Epic ECW basing

[somegeezer 18480xp 1]

Hidee ho history lovers. I’m probably jumping the gun here but oh well.

I saw a review of the epic ECW infantry on Leon T66’s channel and he had the very good idea of using an oversized base for the front rank.

Instead of the 60×20 base he placed them at the rear of a 60×40 one to protect the sticky out pike.

Good idea I thought. Now I’m wondering if there’s any reason not to go further and just mount all four ranks on a 60mm square base.

Anyone else fancy overthinking this with me?

[scribbs 14517xp 2]

It’s pretty common to see ECW bases with a large footprint to accommodate the pikes to the front. Most rulesets that I’m aware of use the pike as a single block, so I don’t think there’s any reason not to?

[somegeezer 18480xp 1]

That’s my thinking. I’m no expert on pike and shotte but it seems the way forward.

[phaidknott 7250xp 1]

The extended bases for pike blocks has been around for years now. Not only do they protect the figures, but when it comes to pushing two blocks of pikes into each other for close combat the “normal” tight basing makes it near impossible.

 

My old buddy Ken (from Yarkshire Gamer), even does this with his 28mm Italian Wars collection (linky for some pics Yarkshire Gamer: 28mm TAG Borgia Shot )

For the Epic Warlord stuff, the front pikes are “at porte” (so you don’t really need to base for the extremes of pike blocks with levelled pikes at the front), so you could probably get away with just an extra 10mm (or 20mm if you want the depth of the bases to be consistent).

 

As for basing the whole lot onto one big base, it depends. If you are just going to be playing the Warlord rules then it’s  probably going to make sense. But if you might be trying to use other rules where yo might need to represent infantry formations that AREN’T 50/50 pike and shotte (which is really only seen at the very start of the period the figures are supposed to represent, or the French 😀 ), then you may as well keep things to using the two bases (then you can have a lower ratio of pike).

[somegeezer 18480xp 0]

Good points. The one about fewer pike later in the period in particular. I think that’s swayed me into two bases of pike vs one.

Thanks all, this hive mind is wise

[scribbs 14517xp 1]

Alternatively, considering that you just need to adjust the ratio of pike to shotte, you could just add more shotte bases… (yes, that was unhelpful, I know!)

[somegeezer 18480xp 0]

@scibbs I’m sure that’s the solution Warlord Games would prefer. I’m just about daft enough to try it ?

[rickabod41 9265xp 0]

I thought this was about Extreme Championship Wrestling….

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