--- title: Choosing a base for your miniature subtitle: Establish your basing scheme author: Seth Kenlon date: 2025-05-16 00:01 publish_date: 2025-05-16 00:01 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: miniature-hattusa-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: blog tag: [ gaming, meta, rpg, wargame ] --- My introduction to miniatures was through D&D. When I started out, miniatures weren't generally found in board games (or at least, not any I'd been exposed to) and I didn't know about wargaming, so miniatures were a thing for "pen and paper" RPGs. By the time I started buying them for myself, the easiest to find were the ones by Wizkids, and I usually used them right out of the box. It wasn't until I started playing **Warhammer 40,000** and other wargames that I learned about miniature bases. The base is [the little plastic circle (or square or hexagon)](http://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/game_miniature-bases-explained) that you can glue a model on so that it doesn't fall over. Recently, I came to the realisation that when you start collecting miniatures, you should establish how you base your models before it's too late and you end up with models on bases that don't match. Don't panic. This "problem" isn't actually a problem. For me, stupidly, it bugs me when I have two miniatures in a game and they each have a different base. It doesn't effect the game, and I quickly look past it anyway, but in a perfect world all my miniatures would be on a base style that I've decided to be my personal standard base style. ## The problem with a standard miniature base I've had to accept that having a personal standard base style isn't realistic. Some miniatures come already attached to a base. For example, my **Mansions of Madness** and **Wrath of Ashardalon** and **Fallout the Board Game** miniatures were all provided in the box with bases attached. And these are some of my favourite miniatures, not necessarily for their sculpt, but thematically and emotionally. I use these miniatures a lot, in all kinds of games, so on one hand their base styles ought to be my standard. However, all Warhammer miniatures ship with bases, and while I could just re-sell the bases in favour of using my own, some of the really big bases sizes would be difficult to replace. The point is, I've accepted that a single base style isn't possible, or at least it's too inconvenient for me to pursue. ## Base variables There are lots of different kinds of bases to choose from. Miniatures by Wizkids comes with flat plastic discs, my giant from **Dungeons & Lasers** comes with a molded base, Wargames Atlantic sells flat bases with a hole for a 3mm magnet, you can use MDF bases, or beveled bases, and so on. various miniature bases, of different sizes and made of different materials It's safe to say that there is no standard. Worse still, some miniatures come with bases attached, some miniatures come with a "puddle base" attached, some miniatures are designed for a slotted base, and still others require being glued onto a base. A base glued to an assembled model, and a puddle base molded as part of a model This introduces some new problems, chiefly among them is that a puddle base adds 1mm or 2mm to the total height of a miniature. When you glue a model with a puddle base to a "standard" round base, it can end up being a head taller than it ought to be. ## Developing a base schema The answer for me was to develop a schema, or a set of rules governing my choice in what kind of base style to choose depending on what kind of miniature I need to base. I started with simple and obvious rules: 1. If a miniature has no base, use a Warhammer-style base. These bases are easy to find in a variety of diameters. They are all approximately 3mm tall, so there's no visual offset to a miniature's height. 2. If a miniature has a puddle base, use a flat base style. This means the puddle base is all that adds to the miniature's height, and the end result is approximately the same vertical rise as a Warhammer base. Those rules cover about 90% of my miniatures. I'm not going to unbase miniatures I've already based one way or another, but at least the schema will hold true for miniatures built after a certain point. Of course there are exceptions. In **Mansions of Madness**, for example, the Investigators are attached to bases, while the monsters are pegged and meant to slot into huge square bases. The square bases are comically large and frankly impractical, so I got rid of those. I clipped off the pegs, and glued each monster to a Warhammer-style base. That doesn't match the style of the Investigators' bases but it's the safe option, because I never know what size of monster I'm going to get with any given expansion set but I'm confident that I'll be able to find a suitable Warhammer-style base regardless of size. Flat bases larger than 28mm are harder to source. This introduces a third rule to my schema: When base styles must be mixed within the same game, keep base styles consistent through each faction. ## Biases and bases This is really just a mental exercise. I'm too pragmatic, and not physically obsessive enough, to go through my collection and remove models from perfectly servicable bases, to conform to my basing schema. It's comforting to have a schema, though, and I wish I'd known enough to establish one early on. Of course, even then I would have magically needed to also know what variables would be involved in the future because I knew nothing about miniatures. Obviously a truly standard basing scheme was not meant to be, at least for me. And maybe not for anybody. The miniature market is far from miniature. There are lots of variables, and probably some yet to be invented. Anyway, it's fun to think about, it's a puzzle to work at, and in the end you can still play a bunch of fun miniature games. Ignoring the bases.

Photos by Seth Kenlon. Creative Commons cc0.