Slitherine

Hello! Couple of questions:

Will there be any changes to basing in v2.0?

Also I'm still slogging through painting up some Gauls - I am at this point totally confused as to whether they ought to be Heavy or Medium foot. In the army book RBS says they really ought to be HF. But the description of HF in the glossary says it reflects how the troops fought in dense formation and were susceptible to disruption by terrain. Now everything I have ever read about Gauls seems to indicate that while they may have fought in a dense mass they were NOT reliant on formation and fought in a more 'heroic' individual style. This sounds to me much more like a medium foot classification?

To further confuse things the option I would like to use - Gaesati (think Telamon) is classified as strictly HF - there is no option to make them medium at all?

Now I'm not really bothered by what is 'best' I merely what to do what is 'correct'. I also don't think that I should have some warband fighting as medium while others fight as heavy as that just doesn't seem to make sense to me?


Anyway, just trying to get some clues about how best to proceed - my gut says medium but the army list seems to be pointing me towards heavy?

Basing for Gauls is not likely to change. (But we are too early in the process to make any promise on that)

Hammy always used to advise basing barbarians 4 to a base on 20mm bases which allows them to be used as MF or HF.
Also when 20mm bases are 2 deep they turn in their own footprint so the enemy cannot stop you turning by judicious placement of his bases.

Paul

elysiumsolutions@fsmail.n wrote:Hammy always used to advise basing barbarians 4 to a base on 20mm bases which allows them to be used as MF or HF.
Also when 20mm bases are 2 deep they turn in their own footprint so the enemy cannot stop you turning by judicious placement of his bases.

Paul

Heh, in a competative game, I'd think someone might have an objection to a player gaining an advantage from his non-standard basing.

I think what Hammy and Paul mean is that two 20mm deep bases when they turn have the same effect two 15mm deep bases turning. They do not confur any advantage in that way from being on non-standard bases, unless I am missing something. (There are other impacts that you have to remember to work around.)

With all the questions on basing and troop types, and the classification of Chinese infantry as MF I think FoG AM should use the same simple solution as FoG R. It should be stated explicitly that MF and HF may be base 3 or 4 figures to a 15-20mm deep base. Personally, I don't think manuevering should be based on the depth of the stand, but if it must - then all foot bases should be considered 20mm.

It would be helpful if this kind of decision were made ASAP in order to help people currently woking on armies.

IMHO
HAL

I'd base them as HF & have some kind of magnetic sabot base to make them as MF when needed.

Actually, given the new big miniatures of Xyston and alike, sometimes it is hard to fit 4 miniatures in 15mm. Unless people around you are too strict, I would go for 20mm deep, 3 or 4 miniatures as they look better. With 20mm deep you have more room to use more dynamic miniatures of Gauls.

timmy1 wrote:I think what Hammy and Paul mean is that two 20mm deep bases when they turn have the same effect two 15mm deep bases turning. They do not confur any advantage in that way from being on non-standard bases, unless I am missing something. (There are other impacts that you have to remember to work around.)

I think what Paul meant is: Something less than 5mm behind 2-deep HF BG will stop it being able to turn 90 degrees. Something flush up against the rear of 2-deep MF BG will not prevent it turning 90 degrees. So basing HF on 20mm bases instead is advantageous in that a) it stops you shooting yourself in the foot (bum?) by carelessly placing friends too close behind and getting in a tangle; b) enemy can't engineer a situation that would stop you turning 90.

If I was going to do something like a Gallic army now, I would probably base all the stands at 20mm depth. I would put 4 figures on about 60% of the bases, and 3 figures on 40%. If I was using an army of mixed HF and MF the 3 figure bases would be MF and the 4 figures bases would be HF. If the army were all of one type I would mix them in a BG, with the 4 figure bases in the front rank.

I like the simplicity of all foot being on 20 mm bases and all mounted being on 40 mm bases. I can't for the life of me figure out why it should be impossible to turn 90 and back with single ranked cav, while chariots do it as a matter of course. Now, if chariots had to be on 60mm deep bases, that would flip the equation. Don't get me started on battle wagons.

gozerius wrote:I like the simplicity of all foot being on 20 mm bases and all mounted being on 40 mm bases. I can't for the life of me figure out why it should be impossible to turn 90 and back with single ranked cav, while chariots do it as a matter of course. Now, if chariots had to be on 60mm deep bases, that would flip the equation. Don't get me started on battle wagons.

or at least expliciyly make it permissable (for backward compatibility)

I like the simplicity of all foot being on 20 mm bases and all mounted being on 40 mm bases.

In theory I agree, but everyone already has 30mm depth cavalry bases, so I doubt if 40mm will be allowed (even as an option).

Foot basing depth is already a mixed bag, so giving players the option of 15-20mm for MF/HF shouldn't be a problem.

But wouldn't 20 and 40mm depths be brilliant. So much easier.

I have to agree. There are always going to be issues with rebasing and compatibility between different rulesets, but then again it is always possible to increase base depths via sabots etc. This is already neceessary to some extent to use my armies in both FoG and DBMM.

Unless of course the current base depths and the results they produce in the rules e.g. what happens when you turn are very finely judged to achieve tabletop behaviour that is historically justified...but somebody would have to explain the justification to me