Sunday 16 December 2018

A slight basing cock up, but recovered!

This week I decided to take the plunge and multi base my 15mm figures for use on the C&C board. having been unable to source magnetic sheet or tape here I went with simple card bases, all cut by hand to a standard 55mm x 40mm with a 10mm black strip painted at the rear to take a printed label. Once I had lightly tacked down 8 line infantry, 4 skirmish infantry and 4 cavalry per base I was quite pleased with things. I say lightly glued down because I might still at some future point go with the magnetic option so did not want anything too permanent before I tried it out in a game. The artillery was based on the narrow front edge with 3 crew standing behind the gun. So far so good.

It had taken a few hours work to get to this stage, I then decided to go one step further and apply flock with the intention of painting the entire base green once fully dry. However, after another couple of hours work doing this and having completed all the bases both French and British I realised that it was a mistake! The flock looked a mess and I knew I should have simply applied a thick coat of green paint, an attempt to paint the flock resulted in a disaster so I left everything to dry overnight and felt pretty disappointed with myself. Returning next day I could see only one way of rescuing things and so spent a couple more hours laboriously removing as much of the flock as I could with a stiff old brush, the intention being now to apply a thick coat of green paint to match the shade of the C&C board. The label at rear will have the base info at a glance, based on the C&C unit stats as shown below.

Back at recovery central I placed the French bases on the C&C board for a few shots to see how things looked. They are a tight fit but will do fine for games on the board and I still intend to make a bigger purpose built board for games that can feature conventional terrain items, to which end I have been painting more of the Battlescale 10mm buildings. I'm getting closer now to what I was looking for when I started this project, and remain inspired by those bloggers working with grids and smaller scale tables and especially by Norm and his fine 'Pinboard' table (link).

Tomorrow I'm off to Leroy Merlin to find a suitably coloured acrylic match pot for all the bases and a game will follow.







I reckon a 70mm hex grid will allow for use of model buildings etc and open up the distance slightly between bases.

Labels at rear will contain unit type, number of blocks represented etc.

10 comments:

  1. Good to see your project is coming together. The units look good.

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  2. It all looks great Lee, I've been doing the same thing myself with 1/72nd plastics. Have a look if you like.

    https://paulwaulysotherwargames.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-grande-armee-invades-russia.html

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    1. Hi Paul, that's excellent, very much what I have in mind eventually! THe figures are very well painted and the board allows use of a few buildings etc, again what I'm looking for. I have added your blog to my list and will follow it. Thanks for the link,
      Lee.

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  3. Nice looking board,Norm does really well on a pin board and of course your figures are excellent!
    Best Iain

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  4. Cheers Iain. I'm still in two minds how far to take this project but I'm enjoying knocking out the figures so I'm happy!

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  5. Hanging on the wall of my dining/wargaming room is a framed, embroidered sampler - it says:

    THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH FLOCK

    I have always obeyed this religiously, as you know...

    Have a great Xmas, Lee

    PS - if you contact Trevor or Paula at Magnetic Displays I think they'll probably ship mag sheet to the moon if you want it.

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    1. Good to hear from you Sir! As for the flock, you will see from the follow up post today I removed them all from the bases and gave the round bases a good coat of paint to try to cover as much as possible of the stuff, so back to where I started and far happier. A Merry Christmas to you and yours too :) Thank you for the link, I will place an order in the New Year.

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