Often newbies or veterans looking for fresh insights ask in forums how others base their 2mm and 6mm miniatures: methods and marking, how to identify elite battalion 3 and militia battalion 4 from corps II ? I paint 2mm Napoleonic, 6mm Napoleonic and 6mm WW2. Earlier I described my method scattered in sub paragraphs in separate blogs. Here I give a short cross-period overview.

Main points are:

• how to make the bases (units) recognizable
• sabot basing
• unit markers
• avoid clutter (loose labels, loose markers etc)

DISCLAIMER: I don’t pretend that my basing solution(s) are the best, the smartest, or the one and only path to light. It’s not a breakthrough in wargaming :-). I just copied and combined older suggestions and share some ideas to help others.

2mm Napoleonic basing

See my long tutorial. 2mm is my travel battle scale. Basing:

• heavy cavalry in 2 lines, 3 units in front, 3 in the back
• lancers in a single line
• light cavalry in 3 lines, 1 unit in front, 2 in the middle, 3 in the back.
• line infantry: lines or columns.
• artillery: half-bases, 2 cannons per base.

My bases are a combination of 7mm double dice cells and magnetic vinyl strips and a printed label.

6mm Napoleonic (sabot) basing

The dominant fashion in Napoleonic 6mm seems to be bigbasing 6 strips (24 figures) on a credit-card/poker card sized base with skirmishers in front. Which is what I do in 2mm.

For 6mm I roughly copied the 15mm DBx basing system. IMHO a system with small magnetized bases that you can place on a metal sheet is more versatile than bigbasing. I can play corps games like Blücher with 72-figure sabot bigbases, or tactical battalion games with 4-6 units that change formation, like Lasalle or Black Powder. See my long blog. Basing:

• 4 strips (Baccus) infantry on a 15mmx40mm base
• 4 skirmishers on a 20mmx40mm base
• light cavalry: scattered on 40x40mm
• lancers, cuirassiers: V-formation, 40x40mm
• dragoons: 2 rows, V-formation, 40x40mm
• commander: 40x40mm
• artillery: single piece with crew on 40x40mm

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6mm WW2 basing

Read my long WW2-blog and painting guide here. In short: again I copied the 15mm DBx-system. I don’t use labeled bases. The big problem with 6mm WW2 is that all armies are in the same earth tones. So, how do you easily spot the difference between a 6mm camouflaged Tiger and a camouflaged Panther from 2 meter distance without labels? Difficult to recognize in the dim lit dungeon we call ‘club’.

My WW2-diorama-bases have different colours: light grey for the Germans, pale sand for the Americans, pale brown MDF for the British, brick red for the French. Figure basing:

• Commanders & subcommanders: 4x4cm. Large, elevated base.
• Forward air/artillery observers/snipers: for these individual bases, I used some spare round 4cm bases, instead of a 4×4 cm large base. Binocular figures. Sandbags.
• Light recon teams, light tanks and transports: 4x2cm. small base. A vehicle and a few miniatures.
• infantry platoons: 4×2 small base. 4-6 miniatures. Some terrain.
• infantry anti tank upgrade units: 4×1,5cm small base, 2-3 miniatures, placed directly behind the platoon, in base contact
• infantry support units like medium guns, mortars, MG’s, etc: 4x3cm medium scenic base. Medium mortars, two per base. Heavy mortar: one per base.
• engineers: one vehicle and a couple of engineers, on a 4×3 base.
• armour on 4×4 diorama bases. Medium tanks: 2 tanks on a 4×4 base. Heavy tanks: 1 heavy tank on a 4×4 base
• anti tank guns, tank hunters: 1 model on a 4×3 medium base.
• heavy artillery, heavy mobile rocket launchers: 1 model on a 4×4 large base.

I abundantly use decals (deliberately (too) large) and miniaturized WW2-propaganda posters to give my WW2 armies a Hollywood flavour and to simplify identification during play. Magnetized strips and dice cells are absent on my 6mm DBx bases, hadn’t thought of that option yet when I was busy with these projects. Anyway, both systems work.