Basing Spencer Smith figures

Having printed my second unit for my imagi-nations armies I have been playing around with how best to base units and the base sizes themselves. I am not yet decided as to whether I will use a grid for these armies or not.

The armies themselves will be a combination of ACW and Napoleonic Spencer Smith figures.

My memories of Spencer Smith figures are all in black and white from those early wargaming books borrowed from the library on multiple occasions.

My basing constraints are:

• A unit must fit into a 6 inch square. (I have no desire to rebase if I choose later to use a grid.)
• Must be big bases. (My recent basing has been one unit all on a big base as I don't like moving fiddly units.) 
• I want to be able to show units to be in line or column without the need for a marker to indicate this.
• A want as many figures as possible on a base. (Spencer Smith figures have similar poses and grouped together look wonderful.)

Infantry Column

Infantry Line

So after a few basing trials I have decided upon two bases for all units and two different base sizes.

• 3x3 inches for infantry and cavalry.
• 3x2 inches for skirmishers and artillery.

I was unsure on the artillery basing. Should it be one stand big based or two smaller bases. After a bit more playing about I went for the two smaller bases. All bases are made for good old 3mm MDF at a couple of dollars a sheet.

Infantry and cavalry use 3x3 inch bases and skirmisher and artillery units 2x3 inches. This photo shows artillery options - I went for the smaller base size.

Artillery on a smaller base size.

Artillery unit

Artillery unit limbered

Cavalry unit in line ready to charge onto the painting table!

I started this project with the idea of using my remaining ACW units which had not become brittle. Thanks to a swap of figures I have now some Spencer Smith Napoleonic figures. A lot more than expected which will add to the variety of units. The cavalry show in the above photos are lancers.