Assembling and Organizing Multi-pose Plastics

Coyote · Post by **Coyote** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 5:34 pm

Or metal miniatures with lots of pose variations.

My goal is to create an animated unit like our gracious host. I am assembling a box of Victrix British Peninsular Center Company. So far I've only assembled 10 of the 13 figures on one sprue-set*

I have a tray where I've drawn squares representing my chosen base sizes to help with ranking and whatnot.

I'm looking for any advice on planning poses. Victrix has some firing, reloading and advancing poses in each set. I was hoping to use all the poses in the same unit if possible. I'm using 60x60 bases with 8 figures in 2 ranks. I don't mind staggering them a little, or making it look like part of the unit has started firing while another is still moving into position.

My current plan is to pick a set of arms for a specific pose and build all of them, instead of building all the poses from one sprue-set.

*Victrix come as four sets of sprues with 10 privates, 1 sergeant, 1 drummer and 1 officer/ensign.

quindia · Post by **quindia** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 10:40 am

Tyler, I've built several hundred of these little buggers - if you cut the bases down into rough ovals (diamonds, polyhedrons, whatever - just make 'em smaller) before you glue them to their stands you will find you have far more latitude when ranking them up.

My minis are fielded on 45x50mm bases, ranked 3x2. I don't use the loading poses because they are very static looking. For more disciplined units, like the Brits, I avoid the firing poses too unless I intend to make the whole unit firing. If you do want to mix in the firing poses, I suggest you group them together at one end with a 'spoiler' mixed in - warning, this tend to make them look like an undisciplined mob, but I thought this was appropriate for my Spanish units! Make sure you build shooters from poses with both feet on the ground!

I generally rank advancing poses, sergeants, and officers in the first rank and shouldered muskets in the second rank. If you drop in a casualty figure (something I do only rarely - don't want my whole army to look bloodied), you can add an advancing figure in the second rank as it looks like he's stepping up to fill the gap.

Hope that helps!

Coyote · Post by **Coyote** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:44 pm

Thanks for the reply. The advice about trimming bases is good. I noticed that some of the bases were very big.

What do you do with the poses that you don't use? Or do you take all the left overs and combine them into another unit?

Basically, I'm looking at all these poses and trying to figure out how to make them look good together.

Yermolov · Post by **Yermolov** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 7:13 pm

Sorry to threadjack a little bit, but are you using the 3mm Litko bases for your figures, Clarence?

I've got a box of Perry French at home and am looking at getting ahold of some Victrix figs are well and have been thinking about basing. The 3mm thick ones wouldn't look bad with the 28mm figures, would give a little more heft/weight to the figures and also give people more impetus (hopefully!) to grab the base instead of the figures when moving units.

Thanks,

Bart

Coyote · Post by **Coyote** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:35 pm

I grew up GW, so I like the look of a thick base as long as the edges are flawless.

I'm also curious what bases Clarence is using. If those are Litko I may re-appraise, perhaps Warbases.

Coyote · Post by **Coyote** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 12:46 am

Well, will be heading downstairs in a bit for some more assembly. Still. not sure how I'm going to deal with the varied poses that come in the Victrix box.

Yermolov · Post by **Yermolov** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 1:30 am

Hi Tyler,

I've got some of the 1.5mm Litko bases for my 15mm Napoleonics and they are nice bases. The quality of the bases I've received from them are very good... the only complaint I have is the slow shipping speed.

Bart

quindia · Post by **quindia** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 2:06 am

All of my bases are 3mm Litko. I like the deep bases so I can pick up the stand of figures by the base rather than the models.

Tyler, I don't usually have many models left over - maybe the kneeling ones. There are enough arms in the box that you needn't use the loading ones!

Coyote · Post by **Coyote** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 3:41 am

I assembled two more models tonight. Man, it's slow going cleaning mold lines off all the miniatures and gluing them together.

Tomorrow I'll have pictures. It's a 4x2 60mmx60mm base. I have three firing, one loading (sorry, like the loading poses) in the front, then four others in the back, except they look like they are trying to bayonet their fellows in the back of the head.

The British box comes with (IIRC) 2 firing, 2 loading, 2 holding their rifle like they are receiving a charge, 4 advancing and 2 marching. I'm building a unit that will have 4 bases of 8, plus a base with the colours and a smaller base of Light Company (the unit's Grenadiers were elsewhere)

Coyote · Post by **Coyote** » Thu Mar 25, 2010 3:20 am

Here's my current process. To spread the firing poses out I'm putting them in the first rank and active poses behind. I've taken some old floating floor scraps that I use as miniature carrying trays and marked 3 60mm x 60mm bases. I then blue-tack the miniatures in position to work out how I want to pose them.

I don't know why, but I always forget to wash the miniatures on the sprue and end up having a more difficult job scrubbing assembled miniatures.

I have some more prep work with this group. As you can see some of the heads have sinkholes. I was disappointed in the number of sinkholes throughout the set. I would have traded more flash to get rid of them.