As you'll remember from this post—which briefly chronicled my efforts to work on a gaming project every day—I actually have been working on stuff daily. I haven't really taken any pictures of any of it because it's been a lot of subtle stuff that will bring my Khorne Bloodbound to completion. To be honest, I've mostly only had a chance to sit down and pick at my figures, working on a layer or a color at a time then cleaning my brushes and turning off the ole paint light.
Well recently I decided to bite the bullet, take the plunge, go for broke, and re-base my Warhammer Chaos army onto round bases. Ever since Age of Sigmar came out I've had the idea of doing a Slaaneshi war band that's out in Ulgu (the Realm of Shadow), looking for Slaanesh. The idea would be that I would build up a Slaaneshi war band and chronicle it on this blog through a narrative. Originally the project had me re-buying a lot of the stuff I already had in my Warhammer army, but that's ludicrous; my stuff's already done. The major problem was that they're all on squares, and I believe that models objectively look better on round bases. So I'm committing to having my Chaos models on rounds now that AoS is the new Warhammer.
Here are some pictures of my stuff so far:
I also thought I'd share what guidelines I'm using to re-base my models ('cause there is a method to my madness). Every Warhammer model is supplied with a square base. Because squares of a certain perimeter take up more area than circles of a certain perimeter I've decided to re-base all my figures one up from the bases they were supplied with. Citadel provides a really impressive range of bases, and I figure by using the rounds and ovals that are just slightly bigger than the squares the models came with, I can have a consistent and fair basing pattern.
For example: 20x20mm squares become 25mm rounds; 25x25mm squares become 32mm rounds; 40x40mm squares become 50mm rounds; and 50x50mm squares become 60mm rounds.
Cavalry and chariot bases are a little trickier, but use the same principles. Citadel has a set of oval bases which look great with cavalry on them. 50x25mm cavalry bases become 60x35mm ovals; 75x50mm monstrous cavalry bases become 90x52mm ovals; 100x50mm chariot bases become 105x70mm ovals.
Of course heroes I want to be particularly impressive-looking. To do this, I've decided to one up them from my new basing scheme. Therefore dark elf heroes—for instance—will go on 32mm rounds, and chaos warrior, and beastmen heroes will go on 40mm rounds. The same principle will work for cavalry heroes.
These are not hard-and-fast rules and I've already broken them on a couple occasions: My Lord of Slaanesh is mounted on a 60mm round even though he came with a 50x50mm square and he's a hero, so he should be going on an 80mm round base by my tortured logic. I found this to be too big for the figure and left a lot of empty space around him. In this case I broke my hero rule because he's already rather impressive, what with being on a super-tall daemonic mount and having a tall banner pole.
Also chaos daemons already come with round bases for use in 40k. For these I've decided to just use the rounds and ovals that come with the figures. So for the most part my daemonic infantry will be on 25mm rounds, greater daemons will be on 60mm rounds, and my seekers of Slaanesh will go on those odd 70x25mm ovals.
Anyway, I thought you might be interested in these guidelines for basing in the new Age of Sigmar. I know the rules have confused a lot of people, but we have to get comfortable with the fact that the new game puts a lot of power in our hands. Provided we work within some reasonable guidelines and maintain consistency, I don't think we'll have many problems. Therefore I present my basing guidelines with the intent that they can inspire you to do the same. The spirit of my basing rules is to have an aesthetically pleasing base for the figure, not to gain an unfair advantage by basing my figures to maximize the amount of models I can get into combat, or some other beardy shenanigans.
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