Basing

Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Posts: 4 Location: SW Ohio USA

Dillingham wrote:

Scary Biscuts wrote:

Dunno if this is accurate, but it would ease the transition from regular FoW:

Medium Bases: RoF=2. (therefore a brigade would have a total RoF of 4, if we adopt the 2 stand formation)
Small Bases: RoF=1, but are never 'pinned down'

Not a bad idea at all m'thinks.

Scary Biscuts wrote:

As the brigade loses casualties it becomes less effective and therefore cannot enable the various formations afforded by the 2 stand unit. ... We could adopt the "wound" system and assign a certian amount of hit points to each brigade (perhaps 4?). As they take hits the brigade loses these hit points until they reach zero and eliminating the brigade as an effective unit,...

Just discussing this with an old Napoleonics friend of mine today. I don't like the idea of removing bases as it mucks up the ability to go into different formations. Rather I'd prefer to see something similar to this (wounds) maybe displayed with casualty caps until a regiment/brigade becomes a noneffective unit and is removed from play.

Instead of casualty caps, I'd like to see the odd dead figure on the penny counter.... Makes the game more visual and after certain dead bodies, a stand is removed. You could almost do this via the number of figures per base....

Madcam.

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Madcam2us wrote:

Instead of casualty caps, I'd like to see the odd dead figure on the penny counter.... Makes the game more visual and after certain dead bodies, a stand is removed. You could almost do this via the number of figures per base....

That certainly sounds something along the lines of the FoW pin marker; and sticking closer to the existing FoW model would seem a very good thing to me.

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

So, if a base represented a company in a battalion (where a battalion operated like a FoW "platoon" in the existing game), how would an army look? ...

I'd imagine that we would have differing sized battalions ... ie. French at six companies, the Russians at 4 Companies (really 8 bases that they would call platoons), and the British 10 companies? ... or something like that perhaps? And that would be equivalent to a FoW "platoon" as it operates now ...

So we'd have in our armies something like
HQ
2-? Battalions
Divisional Artillery
Divisional Cavalry
Corps support from available Cavalry and Artillery

I found this image where I could envision each little grouping as a FoW Medium base within the battalion ...

Joined: 08 May 2006 Posts: 9

I believe that the example above is a pausible idea to begin with.

However, just how many stands (medium bases) of infantry and additional stands of cavalry/artillery would a person need to put together to draw up an army? Would it make the table "too cluttered?"

[and Dillingham, I must admit that I love your diagrams. I wish I had as much talent as you when it comes to putting those togther] Surprised

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Arice J wrote:

However, just how many stands (medium bases) of infantry and additional stands of cavalry/artillery would a person need to put together to draw up an army? Would it make the table "too cluttered?

I put a sample army, as I myself envision it, in the Army List section.
Yorck's Corps

It has the same army listed in both the original approach of playing a Corps and this newest approach of playing a Division in there. I ended up with less than 150 figures on 36 Bases (including guns & cavalry) in the Corps example and just over 200 figures on 46 Bases (including guns & cavalry) in the Divisional example.

Arice J wrote:

[and Dillingham, I must admit that I love your diagrams. I wish I had as much talent as you when it comes to putting those togther] Surprised

Thanks for the compliment. I can't take credit for this last one above, but I did do all the others. I'm glad to be a help in that area. I may not be an expert on historical uses and OOB's, but I can certainly help in the areas of illustration, layout, examples, etc. Smile

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

I finally asked Phil if it was ok to pass on some comments he had sent to me on all of this. He said to feel free, but ...

Phil at Battlefront wrote:

Do mention that I really don't have much more to add at this point though.

Anyway, here are his comments ...

Phil at Battlefront wrote:

... I saw the basing discussion and thought you might appreciate some thoughts from me.

At present what little we've played around here has been on the basis of all infantry based on a medium base with the wide edge to the front, and all cavalry and artillery based on a large base with the narrow edge to the front.

Now this certainly has no more status than a few experimental games (very very few) here, but gives an indication of our inclinations for the future (assuming we don't decide to change everything and rebase things again!)

Phil at Battlefront wrote:

Purely for personal fun with 28mm at present!
...

We are looking at 6-12 bases as a "battalion" with 6-7 "battalions" of infantry and cavalry in a force.

Phil at Battlefront wrote:

... It looks like you are doing 15mm here? If so, 6 to a base seems very sparse we were thinging more like 8-10 figures in two ranks with a couple of sergeants.

... a force with 3 infantry regiments, a small cavalry unit and two artillery units sounds reasonable.

Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7

Can it be, reading between the lines and infering alot of what isnt there, that Naps might be the new historical period that battlefront is going to do?

cheers

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

I wouldn't infer anything more than Phil has a personal interest in Napoleonics. A personal interest doesn't mean that's necessarily the way the company is going to go next year. Only time will tell.

Joined: 15 May 2006 Posts: 1

Evening all
With regards to the basing and scale of the game has there been a general discussion re what we want to achieve with these rules other than use the FoW mechanics?

I'm looking for a set of rules that gives me the detail of a brigade level game where I can see column, square, line etc (General de Bregade) but I can have a reasonably fast large game (V&B, Grand Armee).

