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Well, I have tried pretty much everything, starting with precut 1mm plastic bases, moving to steel washers and then steel precut bases, then do-it-yourself plastic bases, moving back to painted (but not flocked) pre-made plastic bases before finally settling on my 1.5 mm posterboard scheme, which I love.
Here are its pluses.
1) Unlike steel and plastic, it takes and holds paint marvelously well and doesn’t chip, ever.
2) It is much, much cheaper than pre-made bases.
3) It is very light.
4) It can be easily cut to any size and shape which you may desire.
5) It can be easily picked up without touching the miniature.
6) Unlike steel, it doesn’t rust.
Its only drawback, as far as I can see, is that it isn’t magnetic. But that’s not an issue because 3mm is so small and light. Pack your figs in a plano box, stuff some foam above it, and Bobbie’s yer mamma’s bubba. Another potential benefit of steel bases is that they give some heft to 3mm figs. But I have never found that to be a problem.
Note that my bases are, at most, 3omm x 15mm. Most are 20mm x 12,5mm. There is thus little chance they will warp. If you make 3 inch x 3 inch bases with posterboard, that might not be true. I would probably use plastic or steel in that case.
Originally, I thought 1.5mm might be too thick for this scale, but I think it actually looks BETTER than thin metal because it further helps delineate the miniature on the board.
The trick is to paint the base a dark soil color that combines with the backing color of your mat or terrain scheme. Then you flock a lighter color and paint your minis to contrast with the flock.
For my sci-fi collection and 3mm Napoleonics, I paint the bases terracotta swirled when still wet with papaya. Then I partially flock the base with yellow flocking and — very sparsely — place a few clumps of light green corse flock as bushes, here and there. For the Napoleonics, I use this to distinguish battalions (i.e. First battalion stands get one big clump, second battalion gets two smaller, etc).
I am entirely pleased with this scheme, which is more than I can say for they others.
For woodlands/green/temperate, I think I’d go chocolate paint, swirled with tan, light green flocking and dark green bushes.
Three things I can’t stress enough, however:
1) Paint light and bright (never use black as a base — mid grey at most).
2) Flock and base in contrast to your paint scheme.
3) Use flocking sparingly! Too much or too many types and your figures will be lost in the basing noise.
My favorite and most successfully based figures so far are my People’s Revolutionary Army figs, which are light green on yellow and terracotta bases. IMHO, these look a treat on the table:
When doing moderns or WWII, you obviously can’t go the “Circus wagon” route (as PhD Leadhead uncharitably calls it. You can and should, however, paint twice as light as you think you should. For olive green, I’d base white and WASH olive. This is the easy way to bring out the details on O8’s fantastic figs.
Another way to go is to paint darker, but neon highlight. So you paint an olive green, but highlight the edges two shades lighter and yellower. This takes patience and a steady hand or it looks crap. Washing over white and dot and slashing details is the best way to go if you’re in a hurry, IMHO.
If you are beginning, buy one pack extra of your favorite vehicle and practice on it until you get the scheme and touch you like. It’s cheap and will save you a lot of grief later. Please trust my experience on this one.
If you f*** up, chant this mantra: “It’s only 3mm. A pack costs half of what one 28mm figure does. Fuck it.” Strip ’em or, hell, just toss them or give them to children to play with and start over.
We get slapped around, but we have a good time!
Here’s a troop from the First Polish Lancer GEVs, placed next to a pound and a quarter for a size referent:
We get slapped around, but we have a good time!
I have been painting 3mm almost literally since the first day they were available. I have extensive WWII, Modern and Sci-Fi collections and I have posted quite a lot about this scale over at my blog, which contains painting, basing and terrain tips. http://leadnobleed.blogspot.com.br/2012/12/what-do-3mm-figures-really-look-like.html
To put it simply, there are plenty of good reasons to game in 3mm, most of which have been touched on above (space, the ability to game big battles, etc.) My favorite, which hasn’t been mentioned yet, is affordability, which makes this scale somewhat of a “bonus” scale to any gamer, in that you can get into it essentially for free.
A pack of 3mm O8 WWII tanks runs 4.50 USD for 15 castings. Ten packs will give you enough troops for a battalion-sized game of Blitzkrieg Commander which can be played on your coffee table and stored in a shoe box. And, unless you are REALLY detail minded, you can get everything painted up in a weekend, with the terrain done on another weekend.
A six company French 1813 infantry battalion with 180 figures (i.e. 1:4 scale) costs five dollars. 3.50 if you go with four base battalions. Compare that to a 32 dollar box of Warlord figures. For the price of one box of warlord’s admittedly maravelous 28mm stuff, you can field a six squadron cavalry regiment, four entire artillery batteries, and a five battalion infantry brigade! And you can paint everything in an afternoon!
One should not think of 3mm as competition for larger figs, but rather as a complimentary scale. It allows one to do cheap, fast projects in periods or areas one normally wouldn’t go into. For example, I have wanted to play Napoleonics ever since I got into wargaming, but the thought of putting together and painting the necessary figs was just too daunting. This is no problem whatsoever in 3mm scale, however! Just during my off time at the World Cup, I was able to paint and field an entire French army. Awhile back, I wanted to do a Venezuelan invasion of Colombia: 50 bucks of O8 figs was enough to set me up.
Finally, of course, this is THE scale for nice looking, easily portable games. Many wags say “Hell, if you go 3mm, you are practically boardgaming”. First of all, that’s not true (see my above link comparing counters to 3mm stands). But secondly, even if it were true, so what? A boardgame can be carried in a backpack, friend, with room left over for a book, an iPad and sixpack. Idem 3mm. Even my deluxe set up consists of a flocked terrain mat wrapped around a pvc pipe and two shoeboxes of terrain and figures. This is a bad thing? Only if you are a hugely wealthy git with an SUV and a dedicated wargames room! A DBA set up can easily be completely stored in a shoebox in 3mm.
Now yes, there are problems with 3mm. One of them is that, to be as spectacular as the larger scales, real thought must be given to terrain. Your battles are going to look somewhat like Osprey maps and not like toy collections. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
The real problem, however, is that you need to develop an entirely new painting and basing technique for these. Painting needs to be MUCH lighter and basing much simpler, with finer grain or even no flocking. You can see my eight years of travails over at the Lead Doesn’t Bleed blog. However, now that many people have developed the techniques you need to use and posted them, you won’t have to go through the troubles I had. You can find a discussion about these tips and techniques here on TWW at: http://www.thewargameswebsite.com/forums/topic/painting-3mm-1600-vehicles-and-figures/
In conclusion, I find 3mm to be a wholly rewarding, cost-effective and lovely scale. There is literally nothing to not like about it, except for the fact that it isn’t 28mm… But that is precisely the point! With regards to 3mm versus 6mm, well, that is perhaps a matter of taste, but again, one typically gets three times the number of 3mm castings for something like half the price, so I would say that, if anything, it is even more cost effective to play in 3mm versus 6mm than 3mm versus 28mm.
Given that you can buy a complete army in 3mm for the price of one Games Wankshop blister pack, I very much urge gamers to try this new scale out! You have literally nothing to lose but the price of one cheap dinner for two!
We get slapped around, but we have a good time!
