Rebasing BFG ships

[Wizz]

I'm currently working with a small US company who sells plastic wargaming bases to produce a generic flying base that will be very suitable for BFG. The bases will be black styrene, include heading and fire arc marks, and will work with 2mm brass or styrene rod (styrene is fine for escorts, brass is preferred for everything else).

Should be available in around 4 weeks or so and cheaper than the GW price

I'm guessing it's the bases shown in your special eBay fleet? If so they're looking really good! So good I'm gonna stop buying GW bases until I see what you come up with.

[Duskland]

I've been using magnets for basing for a while now.  I generally use neodymium N42 magnets from K&J magnetics.

http://www.kjmagnetics.com/products.asp?cat=10

On the smaller escorts I place one 1/8th by 1/32nd magnet on the bottom of the ship and one 1/8th by 1/16th magnet on the stand (I usually cut the stand back by a quarter inch to match the diameters).  On larger escorts/ cruisers I'll use 1/16 thickness magnets on both sides of the join.  For battleships I use these (http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=D2X8) as the stand part of the magnet pair.  They are quite strong and if you inset the magnet hole slightly into the ship they don't seem to have much trouble with tipping. 

You should paint a forward mark on the ship base since the ships tend to swing back and forth when bumped.  Ninja magic makes base adaptors that are toothed to avoid this problem, but I find them a little pricey for what you get.

[mangozac]

I'm guessing it's the bases shown in your special eBay fleet? If so they're looking really good! So good I'm gonna stop buying GW bases until I see what you come up with.

Sure is, except those are the resin prototypes. The production ones will be black styrene. Here's a pic (the one on the right):

[timdp]

Ive been doing bases with steel rods similar to the way Dan does his, although I have added magnets for all the of the escort and smaller ships. One advantage to steel rods is that you only need one magnet per ship because the magnets stick quite nicely top the steel rods.

I use 1/8" welding rods cut with a hacksaw and ground flat on a bench grinder (or coarse file). 1/8" holes are drilled into the ships as deep as they can go without breaking through to the top side of the ship and the  1/8"  x 1/16" magnets are glued into the bottom of the holes. On some of the shallower ships the bottoms of the magnets are flush with the bottom of the ships, but they still work fine just sitting on top of the steel rods.

Another advantage to this method is that the (unnamed) bases for escorts can be used across different fleets so you don't need to make as many bases.

Side note: I also made up some bases using smaller 3/32" steel welding rod, planning to use then for some of the smaller ships, but have found the almost all of the Imperial and Chaos ships, except some of the very smallest system ships, are big enough to take a 1/8" holes for 1/8" rods and magnets.

Very much looking forward to seeing Zac's bases too.

Tim

[mangozac]

It's taken a little longer than planned, but the first production samples of my new base are on their way so I'm pretty eager to see them! There's been a change of plans and I'll now be selling them myself through my online store (among other places in the future). Hold off a little longer guys - it will be worth it!

[Comrade-K-Rad]

We've tallied up how many we need in my group.  Just awaiting your word. 

[Dragon Lord]

For battleships that are otherwise liable to break their stands I cut the little pin off the top of the plastic rods and drill out the hole in the ship so that the whole rod will fit in, much like Unseelied.  I've never had any problems with them like that.

I would be perfectly allowing of hexagonal bases (as they are close enough to circular), but I agree that I would have a problem with those elliptical ones.

[Islacrusez]

The elliptical ones should be fine as long as all players in the battle are playing with them. In effect, they are a rule variant. They represent the shape of the ship, since the edge of the a circular base will be closer to the ship at the front and much further away at the sides, so an elliptical base is more equidistant (albeit crude).

[horizon]

But that would mean Tau FW vessels should have the elliptical once sideways.

[Gothmog Lord of Balrogs]

But that would mean Tau FW vessels should have the elliptical once sideways.

To me it would also require 3 base sizes. Escort, cruiser and bb. Then otbitals and bsf have round bases...

[Gothmog Lord of Balrogs]

And since sjips are sctually the very midpoont of the base, that suggests that they are effected by events (asteroid clusters,  blast markers) within a few hundred km. Since the scale is so large the fact that the f/r of the base is 1 to 3 km closer than the l/r is irrelevant.

[Islacrusez]

That speaks more to BFG's fudged scale more than anything else. How the hell does an as asteroid field affect you when you're 1500km away from it? How does a ship ram you when it's actually passing 3000km away (sure there's a leadership roll for manoeuvring into position, but it's hell of a detour when you're supposed to be routing all power into going forward). More importantly, why do shell impacts on shields produce blast markers which are 3000km across when hitting a ship that's only 1.5km? That's 2000x the size of the ship! More importantly the ship's shields soaked the damage that case that blast marker.

No, it's a variant rule as good as any other. And yes, Tau ships would suffer from this one (though the original GW ones wouldn't, but they've suffered enough!). Which is why a Tau player probably wouldn't agree to play by it.

[horizon]

Eh... Tau suffer from s what?

And yes. Bfg had a fun scale. 

[Gothmog Lord of Balrogs]

Asteroid fields arent just 10 or 11 big rocks.  What you put on the field is representative of a densly packed area of space with thoudands if not millions of rocks

[Islacrusez]

That may be, but you are still 1500 km away from it. More if you're a bigger ship. And how is that supposed to work? The difference between your ship and the edge of the small base is still negligible, but suddenly you can be affected by torps and asteroids some 3000km away?