Rebasing an 6mm Army and another Nightmarish model from Fenris Games

On By The OneIn 6mm, Command and Colors - Ancients, Painting

I was flashed a Republican Roman army by Ebay the other day, it looked well painted and there were a lot of miniatures for the £65 asked for including postage, with a mixture of Baccus and Rapier models. Doing a quick calculation I found the metal value was about £62 if the models would have been bought from Baccus and Rapier, the models were really well painted.

Well for the cost of bare metal and the models already base painted I thought it might be quicker to remove the figures from the bases, add some details and rebase them in my own style and base style – I have based all my ancients on 50 by 20mm bases (based on some Command and Colors stuff I have done). Before you do this it could be worth asking the seller how they based the figures – if they based the modes with sand and pva, it is relatively easy to do this (even if they superglued the models first), if a form of filler were used it is still ok but messier and finally if a superglue was used for both attaching the figures and to bind the sand – I would probably give it a pass. These were glued on then based with PVA and Sand – piece of cake.

The Army as delivered, nothing wrong with it!

Here is the steps I took.

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Let it all soak in some water
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After this I scraped off all the grass, sand and pva (I used a hobby knife, see below).
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It creates an interesting mess
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Then I removed the miniatures with the following tools
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All lining up nicely
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Then I added details to the shields, you will spot a few I forgot
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Then I rebased them in my own style.
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And here mixing them up with the other part of the collection
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A mixture of the new and the old,
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This is why I do 6mm!
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These are old, but who does not like some Elephants?

In total it took me a few sessions, about 9 hours to rebase all the miniatures (including doing the shields and a few more highlights) – I would not have been able to paint the bare lead and base up nowhere near this amount, so it was well worth it and fun. With addition of detail and uniform details it is difficult to see any difference between the models I have painted from scratch and the ones I have rebased.

It is messy and I suppose if the basing has been done with superglue and sand it may be tricky to deal with, but otherwise perfectly ok. I managed to increased the size of my Romans significantly to match my Carthagians very quickly.

In other news…

In other news I have enjoyed painting another excellent model I got from Fenris Games – it is called the Dweller in the Ruins and can be bought here in the UK and from Barbaric Splendor, here, in the US. It did not take long and it is an absolute master sculpt – I think a more skilled painter than I could do something really remarkable with the model, but I am more than happy with this result.

/ Hope that was of some interest

18 thoughts on “Rebasing an 6mm Army and another Nightmarish model from Fenris Games”

    1. Thanks John, just wanted to illustrated that old stuff can be re-done and re-used with your stuff relatively effectively. There are a lot of 6mm armies needing some love out there that are perfectly serviceable next to your new and shiny. I love the dweller too, it was one of those self paining models, just black and browns and some ivory really.

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  2. Phil Carrington

    I think you got quite a good deal there – some nice figures. Really interesting to see as Punic Wars is on my (middle distance) to do list after being inspired by the Little Wars TV ‘Age of Hannibal’ rules.

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  4. I get a lot of my armies from Hinds and eBay, and do exactly the same thing. If you are patient, you get to expand your forces with well painted troops for often not much more than the cost of the raw figures, just like you did here.

    They look great, and look like they were part of your forces from the planning stage.

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