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Sooner or later, I'm going to get around to getting my first army put together: Space Marines. I've read a lot about what people think when it comes to the 25 and 32mm bases and I've read GW's "answer" to whole rebasing question. I understand the 'use what bases they come with rule' but certain kits are now being officially released with the new bases. I can't find any good recent information on it. Most of the links I find in web searches are dated closer to when the new bases were just rumors or when they finally dropped.

My question is what are tournament players doing now that this has had time to sink in? I know different tournaments will have different rules and grace periods, but are the competitive players jumping onto rebasing to 32mm excitedly, begrudgingly swapping if they want to play a tournament that requires it, avoiding rebasing altogether? I don't know that I would ever play in a tournament setting, but I'd like to make my basing decision on what is going to be the tournament norm.

There has never been any requirement in the 40K rules to update your bases to whatever the model is currently supplied with, and outside of certain specific examples (Terminators and Astra Imperialguardium Heavy Weapons come to mind) tournaments have rarely required it either.


It would be a nightmare to try and enforce, as models are quite often available simultaneously with more than one sized base (Eldar Jetbikes, I'm looking at you!) so determining which one is 'correct' can be problematic.

Add that to the fact that the 40K rules have flip-flopped around over the years regarding using bases other than those supplied, and you're left with the idea that the best policy for tournaments is to just ask players to not be stupid with it but use whatever sized bases look appropriate for the model.

Yes, I understand that there's not an actual hard set rule and that enforcement would either be nonexistent, difficult, or dependent on a tournament's own rules.

What I'm wanting to know is what are the competitive tournament players independently choosing to do now that these new bases are available? Do they like them, hate them, are they staying, are they swapping?

Bobinator wrote:
Yes, I understand that there's not an actual hard set rule and that enforcement would either be nonexistent, difficult, or dependent on a tournament's own rules.

What I'm wanting to know is what are the competitive tournament players independently choosing to do now that these new bases are available? Do they like them, hate them, are they staying, are they swapping?

I really don't think it's a thing, either way. I've yet to see even the most competitive players complain about being disadvantaged with base size. Most I've seen have based new models that seem like they should go on a 32mm base, onto a 32mm base. Some people have a mix of 32 and 25mm on the same army, simply because they don't want to rebase dozens of models. Of course there are well-discussed technical advantages and disadvantages to a larger or smaller base, the situation where it would change the game outcome one way or the other would be very rare.