Basing the Brits

I've been basing up my Falklands era Brits, I suspect that they will mainly get used for playing AK47 however, so I'm doing them to fit in with my other AK stuff and I'd like to keep the option open to use them on my grassy/muddyhexon terrain as well. As they are 15s I'll put them on my usual basing material of thick artists mounting board. Usual method:

• Calculate how many bases required of which sizes (I have various templates to test with different sized vehicles).
• Cut bases out of card.
• Stick figures onto bases with UHU or Bostik. I leave guns and vehicles off at this stage.
• Stick bits of magnabase on the rear edge, normally just a single 8mmx8mm or 10mmx10mm square. This allows for use with games which use steel markers etc. I often also write unit IDs on here.
• Paint base in base colour, in this case a chocolate brown, using a cheap match pot of emulsion from Wickes.
• Stick vehicles onto the painted base (but not guns).
• Liberally apply diluted PVA and flock. For these I'll just use Woodland Scenics mixed turf so it matches my other AK stuff, for other figs I'd use sand as a base and work up from there.
• Once dry, stick guns down. I always do these last.
• Finish the edges of the bases with black marker pen.
• Put strips of magnabase on the bottom of the bases.

Once it is all dry they can go in their storage box. Job done.

The trickiest thing is organising the figures, these were a bit of a job lot and as I'm not sure which rules I'll want to use these with, they could be anything from 1:1 skirmish up to 1 base = 1 company type stuff. I went for:

• normal rifle groups with two figures abreast
• command stands with one rifleman and one commander type figure (can double up as rifle stands)
• HQ stands with an officer and a radio op standing diagonally
• light support weapons (GPMGs, LAW etc) with two figs in column if appropriate poses
• individually based leader/observer types to use as FOs etc
• heavy weapons with a couple of crew and one weapon, I usually give MGs and mortars two crew and artillery three

all on 30mm bases. That should be reasonable flexible and looks OK. One problem I did have with these figs was that some of the MJ ones are enormous, more like 20mm, whereas other ones are a more normal size. The QRF figs similarly varied in size but were generally smaller, so mixing them on bases was a bit problematic.