Slitherine

Hi,

Just have received the book and like what I see so far. I am going to try the quick play scenario and had a quick question about basing. I have a pretty large 28 mm Napoleonic collection with forces from France, Great Britain and Allies as well a budding Prussian Collection. All my cavalry and infantry are uniformly based on 40mm wide bases. Rebasing is not an option and looking through the rules it does not appear necessary.

So with this basing, should I use the rules for 15 mm figures rather then 28 mm figures. So this would be a MU of 25mm...correct?

I would actually prefer to use the MU of 40mm, as I have a large terrain, but I would suspect that this would throw off movement because of the smaller footprint of my units in line, i.e. 160mm for a small infantry unit, rather then 240mm as specified by the rules.

Comments appreciated.

Hi John

The simple answer is to do what suits you, particularly as you have armies for both sides.

I am tempted by 40mm frontage for 28mm figures (it allows me to have 4 French grenadiers on a base and then I can converge them for some battles/ scenarios and also gets the standard in the centre of the unit). If I go down this route then I will use 6 bases for a unit and 8 for a large unit. This gives the correct frontage for a unit and a slightly small large unit. It does mean that you will not be able to position your attachments as per the rules but since I am thinking of having them outside the unit anyway this will not be a problem for me (see the posts on Attachments for more details of this particular discussion).

Since the units have the same frontage as using 60mm bases you use the 28mm movement distances (ie 1MU = 1.5" or 40mm) without any problems.

Certainly you could have just 4 bases on a 40mm frontage each but I personally would find those units rather small, particularly in Tactical formation.

Regards
Tim

Thanks Tim, that is a good idea about increasing the number of bases in an unit.

I have laid out some troops on an area of my table for the quick play introduction. The dimensions are pretty exact ie. 30x30" playing area, with the building, walled area and the zone of entries being based on 25mm MU. Used Prussians rather then Austrians. My artillery are actually 50mm wide. Have no hills unfortunately.



There may be a bit of a problem using 25mm MU as the depth of the bases is 40mm, i.e. maybe too deep. I will let you give an opinion but I might just lay it out as you suggest with an increased number of bases to make the footprint up and use a 45" terrain.

ps is the number of French artillery a type it says a small unit but then says 4 bases, although the picture only shows two.

I am going to do my 25/28 mm napoleonics on the 15mm basing and scale.

So 1 stand is 40x40 and 4 stands are a small unit.

The table top stuff I have played with so far indicated that if you to the 40mm=MU that you take up quite a space.

The shooting zone if you will is about 6 MU between the battle lines.
The Outcome zone is about another 6 MU behind each.
That is 18 MU and if do 40mm to MU you are appraoching a combat zone 2.5 feet deep. That start needing a lot of space.

16 figures of foot and 8 of Mounted look just fine to me.

It won't take much for a historical action to fill up a LOT of tables.

Thanks Hazelbark. I am a little less concerned about the space taken up, as I have a 12x5' table. I actually have 6 28mm infantry on a 40x40mm base. So they look pretty tight. I will have to think about it a little more, probably will lay out the same troops as above on a 4'x4' terrain to get a better sense of what a 6 base and 8 base small and large units would look like.

Had a second bash, and used Tim's suggestion of using 6 40mm bases wide for a small unit (gives the exact dimension as suggested in the ruleset for 28 mm figures). Increased the terrain for the Quick Start Rules Scenario by 50% and am now using a 4x4' terrain with a 40mm MU (had some 40 mm measuring sticks done up for Lasalle so this was handy).

Actually found some Austrians, but with a Prussian commander and some Prussian Jaegers. Substituted some French Dragoons and Austrian Uhlans for the Hussars and got this.

Have to admit this looks a lot better, and is with what I will give the rules a go.

Thanks for the input.

Johndeterreneuve wrote:Hi,

Just have received the book and like what I see so far. I am going to try the quick play scenario and had a quick question about basing. I have a pretty large 28 mm Napoleonic collection with forces from France, Great Britain and Allies as well a budding Prussian Collection. All my cavalry and infantry are uniformly based on 40mm wide bases. Rebasing is not an option and looking through the rules it does not appear necessary.

So with this basing, should I use the rules for 15 mm figures rather then 28 mm figures. So this would be a MU of 25mm...correct?

I would actually prefer to use the MU of 40mm, as I have a large terrain, but I would suspect that this would throw off movement because of the smaller footprint of my units in line, i.e. 160mm for a small infantry unit, rather then 240mm as specified by the rules.

Comments appreciated.

If all your figures are on identical bases that helps and then you need to determine what represents small and large units respectively for infantry and cavalry. It sounds line 6 bases for infantry would be a small unit and 8 a large one ( not knowing how many figures you have to a base and the depth). For cavalry probably the same . On a big table as you say using the 15mm MU is not ideal.

I understand your problem as I have a very large collection myself of 28mm for Grand Manner and have no plans to rebase. GM for infantry are in a mix of 6 figures ( 3X2 ) on a 45mm width and 8 ( 4x2) on a 60mm base. Cavalry are standard in 2s or 4's at 20mm per figure. So I treat 6x6 as a small unit and 4x8 for infantry which does not throw it out too much and then 8x6 and 6x8 for a large one which are identical in width and depth . For cavalry I have very few 3's so use 12 whuch is easy and 16's . But I will still use the 28mm MU as I like you use a 6x up to 12 foot table.

Does that help?

It does, thank you. All my figures are identically based, so as long as the footprint as specified by the rules is close and it is I believe I can go ahead and use the 28mm MU.

Thanks,

John