Saturday 6 October 2018

Re-basing update

I've decided to make a slight change to the overall look of my recent re-basing and I've re-done the name plates and information pin plates; I've toned them down.

This entailed completely painting out the white plates with a dark brown Dulux emulsion undercoat. Then I  'based over' the information pin plate so that it blended with the rest of the base and finally re-painted the pins with gloss black enamel. I printed new name plates on good quality brown paper (almost thin card), that I purchased from my local artist suppliers, and glued these onto the name plate.



BEFORE

AFTER


And there you have it. I'm now completely happy with the way the new basing looks.

15 comments:

Ray Rousell said...

That looks a lot better James. It blends in so much more.

Peter Douglas said...

I confess that I wou,d have left them in the white. But having seen the end effort I will agree that the brown fits into the basing much better. I use unit labels in the back of my bases too, and so far have left them white....

Those two units look lovely BTW!

Der Alte Fritz said...

The extra work has paid off in a better looking base. Thumbs up.

Jim

caveadsum1471 said...

I thought the name tags were fine before but they're better now!
Best Iain

William Stewart said...

They look great however I have to admit that I was slightly blinded by the exquisite kilt work.

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Much better.. not so stark...

Independentwargamesgroup said...

Im surprised at you James, a man of your talents could have least hand painted the regimental names, perhaps in a lovely copper plate.Wonderful, as usual.

Phil said...

What an impressive improvement!

pancerni said...

Blends in very nice. Lots of fixin' to do now!

TamsinP said...

They do blend in nicely now James :)

Ratmaul said...

Low visibility name plates. Beautiful.
Also the white ones were beautiful, just a different philosophy... ;)
To keep the low visibility approach, I'd paint the pins brown!

GarethG said...

They look much better than before, but you'll still have the coloured rings as markers. Why not make up some smoke bursts or casualties or similar to blend in better with the figures andthe battle?

Tony Miles said...

That looks great now, especially the pin section.

JAMES ROACH said...

Thanks, guys.

GarethG, we do use markers that 'blend' for casualties, disorder, shaken etc.

The thing it's harder to make markers for are command group ID, first fire, unit quality (we generally have four different qualities for each class of troops - e.g. trained regulars can be battle weary -1, ready 0, eager +1 or determined +2), and command quality (we have five, from abysmal -2 to superior +2).

The pin system was devised to rid my games of the roster sheet, where all this information was previously stored. I never use them now because everything you need to know, for every single unit and command element, is immediately visible when you look at a unit on the table. The amount of time it saves in play is amazing, and the number of things forgotten in play is next to none. The amount of time (one finger typist), paper and ink it saves me when setting up games is also quite substantial.

Gonsalvo said...

I have yo agree, that is one bit of base reworking that was really worth it!