1 miniature equals 1 soldier/vehicle/military formation

1 miniature equals 1 soldier/vehicle/military formation or at least for me. After assembling and painting you can decide to base your miniature for wargaming purposes or just out of preference. For microminiatures (below 10mm) some prefer it so they can keep the miniatures together. Others for artistic purposes, integrating the military units with the environment, or others for the need to assure historical precision, when let’s say that a reconnaisance platoon is represented and it may have different components.

As for me, I don’t base my miniatures. For me 1 miniature equals 1 soldier/vehicle/military formation. For example, this means that one miniature tank can represent on actual tank on the tabletop wargame or a whole platoon, or even more depending on the wishes and current necessities (skirmish or operational level). There are some wargames rules that in order to be played need based miniatures, but here again it is another problem of representation: 5 soldiers per base may represent a half-squad or battalion, so in the latter example of course not a real representation. The 5 soldiers on a base function like a symbol of a battalion, so in a wargame they may provide the players a feel of actual big military units engaged in vicious fights. I tend to improvise when playing games with basing needed, keeping my miniatures not (permamently) based so I can deal with wargames that do not require it and for other activities with miniatures (photos in the combination I want and others).

So I like not to base my miniatures in general, but I experiment with others. The base may be sometimes a whole different thing or may be as complex as a miniature. Standard use of a base is to protect the miniature especially when used in wargames (manipulation in actual play and transport with an improved rate of success in terms of avoiding damaging it – as artefacts from museum leaving the building for an exposition in another place, the transport and associated activities, no matter how carreful are being done, always result in damaging to a certain even minor extent, the object of exposition).

A base may also highlight the miniature. The standard way is to paint it black or dark grey, because the human eye tends to neglect the black color, so all the attention will fall on the miniature. But a base, as said may be complex. You can use hobby bushes, grass, stones and other environment features to simulate the environment where the miniature represented may be encountered, and depending if it is a sci-fi, WW2 or other era you may have more chances to improvise, making a good unique job. So the base may have an auxiliary role or an equal role to the miniature. Sometimes even more, especially when thinking about dioramas. For example in a WW2 diorama representing a tank crossing a small river, while the focus may still be on the miniature itself, it may also be important to give clues to the viewer of the difficulty to cross such a small river by a tracked vehicle. The only limit is your imagination.

Based or not, with a an equal focus on base painting as in painting of the miniature or not, go out there and experiment, assemble, create, paint, make errors and learn from them, having fun along this process.