"changing basing for F&F" Topic

So I read the sort info about F&F regimental, it says each base is 40 figures, that means huge units, of 8-12 bases, which would limit the the battle by alot,

If you simply increace the base to 80 soldiers, you can get away with 4-6 bases, and there by doubeling the size of the battle you can play.

Does this work, and what would you have to do with the ranges?

Personally, if space becomes an issue I would keep the ranges but half the number of bases as you suggest

Should work – we have used a similar solution for some of our larger campaign battles with basic F&F and it worked fine

If table space is a problem, RF&F units are two stands deep so a 10 stand unit would have frontage of 5 stands.

As William points out, a regiment in line of battle is two stands deep. A 12 stand unit takes up 6" of frontage. If you need smaller units than that, RFF may not be the set of rules for you. Maybe Volley and Bayonet?

Why make it two stands deep, I get that the rules use 3 figures in a single line, so you need two bases to make a double line, but that just seems like more trouble that need be, I always use double line bases, so my bases have 6 figures, two ranks of 3.

So in esence my single base is like two bases for fire and fury.

"So in esence my single base is like two bases for fire and fury."

Mine too. I like the look of two deep lines but with less depth and its less fiddly. It takes two hits to remove a stand. And I use 25mm figures. Hmmm… some people (such as myself) just can't get it right.

Ok, then things become much more managble, I just found it very od, that regiments should be like 12 inches.

When the rules said 3 figures pr base I thought they were based kina iregular way, I didn't understand that you had regiments in 2 bases deep.

That did explanes alot.

Regimental F&F does allow units to operate in formations one stand deep (I think they call it extended line?) but the reinforced line-- 2 ranks deep- I understand is the "normal" formation. If your figures are based two ranks deep (mine are 28mm, four per base in two ranks) just spread them out to represent extended line. Skirmishers aren't represented by figures on the table, so that shouldn't cause confusion.

The double-rank basing is the one thing I didn't like about RF&F, so I went with 15mm frontage bases (3x 10mm figures) and simply use single-rank basing with approximately the same per unit frontage. The battles have a much more linear look to them.

So, what do you do if you're going for accurate regiment sizes? Take for instance the 17th Louisiana at Antietam. The morning of the battle they mustered 17 men. The 17th Virginia managed 55. Evans' brigade, independent attached to Longstreet's corps, had 5 flagged regiments but fielded about 300 men. Jackson's whole corps of 88 regiments topped out at about 10,000 infantry, about 114/regiment.

A little bit of a problem.

I should probably stick to brigades as the base unit, eh?

Those are extremes, and obviously they would be amalgamated in a game just as they would have been amalgamated in real life. I have a collection of scenarios approaching the 100 mark that all have entirely reasonable regimental strengths, with very few instances where game units are formed from amalgamated historical units. The flip side of the coin is that some of the early war regiments were so large that they were fielded in two "wings" – but that's easy to do as well.

All in all the decision on whether to scale at regimental or brigade level is going to depend on what size battle you want to fight, and probably will be determined more by map/table size and scale and number of figures than anything else. Although I'm primarily gaming at the regimental level, I'm also scaling RF&F up to brigade level for really big battles.

Since I'm going to attempt the whole of Antietam, I guess doing 40-50 brigades per side is going to be more practical than 180 or so individual regiments. It'll cut down on the individual unit colors I have to try and track down.

Since I'm going to attempt the whole of Antietam, I guess doing 40-50 brigades per side is going to be more practical than 180 or so individual regiments. It'll cut down on the individual unit colors I have to try and track down.

John,

I have done Antietam many times (probably a dozen!), it is my favorite battle. Always did this at the brigade level to do the entire battle.

At the regimental level you can do parts of the battle such as the Corn Field or Burnsides Bridge, but if you want to get the entire battle done in an afternoon the brigade level works best.

Kim

I bought a Nook today and the number of free books about Antietam is amazing. Most are from post-war reports compiled by officers of the historical branch. Some really fascinating reading.

Antietam is a game better played with the Brigade Fire and Fury since the level of unit size is more appropriate than regimental to large battles. Brigade infantry scale is 1 stand to 150 soldiers or 1 stand to 200 soldiers. Pending Rich's rewrite of the Brigade rules to incorporate some of the mechanisms from new regimental rules the the Brigade book, I believe, is available as a a reprint from On Military Matters bookstore.

