"200m/400m/600m- Sufficient to show a brigade?" Topic

Lion in the stars. thanks for the interest, these are actually 5mm figs – Heroics and Ros. Buildings are Langton Miniatures.

The ground scale is 1:10000 so musket range is only 1cm. This is a non-issue as combat includes all firing and assault. Skirmishers are factored-in.

Your comments about scale depths are very significant. For cavalry I use square bases 1cm frontage (and if I can 12mm depth but sometimes 13mm as that is what you get with the figures). 1 cm frontage is 100 metres so you can fit in 100 files or 200 cavalry. The depth of the base corresponds to the frontage which allows the column to be considered as an open column. Now if the column wqas one of company (half squadron or troop ) then it would still have the same depth. The base is over-wide but there are limits to what we can do here. A regiment in open column of squadron would be made up of three bases one behind the other. In line three bases side by side (this is overdeep but there would be a gap between sucessive lines of at least the frontage of a squadron). The problem comes when you need to assemble cavalry into reserve formations as these bases are too large to represent a regiment in close column. That is why I use markers for the number of bases removed for reserve formations.

Artillery again is difficult to represent. A limbered team, limber and gun represents a battery and first line transport (caissons etc.) on the road in single file with intervals (to allow halting without collisions). The base is too wide – it should really be 4 metres or 0.04mm in scale.

At the halt limbered batteries can be "stacked" again remove bases and leave a marker. This is still in "road" mode and can resume movement extending out the column.

I use a separate artillery base 10mm wide by 15mm deep with one gun model and crew figures to represent the battery ready for action. This may mean deployed or moving line abreast with caissons behind or moving in column of sections.

Second line transport is represented by a caisson and team, one per division plus one for Corps artillery park and so on. This creates a significant column when a corps is marching to join the battle.

Mike d'Mug:

Yes, the width of the stands in column is really the scale issue, rather than the depth of the columns, for infantry, cavalry and artillery. Your solution is certainly attractive/functional at the scale you are working with.

The lengths of columns in road march is another serious issue in coming on to the table and moving. It is one of the major reasons it could take a divisin a loooong time to actually deploy, ready for combat.

@Lion in the Stars

I don't know who changed my ground scale into inch – I used centimeter – here my original posting

"In case I use a scale of 1 cm equals 20 m, for 8 companies battalion – I would need 8 cm width.

to base figures, without tumbling them over – I would use 1 cm depth – which would be 20 meters (as you see a bit too deep – but still ok for a battalion in line).

I could easily place a second battle line about 150 to 200 meters – or 7,5 to 10 cm distance.

Now in case we come to the columns, a battalion column in open colums would be as deep as wide, easily achieved by one company front of 1cm and 8 cm depth.

At a half open column this would be 1 cm front and 4 cm depth (which we cannot achieve – there the base of one company would be 1 cm deep) – the solution would be to reduce this column to 4 stands only and by that we could represent a battalion column in half open column quite well.

And to figure out more – I would be interested in your opinion of how deep a colonne d'attaque was – quarter distance? – which would give 2 cm depth or 2 cm front (two companies width) so again a reduction in stands in depth, you would only use two stands)

That would be more or less the limit, a closed column would be even less deep, but could be formed by less stands as well."

So a table with one meter depth would give 2 km in reality – or 1.6 m(about 5.5. feet) depth would give 3,2 km – this is sufficient distance to be well out of effective artillery range.

@von W: I was the one using the inches for my example. Your metric scale seems to be much better for having a reasonably-sized table.

I hadn't considered base width to be a problem like that, though it definitely makes sense that it would be at your groundscale.

I think I'm going to bite the bullet and buy O8's 3mm Napoleonics, run things at close to 1/600 groundscale. I will still have some issues with cannon range, since the groundscale works out to 6"=100yds. Cannon range would be 60" or more, and it's impractical to have a table wider than 72" (can't reach into the middle of the table). I'm sure I can find some smaller battles, where the terrain didn't support those full-length cannon shots. La Haye comes to mind…

Or I could just skip the deployment and roll through the actual shooting part of the battle (hey, sounds like LaSalle!). I'm not sure that will be as interesting, but I will take a swing at this.

When I began to delve into scale and scope a while back I immediately found myself fighting table size. I think we all do don't we? There is a lot of continual talk amongst groups and on forums about how the edge of the table is the edge of the world and everyone always has secure flanks and any two miniature games look the same because they are some random hills in the middle and two parallel lines of dense figures packed against opposing table edges. I just can't see how that isn't a direct outcome of scope and scale. Other things contribute as well but even if it wasn't for the other factors scope and scale would lead us to that end.