I do like the 1 base = company acts like FoW platoon idea. I think that that in 15mm that would give us the same ground scale as General de Bregade.

Do we need the option of a second figure scale for very large games?
Just a thought.

Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 6:08 am

Phil wrote:

a force with 3 infantry regiments, a small cavalry unit and two artillery units sounds reasonable.

It's a little small force. No ?
If it's a division scale so we must to think about skirmisher for infantry and "fourrageurs" ( sorry I don't know the english word ) for Cavalry. I am afraid than with this system of basing; it's hard to do that. Confused

Maybe we could use some markers.

Joined: 25 May 2006 Posts: 17 Location: Oslo, Norway

How about 1 medium base = 2 companies? This would give 3 medium bases per battalion for late French. In this way, we get the effect of 1 small base per company (based to the short edge) but without the hassle of moving too many bases.

If we use this scheme, a three-regiment force would be somewhere around 18 medium bases of infantry. Throw in some cavalry and artillery, and I think it would work well on the table top.

J.

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Would two companies per base cooperate well with the function of Elite and Light/Skirmishing Companies?

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Nicofig wrote:

It's a little small force. No ?

It is, perhaps, a little small, I think. I do know we want to keep the miniature count to a reasonable level. Some of us may get excited about fielding the entire Austrian army at Austerlitz in a 1:30 scale ... but I think that will eliminate the participation of a large number of players.

Nicofig wrote:

If it's a division scale so we must to think about skirmisher for infantry and "fourrageurs" ( sorry I don't know the english word ) for Cavalry.

Yes, I think they should be represented. As for Fourrageurs, I think most Napoleonic enthusaists know exactly what you're saying. Smile

Your English is just fine ... far better than my French! (sadly) And you have the advantage of being fluent in the language which basically defined the naming of different types of units and soldiers.

Nicofig wrote:

Maybe we could use some markers.

We very likely will have to.

I sincerely hope that I am not being too verbose today. I apologize if I am. Very Happy

Joined: 25 May 2006 Posts: 17 Location: Oslo, Norway

Good question Dillingham.

I don’t think that the elite company needs to be a problem as the presence of this company could be factored into the stats of either the whole battalion (which would make things simpler), or for its stand shared with a centre company (which would give different stats for the different bases in a battalion – but do we really want to be that detailed?).

I propose that the problem with the skirmish company be solved in this way:
When the light company is not deployed, it should function as an elite company – either factored into battalion stats or base stats as for the grenadier company (see above).

When skirmishers are deployed, the light company would get a medium base of its own in addition to the “close order” base it shares with one of the centre companies. This base, sporting only four models instead of eight, would be deployed in front of the battalion, or in a separate unit together with other light companies from the brigade.

This would of course leave a full strength battalion even when skirmishers are deployed, but we could get around this by using a negative modifier to shooting (lower rof for either the base or the unit) applied to the battalion when skirmishers are deployed. This shouldn’t be much of a problem however, since skirmishers would normally be recalled before the enemy is in firing range of the battalion.

My suggestion does abstract things a little bit, but I think it would work. I’ll proxy some of my brand new beautiful 15 (18)mm AB miniatures based for “Huzzah” (40mm x 20mm) to try it out when I get a chance.

Visually, I think it would look great with eight models in two ranks on a medium base.

From left to right (late French):

1st base: Light company (four models in two lines) and a centre company (four models).
2nd base: two centre companies (four command models in the first rank and four soldiers in the second).
3rd base: centre company (four models in two lines) and the grenadier company (four models in two ranks).

I hope this makes sense. I don’t have a camera these days, so no pics so far unfortunately.

What do you think?

J.

Joined: 25 May 2006 Posts: 17 Location: Oslo, Norway

Not a lot of activity here these days it seems.

I’ve been thinking a bit more about scale and basing, and in the end, I think I prefer Dillingham’s scheme where a (medium) base equals a company in a battalion. Look at this picture of a base of Pavlov Grenadiers from the Fighting 15’s website: http://www.fighting15sshop.co.uk/index.asp?function=DISPLAYPRODUCT&productid=1855 This looks to me to be a great way of basing a company; ten minis in two ranks and an accompanying officer. With six to ten companies in a battalion depending on nationality, that would give roughly seventy figures for a French battalion, including officers, or roughly a scale of 1:10. Granted, we won’t be able to re-fight Austerlitz in this scale, but I think it would work great for a battalion level game with 2-4 battalions of infantry and some cavalry and artillery support for each side.

Now how about the basic mechanics? This ratio of bases and scale, make the use of formations very attractive I think, and I think we should focus on the movement maneuvering aspect first, before we tackle shooting, morale, ratings, special rules, etc.

How about a set movement distance for all infantry depending on the formation they are in? Loose formation and skirmishing troops should have the greatest move allowance, perhaps six inches, with the movement rate of a column formation next greatest (“next greatest” is probably not very grammatically correct, but I think you get my drift), followed by line and square. There needs to be some system for changing formation, perhaps giving up that turns move to change formation. This could lead to some tense moments where attack-columns attempt to deploy into line in the face of withering fire.

Jonas