Art De La Guerre

[76mm]

I'm just getting started collecting, painting, and basing my first armies! I'm doing 10mm and have a question about basing commanders: for some reason it offends my sensibilities to have a couple of 10mm figures on a "huge" 40mm base, so I'd like to base my commanders (with standards, etc) on 20mm or 30mm square or hex bases. Is there any reason not to do so?

I don't play to play competitively, and play to have a 40mm x 40mm base to use as a commander placeholder if necessary, so to me it seems like no harm, no foul?

[KevinD]

Smaller bases with a few (1-3) figs would be fine.

You could also have a larger larger base with a number of figures making a diorama. This might include the big guy, some musicians, standard bearers and bodyguards and maybe a few messengers. You might also have things like the screens used by Japanese generals for a Samurai army. If you look at Renaissance or similar era paintings of classical battles you can often see a focus on the headquarters staff of the general and use these as inspiration. (Here’s a picture of Caesar at Alicia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar#/media/File:Siege-alesia-vercingetorix-jules-cesar.jpg)

Another option is to use a single larger figure (15-25mm) to show the great leader larger than life. Tim Porter does this if you see some of his pictures. IMO this would be really suitable if doing an Egyptian or other Bronze Age army where contemporary art very often shows the great man as heroically larger than everyone else.

[76mm]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I'm too lazy and untalented to make diorama-style bases, and for me using larger figures would be rather jarring.

I forgot to mention that another goal is to keep the basing compatible with other (to be determined) rulesets to the maximum extent possible.