If the table is too shallow to support ployed troops and too narrow to support open flanks, then are we not all choosing to play only specific aspects of battles? Basically only the center correct?

I believe, perhaps someone will tell me erroneously, that divisions were pretty deep grand tactical formations. Not because of the fighting units but because of all that junk that got hauled along behind them. Their artillery park, the stragglers, the various support units – and I am not talking about the huge train of wagons and things that might be trailing after them when on the march.

We're doing lots of extrapolation in this thread. "If a horse takes up X footprint then Y horses must take up X * Y footprint + intervals." That is the formula that everyone from Featherstone and Quarrie to Bowden used right? Yet everyone came up with slightly different numbers and none of them seem "quite right". "If an infantry battalion in line is three ranks deep and the depth of a man walking is A then the depth of a battalion in line is A * 3 = B and there are three waves in the division then the depth of the division is B * 3." All settled. But it isn't.

None of these things work the way we are treating them. The original poster's question was:

200m/400m/600m- Sufficient to show a brigade?

I kinda scoffed when I read that. Sorry for being rude.

A brigade is what, 2-6 battalions?

Those battalions could be orientated against each other in any way right? They could form an L with one facing or two facings… they could form a T with a deep center, or maybe that T used to be an L with a refused flank but the main line was pushed back.

I don't know that it is bad to say a brigade takes up 200m/400m/600m necessarily. But I think when you do that you need to accept there is no facing. I am accepting that in this square on the tabletop there are troops doing things and I have no idea what they are doing. Stuff. Hopefully the right stuff. I don't know if they refused their flank or not when they were struck on the side. If they win their die contest I guess they must have.

A common problem we have is we apply what I call "out of scope" concerns to games. As a player I somehow need to indicate that the brigade refused its flank – why? The brigade is *one stand*, it does not need to change its entire orientation to send one battalion left to cover its flank. In fact to a corps commander on the field there may not be able indication anything happened.

Lion in the Stars,

I'm confused by your decision to game with 3mm figures and run at 1" = 17 yards. It seems, at least on the surface to me, to be the worst of all worlds. I am using figures so small that I'd have a better view observing real life from a news helicopter yet my ground scale is so low that I will only represent the point of contact and no context. Isn't the point of using tiny figures (i.e. 2-3mm, 5-6mm, 10mm and *maybe* 15mm) that I get context? If I'm gonna reduce my 6' deep table to only being able to march straight forward I really want a ton of 28mm figures so I can admire how amazing they look right?

If I'm coming across as rude, please forgive me, I'm being very direct as if we were sitting in a bar but I'm not meaning to be mean spirited. We trade detail of one kind (nuance) for detail of another kind (scope). This is always a balance, robbing one's self of both seems so odd to me.

Cheers,

The Bandit

@ The Bandit, direct is best !!

My startpoint is the Kriegspiel and the way troop block are represented. Blocks are stackable and if turned to a flank they do not have the figure facing the wrong way as would happen when using figures.

I am also influenced by various drill manuals and reglements. The French 1791 and Ney in Military Studies show how a division of 8-12 battalions Sometimes the division will be in Line of Battle, sometimes moving grand tactically as a single column, each battalion in column following the lead battalion.

Think of the following. If a division is represented by a single square base then you can calculate the area that square represents. You can also calculate the space occupied by the troops of the division and include artillery, caissons and so on – first line transport. I would expect the space occupied to be only a low proportion of the area that the division base takes up. Plenty of empty space to allow other units to move through.

Maybe represent the division by four small square bases instead, put them side by side and you have the division deployed, in column one behind the other then this is moving grand tactically. Remove all bases except one to represent the division in reserve.

Back to the OP's question.

Seeking generalised answers to broad questions is always fraught with danger, but hey … thats what we do !!

Bottom line is that I think 200-800m is a perfectly reasonable generalisation for the area taken by a brigade.

I have a similar conundrum with smaller scaled games, where I am representing Battalions. I wish to fight big battles – ie: many dozens of battalions per side, over several miles of frontage. So my concern is about the general density of those units at various points on the battlefield.

Its not a lot of fun in working things out from the average paces taken by a few men, and multiplying that up by the number of files to arrive at the size taken by a unit. Small errors quickly become big ones if you do it that way.

