Rethinking Multiple Figure Bases for CoC

I have long been bothered by the way I have based my multi-figure bases for WWII skirmish wargaming. I initially started by basing the 5 man crew on a large base with the gun. I would base the Junior Leader if there was one on a different base and keep it close to the larger base. Using this method I could create little dioramas that look nice on the table.

This was ok but it was always a challenge in respect to casualties as I could not remove the dead men. I have been using little beads but that is a bit of a hassle as I have to re-glue the beads on after each game if there were indeed casualties. I also had to repaint and build multiple stands with essentially the same figures over and over again for different anti-tank and anti-infantry guns although I knew at the most I would be fielding 2 guns for any one game, a waste of both money and time. There was also the problem with storage.

Recently, I decided to base the guns and the figures individually but to be honest this looks shite and after doing it once I was all done! For ideas I always look to two Australian gamer's blogs. Both the Tactical Painter and John Bond's Wargaming Stuff are just chock full of ideas. I am not sure on which of the 2 websites, it might have been both, that I saw the idea of using rare earth magnets and metal bases to overcome these problems.

 Recently, I have been replacing my British and German forces with metal AB miniatures. When I started playing CoC I painted up some PSC figures to test the waters as would would say. These figures are great and have seen many battles but are looking a little ragged and some teams were multi-based and the whole crowd used coins as bases. One thing 15 years of gaming has taught me, is that it is best to use metal bases. I am continously transporting my troops and metal bases with magnetised transport cases are by far the safest.

I thought I would start with some figures from my Belgian force. I like playing this force but I had a lot of problems with it. First the Early War Miniature figures themselves were quite poor; very few variations and very poorly cast. I then added insult to injury by doing a poor job of basing them on washers that I thought were fero-magnetic which proved not to be! I knew I would end up re-basing the whole lot so why not start with them.

I used a 60x80mm metal base, first step was to glue the figures onto their new bases, 20mm for figures and 30mm for guns. I then lined them up on the bases, marked them out and glued on the magnets.

I am notorious for measuring once and then cutting, but I did check things out!

The bases were then terrained. I used a combination of Wood Putty and fine sand. Once try I scrapped off the area over the magnets and then painted the base and drybrushed it.

Once this was done, I put the figures in place and then added some flock. Doing it this way served to unify the base. As you can see I added a small clump of red flowers to the JL stand. So I can now easily remove a figure (this will be demonstrated below with the MMG stand) and the base still looks OK. Here we a 47mm FRC M1931 gun, but if I want to field my 60mm FRC L/50 it will be quite easy to do. I have a cunning plan on how to mark CI on the JL but that will be a different post.

I believe this is going to work out well as I really only have to do 4-5 bases with the rare earth magnets in total for all my non-winter forces. I have to rebase the individual figures and guns but so it goes. But I really never need more than this many bases for any one game. I will move on with this for my Belgian, British and German armies. I am not sure if I will ever get to rebasing my Jungle themed Japanese and USMC (after all they have yet to see the battlefield) but I hope to follow up with my Winter themed Germans, Soviets, Finns and Americans (I suspect I am kidding myself here).

So I was quite pleased with the result so I moved on to some British troops. Here we have a slightly smaller base (70x45mm) as the MMG is permanently glued to the base with one figure and there is no JL.

Here I have permamently fixed the gun and 1 figure to the base with 4 figures that can be removed.

MMG with 1 casualty.

I have also been working on some markers to denote SL/JL leader status in CoC but I will save it for my next post.