3mm Infantry bases

This is a follow up to the post on 3mm basing a made a couple of days ago.  I'm doing it for completeness sake as a couple of people asked about the basing.  

Basing vehicles was easy infantry caused me a bit more of an issue.  The BAOR force uses specialist teams of less then platoon size in some front line roles.  These are mounted in the FV103 Spartan based on the CVR(T) chassis.  That vehicle provides transport for dismountable Blowpipe manpack anti-aircraft teams and Milan ATGM teams.  It also provides the mount for fire control officers for artillery and mortar support.  Its a smaller vehicle than the FV432

So I was going to need to be able to distinguish between platoon sized infantry units and specialist teams.  The team based solution seemed obvious, mount them on pennies just like the vehicles.  For an infantry platoon I clearly needed a bigger base to reflect the larger frontage so after some humming and hawing I decided on a rectangular base and plumped for 40mm x 20mm as a reasonable compromise.  This gives a platoon a game frontage of just over 150 yards.  Its not an exact science though as frontages differ in different terrain, attack or defence postures.  So I'm going to go on record as saying the base shows the unit's 'centre of gravity' not necessarily the actual operational footprint at any given time.

A BMP company and dismounts

For figures per base I have worked on the basis of the platoon transport being represented by one vehicle so its troop payload can be represented by the same number of figures as that single vehicle's passenger count, give or take a figure.  This works well for the BAOR with a standardised system of transport but less well for the Soviets who have a number of different APCs and IFVs in use at the same time.  In general BTRs carry slightly less men than BMPs so I just went with an average.

The bottom line is that it doesn't really matter.  A base is a base and provided both sides have the same footprints no-one is disadvantaged.  If it was real issue I would mark the same central spot on all bases and measure weapon ranges from that point.

One issue I have found with the Oddzial Osmy infantry is that as they are cast in strips they need to be separated into smaller groups or individual figures.  Although the bases have some narrowing where you might want to split them it is difficult as the metal they use is very hard.   My trusty side cutters struggle to cut it, so instead of the random groups I wanted to use I often end up with lines of troops.  I suppose its the price for the level of detail the casting metal makes possible.

The basing technique I use for the infantry is almost the same as that for the vehicle stands except more untextured base is left. So That involves random patterns in undiluted PVA with fine sand sprinkled on then more random patterns of PVA with my flock mix.  It breaks the bases up while still allowing them to stay visible on the playing surface.  probably not at all realistic but it works.

The Soviet dismounts are listed for FFT as having options of for each company of either three Rifle Platoons, or Companies with mixtures of Rifle Platoons, ATGM and Rifle or SAM and Rifle Platoons.  in each Company one platoon can be changed to a ATGM equipped one and/or a SAM equipped one.  The photo above has one of each option.  That then brings in the issue of telling them apart.  While I can tell the difference opponents might not be able to so the rear corner (left in the photo has either AA or AT marked in black and a coloured dot; light blue for SAM and Green for ATGM (sky blue cos the SAM is shooting into the sky and green as the ATGM is shooting ground targets I'm literal minded that way!).  It makes sense to me honest.