"Napoleonic Games, How many figs seem right to you?" Topic

Hey Guys,
I was playing Shako II at the club and
was admiring the club minis. The French were
in units of 12 figs (3 stands of 4figs) and the
cav in units of 8 figs (2 stands of 4fig).
Some how I felt that that the units, especially the
inf were to thin. I was looking at my General de Brigade rules but those units at 1:20 looked far to big. So for a unit (bat) how big do you like your units. Maybe I should ask what ratio do you prefer.
Mike

1:60 has always been my preferred ratio, obviously not counting skirmish games.

About 1:100. 5 figures to the battalion in 6mm.

1:1 using Sharpe Practice

I find 16 figures in 2 ranks to be just ideal for infantry; 12 is a little too small, 24+ too big for someone like me who paints both sides alone.

I do not concern myself with ratio; one unit = 1 regiment/batallion. None of the rules I use ask for specific ratio anyways.

Iannick
Clash of Empires link

1:100 in 2mm with the soldiers mounted on frisbees. Each frisbee represents a corps, all of the soldiers need to be painted to a 10 level and then the frisbees are hurled at each other for 5minutes, thats the move phase. After which each player gets two hammer strikes at any figures that have been knocked off of the firsbees while golf balls are being hit at them, that's the casuality/opportunity fire phase. After each turn all players need to drink 3-6, I haven't decided, beers or equivalents of other alcholic based bevies, this is the morale phase. Last player standing or not puking/passing out wins. He then has to load all his chums into a car and drive them home.

Ok I lied, I like 1:20-30.

Whoa! Hauser!
You had my wife in stitches!
She was hoping youur rules had plenty
off glossy pics of games in action!

Arch Charles, what rules do you use?

Mike,

What are you looking for in a game? My troops are based for Empire 1:60 ratio. I have 3 different sets off rules I can play: Empire, Battles for Empire, or Le Feu Sacre. Somewhere, I even have a copy of Houserules Napoleonic (does that show how long I have been a Napoleonic gamer?). I am also looking to pick up Shako and Legacy of Glory. Won't take much work to run a game some Saturday for you.

Joe

Hey Joe,
I'm in my yearly 'I want to go back to Napoleonics' fever.
I keep fighting off the urge to get into 25mm Napoleonics.
So I'm in that looking for the right rules/ratio phase of my fever. I wouldn't mind setting up a game with you
one day. I'm over Empire, but I have yet to try
Battles for Empire or Le Feu Sacre.

25mm: Column Line and Square: 1 figure = 20 men
15mm: DBN 1 base of 4 figs = brigade

More is better

I like the look of 24-50 figures per unit for Infantry, 12-20 for Cavalry

Its lovely to have huge units providing you have a huge table to manouvre around. Ok for a small skirmish on a 12 x 6 table but to re-fight Aspern or Borindo or similar large battle, 1=100/1=120,

Tally Ho!

We are using a 1:30 ratio, so they are double what you saw for Shako. We deploy them in 2-rank lines and it looks pretty good, better than the one-rank lines, I think.

D6 Junkie

I haven't settled on any ruleset yet; Huzzah!, In the Name of Glory and Piquet, mostly. But I will soon try a few others (Foundry's Napoleon, Shako II, Field of Battle), and I'm waiting for Hilton's new Republic to Empire.

I like big battles with lots of units, big units in 28mm do not work very well for that imho.

I like Grant style big battalions, around 50 figures per Battalion is a good starting point, more is better.

Bigger is better. We use 1:20 for big battles and 1:1 for skirmishing.

Rick

Use 1:20, but also realistic field strength units, not
'factory fresh,' so a Bn is usually 20-28 figures, some
a bit larger, some a bit smaller.

Cav regiments 12-16 figures.

I like 24 fig French battalions with the others working off those. 16 for cav.

I'm working on my armies at 1:33 for Le Feu Sacre although that's not the ratio its written at.

My French battalions are 18's ie 6 companies of three. I can have them in line or hollow square (not a clump of bases) but most importantly, to me, I can have them in one or two company wide column without the units getting too deep. Normally they deploy as three ranks of six castings so the column is wider than deep as it should be. Something I've not seen with most rules at 1:20 and its something that really bothers me ie that the unit footprint is at least a nod in the right direction not a great squarish slab of figures. That doesn't look at all Napoleonic to me.

I used to play Naps at 1:33 so there's no great surprise I came back to what I felt is a natural choice for Naps. I tried 1:50/60 and the units seemed a bit small but I lost the will to continue at 1:20 which I tried for a while. I arrived at my 18 figures unit by painting up about 100 ABs and trying lots of options. I liked 24 figure units – 8 castings frontage and three ranks deep but to use this would seriously knacker the ground scale notions I thought through and I couldn't face painting 24 figures units, not when I wanted 25+ per side.

Cavalry are in 12's that also looks about right. I use two model guns per battery varying the frontage and crew figures for 6 or 8 gun batteries. ie a gun model represent 3 or 4 real pieces.

In the end this all worked out so well for me so the choices I made seemed very natural. Of course you might not like single rank basing that I use and love.

I actually think two rank basing photographs better and looks nice on a unit by unit basis but looks less good deployed by division in a game – it simply doesn't look linear enough (unless you use at least 50+ castings per unit) for my taste of what a Napoleonic battlefield would be like.

This is such a hard question. It really depends on the scale of the figures and how big the playing area might be.

Personally, I am partial to 1:60 (12 figs per unit) for 25/28mm figs

For 15mm, 1:30 is better.

mjc

I only do 25mm/28mm.
Infantry in units of 20 to 30
Cavalry in units of 12 to 24
Artillery in units of 2.

I use 60mm x 40mm bases for foot and horse. 60 x 60 for guns.

I use 4 bases for a battalion so I can represent the various formations. Then I pack them with as many troops look right.

And for me, two ranks looks better than one. So for 28mm, this leads to battalions of between 28 and 32 figs per unit, plus skirmishers.

I do have a couple of 24 fig light inf units too, individually mopunted on 20 x 20 bases with 60 x 40 sabots, so I can use them for SP as well.

Cav are in units of 12 – 18, guns in batts of 2.

I am building division sized forces.

I think 16 figs is enough to look like a battalion in games which require battalion sized units. The old WRG 1:50 is OK for this, but obviously the French battalions at Waterloo can look a bit thin (10-11 figs!). We used to play Shako with 18 fig 15mm Bns and they looked OK, also 36 fig 6mm battalions (six Irregular strips).

I usually play rather more grandiose games these days, so you are looking at a couple of figs per battalion.

I remember a photo of a French Bn 1:1 in AB 18mm in one of the magazines a few years ago. Looked beautiful, photographed nicely and would have looked good formed into squares!

However!

Are you including zombies, or not?