Miniature Figure Bases: uxcell plastic end caps

[iKarith]

no.. it's Zargon & Mentor

Then we're gonna need some M&Ms Not recommended as bases for minis.

Less cutting for this method, search ye olde amazon(e) for 20mm extrusion end cap. Aluminum extrusion comes in 20mm square, 40mm square, and 20x40mm rectangular. So the end caps (same type of soft plastic) would be perfect for your "less than 25mm please" board game minis.

20mm extrusion caps have one central post which will cut much more quickly. 40mm have five + shaped posts you can almost hit with flush cutters you probably already have if you're into this enough to be rebasing minis.

[Kurgan]

I have now posted many examples of the use of these custom plastic bases in my miniatures collection (click on the "images" on my profile there to the right) in the gallery section of this site, but I realized I have forgotten to post examples here, so see below.

Yes I know some people don't like that I keep the "original base" on some of those reaper miniatures (could be easily trimmed off with a knife), but you get the idea.

[iKarith]

You could also trim with knife to fit the flipped version as suggested above. If you're going to flock and paint them, I really don't see the need to worry about double-basing.

Of course if I'd decided to buy a bunch of minis from Reaper and just build a whole army from scratch (leave my "***RARE*** @@@OOP@@@" minis for display purposes only), I'd probably just use the irregularly-shaped Reaper bases. They work, and since they're all the same style, they work well together.

I've been convinced though that I really want to buy a printer. And after I've printed my own army of minis, I think I'll see who else has need of a large batch, try to sort the list by those who need more for quest expansion quest packs vs. people who want more to recreate the Battle of Helm's Deep in 28mm scale , since I can probably only take one or two such requests at a time with just the one printer.

I'd probably pay for the printer in a couple months at that rate, even at "I'm not trying to make a profit, just help some HQ community peeps at a fair price" rates. Wish I could do it comparably to the original quest prices. And I probably can do for materials cost, but time to set up, print, clean, hang around for the cure timer, etc. I'll have to see what seems fair, minus cost of me not knowing wtf I'm doing yet and taking longer than need be. Should definitely be less than ordering from Europe if you're in the US, that's for sure even if they were offering batch prints, which they're not.

[Kurgan]

As cool as it looks to have a base that is full of fake grass and sand, etc. I don't think it's really something I ever wanted for my HQ figures, because the majority of encounters are set in a dungeon. If I was really serious I'd probably want all the bases to be transparent (which I know exist). At the same time a lot of the minis I started with were designed to replace the classic minis I didn't have back in the day, so I started painting them in solid colors to "match" the style of the classic miniatures. And no fancy bases. That's what I wanted. Most people probably disagree, and say they would rather paint everything in full color, perhaps to match what the characters look like on the box, or how they imagined them in "real life." I'm not against that of course. I have painted some other figures in full colors, and obviously it takes a lot more time and effort than just a nice solid color (possibly a wash if there's not much detail) and then varnish.

Many of the reaper figures are big and have bases that are a bit unwieldy if being used as HQ minis. I have quite a few Ice Devils (which I used as my "Chaos Mutant" monster) that I have whittled down the bases to a smaller square, same with the Yetis (many of which I used as chaos Sasquatches). Some figures I've tailored into double wide bases (akin to the bigger bases used by the Giant Wolves and Frozen Horror figures of the classic miniatures line). Many of the Reaper Ogres have a wider leg stance necessitating this type of base (double wide, either 20x40 or 25x50). Actually I think I only used the 25x50 on the Frozen Horror replacements (using a massive "huge" Frost Giant and Mountain Troll figures).

Reaper's figures are all over the place of course, and they're great. But if you're not using them as war game miniatures or D&D minis but trying to fit them on the classic HQ board, some trimming is necessary, I just didn't want to completely remove it and just have the feet. Again, my stylistic choice, respect to others who want to do their own thing, see it through and show it off. I see lots of people have opted to paint the original HQ bases to look like stone patterns, which is great, though they're going to be standing on different colors of stone all the time anyway. In the end, they're symbolic figures no matter how detailed they aren't going to fit all situations, like showing visible wounds or showing the proper gear the character is wearing at all times, etc. You could do this in a video game (and its too bad the official HQ game just gave them each a generic look that never changed), but not really practical in a table-top miniatures board game.

Someday I probably will try my hand at hand painting a series of full color figures, but I will be using 3d prints or cast copies rather than the classic originals. Actually several of my particular HQ set came pre-painted and I've done little tweaks here and there but nothing too substantial. Having the full color DOES make them easier to distinguish when playing live via Zoom (imaging just seeing essentially four reddish blobs on the board, which one is my guy again?). Plus copies tend to lose some detail and a good paint job can hide that pretty well.

Just basing, painting and varnishing enough minis to re-create the other expansions (WOM, ATOH, EQP & BQP) took about 3 months. You have videos of people claiming to have speed painted large numbers of warhammer minis in a matter of days. I'm sure having all your paints ready to go (and skills with airbrushing) probably helps.... (and having the cash but not a full time job/kids off your internet hobby probably helps even more). In between when I was waiting for more supplies to arrive in the mail (this was pre-covid so a lot of it I just got at hobby shops or regular stores using found objects), I was printing and cutting out paper and gluing it to chip board and sleeving cards and other things. It was a massive undertaking but a lot of fun. Sitting down and painting each one for display quality is an entirely different thing. I wanted us to be able to sit down and play any of the official quests with all the assets one could want for those, and them to be durable on the gaming table first and foremost. I was also trying to do it somewhat more cheaply, so I opted for plastic instead of metal (glad I did in terms of durability as well!). Your own goals may be different.

