"FOGN Basing - How flexible ?" Topic

Hi

My Napoleonics are based as follows (frontage first) –

Infantry 30x30
Cavalry 40x30
Guns 30x40

Assuming I don't want to play in Competitions, will this basing make a massive difference if I want to play FoGN with them ?

TIA

Pete

You can play perfectly with that basing. I am playing with the same basing (except my artillery bases are wider). Simply remind that a Cavalry unit frontage in Tactical Formation is the same as that of an Infantry unit. That means, 4 of your infantry bases or 3 of your Cavalry bases, make a regular sized unit front (12 cm). 6 of your infantry bases make the width of a Large unit (18 cm). For cavalry Large units, I use 5 bases (20 cm, a little wider than the "official" 18 cm, but I can live with that).

As for artillery, 2 of your bases would count as one game base.

As an aside that may interest you: I donīt like the look of FoGN units (too deep for their width), so I dispense with the second line of infantry bases (my armies on the table look more "linear", which in my mind is more correct; and it allows me to play battles double the size with the same number or figures…). In the case of cavalry units, I indulge putting just one base to form the second line (when they get "Spent", I remove it).

Don't have my rules with me, but doesn't having a single line of bases make it impossible to distinguish "tactical" from"extended line" formations?

Not really. Extended Line formations are 24 cm (8/6 bases of my inf/cav bases) or 36 cm (12/9 of my inf/cav bases) wide. That means, you simply double the number of bases used in Tactical formation, thatīs all. As Extended Lines are not used very frequently, you only need some spare bases.

Joaquin99, are you playing with 28 mm? I am a 15 mm man and my regular units have frontage of 8 cm (2 bases) as do large in deep formation. In standard tactical, large have frontage of 12 cm. The depth of formation issue is one that I justify in my own mind by thinking of unit as several battalions, which would be deployed to cover/control a certain area of ground. If the units represented single battalions I would share your concern about the "look" of the table.
Not sure what size figures Guthroth is using, but if cavalry depth only 3cm, suggests 15 mm. I agree no real issue using different base sizes ( rules actually say as much, can't remember page refs and my book is 6000 miles away at present) and it's worth giving the rules a run out- they take a little work as the rule book is set out rather poorly, but I like some of the ideas and mechanisms. Worth taking a look at the Slitherine forum on FoGN:-

link

Steamingdave47, yes, I am playing with 28 mm. Even if the Tactical formation in the game is designed to represent mostly a double line of about 4 batalions (with a gap of about 100 meters between the first and the second line) the fact is that it looks like "blocks" of troops, which I donīt find appealing. As you know, even a batalion column was really a quite "linear" (much wider than deep) formation. In any case, I am just proposing this for the looks of it, and the economy of figures.