I took the approach of looking at the whole battlefield as a checkerboard of grids, with each grid being a quarter mile (or 400m). The question then arrises "how much can you typically have deployed in each quarter mile of the battlefield ?" … a dangerous question given that each battlefield is very different.

So lets start with some battle maps, and work backwards to get the small details.

There are tonnes of battle maps online, some better than others. Some have a scale on them, some need a bit more research to chop them into quater mile grids.

Here is a small sample across the period, all with very different types of terrain :

link

Lets face it, you can study and dissect all this till you are blue in the face, but to get a game on, you need _some_ answer which is within the realms of reason, and remains a reasonable answer for _most_ of the battles to be fought.

I came to the conclusion that you can deploy up to 2 battalions in close order in any given "grid", and conform with reality as reported in the battle maps.

Within that deployment area, the battalions can be in column, attack column, line .. whatever. But the big picture is that you get a max frontage of 2 units per quarter mile… going by what historically happens, and assuming that the maps are even accurate.

If the second line is deployed within 200-300paces from the first line (which is a reasonable going by regulations), then 4 units per quarter mile square … 2 up, 2 deep, is a good rule of thumb for the maximum concentration of forces.

Most extreme outlier I could find was the encounter at Smolensk, where due to terrain restrictions the opposing columns were 200m wide, and engagement range at 200m. Tiny scale – but it still fits the rule of thumb above.

I would be more than happy if people could provide any maps that correct my observations/estimates here.

Converting that to the OP's question about brigade deployment, 200m is a perfectly reasonable minimum, and 600-800m would be a perfectly reasonable upper limit.

If the table is too shallow to support ployed troops and too narrow to support open flanks, then are we not all choosing to play only specific aspects of battles? Basically only the center correct?

Yes. The question is what scale and representation is the designer choosing to portray. Does that choice work on the a typical table?

Within that deployment area, the battalions can be in column, attack column, line .. whatever. But the big picture is that you get a max frontage of 2 units per quarter mile… going by what historically happens, and assuming that the maps are even accurate.

The maps you provided could be extremely accurate…in what information they were meant to relay. Note that half don't even have a scale, none provide more that a key of a command's "position" at some time in a very vague way…certainly not something to use to determine a division, brigade or battalion frontage or depth.

So, the first question is what is the typical 'routine' for battle, the SOP for troops going into combat? Would you expect a current army brigade to go into combat shoulder-to-shoulder? Why would we expect a unit of similar size in a Napoleonic battle? What was the norm and basic combat formations for different armies. THAT will give you the space issues, both in depth and frontage.

For instance, at Busaco, the Allied army is occupying a front of over 4000 meters, the French attacking on a front of about 1000 meters, yet, the little squares fail to represent any of the actual formations that Ney's brigades attacked with. According to Pelet and Vernon, 11 or the 21 battalions were deployed as skrimishers and the rest were in a single long column going up the road.

So when you say:

I came to the conclusion that you can deploy up to 2 battalions in close order in any given "grid", and conform with reality as reported in the battle maps.

That is probably quite true. The question is whether anyone ever bothered to do that, and if so, when and why.

So, we can follow the 'rule of thumb' you describe. It certainly is quite reasonable concerning what *could* be done. The question is what Napoleonic commanders did.

For that reason I like the Ferraris map approach, you get a map, scale it down or up to the scale you would like to have on the wargaming table and then you place your scaled down units over the map.

Then you can see – if it works or not.

I agree with McLaddie that the usual battle maps as seem in most book could be misleading.

@Bandit: because 9-12 figures isn't a battalion. It took 3 years before the "grinder reminder" tanline on my head faded, I've spent an awful lot of time doing modern close-order drill.

I just flat don't like the looks of a small bunch of figures representing a battalion. If you use larger numbers of bigger figures (say, 36 men per battalion), your figures get in the way because the depth of the formation is all messed up.

Just playing the critical events of the battle? LaSalle seems to adopt that idea without impacting it's success…

@ Lion, I believe a single line of 12 figures is probably a better representation than 36 (12 files in three ranks). It may not look as impressive as some of the figures we see in wargame displays.

Is 12 figures representing 200 files any better or worse than one rank of figure representing three ranks.

@ Steve64 (and McLaddie). Ney at Bussaco does appear to have had his main force in a narrow column. I would describe this as a grand tactical column which is used to move to the deployment area and then deploy. The Light Division appear to have caught this column before it could deploy. I think a key aspect of napoleonic combat is the variation of the dentity of troops at different points and not an even spread.

