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This is a reply to a post in the refugee topic, but I thought I'd branch it off to avoid clogging that thread. Hope it's okay.

lees_shadow wrote:

I don't think KoW has ever denied they are elements. With the dawn of 2nd number of figures is not important, base size is. Most GW based infantry armies are 4 across x 2 or 4 deep on 100mm x 50mm or 100mm x 100mm.

Well, not infantry on 20mm bases. But my main problem is that your first two lines kinda contradict eachother, in the same way that KoW's basing conventions kinda did when I read through my 1st ed book aaaall that time ago.

It's not a huge whine, I'm just curious. Of course there's all this joyful romping through the possibilities of element basing, spacing your minis and creating little dioramas, and I'm well on board with that. But then, in the refugee thread there was a reiteration of a Mantic rule: 'minis must be glued to the base they were supplied with!'

Not entirely literal, maybe, or there wouldn't be all this discussion about diorama bases; but a kind of a restriction on just what size of unit bases your infantry must go on, based on which individual bases they happened to be supplied with and... what? I understand that Mantic had to match certain base sizes way back when they were 'just' supplying alternative minis for certain other settings, and KoW was just a twinkle in Alessio's eye. But what now, when 'certain other' settings and games don't exist anymore, for all intents and purposes? There will still be ex Grandma Wendy gamers bringing their old orcs and warriors and things into KoW for some time, and plenty of existing KoW gamers with 125x100mm dioramas, and not all will want to rebase. I don't blame them. But will that old tie still inform KoW into the future? Are KoW orcs irretrievably tied to and playtested to dust in 125x100 regiments?

If there was a 3rd or even 4th edition of KoW, and all the GW refugees that there could be were shepherded in long before, would Mantic still stick to the strange 'official' situation of element base gaming with individually based minis? Would there be any kind of shock at the idea of a 100x80mm orc regiment, for reasons other than 'that's not how we based them at the start'? I seem to remember an old reason, that Mantic orcs had bigger bases because they needed room to swing; but I don't know if that convinced anyone...

It's a reasonable point if you're likely to be playing in a tournament. I read that little Alessio quote recently, and basically wrote it off, since I'm doing whatever the hell I like with my toy soldiers. it's probably worth a RC clearup, but I fear it's too late to be in the book.

I'd personally be all for 100x80mm Orc basing, but I think we'll be stuck with it since they won't want to ask people to rebase their existing units. - Which had its benefits when Mantic/Alessio were trying to remove several unit sizes in early V2 playtesting, but has also led to silly things like Chariots being units of 3 or 6, with no chance for 2 or 4 (and the removal of single chariot units).