Multi-basing Celts

This evening I've been getting my Celt army out ready for a few games this weekend. However, it's taken me more than an hour to get them all ranked up on movement trays. Aaaah!?

As you probably know by now the army was based for Warhammer Ancient Battles so all the figures are on individual 20mm x 20mm bases. If you look back on the blog you'll notice that the bulk of the army is composed from Warlord Games plastic Celts. Very reasonably priced figures but quite a few have rather odd "chicken wing" poses which makes the a right pain to rank up nicely - and that's putting it mildy. I've always found them rather fiddly to arrange but this evening took the biscuit. Also, you only need to just clip a figure and the magic of plastic will ensure that several go flying and your painstakingly arranged ranks are thrown in to disorder.

The problems are (a) if I ever wanted to play a quick game then it would probably take me longer to get the army ready for battle than to actually play! and (b) the thought of getting the army out of the carry cases and the hassle of organising them for battle is almost off-putting.

Historical Celt leaders probably had less bother rounding up the lads for a ruck with the Romans ... well OK, maybe not, but you get the idea.

All this has led me to think that I need to gradually replace the awkward figures for more sensibly posed lead (thinking GB), and come up with a scheme for multi-basing the figures. I'd also look to remove some of the better posed figures from their individual bases and re-base (!?) them en-masse.

A warband of 32 figures on 4 bases of 8 x 4 figures, i.e. 80mm x 40mm, would be so much quicker to get ready for a game. Plus it gives an opportunity to make the bases look a little more scenic.

I'd have to think a little about how I based "command figures" to ensure they were approx front and centre. I like the idea of the front ranks of the warband being the better armed and equipped troops anyway so this shouldn't be difficult either. Also, basing figures in blocks would allow me to make the formations a little more disorganised.

Some of the blogs I follow (Saxon Dog being a prime example) multi-base most of their figures and I must say that the result is very good - though Dave's splendid painting helps too! BigRedBat's blog is another excellent example.

Casualty removal would take a little planning but it's not an insurmountable problem. Plus not all games systems require removal of figures anyway. Certainly need to have think about what to do as I'm just not happy with my Celt army the way it is. Some of the painting is a bit dodgy too. I know it was dipped but some of the figures are dreadful, plus some of the early figures were ruined by the horrible Army Painter varnish going cloudy. It was all rather rushed. I'm certainly not going to re-start the army from scratch but it definitely needs an overhaul.