I asked the following to a more experienced gamer than I, my good friend Bruce M.:
What kind of cardboard would your recommend for making cheap bases for table top wargame miniatures? Would cereal boxes suffice or something thicker? I have used box cardboard before but it did not look so good. I wanted to get the standard bases so that I could learn and then do my own. Any links that you know of for how to base in DBA–size and for which troops? And for the scale?
Bruce said: (Paraphrasing in some places)
I go thru a lot of A4 notepads writing notes for students, given to them at the end of lesson, and use the backing card for bases and making buildings.
A friend uses candy box card. Thick sturdy stuff. His wife and daughter are fans of the chocolate that comes in such boxes so he has a steady supply.
I used cereal box card for 6mm DBA and with paint and glue they are fine.
What scale are you using? I have some bags of Games Workshop plasticbases that might be useful. They are very stolid of course but quite thick so would probably only do for 25mm and up.
If you mount some figures using regular white glue, they can be torn off and rebased later if need be.
Have a look around your house, as it seems everyone probably has some stuff that might be useful.
Another option is flooring squares (100 yen shop) like linoleum.
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