@Lion in the Stars

I see your argument, the only solution in my view is to reduce stands to avoid messing up the depth – when doing a column, unless it is on open column.

G'Day Mike

I grew up using a scale of 1:60…therefore my battalions are normally 7 to 9 figures strong. As long as I can represent a battalion formed in column with four divisions (three depending on the year) it works for me.

For me..and I say for me…I am not concerned about the correct representation of what a battalion would have on the table top.

I am more concerns about using the grand manoeuvres of a great body of troops that are in accordance to each army.

I find very few players desire this…which is fine with me…

Anyway…this can be done at a 1:60 scale…perhaps not as impressive as a 1:30 scale…but its the grand manoeuvres which are important for me.

That means that we must understand that the French reglement de 1791 was not l'ordonnce de tactique used from 1792 to 1815…it was the ordonnance d' exercise.

But the instructions that are commonly called 'Ney Military Studies'…were the principles of manouevre being conducted by the entire French Army at the Boulogne Camp.

These instructions and more were used in l'ordre perpendiculaire – l'ordonnance de tactique or l'ordre tactique.

This means that the French for the most part…tried to use a holding force while they sent another force as a flanking force. Therefore the table top must be wide enough to permit the French this flanking force.

At Brigade level…I have to agree with an earlier posting…

"I think when you do that you need to accept there is no facing. I am accepting that in this square on the tabletop there are troops doing things and I have no idea what they are doing. Stuff. Hopefully the right stuff. I don't know if they refused their flank or not when they were struck on the side. If they win their die contest I guess they must have."

To add on to this…there were times when a French division had both brigades acting as one great body of troops…and that is important in some battles.

Best Regards
Art

@ Lion, I believe a single line of 12 figures is probably a better representation than 36 (12 files in three ranks). It may not look as impressive as some of the figures we see in wargame displays.

With "larger" figures (say, 15s or 28s), a single line of 12 figures is certainly less distorted in depth than a triple-ranked block of 36.

However, even a single rank of 15mm figures may still be significantly deeper than the ground truth, depending on the figure compression ratio and the groundscale.

Is 12 figures representing 200 files any better or worse than one rank of figure representing three ranks.

It's certainly less of a distortion in terms of proportions. But I think both do unfortunate things to the visuals of the game.

I thought we played these games for the tabletop spectacle, so there's a push to make the units on-table look as good as possible? Some even push to have the historically-correct number of ranks, despite the nasty things this does to our unit footprints.

That's why I'm going for 1:1 (or close to it, may have to use 3:4 or something similar) figure strengths in 3mm!

I will have a Thin Red Line, and those guys in Rifle Green almost lost on their bases amongst the grass and trees. I will probably tweak size of the Colours for better unit ID, though. May go so far as using flags correctly scaled for 15mm, but will certainly be more likely to use 6mm flags than perfectly to-scale. That's a compromise for gameplay, however, and if it works well enough without the oversized Colours, I'm not going to use them.

The other thing is that 3mm figures even in 1:1 headcount will be significantly cheaper than I had been working on with my 32+man battalions of ABs (~$20/battalion counting skirmishers and command stands instead of $50 USD+/bn!). I will probably keep those ABs for painting and maybe even individually-based skirmishing, as I have a lot of 15mm terrain, anyway. 3mm terrain should be so flat as to need very little storage space.

Art:

But the instructions that are commonly called 'Ney Military Studies'…were the principles of manouevre being conducted by the entire French Army at the Boulogne Camp.

These instructions and more were used in l'ordre perpendiculaire – l'ordonnance de tactique or l'ordre tactique.

That is interesting about being the principles of manouevre at the Boulogne Camp. Does that include using the 3rd Rank as skirmishers?

And your references to l'ordre perpendiculaire, l'ordonnance de tactique and l'ordre tactique

Are these written instructions for particular tactical 1.formations and the principles of manouevre or
2.simply accepted conventions for regarding the 'principles' or
3.specific terms for specific SOPs created and titled as such?

And where do you find references to them?

Bill

Welcome to the club!
3mm is the way to go. There's a lot of things you can do with it that you simply can't with larger figs. Like true ground scale, the use of tactical maps instead of not-very-accurate terrain, etc. 4:3 is possible, but bear in mind that at 4:3 figure ration you will have 1:1 ground scale, because the missing figures are inbetween the figs that you do have. You can also do a kind of half-scale with 360 figure French battalions. If you put together a few units like this on some of the thinnest bases you can, then throw them onto a well made terrain mat with the right scale trees and buildings you can make a terrain set-up/convention game that'll blow people away.

