Going forward with my 6mm Flames of War project i needed to think about what i am going to do with all the stuff that i bought. Namely how am i going to base all of them. For me it was pretty clear that i had to base everything up, including vehicles. This was a decision i took thinking at how small the miniatures are and to avoid picking them up all the time.
Flames of War base size is the following:
Small Base: 1 1/4″ x 1″
Medium Base: 2″ x 1 1/4″
Large Base: 2 1/2″ x 2″
By applying to Flames of War the conversion of inches to cm (keeping everything else the same) that meant i needed custom bases. I remembered i had a Forex 2mm thick plate around the house and 5 minutes later i had it on my desk (that serves as a work bench also). I carefully cut some 4 large bases, intending to use them for my tanks.
After cutting them i fitted the tanks and it looked quite good, in my opinion. A few words on cutting them. I only had a cutter knife so i had to carefully mark with a pen the cut line and very carefully cut along it. Needless to say i did mess up a few times so some bases are slightly smaller (by 1mm on a side but at that dimension it shows). I thought about buying a small electrical saw but i was advised against it as Forex is simply plastic so it would melt, not cut. Oh well, cutter knife it is then!
And so it was decided. Getting the guidelines from Flames of War was easy, as was adding my own observations (in bold):
Small base: Command stands, special weapon teams like light mortars, anti-tank rifles and bazookas.
Medium base: Infantry, majority of gun teams including medium mortars (although these face the short end of the base), small vehicles, trucks, light tanks
Large base: Artillery, larger AT guns, heavy mortars, cavalry, medium-large vehicles, medium tanks, heavy tanks
I did some more work on my awesome Panther tanks as you can see bellow. Painting to a tabletop visual quality (maybe a slight worse) took only about 1 hour for all 8 of them. I actually got a small scare on the bases as the first 2 layers of green let out some visible streaks however the 3rd layer was the charm that unified the colors. Also, i used too much paint on some of them. A heavy drybrush would have been more indicated rather then the gallons of paint i dumped on them.
And since these were the first models i finished i went over to the Forces of Flames of War site (the new Battlefront online army builder) and drafted a quick 116th Panzerkompanie. I wanted armored forces because they paint faster and i was not in the mood to start painting 6mm infantry just yet.
Panzerkompanie HQ, 2 Panther G, 375 points
Panther Platoon, 3 Panther G, 560 points
Panther Platoon, 3 Panther G, 560 points
Panzerspah Patrol, 1 Command Sd.kfz.250 + 2 Sd.kfz. 250/9 (2cm), 100 points
Armoured Artillery Battery, Kfz.15 Field car + Kfz. 68 Radio truck + 1 Panzer IV Observation Tank + 3 Wespe, 255 points
Self-Propelled AA Gun Platoon, 3 Armoured Sd.kfz. 7/1 (Quad 2cm), 150 points
Total: 2000 points
And here is the company in all it’s (unfinished) glory:
Next steps are to finish painting all the other vehicles and add a U.S. counterpart so that i can start some games up. Getting to print some nice color 6mm buildings should not prove difficult since there are allot of free models on the internet and it would take only a bit of scaling down to make them workable. Print some forests and a river or two on some nice cardboard and terrain should be covered.
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