Home › Forums › COG – Green Room › CogitoLudos#9 › Reply To: CogitoLudos#9
I’m not sure it’d be practical for all games to be base agnostic. The problem with letting people use whatever bases they want is that it can have an impact in how they interact within the game. For example, if the game uses templates for attacks, then basing on larger bases gives you an advantage as it means less models will fit under the template and thus less will get hit by the attack (and conversely basing on smaller templates disadvantages you as more fit under).
Similarly, if a model has an aura/AoE ability, then basing on a larger base widens the aura; eg on a 1” base with a 12” ability, the AoE is about 490 square inches while on a 3” base the same aura has an AoE of about 572 square inches.
And if you base on a smaller bases you can get more models into combat while minimising the number of enemy models that can get into combat back; and if you enemy is on larger bases you can swarm them with more models while they can get fewer into combat back.
The only way I could see around these issues is if every game moved to grid based rules, but even then bases would be limited by the size of the squares/hexes in use. I suppose you could measure from the mini itself but that has its own issues of trying to agree on which bits count and could hamstring modelling opportunities as it could discourage dynamic posing (no one wants their general getting taken out because he was posed lunging forwards for example).
What might be better is companies starting to produce base adapters, that way people could have more flexibility with their basing, without unduly impacting gameplay. Also in the case of non-skirmish games, I suppose base agnosticity could be achieved if rules moved away from focusing on individual models and instead did something like games like KoW where a unit has a set ‘footprint’ and it’s the footprint rather than models that matter so you can just have a movement tray/base and play around with the models on it (well, within reason – no sticking one goblin on a 50man unit tray and saying that’s it).
Ultimately, I suppose if you really want to be playing around with base sizes and whatnot for aesthetic reasons then maybe you should consider using those minis as display pieces/dioramas rather than as gaming pieces.
A possible solution to allow for cross game compatibility could be if all manufacturers/rule writers agreed to a standardised system of bases, but the problem with that is that it could stymy creativity on their part and there’d be no way to enforce it as anyone could come out and provide different bases with their products and/or write their rules with different bases in mind.
