To Rebase or Not to Rebase?

This week I worked on some stuff and played some games!

 

Tomb Kings Project

I finished building the standard bearer for the skeleton regiment. As I mentioned last time, the large skull icon is from the Bone Dragon, and the small skulls are from the Tomb Guard kit, while the banner itself is from the 6th Edition Orc regiment. The pieces went together pretty easily, and I only had to do a little sculpting with putty to fill in the hole on the back of of the skull, and repair the top of the banner pole.

 

 

Gaming

I was able to play two games with my Vampire Counts. My opponent for both games was fielding a Dwarf army. The first match up was at 1000 points in an Open Battle scenario.

 

 

Dire Wolves are truly fast, moving three times in the first turn (a Vanguard move after deployment, their normal move, and then a Reserve Move in the shooting phase), which more than makes up for being unable to march. My wolves were up the side of the board and around that mausoleum by the end of turn two, ready to charge the war machine! The Dwarf Engineer shot most of them to pieces, however, leaving only the Doom Wolf to make the charge.

My Blood Knights did some damage to the Dwarf Hammerers, but were unable to break them. The Dwarfs fell back in good order, and in the subsequent turn my knights suffered too many of their own casualties and succumbed to the undead instability, crumbling to dust.

The small model count at the low points level hamstrung the Dwarfs a bit– My 20-man Grave Guard unit was eventually able to break the Dwarf Warrior unit. Even though I couldn't catch them, they ran back through the Engineer, leaving him to fend off the Grave Guard on his own!

We had gotten a late start, and had to call the game in turn three. The Dwarfs were on the run, and didn't have the manpower to fend off my two large infantry blocks barreling down on them.

 

 

For the second game, we increased the size to 1250 points, and I fielded a list of ghouls, wolves, and bats, led by Marduk the Ghoul King.

 

 

The had Dwarfs bolstered their ranks, and added a Gyrocopter:

 

 

This game went the distance– The Dwarf Rangers chewed one unit of Dire Wolves and my Fell Bats to pieces. Similarly, the Dwarfs made quick work of the other wolves, but not before one of them took out the Gyrocopter. It attempted to fire and flee when charged, but couldn't outrun the wolves with an extra D6 inches from Swiftstride.

 

 

With all of my chaff units wiped out, the game came down to a slugfest in the middle, with each of my units squaring off against a Dwarf unit. This time, Marduk's unit faced the Hammerers with their Rune Priest general and Thane carrying the battle standard, and my Necromancer's ghouls fought the Warriors.

 

 

It was a slow grind for the rest of the game, with each side giving ground from time to time. At the top of the sixth turn, I was finally able to kill the Rune Priest and Thane, and reduce the Hammerers to one man. That being the majority of the points, I managed to eek out a victory. A great game that came down to the wire, and was a bloodbath on both sides!

One new unit I fielded (well, new in terms of using it in The Old World) was the Corpse Cart. When equipped with the Warped Tintinnabulation, this thing acts like a mini battle standard because it reduces the number of wounds lost to the Unstable rule by one, and can increase the number of wounds recovered when using the Invocation of Nehek. It also serves as a Level 1 Wizard! I definitely need to start including one in every list. 

 

 

Rebasing

 

I hate having to rework models that are already finished. I have supplies to make movement trays that space out the 20mm bases to stretch everything out to the appropriate size.

 

 

In the mean time, a temporary cheat that I discovered is to flip the 25mm bases upside down and stand the models in them. The 20mm bases fit in the underside of the 25mms, and it gives them the appropriate footprint, the same as with a spacer movement tray.

 

 

Unfortunately, I built many of my units with regimental strips: 

 

 

The regimental strips don't exactly fit onto the spacers, and really complicate things. (If only Future Rob could go back and warn Past Rob not to use regimental bases at all, despite how awesome the 6th Edition Vampire Counts army book made them look. Curse you, Mark Bedford!)

 

 

I've come to the conclusion that any units with regimental strips will need full rebasing, and any that are not regimental-stripped (my knights, zombies, and some of my skeletons) will get spacer trays. Fortunately, many of my units maintained the same base sizes– the bats, swarms, monstrous infantry, Dire Wolves, chariots, and monsters.

I'm going to start with the 20 Grave Guard that are on strips. To preserve as much of the original basing as possible, I'm making 25mm bases that I can plug them into. For this, I cut out a hole in the top of each 25mm base, and then glue them all onto a sheet of .25mm thick styrene. (It's easier to cut out the hole before gluing the base on the card; doing it afterward risks poking through the sheet styrene.

 

 

Once the glue has dried, I separate the bases and trim away the excess styrene.

 

 

Then, I use sanding sticks to sand the edges smooth, and widen the hole so the 20mm base can sit in the top. The holes won't need to be as wide for the regimental strips parts that get cut up and inserted; I'll have to make each of those as I go because some models on the strip will end up with more base than others.

 

 

I will prime all the 25mm bases first. Then, once I have the model seated in its new base, I'll fill the gap with putty and add more basing material around the perimeter.

 

 

But first, I need to take a new army shot. This one is is from 2016, and I've added quite a few models since then. I'll take the new photo before I start rebasing, while everything still matches. (If I wait until after I start chopping up bases, it will be forever until I can get a new army shot.) That's going to be one of my new projects for October.

 

 

'Til next time!