Cabinette Wars

Covert Sabots - Old-School Basing

With my painting desk taken up with figures waiting for their gloss varnish to dry, and no game coming up that needs any prep, I was at a bit of a loose end.  As the figures had been varnished because I had shaved down their bases to better fit my storage trays, I thought why not a quick post on my basing system.

Inspired by CS Grant's 'The Wargame' and Brig Peter Young's rules 'Charge!' I wanted to keep my troops based as single figures.  Needless to say, this makes moving the troops a laborious exercise.  Nowadays, sabots would be the obvious answer to this dilemma, but they were less common 20+ years ago.  Also, I wanted it to look like the figures were single based.

The answer was steel bases exactly the same shape as 8 infantry figures bases and magnets mounted in the base of the figures - see below.

The custom-made steel trays were commissioned from Essex Laser Job Shop Ltd., an expensive indulgence but worth it IMO.  They were sprayed the same colour I use for my toy soldier bases.  I hope you agree they are pretty unobtrusive, or covert, as per the title of this post.

I did get some sample magnets made up, the same size and shape as the figure bases, but if I'd opted to go with these it would have been more an order of magnitude more expensive than the trays.  Also, it turned out that the magnets didn't like sitting adjacent to each other on the trays - just getting samples was a lucky escape.

In the end, the magnets I used were just readily available rear-earth disk-shaped magnets source on Amazon.  To make their fitting easier, I bought Litko ferro-sheet, pill-shaped bases with a pre-cut hole into which the magnets would fit.  The bases were then finished by using Milliput to create a nice rounded shape to the base.  

The infantry bases are 15mm wide and 25mm long, each end being a semi-circle 15mm in diameter.  My cavalry bases are the same width but twice as long.

This means that one cavalry figure has the same footprint as two infantry figures, well almost if you ignore the bit where the two infantry bases touch.  This can be seen here with cavalry figures on some half-sized bases (4 infantry or 2 cavalry as opposed to the standard 8 infantry or 4 cavalry) which used for flexibility and casualty removal.

As can be seen I use two magnets for cavalry figures as they are much heavier.  While the magnets hold the figures well, they are not as secure as glued figures.  Nonetheless it makes moving figures so much easier.

Having solved the movement problem I found that taking them in and out of my display cabinet was a bit of a chore, but I like having them on display.  So, another solution was required, and again the answer was an old favourite, movement trays!

These trays were custom ordered from Warbases with a shallow lip around the edge to keep the figures in place, as modelled here by the Hohenzollern Dragoons.

There is no lip at the back, which makes it easy to slide the figures on and off the tray, here modelled by the Hessian Erbprinz Infantry Regiment.

These trays have made it so much easier to get my armies on, and off the table.  the only fly in the ointment was one regiment that didn't quite fit on the trays.  On investigation it seems that my first trial based unit had had the Milliput applied a little more generously such that it slightly overhung the sides of the Litko base. This made them all a tiny bit wider so they wouldn't fit as planned between the tray lips.  So, having finally decided to do something about I shaved the bases down a bit with a Stanley knife and then re-painted the base where they'd been shaved back, and then varnished them.  

And, these are the figures who are currently occupying my painting desk while drying.  How can it take that long to dry you ask?  It's enamel varnish and applied fairly thickly for robustness.