EDIT: No, I refuse to lower myself….

I thought we played these games for the tabletop spectacle, so there's a push to make the units on-table look as good as possible? Some even push to have the historically-correct number of ranks, despite the nasty things this does to our unit footprints.

I think this is the issue. It all depends on what priorities you have for your game table. The choice is up to you.

The todo that has Sam M. noblely identifying the elephant in the room are designers and gamers who either believe they can meet all priorities of the historical, game ease and spectical in equal measure--which is a practical impossibility, or worse claim to do it when they know they aren't. And considering the preferences of many gamers, Sam can't find a 'acceptable' way of staying true to time, scale and movement.

I think it's obvious from this thread that gamers can achieve reasonable representation of the historical footprints of units on the tabletop. It is just a matter of what they are willing to give up in other areas to achieve it.

Even within any one element of tabletop gaming, like the spectacle, different folks have different preferences of what kind of spectacle they want to achieve. Or with Lion's example, where ranks is more important than the overall footprint. Depending on the scale and figures, you can achieve spectacle, historical representation and ease of play, but not in equal measure, and not necessarily to anyone's liking. So what else is new?

Bill

spectacle, historical representation and ease of play

Pick any two, right, McLaddie? Just like the rule of tank design ("Firepower, armor, speed, and availability, pick 3.")

@Forward March: I blame you for planting the idea for using 3mm into my head, those near-real-headcount battalions (on what was it, 40x10mm bases?) look really incredible and seem to be quick to paint. The killer was discovering that I could do a high-count battalion for ~$20.

When you say 4:3, you do mean 4 real guys represented by 3 minis, right?

Might do half-sized battalions like you suggest, as that would give a better table scale (1/1200, where 3"=100yds), as well as being cheaper. I'd just need to muck with some "proper-size" sabots if the width of a company/peleton didn't work out to ~20mm or so. (I'm still planning on using LaSalle, so I'm looking at 4x or 6x 40mm bases per battalion). The problem would be the over-wide bases, but I think that 2x the 'proper' width is about as good as it's possible to get.

Something to ponder, anyway.

Lion in the Stars,

I think your position is inconsistent. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you can't do whatever you want to do, that's obvious, it is your hobby.

because 9-12 figures isn't a battalion.

I don't grant that the conclusion that the alternative to meshing 3mm figures with a really low ground scale is a 9-12 figure battalion.

If you use larger numbers of bigger figures (say, 36 men per battalion), your figures get in the way because the depth of the formation is all messed up.

You're willing to accept this very distortion with 3mm just not with 15mm. That's why I think you are inconsistent. Really, as Bill points out, it is a matter of personal taste, preference and priorities though.

Just playing the critical events of the battle? LaSalle seems to adopt that idea without impacting it's success…

Sure, not my preference, I'm of the mind that Napoleonic warfare is visible in the timing and coordination of Austerlitz and Bautzen with the pinning and flanking, etc… as well as in the straight forward mass attacks of Borodino and Waterloo. Thus, in my wargaming I want to be able to represent both. I think when the space represented by the table gets small we create a situation where our table can only offer the latter and not the former.

Cheers,

The Bandit

…some get it, some don't. One thing I will say is that the figs are waaay more impressive in person that in the pics.

Obviously, if you are using 3mm units at the same foot print as a 36 x figure 28mm battalion then you will have the same issues with table size, etc. I agree that such a ground scale will lead to some problems. However you can then get down to creating realistic terrain, and if you do everything right you'll end up with a more realistic and (at the moment) fairly unique product. Also, when you start using 3mm figs the arbitrariness of many war games rules becomes clear, for instance the movement ranges allowed to skirmishing troops, weapon ranges, the over-simplification of BUAs and the lack of dead ground. Simply put when you are looking at a table and you KNOW that the ground scale is 1:1 to the height of the figures then all the fudges become quite apparent. Also, if you go out to 1:1 then you'll almost have to also start making some very well detailed terrain mats. When I worked on an ACW set for Pico Armor last year it was the hardest project I've ever done, in part because I had to make stuff up as I went along- I'm not a diorama builder, but thats what 1:1 ground scale terrain is!

