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Battletech Styled Hex Bases

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Battletech Styled Hex Bases

Postby paulson games » Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:39 am

Battletech uses 30mm hex bases for their game and they sell pewter bases to use with their minis, but the problem with them is that they have a fairly thick lip around the top edge. (maybe 3mm) The design was so that older mechs that featured a built in stand could be placed inside the lip and then all that'd need to be done is fill in left over ecessed areas.

However as the years have passed a lot of the mech designs have gotten away from using built in bases, particuarly the clan mech designs. Additionally the mechs have gotten a bit larger in scale and as a result a number of the newer designs don't fit inside the lipped base very well. Most people (including myself) have traditionally fixed this issue by filling the entire recessed portion of the lipped base with greenstuff, which takes a fair amount of work and totally sucks when you have a dozen or so bases to fix.

Other upsides are that they are very light, they keep a very sharp edge on the corners and clean up very easily. The pewter hex bases are heavy and have some wickedly thick mold lines on them which are a giant pain to clean up. Plastic slotted bases can be rather weak and have slightly rounded out corners.

Anyways a while back I decided to fix that issue by doing my own base that'd have a flat top. I'd have this printed about 6 months ago but it'd been buried in my modelling box and ignored for a bit. I dug it out last weekend and finally have them molded.

They could be made in black, grey, or white. I'm leaning towards making the black the standard color. They are a good thickness so they are more sturdy than the plastic slotted hex bases and also feature a tab on the underside to help keep it from bowing. (Not an issue given how study they are, but i wasn't sure in the design phase)

I'm looking to start selling these for $1.50 a base.
Last edited by paulson games on Mon Feb 24, 2014 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Battletech Styled Hex Bases

Postby Vaaish » Wed Sep 14, 2011 6:12 am

I like the look and I think it's a good idea, but how do you think this will compete with think like litko?
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Re: Battletech Styled Hex Bases

Postby paulson games » Wed Sep 14, 2011 6:50 am

Plastic and laser cut MDF board bases are obviously going to be significantly cheaper and there's no way to compete with that. If you buy bases in bulk you can get 30mm-50mm plastic for about ten cents each, resin bases the material itself is going to cost 50 cents and that's not considering the mold costs or labor.

The Litko bases I'm not really keen on due to them all being a straight 90 degree edge, I prefer the beveled edges that the BT line and other bases use. Also I've had some stuff made from particle board in the past which over time can absord moisture and swell or crumble.

There's a couple companies that make plastic slotted hex bases, which are quite cheap as well but the difficulty with those is the customer has to spend time to fill in the slot, and also has to buy greenstuff or other filler.

I'm looking at these being most comperable to the pewter bases put out for CBT as those sell even though there are cheaper alternatives.

I'm also toying with the idea of doing another version that'd have a name plate on one edge that way you could put unit numbers or pilot names etc on it for identifying simular mechs. I always liked having unit designations on the plastic minis and it might be worth doing an adapted verision of that on the resin bases.
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Re: Battletech Styled Hex Bases

Postby mangozac » Wed Sep 14, 2011 8:18 am

I think they look good, and despite the higher cost I would gladly go with these over the Litko ones due to these having the bevelled edge. Plus from what I've seen it's not like a Battletech force has that many bases compared to something like 40k...
Oh yeah I can make that....
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Re: Battletech Styled Hex Bases

Postby paulson games » Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:14 pm

IWM base for reference, same outer dimensions with my casts being about 1mm shorter in height.

The solid color makes them a bit hard to photograph.

Image
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Re: Battletech Styled Hex Bases

Postby mangozac » Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:14 pm

Why is it that it's only black bases that look right? Any other colour just seems strange - yeah I grew up (in the hobby) with GW black bases :P

From what I've sen of the Battletech stuff a nameplate built into the base would probably go down well.
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Re: Battletech Styled Hex Bases

Postby Kommando » Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:26 am

I am interested in purchasing some of these.
I play battletech on a regular basis with a group and might be able to get them interested in buying them too.

are you still making them and if so could i get some bases in all three colours.

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