Sortition and the big rebasing project

 

Being undecided about which project to take up next, I made a list of possibilities.  This ran to five new painting projects and one that had been put off for a long time, rebasing ancient cavalry for various armies.  With six projects to choose from, rolling a D6 was the obvious solution.  A 6 was rolled, which was the number I had put against the rebasing project, so that was that.

My old system for basing cavalry was to put two melee cavalry figures on a 50mm square base and two skirmish cavalry on a 70mm by 50mm base.  What prompted me to choose these numbers and dimensions I do not now recall but I have been dissatisfied with the effect for some time.

Two melee cavalry to a 50mm square base.  It doesn't look massed enough and the width doesn't match up with the 60mm frontage I use for massed infantry.

Skirmish cavalry look too spread out - and take up a lot of space in the storage trays - on a 70mm frontage

What I now intend to do is to put both types of cavalry on the same sized base, with a 60mm frontage and 50mm depth, but to fix two skirmish cavalry or three melee cavalry per base.  A few skirmish cavalry have been put onto this size base over the last couple of years, but the majority of these together with all the melee cavalry need to be redone.  Quite a lot of these units were fixed on card or thin plastic bases that have warped over the years.  All will now go on 2mm thick mdf with a magnetic underlay so they can fix to sabots or storage trays.

The first batch to hit the rebasing table are the Gallic melee cavalry - two unarmored units and one armoured - to be followed by two units of skirmish cavalry.

Removed from old bases and glued to new mdf bases.

Completed unarmored unit

and the armoured cavalry on their new bases.

A small bonus of having started with the Gauls is that I found a couple of packs of unpainted Newline gallic chariots in one of the storage trays and decided that it was within the spirit of the project to paint these at the same time.  This is the first pack on the painting table.

This work will take well into the New Year, but for the moment I wish every reader a Merry Christmas and happy gaming in the year ahead.