We were talking about Aspern and Essling earlier- well, you could do Aspern and Essling in 3mm, at 4:3, with every single building, street and alleyway…even every tree… represented, and not only theoretically but realistically. I can paint up 2000 3mm figs in 6 hours after working 8 hours at my real job, and I can do 2k on a weekend day, assembly-line, popsicle stick method. It's not that hard- just put on some WWII docs and lay off the whiskey :) (and when my GF lets me….)

Practically anyone can practice a few easy speed painting techniques and start knocking out 500-2000 x 3mm figs a day/night, and over the course of a few leisurely months put together, say, Davout's entire I Corps at Borodino at 4:3 figure ratio, so that you can show not just the uniforms but the awful spectacle of Napoleonic combat. It is not impossible either financially or time wise. For that matter you could easily do smaller battles in their entirety, with no fudges, so that all complaints about inaccurately represented formations, etc, can be resolved in the cold hard light of full ground and time scale. For example the recent, very productive and strangely civil conversations we had on here concerning the Austrian division mass. If you think that artillery fire is poorly portrayed you could track it by gun, by cannon ball, etc, because you can have every gun and caisson represented on the table top.

"When you say 4:3, you do mean 4 real guys represented by 3 minis, right?"

Exactly. This is based on the frontage of the strip compared to the height of the figures and an estimated 24 inch file width, which is sort of generous maybe. If the file width is smaller then the figure ratio is even closer to 1:1. One can also debate the exact height of the men at the time, and where to measure the figures height from- from the tops of the bayonets, the tops of the shakos or slightly below the shakos, that is, the tops of the heads. Keep in mind that the ACW figs are actually taller than the Napoleonics too- I don't think you can get higher than 2:1 with the ACW figures, for instance, because not only are the figs taller but there are also two less of them on the strip… BUT… you can sweet spot it so that you can get 2:1 figure scale but 1:1 ground scale, because once again the missing figs are between the figs that are there.

For example, if you want to represent a 300 man regiment at Gettysburg you would use 150 figures in two ranks. That unit would cover 3 x 60mm bases and have a scale frontage of ~100m at 1:1 ground scale. This calculation is subject to the variables in calculation that I mentioned in the paragraph above, and those variables you'll have to come to your own conclusions on. As long as you're consistent with it though, you should be able to take a map of, say, the fighting around the Wheat Field at Gettysburg, make up a few terrain mats and then base up all the units who were there according to the OOBs and everything will fit perfectly.

Also, the Napoleonic cav you can bring up to almost 1:1, the width is spot on… and obviously with the artillery you can show proper (and mutable) spacing between guns and all the train.

That being said, I'd consider half scale units, and my Wagram project is even smaller than that (Each battalion is 60 figs, 3 x 20mm x 10mm rectangles for the French, twice that for the Austrians, on average. This will let me to the whole battle at 10:1 and show all the units with formations). I'd also recommend considering dropping the 3rd rank, unless you really want to show it. At least spread the ranks out so that you can clearly see that middle rank, or else you're wasting the figs and painting time!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. In the pics above I used 60mm x 40mm bases for the untis exclusively, and they were the thick ones because I needed to be sure they wouldn't warp with the application of a lot of glue. This was because Pico Amor wanted something that'd work as both game pieces and display pieces for conventions. So it was a weird hybrid project. For gaming purposes, and even for display, I'd recommend using the thinnest, smallest bases you can, and then use terrain mats to put them into context. just flock the small amount of base showing in such a way that it'll blend into your terrain mats. It'll also be a lot easier.

Another super-secret trick, although it'll throw off the fig scale a bit, is to chop off the 10th fig on each strip. This will make it much easier to fit them right onto the 20mm (or whatever size) bases, and it'll give you a ready-made NCO fig if you want to show them (another neat feature of 3mm figs, supernumeraries, like in the pics above.). If you want to show the NCOs and 3 ranks you'll want 20mm deep bases. If you want 3 ranks or 2 ranks and NCOs you'll want 15mm deep bases. And if you want 2 ranks and no NCOs then 10mm deep bases.

Pick any two, right, McLaddie? Just like the rule of tank design ("Firepower, armor, speed, and availability, pick 3.")

Lion:
Not quite what I meant. It isn't an either/or proposition. I was saying that it is unrealistic to expect to achieve equal levels of all three. You will end up prioritizing, where 10 is perfect, most folks will end up with a 8, 6, 3 kind of score, rather than all 10s, or a 10 and two zeros.