According to my postings regarding battalion historical widths and lengths, and the Empire V rules ground scale, I should have a French Line Infantry battalion in a 3 rank line to be 60mm wide x 5mm deep. I doubled the depth of the base to enable better handling to 10mm deep.
Below is a brigade of 4 battalions based on the above:
I feel this is still not the mass I am looking for. The problem I now have is that if I double the width of the battalions to get 120mm wide I may be somewhat limited in my games on a 6 x 4 table
Below is a brigade of 4 battalions based on 120mm width:
I do like the 2nd option better. The pieces are so much easier to handle on the board. This would though I would probably have to double the width of the cavalry and artillery as well. So it doesn’t leave as much room on the board. And then what about the width of a battalion in relation to marching distances and shooting ranges in the rules. Will it make much of an impact?
Let me know what you think of both options.
I guess I need to complete division or 2 of French and then build a division or 2 of British and play head to head on the field using the rules to see whether the 120mm frontage ruins the rules in any way.
Stay tuned!
9 comments:
David
Assuming a 600 men battalion in three ranks, you'll have a 200 men wide unit. At around 60 cm per man that's is 120 m, so using 120mm units the scale is 1/1000 and using 60mm 1/2000 (Surely you made the calculations yourself!). Using the 1/1000 option, a 6x4 feet table will represent a small battlefield of 1,828 x 1,219 m so you would be reduced to smaller affairs. Waterloo battlefield was small and still measured around 3,500 x 2,000 m
Regards
Rafa
David, I think one of the reasons that it doesn't seem to give the mass is that (at least in the photos) you can't see the rear ranks that well. It makes the unit look like a block. But again, it could be just the photo.
Looks like things are moving along quite well for you with them however.
I prefer the larger batallions. You will be playing sections of battles on a 6X4 table as rpardo suggests. As for the "mass" try cutting in around the figures best you can and eliminate most of the white.
John
Thanks guys. While the bigger 120mm frontage looks better, when I add a whole division to my table it fills pretty quick. It would also mean all my buit up areas would be out of wack. When i go back to 60mm front its looks better when compared to the 6x4 table.
One of the things I had been toying with was to use a scale where 50 men would take up 20mm of space. A baccus strip is 20mm with so 3 baccus strips fit one 20X20 stand. Two rank line would be 50% wider so it would still be 3 strips take up 30X15 but one strip would be cut in half and butted on the end.
With that in mind, a French batlallion would have something like 100 men per company. There was 1 grenadier company and one voltigeur company and 4 line companies. So each company, by my scale above would be 40mmX20mm and 3 ranks of troops...either paper or lead. British line troops would have 50 man companies as they did not bring them up to the full 100 man strength very often. There were 10 companies of which 2 were elite. Each company in our guidline aboove would be 30X15 with 1 grenadier and 1 light company and 8 line companies.
So a french batallion would be 24cm long. An english batallion would be 30cm long. These, of course, would shorten if you deployed your light infantry as skirmishers.
John
Wow John. Nice project. What scale figures would you use for that?
Hi David,
My thought was to use Baccus since all the strips are 20mm long. I suspect irregular would work ok but they are...um...irregular in length! :) H&R could be fine too. I don't like them as well only because they are so small, you cannot see the detail all that well.
John
I thought you said you were going to look at paper? Have you dropped that idea now?
Hve not dropped the idea. It is just a distant future plan. :) Too much unpainted lead and hectic family life prevent me from doing this. Paper is a good alternative though. I might look at it with my top downs. I like the look of the stand ups but I find myself inclined to cut around the edges and that takes a goodly amount of time.
John
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