"BP and napoleonic artillery in 15mm" Topic

How may guns for a batery do you use in Balck Powder. According to the rules 1 gun but this seems to small a battery. Shoudld I go to 2 or even three?

I suppose you could in any scale. I'm sticking with one per for 28mm. If you keep the stats the same, it would merely be an aesthetics change IMO. Dean

Many years ago I adopted a convention of one gun per battery, but crewed by the same number of gunners as guns in the real battery. I then made my deployed artillery bases proportionate to the number of guns in the battery (ie for my 1:72 plastic figures six gun batteries have a frontage of 120 mm and 8 gun batteries a frontage of 160 mm). Since my two rank British infantry is 15 mm per figure (on a 1:30 figure ratio) this would make a battalion of 20 figures in line occupy 300 mm which is a correct proportion to the battery frontage.

With a little modification it works for any rules, and avoids the problem of infantry/cavalry being represented at 1 figure to 20 or 30 but guns at 1 gun to 2-4 real ones.

Rod

Too much artillery can really damage the game in my experience.

For our games we use more gun models, but count them as only 1 for shooting etc. In a 20 command army I have 4.

Pat

Strictly speaking a Napoleonic artillery battery should have a similar frontage to an infantry battalion. See:
TMP link

Having said that, BP is not actually too fussy about ground scales, so Sane Max's suggestion makes a lot of sense or alternatively just fudge it and have 1 gun per battery.
Whatever floats your boat – if that isn't mixing my metaphors too much!

I use 2 models. It seems a better frontage for a battery than just one.
Max

Bavarian foot battery (4) six pounders and (2) howitzers, I use 1 model per two guns. (15mm) so I use (2) 6 pdr and (1) howitzer model pieces

I use sevral rules, BP is just one of them, and I use 1 gun to start with in 28mm simply to save money on guns,

I use two and full limbers.

Given the firepower relative to an infantry battalion, the single gun in BP seems to represent a brigade/company of approx. 6 guns, as stated in the rules.

Actual artillery frontages presumably varied based on the circumstances and requirements of the moment, Nafziger quotes separations of 10-20 paces between individual guns, Ayde talks about guns in batteries/redoubts being 18 feet apart, while Adkin shows Napoleon's grand battery at Waterloo deployed on average approx 15 paces apart.

I play in 15mm and use a single model on a 54mm triangular base per 6 gun brigade/company, while my "standard" infantry battalions are about twice that when deployed in line.

Regards

Garry Wills
caseshotpublishing.com

How can you use one gun and think that it looks like a battery.

I use my own rules based on WRG rules and I think their scale that gives 3 and 4 gun batteries looks good.

But of course what we should be doing is trying to use a set of rules that gives and accurate frontage for a battalion in line versus a deployed battery.

And a set of rules that encourages the correct ratio of infantry to cavalry and artillery in most games.
(I know there is no fixed ratio here)

Understand your point Le general, but for me it is no odder than using 24 figs to represent a battalion.

Regards

Garry Wills
caseshotpublishing.com

The authors of the rules state quite clearly that their use of a single model to represent a battery is merely due to the fact that that is how they have built their collections.

BP works on the basis that the combat statistics relate to the unit as a whole and have nothing whatsoever to do with the number of models used. That is purely an aesthetic consideration. So you could use 1 figure to represent an infantry battalion, cavalry regiment or a gun battery. What does matter is the relative frontages of the units if you want your game to have any relationship to reality.

As Margard pointed out a battery should have a similar frontage to an infantry battalion in line. in practice the frontage of artillery batteries was flexible depending on the tactical conditions on the battlefield so anything between half and full infantry battalion frontage is reasonable acceptable.

Everyone I know that plays BP tends to use between 2 and 4 guns to represent a battery. But this is simply because they have armies that were built up pre-BP. All that really matters is the frontage and the unit stats.