Slitherine

sorry,
this may be a silly question, but is there any reason other than being able to use medium bases for heavy where applicable, to put four figures on a medium base.

I'm guessing that some of the troops labelled MF here were classed as HF in DBX (or whatever) and so people may already have them based in 4s. Helps not to have to rebase stuff.

That is only a guess though

I would be inclined to put four MF figures on a base in order to represent "medium" soldiers that could be expected to occasionally fight in close order. That would mean using four figures to represent drilled "light infantry" such as peltasts, thurephoroi or thorakitai. That may also include veteran Spaniards in Hannibal's army (I haven't seen the FoG list but I expect there may be drilled Spanish scutarii available)

In my ancient Spanish I've based the scutarii as 3s in 10paks (makes them look a bit more spread out and wild) but Sertorius's Roman-trained drilled infantry as 4's in 6 paks (plus they can double as DBMM Blade (F)).

In DBM regular Auxilia and regular Bow were based four to a 40 by 20 base while irregular Auxilia and irregular bow were three to a base.

The 3-4 is to allow backwards compatibility. If you want use 3 for some and 4 for others that's fine.

I have a feeling that I used BGs with 4s in the front rank and 3s in the second on at least one occasion.

That's what I'm planning to do - use 4 figures per base for drilled MF and 3 for undrilled. Although I may change my mind and just use 3 for everything for simplicity's sake. I try as much as possible to make everything visually distinct and easily recognizable by my opponent.

Thanks for that, given its ok I will go with 3's and perhaps the odd 4 for variation. Takes less time to paint and often easier to base.

Will

I think 3 per base for MF works well, and I use 3 men in a line for drilled troops, 3 men irregularly positioned to represent undrilled troops.

The reason is that in DBX med foot could be either 3 or 4 to a base according to the grade of the troop. Irregular or regular.

Use three!
Its easier to tell them apart from HF and it costs you less money in figures.

pezhetairoi wrote:Use three!
Its easier to tell them apart from HF and it costs you less money in figures.

Not to mention less miniatures to paint for each BG!!

If I could completely break with past basing I would have done (15mm):

Heavy foot 4 figures per base 40x20 bases
Medium foot 3 figures per base 40x20 bases
Light foot 3 figures per base 40x20 bases

Most mounted 3 figures per base 40x40 bases
Light Horse 2 figures per base 40x40 bases

would eliminate a lot of geometry issues...