Hi all,

Recently gotten into 6mm ancients, After getting a small order to get started with i picked up the spqr republican rome starter at recon and have been happily painting away (my god its so much more enjoyable to paint 6mm than 28mm) having painted up the first lot of 160 hastati it occured to me that i dont have a plan for basing them.

im mostly wanting to play half scale SPQR and Age of Hannibal but i cant arrange the models in a way that seems to be rational. As supplied both the hastati and princepes are made of 5 units of 8 strips, presumably for SPQRs reccomended 80mm frontage for small units with 2 lots on a 40x20mm and strips placed 2x2 .

40x20mm seems a bit small to me for a movable game base so i was thinking 60mm wide by 30mm deep but i cant make the strips look like a sensible unit on that size, arranging 3,3,2 gives a good width on the 60x30 but just looks odd with the uneven rear rankgoing 4,4 wont fit and going 2,2,2,2 gives a really nice depth but there just seems too much space either side. going for 2,2,2,2 on a 40x40 looks good but it just seems like a cohesive battle line would be way to narrow at only 20cm.

3,3,3 on the 60x30 looks good but then ill only have 4 and a half units of each, how would you deal with this (small) problem?

The close order infantry packs are designed to use 6 strips per a 60mm x 30mm base.   

If you want to go with 3 rows per base, perhaps you could split bases and go with 3 rows of 10 figures each.   

What Rakkasan said. For my horse-and-musket era armies, most of the infantry is based on 2 ranks of 12, but the odd one (to use odds and ends) is made up of 2 ranks of 10 and it works just fine.

Was the pack for SPQR or Hail Caesar?  It does affect the basing conventions used to put the packs together.

Also consider how you are going to base other armies and troop types to make sure these look "right" when compared to them.

@peter apologies i mean hail ceasar a little brain fart in that one.

as their first opponent was going to be pyrrhus i got some phalangites and they seem pretty forgiving on the basing, quite easy to fit on any of the squares/rectangles.

skirmishers and irregular formations like the samnites seem to be pretty forgiving aesthetically in how they are based.

i think i like the idea of the 3 ranks of 10 though on a 60x30 ill have to try that when i get home maybe put the centurion and signifer to the side as would have been the practice.