"1806 French army at 1:10 Ratio Pix" Topic

I will be posting pictures of my 1806 French and Prussian armies on my Der Alte Fritz blog, so please click on the link below to view more pictures.

link

I have been building 28mm armies in a 1:10 figure to man ratio which means that my French battalions have 72 figures and my Prussians have 60 figures plus 5 schuetzen. Our group is developing a Napoleonic version of the BAR rules with some major changes to reflect Napoleonic warfare. For example, infantry and cavalry no longer melee, they test to see whether or not the cavalry breaks through the infantry. Skirmish rules have been added, such as the skirmishers take a full turn to reload, thus they work in pairs and fire every other turn.

Here is a little preview for your enjoyment:

Full French brigade of two regiments, each with two battalions. Figures are Elite Miniatures 28mm.

French artillery battery (8 guns) – Front Rank limber teams, Elite Miniatures cannon and crew:

That is quite amazing. What size table do you have access to?

My own table is 15ft by 6 ft wide plus I have two back tables of 2.5ft by 15ft to provide depth. The gap in the tables is not really there in terms of the play, you just move your figures across the gap without any loss of movement. This can create some interesting fog of war situations where you think that the enemy unit is far away, but in fact, it is a few inches from your front or flank. Ouch! I've been gaming like this for years and I recently got discombobulated by the gap. I had a whole regiment of British infantry ridden down by some French chasseurs that I did not notice across the aisle.

We also have a 20 ft by 6 ft table with the same back table set up at Bill P.'s house, where we play most of our games. It is hard to believe that the 15ft table is the "little table" in our group's wargames.

Gorgeous collection Jim!
You and I both get to fight against it for a change!
Bonne chance to the pards commanding the French!
Tally-Ho
Bill

I'm amazed that anyone has time to paint units of that size. Beautiful stuff.

I'm also working on units that size or thereabouts, but AB's big 15s. One day I will get back to my Napoleonics, but I'm having a lot more fun shooting Afghan hill tribes at the moment (Minifigs, Peter Pig, QRF, and maybe a few others I don't remember at the moment).

I'd love to get a game in with DAF or Bill one of these days, except they'd need to teach me the rules!

I struggle with 24 figure battalions.

What else can one say but…

Impressive, very Impressive.

great looking units, i like especially the artillery

Dribbling on the keyboard.

DAF another excellent share – beautiful figures at 1:10 yikes huge battles then…no wonder you need the 15ft plus! Do you possess any boardgames DAF and in particular do you have The Coming Storm (quad game of the four battles of 1806-1807 campaigns) by OSG?

I have some of the Clash of Arms boardgames which I bought primarily to obtain their exsquisite maps of the battlefields. My plan was to use the boardgame maps as an aid to constructing the wargame terrain for the battles.

I would recommend you try and pick up the following if you don't have them, great for campaigns

Jena by CoA
1806 and The Habit of Victory by OSG

The look great, would love to see the Prussians too

Awesome

It'd take Me years to paint all those

F

Very impressive

DAF,
Great looking units!!

I did an AB 1806 Prussians Musketeer regiment years ago based for Chef de Battalion at 1 to 5. The joys of repainting facings on around 200 figures, which I still haven't completed yet.

John

Jim,

You are truly one sick and demented individual…and we love you for that! Those are some great looking figures and units.

72 Figures per French battalion! What is wrong with you!That being said… whatever is wrong with you, I need to get . Lovely work. You sir are a true credit to wargaming everywhere.Keep up the good work and please … can I see some more sir?

Very nice!

When you have a full French regiment (2btns) coming at you and the French player deploys all of his voltigeurs as skirmishers (that's 24 figures in total), you begin to see a real "cloud of skirmishers" and you appreciate the problems that French opponents had in trying to deal with the voltigeurs before they could do any harm to the columns that were following up behind the screen.

