Welcome

Welcome to my wargaming blog,
I'm Dave and live in Morpeth, Northumberland in the UK.
This may or may not be a regular thing, we'll just have to see how it goes.

I am a painter/collector of figures first and a wargamer second. My thrill in this great hobby of ours is to place that final well researched & painted unit into the cabinet. The actual gaming with the figures is an important but secondary experience, we all like to win, but it isn't the be all and end all of it, being with good friends and having fun is.
Hope you will enjoy reading this blog as much as I will writing in it.
Just to remind the visitor to scroll down the various pages and click on 'older posts' to see more.
Dave.

Thursday 1 September 2011

10mm War of Spanish Sucession unit organisation

Not going to have time to post any pictures tonight but I thought I'd let anyone interested know why I based the figures the way I did.
If you look to the left under the blogs I follow you will find a link to Peelers Wargames and Witterings page.
I met this gent at many of the shows up here and was really impressed with his basing system of about 60 10mm figures to the Battalion, split into two 30 fig halves.
I hate fiddling around with small bases of figures, moving them around the table seems to take forever and they tend to get knocked or even dropped by the less adroit members of the club (guys you know who you are, no names no pack drill!). Visually 60 figures does the business, side by side they form line, split in two one behind the other they represent the Battalion in 'column of attack' probably to wide in terms of actual ground scale but what the hey. Back to back they can be said to be in square, and column of march will have a small arrow marker to one side in the direction they are going.
Truthfully for this period line was the formation for most actions and column of attack would be used for manoeuvre near the enemy and assaulting fixed positions only.
I love and as you will see in the future, own plenty of 28mm figures, but 10mm gives you the visual sight of lots of figures en-mass, and because of the ground scale (an ancient but seemingly forgotten thing in 'modern' rules) you get depth of manoeuvre on our limited table tops. Therefore as a general you keep reserves, as so you should.
Anyho I digress, the Allies using the Platoon firing system are based in two figures depth and the French using the rank firing system are (as you will see when I put up the pics) based three figures deep.
The cavalry are nine figures to a squadron. I arrived at this by comparing the average (as it varies from nationality to nationality and depending on circumstances and situations) frontage of a Battalion of infantry to a squadron of cavalry, about half the width of an Allied battalion in line actually.
Originally I went for a variant of General De Brigade as a set of rules, I like them, we use them at the Reivers club but at best they are for a couple of brigades per side if you want to finish in one evening (as unfortunately we do). Then came Blackpowder, everyone seems to like them, there flexible, you can add bits on to the basic rules if you wish and your units can be of any size, you just designate them as tiny, medium or large. No figures are taken off so ok for my basing system, all you do is place a small die behind to show fatigue. Sorted!
The figures bit was easy, I get on well with Andy from Old Glory UK, he lives fairly locally and I'm a member of T.W.A.T.S (I really won't go into that one) so theirs was the main choice with fill ins from Pendraken, another great range.
That was two years ago, I tend to dip in and out of a period but there will be enough to have a game with them soon. I will be purchasing some more command figs at our Border Reiver Show in Newcastle Arena
 on Saturday.
OK enough for now.
By, Dave.

5 comments:

  1. What are the dimensions of the bases you're using for the 10mm WSS figures?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Patrick,
    the platoon firing battalions British, Dutch German etc are 8cm x 2cm figures in two ranks. French, Bavarian rank firing were deeper so 6cm x 3cm figures in three ranks, both of these are for half battalions so times two to get the full unit. All cavalry squadrons are 8cm x 3cm.
    You may have to make the bases slightly larger depending on who's figures you use but it really doesn't matter how many figs you put on the base if you intend to use Black Powder. Just whatever looks good to you.
    Dave

    ReplyDelete
  3. We made similar basing choices for our 6mm WSS troops, for generally the same reasons. For BP, we are using cavalry units of two squadrons (two bases), giving the same unit width as infantry. This simplifies combat match ups.

    http://ncc1717.wordpress.com/

    ReplyDelete
  4. 60 man battalions? Wow, I find it hard enough to paint 36! They do look good (hence this post on my blog), and nice painting.
    http://lasthussar.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/why-i-wargame-10mm/

    My lottery win dream would be to use BP inch scale to play in 10mm - so 6 x 10mm to a base, rather than 1 x 28mm. That would give units of 144 ("lottery win" because I'd pay for that much to be painted!)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh the dream of a lottery win! Would all wargamers wish for the same things? A huge dedicated wargames room (with bar), not having to work (other than paint and play with the figures) and a partner to put up with the 'Boys with toys' syndrome.
    We can all dream

    ReplyDelete