Any reason

[Gilvan Blight]

Is there any reason, GW rules wise for tournaments, play in their stores, or whatever, that you could not base your minis upside down?

By this I mean the base upside down, with the wide part at the top, the small at the bottom?

The reason I ask is twofold:

1) you get a bit more room for the base and you have a \'pit\' to start with. This gives you some interesting basing options for making less flat \'terrain\'

2) the minis would fit in a display base much better and cleaner. I always find it disapointing when you see a cool diorama with removable figures and all of the minis have that 2mm gap that separates them from the scenery.

 

[porkaborg]

maybe becouse the mini gets a bigger base and when its moves it moves 2 mm more heh dont know .. probably becouse of those kind of those little things ... we are speaking about GW here lol

 

[Gilvan Blight]

It wouldn\'t move more and base to base contact would be identical.

The only difference is that the bases would meet a bit higher up.

 

[OrkyDave]

I personally cannot see any problem with it, and as you say, the point of contact would be exactly the same- its not as if you are gaining any advantage! (unless of course your movement trays are stupidly big (which I have seen in the past!)

And I totally agree about the diorama point bought up.

I would check with a GW staff member or manager though, as these are probably the best bet.

 

[vincegamer]

technically, base to base contact would not be the same. The narrowest part of your base would contact the widest part of his base (and vice versa) which would mean you would have to move that 1/8 inch closer to actually make contact.

of course that\'s not likely to have any effect on a game, so it\'s really just an aesthetics issue. Know anyone who\'s put the bases upside down? I am not thinking it would look very good (except, as you say, when in a tray).

 

[Ogrebane]

You dont have to use thier bases at all. You can sscratch build regiment bases so I dont see why u would have to use them in the configuration that they use them in.

As long as the right size base is used I wouldnt see a problem.

 

[lono]

As long as the frontage of the unit remained identical in size I don\'t see why it would be a problem. Having just conducted a complex and in depth scientific analysis though (I stuck a mini in an upside down base!) I can state in no uncertain terms that it looks odd.

 

[Gilvan Blight]

I hadn\'t thought about the fact that any oponenets bases would be right side up. I guess there\'s a tiny bit of an issue there. Though there is the, what is it 1/4\" rule or something like that. Where as long a charge is withing a 1/4\" it is assumed to connect. I would think charging is the only time this could be an issue.

Looking at the fact you can make your own bases (which I didn\'t think you could do), a better idea then may be to just make/buy square bases, without a sloped side. This would eliminate the \'diorama gap\', keep the frontage the same, and eliminat the \'odd\' look.

As for anyone actually doing it. Not that I know of, at one point I had stuck a mini in a base upside down to paint it, as the base was easier to hold upside down. I swaped it over when actually attaching the base to the mini.

The question just arose from too much free time on a long shift on midnights, and my mind wandering.

Edit: thinking a bit further about it, and just realized they wouldn\'t look odd if moved from their display base to a movement tray. I addition since the movement tray would be holding upside down bases you could add a raised grid to the tray to better hold the minis in place.

 

[Undave]

See the thing is there has never been an official guide as to what size bases must be in either Fantasy or 40k (unless they\'ve put one in the new fantasy rulebook, I only read the important updated bits) So ruleswise you\'re perfectly OK to mount a gnoblar on a 4 foot wide base or have a unit of chaos warriors ballancing on tippytoe on 1/4 inch wide ones. It\'s just assumed that you\'ll use the minis on the bases they come with. A good example is terminators in 40k. The previous metal and plastic versions were mounted on 25mm round bases wheras the new plastics come with 40mm bases. Logic dictates that smaller bases are better because you can\'t fit as many attackers round them but they certainly look better on the big bases. So in answer to your question base \'em on whatever the heck you feel like

 

[lono]

There are specific base sizes for all models in the GW range actually. If you want to game in tournaments you couldn\'t put a Terminator on a 25mm base for example. The rule for 40k is that you can\'t base the models on bases smaller than the ones provided you see, so you could, in theory have a Termy on a 60mm base, but not 25mm. All the different Warhammer stuff must be based on the base sizes that the models are provided on. This is generally a fixed size for each race. Dwarfs, Elves, Empire etc. is 20mm, Chaos, Orcs etc. is 25mm, Ogres are 40mm and so on.

 

[Undave]

But where is it stated though? We searched for ages but couldn\'t find anything. I am genuinely interested if there is a table or something because I\'m taking a load of bikes to a tourny in a week or two and I need to work out what size base to put them on.

 

[lono]

Page 6 of the 40k rulebook, under the header BASES!

\"For models without a base (usually vehicles) use the model\'s hull/main body instead. Games Workshop miniatures are usually supplied with a base and this should be viewed as the minimum size base they can be mounted on - you can mount them on something bigger if you wish, but not something smaller.\"

 

[Undave]

Oh yeah, so it does that\'ll teach me to skim read boring bits. We were looking for some kind of table to say which minis should go with which bases. This still leads to a few discrepancies since the metal deathwing termies are still issued with 25mm bases and jetbike bases are significantly smaller than the model. I think the reason we were looking in the first place was back when I worked for GW a customer asked why marauders were based on 25mm instead of the normal size for humans, 20mm (I think he had a load of the old metal ones). The best we could give him was that they were on larger bases because the chaos warriors had them and it made putting characters in units easier. I suppose it\'s still somewhat down to common sense. Only the most anal of tournament opponents is going to kick up a fuss if your bases are a couple of mm too big

 

[lono]

In 40k I agree, base size isn\'t that much of an issue and I\'m happy to let discrepancies go. Bigger and smaller bases have their own pros and cons. In Warhammer however it could make a massive difference. A unit on 25mm rather than 20mm bases would be vastly different in the game due to the width of its frontage, how many models would get into combat, etc.

If someone brought a Warhammer army to any sort of competitive game and the bases weren\'t the exact size they should be I\'d certainly have an issue with it. If someone brought old school Terminators along on the small bases though I\'d say fair enough, assuming we weren\'t still playing Warhammer.

 

[Ogrebane]

@Undave there was a chart released by GW stating base sizes for minis in fantasy. I also contacted GW and they said that minis must be based on the base provided or next size up (Pegasis came with either 40mm or cav base)

Havent found an official rule for fantasy yet tho