Stand size is not critical but the stands need to have the same frontage so they line up to resolve charge combat.

Number of figures per stand is not as important for example when Rich play tested Glorieta, New Mexico he used a figure ratio of 20 per stand.

Additionally, if your stands are based as two ranks you will need casualty markers to represent stand losses and something to represent extended line when going to extended line. You can also write specific scenario rules to fit the rules to the battle you are recreating.

Cheers,
Joel in Northern Virginia

Two rank bases in RF&F are not a problem.

We play four figures to a square base and just have one of the units bases split 2 and 2. The way casualties work out its easy to swap bases in and out this way.

Forget "extended line" its just a cop out way of avoiding skirmishers in the rules. Not worth hamstringing a good set of rules to fiddle with it.

We use house rule to employ skirmishers and enjoy playing the game without it.

Trajanus, Mind sharing your house rules for skirmishers? I'm using bases with 6 figs (3 x 2), with a few 3 x 1's to use to count casualties and make change. But I'd love to see how you handle skirmishers since I agree extended lines are a bit fiddly…

www,

Basically as I said, we play four to a base in two ranks (28mm) with one base per unit split for casualties like you.

We mount skirmishers two to a base on the same frontage, allowing for at least a base width between each base on the table and count them firing as normal,

They have no movement restrictions and count the -1/-2 when fired on as applies to "Extended Line".

This means that skirmishers can screen/scout and be a pain but wont shoot you to bits. Although on the occasions where a number of stands fire at one target, a big roll can take out a stand or cause a disorder giving them some real use.

It does mean using extra figures where the "Extended Line" doesn't (if the books basing scheme is used)but it feels a better way of doing things.

I plan on buying RFF at some point in time, but I do wish they had just gone officially with 4 x 4 to a base or kept the basing requirements the same as FF. I've seen photos of a number of different RFF games now where even with 2 rank bases they still double them up to meet the official system specs for two bases one behind the other even though they didn't have to as Trajanus points out and I think the designer too. Now those games still looked real good, but when doubling up two rank bases it just looks too dense to my eye… too attack column-ish across the board. Honestly, even the photos of games where they use one rank bases of 3 figs as officially recommended, I think it still looks kind of too dense.

Hi BD,

Hear what you are saying. I think in all honesty they went down this road trying to keep as many previous F&F players on side as they could by reusing existing basing.

Have to confess it was easy for us to blow it out as we made the jump from 15mm to 28mm at the same time as taking on RF&F and four figures on a square base is just so easy to handle.

There's no way we would have considered doubling up. As you say just looks all wrong.

These are a couple of my 'standard' size units:

link

We have started playing games with nearly double this number per unit and they really do look like a Regiment.

Trajanus,

That makes sense, but couldn't they have just said the number of figs per base doesn't matter, each base is equal to 40 men ? I'm looking at an old playtest version, but rather than 1, 2 or 3 fig casualties use a 1/2 stand increment in other words take casualties in 20 man increments ? A 1/2 stand casualty marker is all that would be necessary. Might that not have lined up better with Brigade Level F & F ?

Very nice figures, BTW.

BD,

Thanks,

Each stand/base is 40 men.

The the number of figures they show in the rule book per stand (three in a line) is just a suggestion and has no significance. Actually says so in the rules.

Casualties are taken in stands removed.

We have one of our four figure stands per unit split in half, front to back as spare change. As casualty results in the published version are mostly at two stands max per unit, per turn, we can just swap half's and whole's.

Trajanus,
So, I think you effectively play 2 figs per 40 man stand? I can see where playing 4 fig stands at 40 men per without doubling the line can really impinge upon space requirements. I was looking at an old playtest version, so I guess they moved away from individual fig loss which is nice.

So, if you play RFF w/ 4 fig bases and mark casualties by stand with pipe cleaner down the middle of the base, you can play RFF without having to double up bases.

Have to say, I'm looking forward to buying RFF.

So, if you play RFF w/ 4 fig bases and mark casualties by stand with pipe cleaner down the middle of the base, you can play RFF without having to double up bases

You could look at it that way I guess. We just think of 4 figure base and two stands being the same thing.

To be honest we tend not to deliberately equate a stand with a specific number of men. As we don't recreate specific actions that much its not that important.