"Doing napoleonic battle in 6mm, which one and which scale?" Topic

Ok, for those that have checked the general board, I've gone to the dark side and jumped on the 6mm craze.

I figure I can have about 1500 figs on the table, and still have good room to manouvre.

I either want to do a full battle, but not sure which one.
The problem is that I'm not that big on grand tactical. Just moving brigades or whole divisons around is a bit abstracted for me. But if you can make a good case of a battle done in grand tactical scale that would end up at about 1500 figs. I think I could do Austerlitz at axaclty 1:100 scale. That would mean ~30ish fig brigades.
If I were to do a full battle I would go for the early battles(pre 1812)
Austerlitz seem ideal, as it gives almost exact 1:100 scale.
Battles like wagram would mean 1:200 scale Amd them brigades would look very small. Auzterlitz also gives me a chance to paint Russian and Austrians(even tho 6mm dosn't mean much details) I have never painted them.
Ofcourse Austerlitz was once sided so the rules would have to give the allies side a chance to win.

The other option is to do the battle of möckern a battle that I have great intrest in.
Not sure about the scale, it was a corps vs corps thing. So I'm guessing around 30 000 vs 30 000 ? So around 1:40 scale.
I know the battle was very bloody for it's size, having the casualties of battles 3 times it size.

So any help I can get.
Oh and don't jugde me just becasue I allready have 1600 6mm figs allready on the way and another 800 for another project. And the fact that I have never actualy painted a 6mm fig and I might end up hateing it.

How about doing your own made up battle?

The battle of TrulsFjord?

or

Do part of a battle?
I am as you know doing my HOOGYMONT farm and will be doing the battle of that, which was part of a bigger battle.

or some Peninsular stuff?

For the Napoleonic feel and appearance at 6mm, I would tend to favor 1:35 troop ratio where 3 to four stands (of 6 to 8 eight castings) equals a battalion.

Some painters who like a lot of detail due to all the facing and other disticnt color areas that are highly visable will spend almost as much time painting a 6mm as they do a 15mm. This is why professional painters have several grades of painting levels (time spent on pronounced detail) that they will charge. For massive armies I tend to go with only a C level for most troops and maybe a b level for a few key forces.

In regards to a specific battle so much will depend on the troops (primary Allied forces) that you have in the forces.

An average player-General should be able to handle at least 30 manuever units. More experienced players can handle up to 50-60 in a multiple player game. In a one on one game where action is contastant for both players, players should be able to handle even larger forces.

[But if you can make a good case of a battle done in grand tactical scale that would end up at about 1500 figs. I think I could do Austerlitz at axaclty 1:100 scale.]

I'm not a fan of 6mm, but I always assumed that one of the appeals of that scale was that you didn't need to equate one figure with any particular number of scale-men. Since you're getting closer to a realistic depiction of unit depth, you can make the little guys equal whatever you want, and just choose a certain number of bases that looks right to you.

But if you're really going to do a 1:100 scale, then you *have* to abstract it with big brigades. Because otherwise, you've got… six teensy figures equals a battalion?

The French cuirassier regiments at Austerlitz were only about 250 men apiece, so that would be… two or three tiny figures per regiment?

How about doing your own made up battle?

The battle of TrulsFjord?

or

Do part of a battle?
I am as you know doing my HOOGYMONT farm and will be doing the battle of that, which was part of a bigger battle.

or some Peninsular stuff?

Well I will be doing the 1:1 type battle using the AGS rules.
So that will kinda be my battle of Trulsfjord

Möckern is part of the bigger battle, the problem is ofcourse that it turnes out to be quite big. With as many as 90 000 soldiers.
Which means i will be impossible to do at a battalion scale
As there was like 120 battalions pluss 50 squadrons. And lots of artillery.

One option is to do one of the 4 phases of the battle.

In Baccus terms, use 2-3 strips on a 20mmX20mm stand. Each stand is 100 men. Adjust amount of stands per battalion by country. France 6, Prussia 7, Britain 6 8 or 10 depending on the Regiment. Austria 8-10. etc…

Don't worry about men per figure ratio. That's so 1970s.

