Slitherine

Has anyone played the rules with non-standard bases (on both sides, evidently)?
I ask because all my (20mm) ECW figures are based on 40mm squares, with 4 foot in 2 ranks, or 2 mounted/dragoons.
Based this way they can be used for DBR (Condensed), Warhammer ECW, Regiment of Foote and Warmaster ECW. I'd like to use them for FOG:R, too.

Seems to me they ought to be OK for FOG:R, but of course since the foot are two ranks deep already, the bases will normally be deployed in a line 1 deep, so a typical 6 base Pike & Shot unit would be
SSPPSS, as opposed the the 'official' layout:

SPS
SPS

The only change would be to count *both* the shot bases as 'protected' by the Pike (i.e. any shot base within *or at* one base width)
Would any other changes be needed?
Has anyone else explored this heresy?

The rules would work more correctly if you use 3 of your bases per "6 base" BG and count each as 2 FOGR bases - use some sort of marker to denote casualties.

Then the game should work exactly as intended.

But then foot units would only be 3 bases - which won't look very nice at all.

I think what I'll try is to use 6 bases per foot unit, but treat foot bases which are side by side as if they were one behind the other.
That will look good, do minimum violence to the rules, and should work OK.

And of course as soon as I got the figures on the table I realised that was no good - foot units end up too wide.
So I just decided to take the simple approach - a base is a base, and I'll deploy my square bases two deep just like regulation bases.
It means infantry units look quite 'chunky' but all the rules should work as Bodley-Scott intended

pyruse wrote:And of course as soon as I got the figures on the table I realised that was no good - foot units end up too wide.
So I just decided to take the simple approach - a base is a base, and I'll deploy my square bases two deep just like regulation bases.
It means infantry units look quite 'chunky' but all the rules should work as Bodley-Scott intended

Well to be fair, in contemporary illustrations units do tend to to look squarer than they do with the conventional FOGR basing.

I have also gone with the non standard basing. I am using 15mm figs on 4x3cm bases with 8 figs of pike or 6 of others, with 2 figs as skirmishers. The front of the base is 4cm so I can use the figs both with FOG R and also Warlord II.

The reason is that I just dont like the small pike and shot units, 24 figs on 6 bases. With the rules I used I had 36 figs of pike with 24 figs of shot in a pike and shot unit, this looked right to me. So by basing on deeper bases I get that deeper look with more figures in a unit.

William

rbodleyscott wrote:The rules would work more correctly if you use 3 of your bases per "6 base" BG and count each as 2 FOGR bases - use some sort of marker to denote casualties.

Then the game should work exactly as intended.

FoG is much more geometic than WECW. If you think you are going to be playing FoG (and/or DBR) then remount your armies. You can play WECW with any basing scheme. The appearance of the game, the BG sizes and "divisonal" deployment are really growing on me. I think that the time and effort that goes into re-basing your armies will pay off in the long run.

Mike B

Well, having played a game I can report it works fine.
There's no need to remount the figures - it's not just WECW (which I gave up on a while back); the square basing is also good for Regiment of Foote and Warmaster ECW.
This basing also works fine for DBR condensed scale - looks much better with two ranks of figures per base, and the condensed game is much better than normal scale anyway.