There are some things in our hobby that become so familiar we stop seeing them.
One of those is the humble plastic base.
As the Warhost miniature range has grown, I’ve had to make a decision I never expected to spend much time thinking about. Do we move to the traditional 4mm thick plastic base, or continue with the thinner bases we’ve used so far?
At first glance, it seems like an odd thing to spend time considering. After all, it’s only a base. The more I looked into it, though, the more I realised it opens up a much bigger question about miniature gaming and how much of what we accept today is simply inherited from the past.
I’m old enough to remember when Citadel introduced Slotta bases. Before then, most metal miniatures stood on thin puddle bases. The Slotta base solved a genuine problem. It securely held metal figures with cast tabs and made assembling an army quicker, easier and more consistent. It was an elegant solution, and one that helped shape the modern hobby.
Games Workshop then grew to become the biggest name in miniature gaming.
As its influence spread, so did the Slotta base. Other manufacturers followed, new gamers entered the hobby expecting deep plastic bases, and before long they had become the accepted standard.
Very few of us ever stopped to ask why.
That only changed for me when I started buying miniatures from other manufacturers. Some arrived on much thinner bases. The difference wasn’t dramatic when you picked them up, but it changed how they looked once they were on the table.
The figures felt connected to the battlefield instead of standing above it.
Roads met their feet naturally. Buildings looked the right height. Rivers and bridges felt like part of the same landscape rather than scenery sitting below a row of black cylinders and squares. The miniatures no longer looked as though they were walking around on little plinths.
Once I’d noticed it, I couldn’t unsee it. What surprised me most was that I’d spent nearly forty years in the hobby before I’d ever stopped to ask why.
That experience forced me to look again at the decisions we’re making for Warhost. Choosing a base because it’s familiar didn’t seem like a good enough reason. So before deciding how future releases should be presented, I wanted to understand why the industry had settled on this design in the first place.
The obvious answer is manufacturing, but I’m no longer convinced that’s the whole story. Modern plastic kits routinely include large flat parts, shields, weapons, vehicle panels and even thin puddle bases without issue. Manufacturing has moved on enormously since the 1980s.
The historical explanation feels far more convincing.
The original Slotta base needed enough depth to accommodate a metal tab. That dictated its proportions and solved a real engineering problem. As one-piece plastic miniatures became the norm, that particular problem disappeared.
The base, however, stayed exactly the same.
Perhaps familiarity became more powerful than innovation. Perhaps compatibility across manufacturers became the priority. Or perhaps nobody saw a reason to revisit something that had worked perfectly well for decades.
Whatever the reason, the design outlived the problem it was created to solve.
None of this is intended as a criticism of Games Workshop. Quite the opposite. The Slotta base was an elegant answer to the challenge they faced, and its influence on the hobby is impossible to overstate. I’m not questioning whether it was the right decision in 1985. I’m questioning whether we’re still making the same decision today simply because it’s become the convention.
For me, that’s a question worth asking.
One of the guiding principles behind Warhost has been to challenge assumptions. We aren’t making fantasy miniatures because that’s what fantasy is expected to look like. We’ve built a world that feels grounded, believable and rooted in the same visual language as historical gaming. The figures, armour, weapons and poses have all been approached from that perspective. It seems only right that the bases deserve the same consideration.
This isn’t an announcement, and it isn’t a campaign to change the hobby. It’s simply a question that the development of Warhost has led me to ask. Forty years ago, Games Workshop solved a genuine problem, and the hobby quite rightly followed. Today, I’m wondering whether it’s time to ask the question again.
I'm not saying that 4mm-thick bases are wrong. They’ve served the hobby well for decades, and many gamers genuinely prefer them. Compatibility matters too, particularly for those of us with large existing collections.
But I do think it’s healthy to question the assumptions we’ve inherited.
If you were designing the modern 28mm miniature hobby from scratch today, with no knowledge of Games Workshop or Slotta bases, would you really choose a 4mm thick base?
Or would you design something different?
I’d genuinely like to know what you think.
20 comments
the year was 1987 when i started the Hobby with all the wide span of this (Open) Hobby.
The White Dwarf was full with Roleplay content and other SF and Fantasy Stuff. As German there was only one Option to Pay with Postschecks. So Openminded was the Key. Our first Bases where Cartbords from what ever we find. Yes , after some tough games of CHAOS WARS from Ral Partha , the egdes became round and i have the bases just simple green painted. Or like a Mentor of the Hobby, Alexander Liebold likes to Paint a lot of Hour to Paint the Feudal Heraldy on his Knights with all the Bardings and Herolds Shilds und Flags just to Glue it with Patex on a Stonegrey Cardsbord. Years thats was the 1987 -1990 time.
We i take a look in the Old Warhammer second Edition Book . There some good photos with Bases with just “Goblin Green” Painted Bases from the first Plastik Slotta Bases Rank and File Box. 10 Skaven 10 Woodelf Archers 10 Orcs …… 2026 ? I like the Flat bases from the MDF Lasercutters with all the little things we can add on it. I had rebase all my 15mm Historical Armies to the WRG7,0/DBXx Standart because it was the best for all the following Rulessets that are writen. I like the Baron Wars Meta and World with this Rules. I like it to be Creativ with all the things. It start with little things, like my Halfling Royal Kuduk Army for Chaos Wars in 1987 :)
PS:
The Hobbis where Preslotta Halflings from Citadel with a Flathead Hair und a Bow in Monopose. A friends make a Form with Silikon and we heat up some Lead and do and 80 copies from this Monopose Miniture. this Mini was later Converded to gets a Spearmen and Stinger&Shilds als a Sling and of course a Flagholder.
the Stands? I buy from the Local Store 100 20×20 Slotta 4mm Bases to glued them on them. Just to get them a little more Size. Yes, i was 12 , and i was proud to learn English with this Rules and get the attantion from the Big Boys and i played with them.
I’ve been using Renedra plastic bases for years now, even with the added work it takes to deal with any minis that have puddle bases (making the occasional exception for metal minis as it is a painful process). I find it helps them seem in scale with terrain (and in the case of Scifi, vehicles) better. I’ll make exceptions for large models that have integral bases or ones in shapes I can’t easily buy (though now I have a 3D printer that wouldn’t be as much of an issue), but they are models that tower over foot or cavalry so the thicker base seems less important.
I absolutely prefer the thinner base. In the 80s I used to take my Citadel miniatures to my dad’s belt sander and grind them down.
Excellent question! I agree that the historical reason is a the source of the usage and thus could easily be used as a smooth transition to a 2mm base, which would make our battlefields more aesthetically pleasing. One issue I may raise is that I would prefer bases be 1mm thick due to my adding a 1mm round magnet beneath them. Alternatively, a 1.5mm washer can be used a base but would require magnetic trays, which not everyone has.
Honestly, I started out with 40k well into the age of plastic manufacturing, so the deep base felt like the default to me for a long time, now I definitely see the advantages of each. All-in-all I tend to prefer the flat bases for the reasons listed (the miniature seeming to meet the environment better. To me it looks like you punched a hole out of the battlefield where the soldier stood and plopped it down elsewhere), but there’s some exceptions (Heroscape and Battletech have massive minis that I think suit the chunky bases a bit more)