Anyway, at this scale, you shold be able to do a corps sized battle.

John

"Because otherwise, you've got… six teensy figures equals a battalion? "

That is exactly the ratio I use for FPW battles with multiple Corps. Looks OK but each to their own.

acarhj:
That would give about 12-16cm pr. battalion in frontage.

Which mean I don't have room for that many battalions.

About 20 battalions would be max I could do. And even that willd be quite close to the limit for any realy big movment.

When I say 1500 figs, well that what I got room for on my table. no more.
Dosn't mater if it's 8 figs to 20x20mm or Or 20 figs to 60x30mm bases 1500 mabye 1600 is what I got room for on the table.
So Either I do a small tactical divison vs. divison battle
At one scale. A bigger corps vs corps battle at a higher scale or a full battle at a very high scale.
The end is that no more then 1500 figs are on the table.

What does FPW stand for?

I Say Waterloo for the colour. Blue, Red, Green, Black.

Here's some handy scaling info, from someone who recently went through the same line of thought. ;)

Basing 6 infantry in 2 ranks, on 15mm frontage, equals a 1:40 figure scale (240 men per base) at 1" = 100 yards ground scale, or a 1:20 figure scale (120 men per base) at 1" = 50 yards ground scale. Obviously you could also do 1:60 at 1" = 150 yards or 1:80 at 1" = 200 yards, but you wouldn't need those except for the largest battles. You can either build battalions from these bases or group them to use in brigade scale games.

The corresponding cavalry mounting would be 3 figures in 1 rank on a 20mm frontage (meaning that cavalry bases have half the number of men on a frontage basis as infantry). Artillery can be mounted on a single gun per 20mm frontage basis, which means two bases/guns would equal a battery at 1" = yards scale, or 1 base equals 1 section of guns at 1" = 50 yards scale.

Cheers,

Christopher

Just saw your 1500 figures limit, which I take to mean 750 per side. That would result in opposing armies of approx. 30,000 for 1" = 100 yards ground scale, or half that for 1" = 50 yards ground scale.

30,000 men per side is smallish for Empire period armies (1-2 corps), but it will get you most battles from 1796-1800. On the other hand, you could do smaller engagements or secondary theatres, such as the Peninsula. Obviously 15,000 men per side would limit you to replaying portions of larger battles for the most part.

You could zoom the ground scale way out to 1" = 200 yards and double each sides numbers to 60,000 – that would give you much more to choose from in terms of battles, but would still leave out the major engagements.

Hmm … just had a thought that you could do the 1814 campaign, which had smaller armies than usual and was still fascinating.

I'm doing Marengo myself, with Adler, which would fit your bill but might be hard to fit on a smaller table.

Cheers,

Christopher

CATenWolde:

That might work.
So a full battalion would be from 2 to 3 bases big on in 1:40

Two beses beeing 480 men, 3 beeing 720.
At 3 bases a battalion would cover 4.5cm. Which means I get 46 battalions in a straight line on the long side of my table.
But Möckern hadde ha like 120 battalions, so even with just 4.5cm pr. battalion it would still be to big

Franco
Prussian
War

?

I was (still am) doing Waterloo but my daughter was born 13 days ago so I feel obliged to do Marengo too now.

sigh more work..

Generqally FPW does refer to Franco-Prussian War of the later non-Napoleonic 19th century.

Yep, that's it. I figure that if I'm doing 1" = 100 yards ground scale I'm probably doing a large battle, so the "small" 18 figure battalions would still look good in large numbers (if I'm not playing with brigades as the basic unit).

I wouldn't do the math by calculating how many battalions could fit in a line – they wouldn't have been deployed that way, and it would give you a boring game. ;)

Most likely you would have at most 50% of your total force on the front line at any one time: second line of battalions in every brigade in reserve, brigade/s in reserve for each division, whole divisions in reserve, etc. Especially with so many battles having significant amounts of troops marching onto the table, it's better to look at absolute numbers and the ground scale needed to fit the battlefield onto your table.

