I “played” Warhammer 4th edition as a kid. The one with the High Elf and Goblin armies. The box provided enough miniatures to form up several units, and I’m sure there were a few plastic green movement trays that came with it too.
For some reason though, we never seemed to use them. I’d play on my pal’s bedroom floor, and we’d move units one miniature at a time. I think the reason was essentially that we’d created loads of very small units in order to make the game seem “bigger”. Or for the armies to look like they had a bit more variety.
Anyway, fast forward 25 years, and a recent return to the hobby. Two games I’ve discovered and have really enjoyed are Open Combat and Kings of War.
Both take place in a medieval/fantasy setting, but one is a small scale skirmish, whilst the other is a grand, sweeping ‘rank and flank’ experience. KoW has all the elements that attracted me to Warhammer Fantasy Battles, back in the day.
I’ve been keen to base the figures I’ll use in Open Combat on round bases (I simply think it looks better, when viewed in isolation). However, I wanted to form up these same units into regiments, for Kings of War. The bottom line? I needed movement trays.
I thought I’d have a bash at making my own movement trays, because the regiments I wanted to form were all different shapes and sizes. To do this, I took a thick piece of card, some little wooden dowels cut to size, and (randomly), some wall filler to stick them down with. Use whatever you have to-hand, right?
I ended up making quite a few of these over the past few months.
I’ll then paint them green as a base layer, then coat with sand, then paint a second coat of green.
Some movement trays I’ve coated with flock, but the flock tends to be a bit messy and sheds like a permanently moulting dog.
These minis are far from finished, but here’s one of my movement trays, with the sand-based coating.
I did actually base a lot of miniatures on square bases before I got into Open Combat. The above units (GW chaos warriors, and Perry Miniatures knights) I glued down permanently onto these movement trays.
I did the same with these Perry Miniatures crossbowmen. You might see that I’ve filled them out a little too, using the wooden stake pieces from the box on every second base. On hindsight, I could’ve gone without the individual bases all together and just created a mini diorama on the movement tray.
So I tried it with these bowmen…
I was quite pleased with the result here.
However, I recently discovered that the simplest solution to getting movement trays of any shape or size was right here on my doorstep the whole time.
Warbases are a company who’re located very local to me, and I was fortunate to be invited over for a look round after reaching out to them.
There’s nothing movement tray-related that they don’t seem to do. The above photo shows five of their trays (all in various stages of completion), alongside my own home-made effort on the front right.
The ‘Infamy Mob’ one on the left is great for less organised regiments, like goblins, or zombies. The single line movement tray with the bowmen on it is perfect for archers of any type too.
The large tray at the back can be used to house square-based miniatures, or you could just chuck a load of round-based troops on there to create a mass mob.
Warbases movement trays are excellent, and ultra-cheap. The prices for these trays are all in the single figures.
They just need a lick of paint, and some sort of base (sand or flock), and they are table ready.
I’m happy enough with the movement trays I made myself, but to be honest, it simply isn’t worth my time, when you look at the cost and quality of the Warbases stuff. I’d much rather focus on painting miniatures, and actually getting a game in now and then!
September 2020 Update: Warbases Movement Trays
I’ve been working on my latest batch of Infamy Mob movement trays and wanted to share a few pictures.
The above shows 2 movement trays in different stages of completion.
Here’s one of my village militia units.
And here’s the other village militia.
I’m also using an Infamy Mob movement tray for Krell and some modern GW skeletons.
And for a gang of GW Chaos Marauders.
Next up, snotlings!
More snotlings, with a few goblins thrown in for good measure.
And finally, my goblin archer warband on a one row, six miniature movement tray.
As I said before, the Infamy Mob movement trays are perfect for units that wouldn’t look right being formed up into neat and organised rows. You can pick them up from Warbases. If you do – tell them Bedroom Battlefields sent you!*
So that’s my chat on movement trays, for the time being. Feel free to drop your own hot takes into the comments section, below.
*No affiliation at all here, incidentally. I just really like their stuff!
Next up: 8 Tips to Rekindle Your Miniature Painting Motivation