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Sunday 9 November 2014

Horrors of the marshes! The nightmare of rebasing an army....

A restful sunday afternoon it has not been.

If you've never rebased models, my advice is don't! There's very little of my Fimir army that hasn't been snapped, chipped, bent, dropped, lost or otherwise damaged in the process. Weapons have come off, in one case a head has been lost somewhere, having to cut the integral bases off the Warlord miniatures celts lead to some nice wading-through-the-swamp poses, but also a lot of broken swords and spears. The HQ Fimir I chopped off their HQ bases to mount on 25mm bases it appears were thus mounted rather well, many of them lost toes in the process of relocating them on their new bases. The legs of a couple of the large Citadel Fimir have suffered chipped paintwork where ankles have net getting them off their old bases and several more metal figures will need touching up after the super glue proved to be not so super and fell off their new mounts.

Nevertheless.... the army is rebased. Well, most of it. There are two units of Fimm which are based but not in these photos and I haven't based up the stuff that's not painted yet. Plus I haven't added the detail yet, just a general ground cover made of flock, architect's model grass and static grass. I've got some shrubs, rocks and things to make them look more interesting.






 
 
Now a lot of people have been asking about the clear bases. Well chaps, they're just regular clear acrylic- Perspex to use a brand name- that's readily available from most DIY shops. Chopped them to size with a band saw. The trims I'm afraid I laser cut. I wasn't about to cut oodles of fiddly frames by hand, and they'd most likely have split anyway, a fair few did even with the laser. That does mean I have to sand off a;; the burn marks around the edges, but for the units that will be in movement trays the edges won't be on show anyhow so I might not bother. Also, not all the bases have acrylic set in. It's mostly character models and the edge models of units.

Once I've got the movement trays done... as I say, I have a good idea for them... and touched up all the chip/scratch/break I'll get some full army pics. Then it's a question of painting the last two chariots and two-dozen or so models to fill the army to its current planned capacity.

Was it worth all the swearing, cursing and carnage? Maybe... we'll see when it's all together!

8 comments:

  1. I've rebased my historicals a dozen times. Chopped a few legs off the base but that's about it. The one issue with GW-like stuff is the slottabases - you're probably going to have to cut those off and then maybe pinning the miniature to the new base.

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    1. Do your historicals have integral bases? Most of the damage occurred trying to separate the Warlord Games celts from their moulded plastic bases. If I'd left them on it would have been easy, but they just wouldn't have looked right. Clipping the slottabases was no problem- except I didn't on my wood elves... I'm not one for being pernickety about keeping old figures in tact but it just seemed wrong somehow to chop them around.

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    2. I had to remove the integral bases from those Celts for my fir bolg. A total pain, but worth it in the end.

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  2. It was completely worth it. The new bases look fantastic, and tie everything together. I know the pain of re-basing, but these days I generally pin models to bases, so it's not a total nightmare to take them off.

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    1. Thanks Mr S! From now on I am painting all minis on a sacrificial base and pinning them to the finished article! Separating those plastic HQ Fimir from the bases I'd glued them too was just too painful!

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    2. Whatever plastic the HQ fimir are made from is like granite. One was enough for me!

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  3. My apologies for the Spam, he seems to krept into quite a few oldhammery blogs with his anti-American-women angst. Please ignore the rude git.

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  4. The result is well worth it, you'll soon forget about the pain and will only keep the gorgeous army in mind...

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