Recall that a couple of weeks ago I was pondering some solutions to my basing of SYW figures, with the aim of getting the figures closer together than I have been doing with my present collection. Currently, I use five stands measuring 40mm by 60mm with the flags on the middle stand. 

Some have criticized my basing for having the individual figures a little too far apart, rather than shoulder to shoulder…and this is OK because all feedback is good.

Part of the reason for my current system is to have some space on the edges of the stand so that it can be picked up with someone’s fingers haphazzardly mashing the muskets and bayonets of my figures.

Here is a unit using my existing basing system of five 40mm by 60mm stands. Admittedly the figures are not exactly shoulder to shoulder, but I like them and I don’t plan on rebasing my entire Prussian and Austrian armies,.

With that in mind, I experimented with a tighter appearance for the battalion, using two 40mm by 60mm stands and two 40mm by 80mm stands. The larger stands were put on the ends of the battalion line. These stands had 8 rank and file soldiers and then one drummer who was offset from the rest of the battalion. The 40mm by 60mm stands had 8 figures on one of them and on the command stand there were 6 figures. This was done to keep the size of the battalion down, because I was now increasing the battalion from 30 to 32 figures.

One of the issues with my suggested system of four stands 40mm by 80mm was that this placed the flags a little bit off center when all of the stands were drawn up in a line. So I pondered this for awhile and hit on the idea of going back to four 40mm by 60mm stands and then one smaller stand in the center that would hold the two flags, an officer and a drummer or NCO.

So this is where I am today. One other note, I may increase the unit size to 34 figures so as to place one more soldier on each of the two end stands, filling up a hole created by offsetting the drummer out onto the flank.

What do you think, dear readers? I would like to hear your opinions before I start gluing figures to bases. I only want to do this basing one time. LOL.