Artillery helping hand with blue tack

 I had a little bit of an epiphany late last night while I was trying to glue the wheels onto two pieces of artillery.  I don't know if anyone else has this issue but I have found that trying to put the wheels onto a 10mm piece of artillery can be a pain in the ass at times.  The below models are from Pendraken who makes great stuff but sometimes the axel for the wheel isn't well casted and makes it a chore to get the wheel to stayed glued there.
In past I've used my Insta-Cure glue, which is a cyanoacrylate brand, and held the pieces together until it set. Which could take 10 to 15 minutes. Usually it would take several tries, as I would slip or sneeze and it would come apart. Once I tried to drill out the axel and insert a small piece of metal to adhere to but found I couldn't hold the drill steady enough to drill straight. I also lacked a press and vice to hold anything.
So last night while trying to put the below models together it clicked that I should try blue tack to hold the wheels close enough together so the glue could set.
Well it worked! I fumbled a little getting the gun carriage into place the first time but then it fell into place.  The pictures below tell the story.

If you have any other suggestions I would love to hear about them.

War of Spanish Succession: Basing decision

Well I've made my decision on how I'm going to base my War of Spanish Succession troops.  I know you have all been waiting for this moment.

First, I want to thank everyone who gave suggestions and sent me photos of how they based their figures.  All of your figures looked fantastic.  Thank you again for helping out.

So the moment we have all been waiting for, the basing size I have chosen is 60mm x 30mm for infantry and cavalry.  Artillery will get based on a 30mm x 50mm base.  The reason I chose these base sizes, ease of use and I enjoyed how they looked. I had debated about going with 30mm x 30mm bases but then I figured I would end up using sabots to create units and that seemed more trouble and expense.  

An infantry unit will have 60 figures total, 30 per base. For units that used the Platoon firing mode of battle, I will drop the third rank and only make it 2 ranks deep.  This gives it a little variety. 

Artillery will be 1 gun per base and then a different number of crew depending if its light, field or siege guns.  I like the extra depth of the base as well because it will allow me to build in a little diorama. 

Cavalry will be 12 figures to a unit.  I might drop a figure for a dragoon unit just to mix it up a bit.

Now all I have to do is paint them all. :)

War of Spanish Succession: Basing options

So I am starting my preliminary work for my next project which will be the War of Spanish Succession.  I will build the armies using 10mm figures from Old Glory and mix in Pendraken where I need too.  I have several rule sets that I am currently reading like these below:

Along with Polemos rule set "Chosen Men, well Disposed", Hoplight Research's "Ridiculous Vanity" and Piquet's "Field of Battle 2".  So far after spending the past week reading rules I have narrowed down my options to "Beneath the Lily Banners", "Twilight of the Sun King" and "GaPa".  I know and have played "Field of Battle" quite a lot and know it would work, but some members of the group are not taken with the rule set.  Hence my other options above.  

With my options in rules, they all state that any basing system will work.  Well now I need to pick a basing system.

 My top 2 picks all have some variation on using basing with a 60mm frontage with a different number of bases creating a unit.  BLB uses 60mm for 25mm figures and needs 3 bases to create a unit.  The 15mm figure size requires a 30mm frontage, still 3 bases creates a unit.

Twilight of the Sun King uses 60mm regardless of the size of the figures and 2 bases creates a unit. Also just as a side note the Polemos rules also use a 60mm frontage.

GaPa uses Paces as a unit of measurement and for the 15mm scale, 50 paces would equal 30mm.  The number of bases then depends on the number of men in a unit.  So a 600 man battalion is 150 paces or 90mm of Frontage. 

Piquet uses 15mm figures on a 40mm frontage and 4 bases equals a unit.

Now having said all of this, it comes down to what looks and seems the best.  So I have taken some photos of some of the troops on different sized bases and filled them up as to how I see the units.  Take a look:

These two photos are 60mm x 30mm and can hold 3 ranks of figures.  That to me looks like a nice size unit and gives the compact feel of the period. Too model a unit that fired by Platoon I could reduce the number of ranks to 2, just to give some visual interest. 

These bases are 40mm x 30mm and again 3 ranks deep. Still looks okay.  Again the same thing can be done for a unit that fires by Platoon.

These two photos are 40mm x 20mm. Obviously only 2 ranks can fit onto a base but the mass feel is still there.

So my question to you all is "what seems like a good choice?"  Do you have any suggestions.  Do you have any experience with the rule systems listed and have some advice on how to make it work better?

As always thanks for stopping by and reading about my adventures in gaming.