I bought a few miniatures from other companies to see how they scaled with Imperial Assault. I have a question about their design that more experienced miniature gamers might be able to answer.

Both the Hasslefree and Corvus Belli Infinity miniatures came with black stands and an attachment to the feet of the miniatures that seemed to fit inside a slot in the stand. But that attachment doesn't cover the entire slot.

Am I supposed to cut this thing off and glue the minis to the stand without using the slot? Push the attachment down into the slot and glue them? Nothing seems like a good solution because the attachment will not entirely fill in.

Frankly these stands, which come with starship miniatures, seem built for a flight stand to stick in and not for miniatures to directly attach to.

I hope this pic helps because I know I haven't explained this very well.

You use a hobby knife and/or needle file to make the metal tab fit properly. Then glue the mini in. When the glue dries, I like to fill in the gaps at the edges of the feet with epoxy putty before priming.

Astonishing. What strange design but that makes sense given the pieces I've been given.

It's been a staple stand design for miniatures from Games Workshop (and other companies) for as long as I can remember...

The plastic bases are standardized by the injection molding process. But due the way metal minis are sculpted, the tabs can vary a bit. Plastic minis by the same companies will tend to have tabs that fit perfectly, nowadays. In the early 90's those too could be way too big for the slot and have to be cut down.

Also, you can bend the tab to help the fit into the slot base. Some minis have tabs that are too think for the space on the base.

And yes, modeling putty works great for the spacing issue.

I used to play the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings game, and the minis had the same deal.

If you're just painting the bases, I could see this as an issue. I used terrain on them, though, and it settled in well for me, didn't even have to use extra glue or epoxy. But, if you're going for a more professional look, you might want to anyway.

Some Corvus Belli Infinity minis (Reverend Moiras for example) include both the tab on the figure body and a filled in stand, making it even harder to figure out what they want you to do. For those, I cut the tab off the mini body and glued the feet directly to the filled in stand.

I have a billion of these stands given that they came with every Honor Harrington and Star Fleet Battles mini I've ever purchased, but I would have never thought to use them for this type of miniature because of the gap.

If you go mini feet to base, I would recommend pinning the feet to the base just in case. Then you can use putty on the very bottom of the base to secure the pins.

The idea is that the metal tab makes it easier to cast the miniature and protects the legs from bendng apart and braking in transit/storage. Once inserted into the base, it also offers more surface for the glue to grip.

The idea also was that you would texture the base with sand, gravel or other 'basing materials' and paint it, rendering the tab invisible and filling in the slot.

An alternative were wholesale integral bases at the feet of the miniature, but those wasted material and, due to the imperfections of metal casting, would still need to be glued to a proper base most of the time and would not sit comfortably on their own.

You can chop the slot off, file the feet flush and glue the miniature to the plastic base, but be prepared for it to pop off the moment you look at it funny, unless you pin it, but that's a bit more of an involved technique.

As mentioned, these have been industry standard for a while now. To be honest, it has been relatively recently that the molding and casting technology advanced to a degree we can now have plastic miniatures cast with integral bases that are perfectly round. And I don't think it can be done at all with metal still.

If you were ambitious you could opt for clear bases. Clip the metal tab off the feet. File the edges down and carefully glue the mini to the base. Go easy on the glue. It may cloud the base. It can have a nice effect having the clear base.