A recurring question that appears on many forums for wargames rules is ‘what sort of basing convention is required to play these rules’. My favourite game, Never Mind The Bill Hooks, has no requirements for a particular type of basing. You can pretty much do whatever you prefer with your troops; square bases, round bases, 20mm, 25mm, Single figure basing, multiple figure basing, it’s up to the player. That said, the game is designed to account for casualty removal on a figure by figure basis. You don’t have to do this – you can use dice or some other method of accounting for casualties but removing the figures from units does clearly indicate how that unit is fairing in the game. For example, it is quickly apparent which unit requires a morale test at the end of a turn if half of it’s figures have been removed from play!
There is one other piece of basing that I think helps in the game – Movement trays. They allow you to keep your units separate from each other, facilitate easy movement of units in the game and help to define a units space on the table. I really like them!
In a new project, I have recently decided to add bespoke ‘crews’ to all of my Medieval Boats for my Never Mind The Boat Hooks games. Driven by my OCD tendencies, I wanted my troops to blend in with the ships decks, rather than have landscaped grass and flowered bases! The original attraction of ‘Boat Hooks’ was that we could use our WOTR troops for both games but seeing my heavily flowered and tufted bases on a ships deck was slightly irritating for me. I also felt that smaller bases would be better for the limited space on the ships decks and in the fighting tops. So, I first mounted the figures on 15mm round bases but then decided that the bases needed some extra weight to keep the figures standing up and so resorted to sticking the figures straight onto 15mm metal washers.
I then decided that it would be useful if I could use my fighting boat crews on land…..as if I needed more troops. Well, I could use them on land if they were on movement trays. So I sent to Warbases for some movement trays with 16mm round cut outs but asked them to make the trays the same size as if they were holding 25mm rounds. The reason for the extra size was to allow me to ‘landscape’ the trays so that the plain bases of the troops would be less obvious.
So, in picture format, here’s how I made the movement trays and how they look!
I actually have 60 crew that are now able to fight on land and with another 48 or so to do, I will have a rather formidable army that is able to muster both for land and sea battles.
I hope that the above is helpful to anyone thinking about basing. In the meantime,
Happy Modelling!