BTW, I blame all of this on John Preece. If I hadn't seen pix of his game, in which he pushed two 36-figure units together into one unit, then probably would not have gotten back into Napoleonic wargaming. I had sold off my complete collection a year or two prior to that and started all over again at 1:10.

Well then we all have John Preece to thank. Thanks for the treat.

Wow

The columns look quite "deep" still though DaF – are you using three ranks with these? I like the idea of 1:10 (still only need 60 odd cavalry for the charge of the light brigade!!!) but I guess I would want to expand the frontage more than the depth. I notice you have not finished basing these yet – is this because you have not finalised plans, or just not got round to them yet?

Mind you, a brigade screen if you have 4 battalions to a regt would look good at 1:20 scale.

And finally, nice to see lots of Naps on display, so my congratulations.

I use a 3-ranks for France and Prussia (and every one else) and 2-ranks for the British. The figures are mounted on 20mm square metal bases and then attached to a magnetized sabot/movement tray that is 90mm by 70mm (a little extra to make it easier to pick up the stands).

I just haven't gotten around to terraining some of the French bases (busted!!!) but will do that eventually.

1:20 looks very impressive too. I think that both ratios would look particularly good with 15/18mm figures and in fact I almost considered doing this 1806 project with the very fine AB Miniatures.

I am also contemplating how to base the French using the 9-company organization rather thant the 6-company organization which started in 1808 (?). I would probably have to increase the French from 72 figures to 81 figures as the movement tray needs a certain symetrical look to, well, look right in my mind. I wouldn't want to use 12 figure companies for the 9-company organization (108 figures!), so 9 figure companies is the next lowest number of figures that looks right, IMHO.

Outstanding work, Fritz. About the artillery … I take it the picture shows a limbered up battery. When the battery unlimbers, do you take the whole block off and replace it with individual cannon and artillery troops, much like what is in the background of the picture? I really like the idea that a limbered up battery takes up a lot of ground space.

Yes Kevin, I remove the cannon from the limber base (a loose cannon ) and set the cannon in place with 5 or 6 crew depending on the poundage (5 crew for 6-pdr and 6 crew for 12-pdr) manning the gun.

The limber set is placed behind each section of the battery. I could add supply wagons for each gun, but I think that I will limit it to just one caisson per battery, since they take up so much ground space.

The two howitzers in the background are deployed (actually, I don't have limbers painted for them yet -- the Front Rank limbers are very nice and you can choose between bicorne hats or shakos for your driving team).

yeah, the early French organisation is tricky once used to the later style – I have gone for 4 figures to a company (1:20 of course) and only 2 ranks deep.

May I please ask why you have gone for three ranks deep? I know that is prototypical, but the frontage is condensed, so is it necessary? As in, what is in it for you personally (boy that comes across bad) – what is the "thing" that is exciting you enough about three models deep to go for it?

Hope that is not too nosey to ask :-)

Historically they formed in 3 ranks. At 1:10 ratio you have enough figures to convincingly show this depth. I use only 2 ranks in my 1:20 and 1:30 armies. I know that there is some depth distortion, but I'm willing to trade off depth for frontage. That may not be to everyone's taste, but it works for me.

Just for fun, I pushed two 72 figure French battalions together to see what they would look like in a 1:5 ratio unit of 144 figures. I'm not saying that I would want to game at this ratio, but it is an interesting exercise:

This picture (below) is probably a little bit closer to how the battalion should actually look, what with some space and interval between the companies.

Okay got ask, Can you field one full strength battalion?

what would that look like in a battalion column or line

Lord Ghee

No, I only have 360 French line and 72 Legere so far. Although if I add in Bill P.'s 360 French then I guess that we could do a one to one picture. Our next game is on March 16th so I will set up 720 French as one unit and film them in column and in line formations just to see hw it would look. Good idea!

Lets see a Bn in Square as well.

OK, we will add a square to the list as well. Thank you for the idea.

that is so cool :)

Lord Ghee