[iKarith]

If I can paint … I will paint new/printed/whatever minis. That's a big if—I think to do it I need to paint with a video magnifier. Nothing for sale will do what I want either. I need to be sitting in front of my video screen with the mini in my hands and watching the screen, not the mini. The camera's gotta be a fairly fixed-focus arrangement that doesn't need to refocus if I breathe. And because the mini's gotta be in my hands on the table, the camera's gotta be overhead and probably above or even in front of the screen, with me looking around it slightly if it's actually in the way.

Like I said, that doesn't commercially exist as a product for folks like me. But so much the better it doesn't, as what does exist costs thousands of dollars. If this sounds like a job for a Raspberry Pi Zero, a camera board with swappable lenses, and an HDMI cable, and posibly a numeric keypad to control the camera and some boom apparatus, then congratulations, you're a and … yes, that's what it sounds like to me too.

I'm sure that setup will serve me for lots of things, so I'm interested in building it regardless. If I can paint with it, so much the better. If I can't, I'd like to find colors that match the HQ minis like you have done.

The possibility of something in between exists: Maybe I can paint skin, one color, hair another, clothes a couple of contrasting colors, and manage weapon blades with the two layers I know to be necessary for steel to look good. I can probably hit the whole figure but the weapon with a wash I think I should be able to lightly dry brush white. It's lazy for a skilled painter, but if that's the peak of my skill, then I could do that much.

Again, my major objection is spending a lot to discover it's beyond my ability. If it's something I can actually do, then I'd love to get into it.

I think the trick to painting an army in a few days is probably to assembly line the process: Magnets under each base, a couple painting handles to stick them on, and a whole stack ready to go. Mix a color, paint. Next mini, paint. 3rd mini on the 1st handle, paint. 4th on the 2nd handle, paint. Repeat until done with that color. Mix new color and go back to first mini.

[Kurgan]

A magnifying stand won't work? I have one of those with a built in light and bendable neck that was fairly cheap (I rarely have used it to be honest, but if I got into more detailed painting I might).

[iKarith]

A magnifying stand won't work? I have one of those with a built in light and bendable neck that was fairly cheap (I rarely have used it to be honest, but if I got into more detailed painting I might).

My vision's about 20/310, and I'm light and contrast sensitive. I paid $100 for a 5x magnfying lamp to try and see if I could solder under it. Not even DIP 2.54mm pins, I need it about twice that zoom level, and that tends to get really distorted for an optical zoom. The problem is that my eyes just don't have the resolution for it. A higher resolution digital image can be displayed with less distortion on a large screen. Like my 27" monitor, for example, which at 1080p looks like so as I am typing…

hq-large.png

Did I mention I can touch my nose with my thumb and my screen with my pinky from where I'm sitting as I type? Keyboard's half under the screen.

I actually don't need the font as big as the textarea is set—about the font size of the BBCode is ON, [img] is ON, [flash is LOL, etc is a reasonable size for me. Now, the smilies don't work for me so well without zooming in on them because the contrast is low. Twimoji works better for me because the facial features on the basic emojis are bigger. But since this (and most) forum software predates proper unicode support, if I put emoji in this post, the backend database craps itself.

[iKarith]

normal-terminal.png

That's a plain text terminal with my typical font settings showing a tree of my HeroQuest folder (tree -rC ~/HeroQuest | less -R) and my March colorscheme.

Why yes, I do have Brave, Librewolf, Firefox, and a pair of Chromiums (one's degoogled) pinned to my taskbar. I do a lot of testing UI stuff across browsers. and browser isolation for privacy reasons. Each one uses its own theme so I can tell at a glance which browser is which. For example, I open Ye Olde Inn in Firefox, using a Multiple Account Container HeroQuest I'm still adding Inn subdomains to.

The CSS I'm using, if you're a dark mode fan (you'll note it's a little darker than default) is applied with Stylus and looks like (half-minimized):

Code: Select all

body { font-size: 12px; }
.bg1 { background-color: #ebd8ad; }
.navbar, ul.forums, .bg2, .panel { background: #f5dca1; }
li.row:hover { background-color: #ebbe75; }
#message-box textarea, .inputbox {
    color: #eee;
    background: #333;
    font-size: 1.5em;
}
.inputbox:focus { color: #fffdcc; }
.postbody .content { font-size: 1rem; }
blockquote { background-color: #fffdcc; }
blockquote blockquote { background-color: #fbf9b6; }


I just removed that font-size: 1.5rem; above entirely. Kept the 1rem for .postbody .content … I haven't tried to style code blocks. *sigh* I should, I post them enough.

[Kurgan]

I'm always amazed at the love HQ fans have that they'll experience it in many different ways. Tech finds a way! What about using the alpha-numeric grid system for playing virtually?

[iKarith]

I like the alphanumeric system. I even suggested a way to use it with a 28x22 board, although I am not sure I like what I came up with for it ultimately. I tried to be consistent, but consistent isn't necessarily good in this case.