Ultimately it's going to be the ground scale that determines what battles you can fit on the table (although imaginative use of off-table movement can expand that a bit). Once you figure that out you just need to suit the figure/unit scale to your aesthetic and rules requirements.

Cheers,

Christopher

The reason I mentoned how many figs I can get inn a line is that I read somewere a magic equation is something like how many figs can you get in a single line on the longest width of your table, then cut it by half and you get the number of figs you can have on the table with out it beeing to crowded

hmmmm interesting, I guess it depends on the width of your table.

As mine is only 3` I would say that is a fair rule as there is not much space behind for other units.

I'll add my voice to earlier suggestions. Ditch the strict figure to man ratio. You'll tie yourself in knots if you don't and put a straitjacket on what you want to do and how you are going to do it. One of the many great joys of 6mm is that you can leave that sort of thinking behind.

What you then need to do is to decide at what level you want to set the command and what your basic unit of manouvre is going to be. With smaller battles you can move to one base/unit is a battalion. With the very largest than you will need to look at one base is a brigade. There is no reason why you cannot use the same bases and basing for both scales.

Then you come to which rules to use for all this, and as veterans of TMP will know only too well, ask ten Napoleonic wargamers to suggest the definitive set and you and you'll get eleven different answers. No prizes for what I'll put forward, but the Polemos Napoleonic two-tier rules were designed to address exactly this sort of question.

Cheers

Peter

Well if I go for the 1 base one battalion I can do möckern With ca. 1440 figs if one base battalion has 12 figs.

I realy do feel 12 figs is the minimum I can have in a battalion and it still looks good.
10 or 8 or 6 figs a battalion would just be to little.

Auzterlitz also gives me a chance to paint Russian and Austrians(even tho 6mm dosn't mean much details) I have never painted them.
Ofcourse Austerlitz was once sided so the rules would have to give the allies side a chance to win.

In my experience, Austerlitz has always been a great fight. It is a scenario that we can always go back to.

I for one would not 'ditch' strict troop to casting ratios. The level of play would have a great impact on Morale, command, control and the size and organization of units which was standardized by the napoleonic Wars.

Of course the bottom line is your purpose in playing the era and or system/command level. If you want only an abstract game like in DBN then you do not need strict ratios. if you are trying to reflect combat in the era to includes firing-tactics and unit organizations then I do not see how you cannot use them.

I definately do not like telescoping concepts where multiple ratios are used on the same battleboard. The 12 men per unit/battalion is the 1:50 or 1:60 troop ratio depending if you want to call it being based on paper ToEs or aveerage actual ToEs.

Again decide on an overall goal-purpose and decide which is the best method for you.

"Yep, that's it. I figure that if I'm doing 1" = 100 yards ground scale I'm probably doing a large battle, so the "small" 18 figure battalions would still look good in large numbers (if I'm not playing with brigades as the basic unit)."

Typical battalion frontage was ~150yds. So can you fit 18 figures in 1.5 ins?

Yes I think you actualy could.

Irregular miniatures you can actualy get 24 figs on 40mm or 1.57inches

Mike: 45mm frontage, 5mm per figure … wait for it … double ranked. ;)

"Mike: 45mm frontage, 5mm per figure … wait for it … double ranked. ;)"

Umm … 1.5ins is only 38mm, not 45mm. And I wasn't saying you couldn't, just checking that it is possible, which it is if you double rank. Personally I don't like double ranking as the bases are then too deep and it just seems odd to me having 2 ranks of figures representing 3 ranks of men, but hey-ho each to their own (as usual!).

Ok, help me with some number crunching

If we say 1"= 100 yards/meters It means my table is 396 200 sqare yards/meters Or almost 400sqkm
This is a totaly diffrent scale then I'm used to.
I'm used to regular tactacal games were a battalion is 20-30cm forntage and can move 10cm-20cm at a time. so Natuarly they can walk across my table in a few turns.

