The grand rebasing project
3d printing opened new horizons for me in the hobby, one of them has to do with basing.
Back in 2019 when I re-entered the hobby and painted my first 15mm miniatures, one important decision I had to make was how to base them.
With only a few minis at hand, I hadn’t considered it, so I went with what I had readily available, which has euro cent coins. I found that they’re sturdy, magnetic and have an adequate size. 1 cent coin is a bit larger than 16mm, whereas 2 cent is almost 19mm. However even these were in short supply. Hence I went with the silly decision of placing smaller figures like dwarves and goblins on 1 cent coins and bigger ones on 2 cents. I’m not going to cover the larger figures as these are decided on a one by one basis. Soon however I run out of coins and going to the local bank for cash didn’t work, as they wouldn’t give out coin rolls anymore.
Furthermore I didn’t have any hobby pliers at the time and was also inexperienced with cutting pewter, so if a mini integral base was larger, I accommodated the base around it instead of shaping it to my needs.
I looked up for washers, but I couldn’t find any without a large hole in the middle. None available around where I live were suitable.
Next I found a good supply of 20mm bases over at eBay, with good prices per piece for plastic round slotted bases and later for 20mm wooden discs that were even cheaper. In the meantime BREXIT hit, and customs for every shipment in EU, so again I had to adapt and overcome the challenges.
Overall this had the following results on my regular sized miniatures:
– For Sci Fi miniatures I have 20mm plastic bases and 20mm wooden discs.
– For Fantasy short folk I have 1 cent coins and 15mm MDF bases.
– For Fantasy regular folk I have 2 cent coins and 20mm wooden discs.
I was never too happy with this scheme, and it’s one of the main reasons I haven’t proceeded with painting my ww2 theme miniatures as I could not decide on basing.
On retrospect, 20mm is too wide for 15mm miniatures as they take too much space, especially on my 2’x2′ table, essentially having larger area of control and looking oversized against terrain. 15mm feels okay, but the integral base would either be bigger and not fit, or too tall, giving a pitchers mound that looked out of place. The different base sizes between figures would accentuate the problems during playing.
Here comes 3d printing. In my prints the bases were 18-15mm when I designed them and added them (see the ones from dutchmogul) or 15mm when integrated and scaled down as in Brite Minis. The other day I test printed a few OpenLock terrain tiles scaled down to 60%, and saw that the 2×2 tile was exactly 30mm. Meaning it fit 4 15mm based figures like the Brite Minis perfectly as a 2×2 tile should. Since the OpenLock Clip worked fine scaled down, I was intrigued, and want to proceed with a terrain tile project.
However I must solve basing first, which once more reared its ugly head.
20mm bases would just not work, as the miniatures would occupy too much space on the tiles and gaming would feel even more awkward.
I went with the decision to do rebasing and go with 15mm bases for all applicable figures.
Main concerns: different glue materials on current bases (PVA, UHU, Speckle, Superglue), different bases materials (Metal, Plastic, MDF, Wood), different textures, different size of integral bases.
I decided to begin with my Sci Fi miniatures which are fewer in number.
Designed a 15mm round lipped base to eliminate pitchers mound, and a variant with a cut off lip to accommodate longer oval integral bases.
Used different techniques to remove the miniatures from the previous base, depending on base material. For plastic, I just twisted the base off with pliers, for wood I soaked the base in shallow water, and then went with pliers twist off.
Then I filed the bottom of the integral base to clean it up, and superglued the miniatures to the new bases. When they wouldn’t fit, I would snap off parts of the integral base if possible, with hobby clippers.
This was overall successful. I have only a few miniatures that wouldn’t fit and decided not to rebase them at all (Snakemen, Cnidocytes, Drones) some that I haven’t decided how to rebase (long minis like the dogs) and some that I removed from the bases and found out afterwards that they didn’t fit (Beotans).
Then I had to decide how to texture the bases with the least effort. Two different attempts of DIY texture paste were unsuccessful as there was intense shrinking and I had to reapply two or three times. What finally worked was a mix of painted acrylic speckle with gravel sand, which I dipped in sand briefly afterwards to give a nice top texture. All the sci fi minis are done now, and perhaps some touch up and spots of grass are due in the future.
Another benefit of the process is that the new sizes fit into movement trays and takes less space as it can use storage slots. Which solves my concerns for ww2 basing (individual vs multiples) and saves storage space.
Doing this is a big project, but I definitely believe is worth it. It will open up new avenues in terrain, storage and skirmish gaming.
Tackling Fantasy minis is going to be harder due to more difficult materials to work with. The first test that I did for rebasing from metal bases was successful. I heated the printers heat bed to 80C and let them stay there for a few minis. Once hot, I dislodged the minis easily.
Next up I had to decide on a faster way to texture the bases again. I’m working on a two step process. After superglue of the mini to the base, apply PVA carefully inside the base, dip on basing large grain sand, let dry for a minute or two, add PVA and apply static grass.
This seems to work okay so far.
I’ll dip into rebasing my fantasy minis (which are like double in number than my sci fi minis). My main concerns are a few resin minis that are glued on metal, and also the 15mm MDF based minis, which I may not rebase at all – haven’t decided yet.
I’ll keep you posted.
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
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