Hi guys,

I'm having some difficulty which I'm hoping you can all help me with.  I'm painting up my 6mm minis, but as yet haven't based them becuase I have some concerns over which base size to use.

I'm hoping to refight the battles of the Peninsular War between the allied forces and the French, but I'm struggling for a point of scale.

My aim is to build scaled battlefield (1:7200) where I can re-enact the battles - This is standard scale I believe for representing large scale battles on tabletop. As an example I have included my first draft of a scale drawing of the Battle of Rolica, one this i've inluded three base sizes in blue, the smallest being 40x20mm, then 60x60mm and finally 80x80mm.

By the looks of it, I think 80x80mm is going to be too big - which is a shame as I was hoping to have scenic diorama bases and this size obviosuly would be best.  

60mm x 60mm looks a little too big as well but would prob be the best fit with games such as Polemos and Blucher.

40mm x 20mm looks like an accurate size, but I wouldn't have nearly enough detail on the base to satisfy the look of a brigade! It may be more suitable for regiments, but then maybe the foot print is too big  for a regiment!

Looking for any suggestions that would hopefully help me keep scenic/diorama bases but fit witha scale battlefield.

I have also considered enlarging the Battlefield, but once I get to battles such as Busaco (13 miles in length) it becomes to big for my gaming area.https://imgur.com/a/1Bbv8qD

Hello Ascarin!

Unfortunately you have hit the first major problem with figures/basing/scale/table size. In short they don't really work out togther very well unless you have a very big table. So your into compromises which usually means that everyone of those factors will be adjusted to fit into your space. Today it's common for people to ignore a proper scale and simply use whatever looks good for them. In fact the rules I wrote for Baccus "Ruse de Guerrre" has no actual ground or time scale. 

Also that without extremely detailed drawings you will never really dupilcate the actual battlefield. Oddly enough all rules are a compromise as well so even gaming the event of a battle is a major compromise as you can never really reflect the true accuracy of historical combat on the table top. You also have to accept that your chosen game scale of single base brigades is at the extreme edge of Napoleonic tactical warfare. Most of them are nothing more then a major dice rolling contest. 

So if your happy with the limitations of single base brigade games I would use 60x60 as they have been used by Polemos players with some pretty good effect and do create to my eye the illusion of a brigade. Some of them actually look amazing. It all depends on your skills in basing. I like the basic workhorse of the 60x30 base and simply call it whatever it is. In one scale of game it's a battalion/regiment in another it's a brigade or even a Division. In some of the games I play it's a company! Only you the designer really know what it is. The players or the on lookers could care less.

Hope this helps you out in some way.

Best regards,

Glenn

Thank you Glenn,

I'm going to try and be as accurate as possible in my basing sizes, which means I'm tending to stray towards a 40mm x 20mm base per regiment.

This is purely based on a British Line Infantry Frontage of 280 metres, divided by the previous scale I mentioned of 1:7200 - I realise other countries have different frontages, but as you said I'm going to have to have some compromise.

I'm hoping that I can create topographical maps based on the location data from Google Maps and then accurately scaling these in Photoshop/GIMP before then reproducing the terrain.  I think I can do this fairly accurately, to within a few metres at that scale without too much trouble.  Especially as Google handily provides the topographical data, with 20m elevation increases (which at 1:7200 scale is the thickness of 3mm MDF/Foamboard).

It may not work, but I'm going to give it a shot and start with a relatively small battlefield first.

Your welcome Ascarin!

Everything sounds great, but I have one concern. Are you slipping down scale from brigades to battalions/regiments? If so and your going to be using battalion/regiment playing pieces and using a British battalion in line at 40mm that gives a brigade of three battalions a frontage of 120mm. A small French brigade of four battalions would be 160mm. Unless your just calling the 40mm base a regiment/battalion but in game play will use it as a brigade for all countries.

So as you see even the tradional brigade bases of 60mm and larger have already made a big compromise.