But with 1" = 100 yards a battalion of 12-18 figs can only move like 5-8cm at a time depending on the time scale of the round, wich means it would take like 24 turnes for a unit to cross my table on the short end or over 40 on the long end. this give me alot more for me to manouvre as a gap of 8 inches would take 4 turns to traverse and could fit 3 whole battalions.
Suddenly I have plenty of room. I could probebly fit 2000+ figs on the table and still have room to flank or move

"But with 1" = 100 yards a battalion of 12-18 figs can only move like 5-8cm at a time depending on the time scale of the round,"

8cm = 3in. or 300 yds

According to the 1828 supplement to von Reisswitz's 1824 Kriegsspiel rules, infantry could move 100 paces a minute.

link

100 paces = 83yds. So if you have an infantry move of 8cm the your turn is about 3.5 minutes. This seems rather short for the sort of grand tactical game you are designing. I would have suggested 10 to 15 minutes per turn for that type of game. A 10 minute turn would mean your infantry battalion could move 8.3 ins.

Most wargames rules have troops moving far too slowly.

Most wargames rules have troops moving far too slowly.

Most wargame rules factor the friction of war into movement rates. Even when they include a command and control system, they don't assume that troops are marching every minute of a battle like players would let them do if they could.

Being able to drive 80km per hour does not mean that 60 minutes from now I could possibly find myself 80km away.

"Most wargame rules factor the friction of war into movement rates. Even when they include a command and control system, they don't assume that troops are marching every minute of a battle like players would let them do if they could."

Indeed not. Troops will spend quite a bit of time either waiting for orders, or deploying from line of march to line of battle; they will be slowed down by obstacles and will probably spend a fair amount of time engaged in firefights and close combat.

But in the context of a grand tactical battle it is not unreasonable to assume that a body of troops could march continuously for 10 minutes.

Your bases can be little dioramas. Have a look at these

link

You can use a lot of figures this way. For flexibility I would go with Polemos 6cm x 3cm bases which can be doubled up to play Marshal de Empire (also Baccus) or Grande Armee etc.

Well then lets compremise, and say 6" a turn.

But the point is that you still have more room to manouvre as the bases only have a 1-1.5" reach with muskets Instead of 10-20cm.

So a 4" gap means the units are still 400 yards apart.

So in theory both armies could be spread all over the table with just 4" of gap and no infantry unit can reach eachother and they are even ourside of canister range of guns. So you can only have long range kannon to engage eachother.

"But the point is that you still have more room to manoeuvre as the bases only have a 1-1.5" reach with muskets Instead of 10-20cm.

So a 4" gap means the units are still 400 yards apart.

So in theory both armies could be spread all over the table with just 4" of gap and no infantry unit can reach each other and they are even outside of canister range of guns. So you can only have long range cannon to engage each other."

Absolutely, yes!!!

Changes your whole perspective, doesn't it?

Ok.

Lets drop

Figure counting and set a battalion at 18 figs on one base.
It would be impossible to count figures for Möckern anyway as we don't know how strong each battlion or even brigade was.
Since we don't count figures we don't have to have the right ratio of battalion vs squadron.
Because if we count figs and a battalion 18 figs a squadron would be like 1 or 2 figs. So Lets go for looks.
And say 10 figs to a sqadron, and 1 cannon model for each battery.

And if I'm going to be reasonble Instead of buying the whole 2000+ figs I'll buy one and one corps of each side.

Play it as you feel best.
Your game, your house, your way.

"Lets drop figure counting and set a battalion at 18 figs on one base."

Good idea. That's what I do (except my battalions are smaller). My elements (all with the same frontage) represent either a battalion of infantry, half a regiment of cavalry or an artillery battery. Works for me.

Hei AB, on your site you have russian grenadier instead of line infantry, is there any diffrence at 6mm. Do the grenadiers have mitre or some other hat instead of shako?