I honestly don't think a photo would help here, but if you are missing one please think of a coil of 20mm rubber magnetic tape about the size of studio reel to reel recorder.
I have decided to tackle basing my Eighteenth Century figures for Charge and my English Civil War collection. All figures are 25 or 30mm and will be individually based. However I cannot face the time involved to move them around the table one at a time. So I will be using movement trays.
The figures will have a strip of magnetic tape glued to the bottom of a 1.5mm plywood rectangular base. So the bases will have square edges and butt against one another. Definitely not circular washers squirming about on the base. Infantry will probably be 20mm by 15mm and cavalry 20m by 50mm. The extra deep cavalry bases are so the tails do not knock up against the next row in storage.
I would welcome any advice from people who already have experience of this system. How thick does the base need to be in order to get a decent grip when picking it up? Is a lip around the tray necessary? What are the biggest trays that anyone has seen? Do the figures lie flat against each other or do the bases slip around or ruck up when the base is moved?
Frankly any information on the best way to use this system would be very welcome. I will keep a record of what I do and share the results on this blog. I have already got a lot from seeing this system in use in the photos on .
http://campaignsingermania.blogspot.com/
Flanderkin Serjeant
10 comments:
Good to have you posting again- I wish i could help but will leave it to others with greater knowledge than me...
best wishes
Alan
John, I don't use these myself, but I have seen them in use and they seemed to work quite well..Dare I mention Games Workshop multi-figure movement trays? Ready made in various sizes, with aforementioned lip for ease of picking up...using these may mean that you wouldn't need the magnetic basing perhaps.
Just my first thought!
Regards, Peeler
Don't say that Peeler, I have just spent forty quid on a monster roll of the stuff!!
I've worked things the other way.
For a movement tray I used sheet plastic covered with that sheet magnetic sign material.
I then glued the front and sides (but not the back) with thin strips of balsa to keep figures from getting nudged off. I then painted everything the same color as my figure bases.
I used thin sheet steel bases under their balsa bases so that they would stick to the magnetic movement tray.
I'd think that one of the advantages of this over "your" proposed system is that the individual figures aren't magnetically attracted to each other.
-- Jeff
£40!! In that case it needs to be used.
I do something similar to Jeff in that I make the movement trays magnetic and base the minis on metal. I couldn't find any magnetic tape or sheets with enough "attraction" so I ended up going for rare earth magnets. I sandwich these between 2 pieces of black styrene plastic sheets.
I'm not a magnetic base user but the bloggers non-pareil for this system seem to be Bill Protz (the Germania blog you quoted) and I think Alte Fritz...
John,
(To change the subject for a second..) what rules are you using for ECW?
I'll second DC's question on ECW rules.
-- Jeff
John - I get around the problem by getting my Footman and Butler to move all the figures for me...
Ian
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