I am slipping down a little. The other case I suppose would be to have as accurate frontages as possible i.e. British at 40mm and French at 25mm but then that negates the base widths.

Half the trouble seems to be that there are so many different rule sets, and I'm looking for something thats fairly accurate (after years of Warhammer, I long for some realism) but it also relatively simple (i.e. I'm not looking at formation changes etc).

I may have to rethink this whole escapade.

Another option I've thought of is using 40mm x 20mm bases for British and 25mm x 20mm for French etc but drilling out a small whole for magnet in the base and then having the option to attach them to a larger base such as 80mm x 80mm for example.  This may give the option of being a bit more flexible based on different rulesets.

While you mull over your options I can only suggest that you obtain the rule set that I wrote for Baccus called "Ruse de Guerre". It covers the wars in North American from 1754-1812. The French and Indian War, American War of Independence, War of 1812 (a Napoleonic War). So you get 4 wars in one rule set. It uses the standard 6mm base 60x30 which gives you a little room to make a micro diorama. You can, however, use pretty much any base size you like. The critical feature for you is it uses a unique sliding scale that lets you call a base whatever you want such as sections, platoons, companies, troops, grand divisions, half battalions, battalions, regiments, legions or brigades. You simply pick the size of the battle you want to play, on the size of table your using, and pick the scale you want to use to fight your game with. Obviously no actual ground scale is considered. You can obtain a hardcopy via email from Baccus or order a PDF from the Wargame Vault.

It's extremely accurate, more so than any other rule set on the market. Pretty simple to learn but full of depth that makes most games a sort of sudden death experince where the real winner is not often clear until the game ends. It's not bogged down with the usual game drainers of formation changes or counting of casualties, etc. Members of my club refuse to play any other rule set on a regular bases.  

"It's extremely accurate, more so than any other rule set on the market"

Wow, that sounds amazing. Please could you list all the other rule sets on the market and point out the ways in which they are less accurate?

Sorry, l don't have that much time. There are way too many of them with way too many flaws. It would take years to list them all. I can give you a good starting point though. Throw out all the ones that encourage players to change battalion formations.

I don't understand. Battalions did use different formations, so a rule set obviously isn't intrinsically inaccurate simply because it represents them. Could you give us at least one named example of a rule set that does so and explain what makes it less accurate?

As a newbit to all of this scale and gaming period I find it interesting that a lot of rules say that formations don't really matter and that it was down to the colonel etc to order the formation (which I understand if you're taking the role of Napoleon etc), but my issue is. surely the formations do matter? Such as going into square would be beneficial against Cavalry but would be detrimental against Artillery attacks, while also having your firepower reduced by 1/4? The same for column, it would be good for movement to get across the field quickly, but would suffer from artillery attacks and enfilading fire surely? 

If i want to replicate a histrocial battle as closely as possible, surely these factors need to be taken into account rather than saying an artillery piece can always hit unit A on a 5 and will deal so much damage etc.

Also why are rules written for large scale format with brigades as a basic stand. Why not Battalions on a 40mm base (British) and French on a 25mm base? with a marker saying what formation they're in? I get people will say that it would be awkward doing the orders etc for all those bases. But why not take a leaf from Warhammer's (Sorry) book and instead of treating a brigade as one base, treat a brigade as one unit of 4 or 5 models which work in tandem, but have a number of actions each, say three actions per base, where they can choose to Fire, move or change formation?

Also orders generally seem a little strange to me, as orders were generally given before the battle. So there may be three objectives on a battlefield and you state that you have one corp heading for each objective. Only that copr can score points etc from taking that objective, or if you feel you may be overwhelmed on a flank, that would be a point where you have to get an Adjutant to move from the general to the corp with new orders at which point it could score points on a new objective.

So tempted just to write my own rules at this point, as I doubt I'll get any one on one games with anyone anyway.

Sorry, I'll end my little rant now. But as a new player and collector for this time period it is very off putting having people tell you one thing and then other people tell you another. The community is very at odds compared to where I've come from.