?  I have been toying with the idea of converting over my sci fi miniatures and was curious what sort of hassle it is.... do the bases themselves scratch easily/noticeably.... can you matt varnish spray the bases to remove the shine, or does that yellow the base etc etc.

[Longstrider]

I've bought a bunch and never wound up using them. There's a game store in Toronto where the owner's used a lot of them to good effect - his advice was basically that you have to be fairly careful with superglue because it can cause fuzzing, but it works easily enough with plastics.

I'm not sure whether I find the effect too much or not - they both look very cool, and it's a fairly simple way to get a good look, but it gets close to the uncanny valley for me. And you have to then be comfortable picking minis up by themselves and not by their base.

[rwwin]

In certain situations I love them.  I used them for both my Sedition Wars and Deadzone minis.

I ordered acrylic  bases from Litko.  I use them straight out of the box without any clear coat.  Longstrider is right about super glue fuzzing the base.  It took a few tries for me to figure it out.  First, the bases have to be super clean.  The oil from your fingerprints is part of what causes the discoloration.  Also, use a super glue gel rather than straight super glue.  For bigger models I would pin the feet.  Just be sure you cut off your pins short enough they won't go all the way through the base.

This is a lousey picture because it only shows the bases end on, but it's the only thing I've got uploaded at the moment:

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/EnforcerRiflemen-Front_zps87cfa47a.jpg

[Rhelyk]

I hope you don't mind a cut & pste form an old discusison on this I had here:

I used to use a lot of clear bases, but stopped and went back to regular bases. I really liked the look of the 1.5mm bases, the thinner the better to make the mirror effect on the edge even harder to notice, later I used the clear hard toploader card sleeves and a circle punch. I had very little issues with frosting, but you get a small bead of glue around the feet, although that is easy to hide with some watered down black ink. The clear acrylic has a lot of pros and cons, most of which are easy to see (HAH!), but I also discovered a few that have made me dislike the bases enough to rebase figs again with traditional basing techniques
 
- it's hard (mostly impossible) to magnetize figs. Not a big deal if you use foam trays, but I like to use metal cookie sheets in a box to store and transport armies. I glue rare earth magnets to the bases and that just doesn't work with clear acrylic. I also have issues with figs popping off the bases unless pinned, and the brittle acrylic can snap if you drop a fig
 
- you can't base the figs until they are fully painted. How badly this issue affects you will vary depending on your painting style, but you can't spray varnish a fig on a clear base or it'll ruin the look and you can't prime them on the base.
 
- the effect is kinda ruined by the rim of the base, which stands out quite a bit, especially on the thicker bases. But again, the thinner bases are more prone to snapping.
 
- the flat bottoms are less stable than a lipped base, and more prone to tipping over on uneven terrain. You also can't place weights under the acrylic bases,  or use strategically placed pewter bits as terrain elements to help balance the figs. I've had a lot more issues with figs tipping over and chipping during play than before.
 
- The bases get dusty and are hard to clean. This one I didn't expect but makes total sense in hindsight. You're gonna get dirt on them over time and you're gonna have to practically windex them to get em properly clean or the effect looks pretty bad, whereas dust on normal bases just looks like weathering.
 
- One HUGE factor to consider: you need to be a strong painter! A decent base adds a lot to a miniature, makes it more interesting, helps set a scene and tell a tale. I used to be a very good painter, but got lazy in the last few years and usually stick to table-top quality paintjobs for most things. A tabletop quality paintjob with a decent sand/flocked base looks fine, especially when you have a whole army. Without a proper base, I found that a table-top quality paintjob looks much worse that the same paintjob on the same figure with a mediocre traditional base. The paintjob just has to do more work to keep everything interesting looking, and I've needed to put a lot more work into each figure only to make the end result look about as good as tabletop did. No more blocking in the colors and slathering it in black or brown wash :/ Gotta highlight the highs and shade the lows
 
Overall, while I loved being able to mix infinity and Star Wars and Reaper and Warhammer and LotR and Deadzone figs altogether or use figs for multiple games, I found clear acrylic to be more problematic than it was worth. I wound up rebasing all my Nomads on the plastic bases from the Sedition Wars boardgame and am quite pleased with the change back to "real" bases. I've also has a blast using cork tile and pigments for my 40k Dark Angels Kill Team.  Using acrylic bases has a lot going for it, just be aware of what you're in for if you decide to use them!

[KONNOC]

Thanks for all the great insight!

rwwin: Are those enforcers on the 3mm thick bases or the 1.5?

[Elbows]

My overwhelming issue...is that whenever I see transparent bases, I notice them immediately and they really stand out (which is counter to the idea that they present).  Particularly the shine on the base if they're not somehow matted.

Without fail the ones I've seen catch light and shine/reflect way too much. 

[robh]

Without fail the ones I've seen catch light and shine/reflect way too much. 

I agree entirely. Especially bad if you happen to be on the side of the table looking towards a window.

[Silent Invader]

Hmm, in the last couple of days I've pinned some minis to fit to clear bases and now I'm not so sure ..... I just might end up over-painting them and adding terrain!

[Elbows]

Do they make any which are like that fancy poster-glass which doesn't reflect/glare?  That could be an option, but most I see are just laser cut acrylic (which burrs the edges as well).

[Creaky]

I have my minis on transparent bases.  But I have a growing collection of those printed battle mats, and use my minis in various dungeon crawl environments represented by tiles, so that drove my decision. It frees me from agonising over 'snow, desert, grass, urban, dungeon...' when it comes to painting, and means that the figures can be used on any of my environments without looking like, say, they have brought their own personal meadow to the middle of a chemical wasteland.

One thing I will say is that they look terrible 'on display'.  On a shelf the clear bases are ugly as sin.  Nor are they ever as nice as a properly modelled base for the correct scenery type.  The trade off is that they look pretty good on any terrain.

Whether or not I'd recommend them to anyone therefore depends on the variety of terrain you play on, whether you intend to add more variety, and if you take more pride in displaying the models VS them being more of a gaming piece.