Adventures on the Wargames Table

Yes, the re-basing continues. Here's a couple of officer types (Curteys Miniatures) riding through the desert. It's not all re-basing though! Here's the next batch of Legion ready for some varnish. Wanted to post these as with the holiday season fast approaching they'll have to wait a little while for their shields ;o) Cheerio!

A while back I looked at re-basing my Romans to give them a more sandy-based theme. I've now also decided to give them magnetic bases to make storage easier. So I needed to add suitable movement trays. Here's the next unit, 14 Auxiliaries. I'd like to offer a little tip about making movement trays... In the past I've bough them ready assembled and then trimmed steel 'paper' to fit inside, then added texture to the edge. However, sometimes this has resulted in a badly fitting, slightly wonky, piece of steel 'paper' (which just annoys me) or perhaps the texture has strayed within the bounds of the tray. Not a big deal to fix but here's my new approach. Buy the trays unassembled, that is (as shown below) the rim is left unglued. If you already have the trays then it's simple to slide a modelling knife between the rim and base - just take it steady! Next, cut a piece of steel 'paper' that is slightly larger than the tray base. I ...

I've been having a very cathartic clear out and tidy up; and as part of this I've decided to re-organise how I've been storing my WW2 troops. I've ordered a bunch of Really Useful Boxes but in the mean time I picked up a couple of 4 litre boxes from WH Smith. Old storage solution The figures (mostly individually based) were stored in the old GW cases with foam trays. Well protected but a bit fiddly. So, with some of the 'teams' already mag-based I decided to go the whole hog and mag-base the lot. To line the boxes I needed some steel paper so on Easter Monday afternoon I placed an order with Trevor at Magnetic Displays / Coritani . Within about 15 minutes (I jest not!) I received an email from Trevor saying that the items would be in the post first thing on Tuesday morning. Sure enough on Wednesday morning the order arrived! You simply cannot get better customer service than that. A good price and excellent product too. Highly recommended! I already have ...

For some time now I’ve wanted to enhance the basing of my forces with magnetic basing. I’ve been to quite a few events where players turn up with boxes of figures already on movement trays and thus can be deployed ready to play in minutes. Whereas I’ll be half an hour or more moving figures from compartmentalised carry cases on to movement trays, trying to get them to rank up nicely, etc, when I should be fighting the battle! So here’s a few tips based (no pun intended!) on my experiences. First step was to ask around and two companies were suggested. Magnetic Displays and Hasslefree Miniatures ; I can heartily recommend both in terms of service, value and product quality. For pre-cut circular magnetic discs I’ll go for HM, but for rectangular or square bases I’ll use the magnetic ‘tape’ from MD – plus they also sell the magnetic steel ‘paper’. Here’s one of my trays (please do not adjust your set!) with a mixture of metal and plastic figures. The trays are from Warbases and I...