Based on what i have seen on the net i would say that around one third or fourth of the people base their vehicles.
In the club i play usually with we only have bases on vehicles that really need it due to fragility (FW or 3d printed), for stability (some Walkers and Skimmers, even though i personally still have my Stompas without bases as they are plastic so they fall a lot less than what it would seem they should be doing), or in those few cases where we consider it looks good (Eldar and Tau tanks with round bases (we think that rectangles look particularly awful on tanks)) but we always try that the base does not stick out of the miniature, to keep things small and Epic.
From a game stand point we are against it mostly because is a pain having to mount units on top of the bases of the adversary vehicles just to get to CC, that's why most of the times is the vehicle the one that sticks out of the base, even if just a little.
I keep my miniatures in foam so i do not have issues with protecting them and i do not need of magnets, but that's for now.
I am collecting those plastic boxes where screws and the like come in as they have the perfect height for most GW miniatures an some other companies ones (they are too low for Vanguard ones) and I value highly reducing the space they use so i can transport them around easily (i go everywhere walking). Foam will protect them at the sides, but at the lid i cannot use it so i was planning on using magnets, and that could change my approach on bases too.
I was also thinking of using transparent acrylic crystal like Brumbauer did, as it gives the unit a base i can customize and it is hard to see it so it does not impact the visuals. As a bonus is one less thing to paint.
http://brumbaer.de/images/epic/knights/Knights002.jpgjimmyzimms wrote:
Do I measure from the weapon barrel on my baneblade? Ok sure then what if it's modeled turned to the left then? So instead we use the center front between the tracks? Great but my vindicators have elevation on the z axis so that makes wonkiness as they're diagonal to the plane of the table. and etc and etc
I think we solved around here that issue well by measuring and checking if each weapon can see from any point of the model for all of its weapons at once, or if the unit can be seen, not counting weapons, wings, antennas and the like. That way we save time by measuring only once and that kind of issues you write about.
We also measure from any part of the base on INF units and not from the guy with the heavy weapon, for the same reasons.
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jimmyzimms wrote:
[game design rant]
Using a base helped push the point that this isn't WYSIWYG but a game token, no different functionally from using a cardboard chit would be. It's just pretty one but no more important than a chit for gameplay. edit: I eventually ended up doing all my EA testing using butcher paper and paper proxies eventually because models don't matter in the end
Being all engineers at MS, pushing the abstraction style of play even further, somethign that started with area terrain conventions from EUK events, into using standard sized bases and the base itself as the demarcation for the abstract concept of a "unit" being in a general area of a battlefield, spoke to our brains. I mean I can at least applaud 2nd/NetEpic/and now ID for attempting to make the game play in a literalist style where the range of the bolters carried by marines are physically in scale with the model (problem in those games came then with titan and artillery which in all honesty should just be range = infinity, but they at least gave lip service to being cogent)
That being said, when I have played with "literalists" I have 0 issues using TLOS and the models themselves. Just I feel this is a place where JJ got it wrong from a design stand point.
Interesting point. I do not think it is that necessary as most models being used are quite bulky but it is something to consider. Almost anything that speeds up games is welcome.
Maybe would be interesting to promote a standardization of bases, now that 3d printing is throwing the little standardization we had completely out of the window, with each person with its own bases and scale in miniatures (i have been seeing this last two years several persons with 40x40 bases for infantry and from 5 to 11mm scale printed miniatures).
IJW Wartrader wrote:
*As a minor tangent, Dave is entirely correct that the EA default if you don't agree on something else is that you measure from model to model, but this includes measuring to individual infantry models on bases and is very much something to discuss during the five minute warm-up. For what it's worth, I've never come across anyone who wants to measure to the nearest infantry model instead of their bases, and if vehicles are based I find it more consistent to use their bases too.
In practical terms the trade-off is much like it is for infantry on different size bases - you can spread the formation out a bit further if vehicles are on bases, but at the cost of being less able to manoeuvre through terrain gaps and occasionally struggling to get as many units into base contact or into firefight range.
Or having to use more movement for going around corners, having it easier going back to the Blitz, having a bigger effective ZOC area, having it harder to withdraw further enough from the enemy, or having more issues at putting lots at 10-15 range for FF or clipping, specially if the adversary is smart and has limited approaching room with support formations. I know of people where the bases spread around half a cm out of the LV-AV so that tends to be more noticeable, as those five millimeters usually mean the unit cover double the area.
It doesn't pose an advantage but changes how the units are used. It's just different.
About the measuring, to not complicate things we measure from the base on INF, Dreadnoughts and Titans (those huge bases) units and from the model on the rest not counting weapons, wings, antennas and the like.