Basing

Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 5 Location: Oz

Hi All interesting subject Very Happy

Just a couple of questions and/or statements
What type of battles are we after? I like to play battles on a 6' by 4' table with about 200 odd figures inf cav art per side.
I think the Division/Column is the highest "manoeuvre element" that commanders would attack with in general. So I m thinking that a division can equate to a FOW platoon.(full str about 8 medium bases and a CO)
So I want a Division to contain from say 6-10 medium bases and a division CO
Do we want small or medium bases? Lets see
At Dillinghams basing( 2 med. bases = 1 regiment and we have 4 regiments to a Division we have 8 medium bases plus a Divi com)
At Threshs basing (4 small bases = 1 regiment we have 16 bases plus a divi com base)
I don t mind either way(Dillinghams basing is less cumbersome whereas Threshs has the more potential to represent formations)
So lets say we have for a game 3 Divisions of inf. 1 Division of Cav and some batteries attached to the divisions this gives us about 24 bases of inf(8 figs per base) say 4-6 bases of Cav(4 figues per base) and 6-7 Art bases for a side
OR about 200 inf 20 Cav. figures and 6-7 model guns
This is making the "regiment" the smallest Manoeuvre element with which we want to represent formations with so maybe with this in mind we use the Thresh basing system pictured in an earlier post(4 small stands to a regiment) this will give us 48 small bases of inf, the cav and art can stay on the medium bases. As for representing skirmishs and causualties I m not sure yet. Any way thats my rant regards mic

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

Well, I think I still prefer the 1 battalion = 1 FOW platoon, i.e. 1 base = 1 company. This would also allow us to represent skirmishers on the table top.

By replacing the company base (medium) of approximately 8-10 voltigeurs (or other skirmishers) with the same amount of figures on 4-5 small bases, to figures to a base, the battalion could effectively put out a skirmish line in front of the battalion, which a think would add a lot of fun to this scale. The skirmisher bases could, for example, have the recce rule or something similar.

The drawback to this scale (effectively 1:10) is of course the rather high number of figures with battalions containing somewhere between 70 and 100 figures a piece. Three battalions and some artillery and cavalry could potentially be around 400 figures, which is, I admitt, possibly a little daunting. It would be very visualy appealing though Very Happy

.

Jonas

Joined: 21 Oct 2006 Posts: 1

1st off I just found this site tonight. 2nd I'm glad I did since nappy's battle 2 I quit playing this period.

Has anyone stuck to nappy's battles basing ? If so or not why ?

Well I got some downloading to do and if anyone is in the Hampton Va area drop me a line.

Carl

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheHanger/?yguid=109484201

Joined: 16 Jan 2007 Posts: 4

Hi. Just joined the site and have been reading through this thread and am getting a bit confused.
Q1: what scale mini's are we dealing with (my thought 'stick to one to start with' 15mm ).

Q2: What is the smallest element ( my thought ' Battalion' ).

Q3: how many stands to said element (my thought ' 4 ').

Companies per stand have been mention, but remember different number of companies per battalion for different countries, but about the same amount of men. so not more stands per country.

Q4: What is the largest size army ( my thought ' Division ' ).

This will allow infantry,cavalry and artillery or mixed brigades.

These are just my thoughts after reading the thread once and as I said I'm new to this site and it looks as if things are at a stand still or going round in circles. It's a shame we can't all get together in one place and thrash it out.

I have mentined Battalion as a unit size but this may greate problems as most French regiments had 4-5 Battalions per regiment, with them forming a brigade along with a light Battalion. That is a lot of figures.

But the main things to answer first I belive are the questions I have asked above.
Mick

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Thought you guys might want to see some in game photos of the basing we're using around here:

http://forumnapofow.free.fr/viewtopic.php?t=74

In this example two Medium FoW bases with six figures on each base constitutes a Division. It can be formed into line, column or square similarly to the diagrams further up this thread.

Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 55 Location: Washington

How do 2 bases form a square?????

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Check out the first page of this thread, or here's the diagram from there:

Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 117 Location: Cheltenham

I think 6-10 models depending on the person or unit on each medium base facing the same way as they would in FOW
and i think having 2 stands representing 1 company is much better than 1 base because it allows for more men, spread the models out more on bases rather than trying to cram them on 1 base its also a better representation of a battalion on the gaming board
i'd still keep cavalry to 1 stand for each squadron and artilery can be 1 gun per base but 2 per large base will make the models look better and give oportunites for dioramas of batteries than 1 gun on a huge base which will just be wasted to using up flock and pva

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Not sure I'm following your suggestion accurately ... would that be 12-20 figures on two medium bases to represent a company?

Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 117 Location: Cheltenham

yeah im going with 8 a base so 16 men per company making average 48 men per 3 comapny battalion

Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 16

General Laird wrote:

yeah im going with 8 a base so 16 men per company making average 48 men per 3 comapny battalion

3 company battalions might be hard to find.

Joined: 16 Jul 2007 Posts: 16

Before you can make a decision about basing I think you have to back up and decide exactly what scale and feel you are shooting for. I have read most of the posts and notice there is a fair amount of indecision on this issue.

Originally, I was (am) a big fan of the 2 medium bases = a battalion as it allows for various formations, allows for corps sized games, and visually looks nice.

But from what Dillingham posted from Phil, if appears that BF is considering a much different "road." He envisions 6-12 medium bases = a battalion. THis drastically shifts the focus to the Brigade level (which does have a certain charm.)

While scale may not be a big issue for some, visually I would arrange/base these differently. I would hate to go through the trouble of basing my forces only to find out in a year that BF is going a different direction.

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Please don't forget that Phil qualified what they were doing at the time.

Phil at Battlefront wrote:

... 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!)...

I didn't get the impression that we were to take it as authoritative guidance; especially since they're talking about 25/28mm figures.

Also, I'm not trying to poo-poo discussions or input either. I encourage them, actually. I've just been afraid that those comments would be taken as more than they seemed to be intended for.

Its nice to see some more discussions though. Thanks.

FWIW, I still like the two medium bases as a battalion & played at a corps level (or divisional for small games). That's just my own preference though.

Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 117 Location: Cheltenham

I notice you guys are going into real detail about countries and numbers of men a bit too much historical accuracy in that sense i think
historically accuracy is great for painting, naming unit in your army but no need to get so into detail might aswell play another Napoleonic game out thier which is geared for that FOW is simple quick system and should really be kept like that

at my club and our neighbouring clubs all play it like FOW but with diffrent models really 2 bases= company 1-6 depending on the country = a battalion 2 large bases with 2 guns on each = full battery 1-3 large bases are a cavalry brigade each base representing a squadron

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

What's the ultimate size of your games? It sounds like Divisional (or smaller, perhaps)? How many individual figures per side? And are you going to post some battle reports for us to see? Smile