"Organising and calculating Napoleonic armies help" Topic

I was wondering if their is a list (quasi OOB I guess) of each nationality for the Napoleonic wars say post 1804 to 1815. Iam looking more for lists of OOB strengths at the largest battles each nation fought in and the highest number of units you would need to fight a battle. Iam not looking for exact breakdowns, but a little detail would suffice. So for example the most units you would need for Austria (infantry battalions, Cavalry Regiments, Artillery Battery), would be x number of line battalions, x number of grenadier battalions, x number of landwehr, x number of light battalions, x number of cuirassier, x number of dragoons, x number of chevaux-leger, x number of hussars, x number of artillery batteries, x number of horse batteries, etc..etc…Exact uniforms and details are not necessary, just trying to put a list together to raise armies. Iam only trying to put something together to purchase figures of nations I havent gotten around to yet before they go out of production (I collect and game in 1/72 so sets come and go) so I like to get what I need when they are available.

Iam thinking if possible, austria,French,British,Russian,Prussian,Spanish,Portugese, Polish, and Italian. I should be fine figuring out the French Allied nations, but if their are others please feel free to comment.

I know I may be asking alot, but anything would be helpful.

Thanks

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

G'Day

This should help

The Nafziger Collection of Orders of Battle

link

Best Regards
Art

Napoleonic Wars data Book – by Digby Smith

My advice with plastic figures. Stock up when you can. Any excess can be sold off when the company stops making them

I speak from bitter experience

I also wargame in 1:72 plastics and plan all of my figure purchases using spreadsheets as explained in the General – Planning section of my website:

link

The example I have used on my website is my latest 1745 Jacobite set up, but most of my figures, collected over 45 years, are Napoleonic. I therefore have exactly the same planning system of spreadsheets containing Orbats, Figures (so I can give them identification codes) and Figures to Units of all of the Napoleonic actions which I was interested in. These are all of the Allied and French Troops in every major battle involving the British of the Peninsula War and Waterloo Campaign, plus some of the troops in the 1809 Austrian Campaign.

If you contact me via my website, then I could let you have copies of these.

Marc is absolutely correct about buying when you can. I have spent a lot of time searching for discontinued figure sets on e-Bay and other second-hand figure websites, because I did not buy all the figures I needed when I could. I have even bought some from him!!!

Rod

Shako 2 rule set has a list in the back of all major nations and some smaller ones, to put together a pick up game army. This gives you the basics of what each army was composed of.

When we did Guard du Corps back in 1981, our army list was too detailed. It had total number of battalions by type and nationality. We should have produced Corps and Divisional OBs. So we broke it down to number of guns per number of infantry, etc.

Be warned that the Napoleonic Wars lasted a long time, and there were some very substantial changes over this time in the internal organization of most armies. Not only the proportion of artillery pieces to the overall strength of an army, but the number of battalions per brigade, and brigades within divisions. Not all armies utilized the corps as a higher formation, but the size of a corps varied greatly, even within the same army.

Rod,
That is a level of OCD crazy that I both admire and am inspired by. I early on started a spread sheet but worked just from what I had at the time not my goal. I also didn't know then that plastics sets disappear.

In my spare time I should start to get to a level of detail that will help me organize. Perhaps it might get me out of my painting slump.

This would be a good start:

TMP link

It lists the total number of figures required to play all the scenarios in the Napoleon's Battles ruleset.

Allan

Col Scott ret wrote:

Rod,
That is a level of OCD crazy that I both admire and am inspired by. I early on started a spread sheet but worked just from what I had at the time not my goal. I also didn't know then that plastics sets disappear.

Yes, OCD, that sounds about right. We have a second home in Spain, so I do most of my planning when I am there, and do the converting, modelling and painting back in UK. I normally get up early and have a couple of hours "hobby-time" each morning before my wife gets up so not quite as crazy as it seems, but a good use of time in both countries.

I also use my time in Spain to prepare talks (PowerPoint presentations) on military history (mainly Napoleonic, but some modern), which I give to raise funds for Armed Forces charities. I normally prepare a new one each year and now have about a dozen talks in my portfolio.

All keeps me busy in my retirement.

Rod

Thank you all for you input and great recommendations. Iam sure all of them will be of use and come in handy. Rod, I will be in touch shortly to see what you have been working on. From the website, it seems you have put alot of thought, blood, sweat and tears into these files. Your work will greatly be appreciated.

Well, for those of us who have been fixated on the good old 1/72 figures, it is indeed crazy at times finding sets you should have bought in the past and now cant seem to find. The price for some sets is borderline absurd also.

I will also say "buy anything you need when you see it, and buy anything you may have a partial interest in" because it will be expensive and a headache to find sets once the stock dries up.

Somehow I envision all us 1/72 collectors hunkered down with boxes and boxes of figures we will all never use, for those just in case periods. Its a shame really.

Now I just need to pester Hat to come out with those Austrian, Russian and Landwehr sets for christmas sake!!

Happy Hunting!
Chris

I will also say "buy anything you need when you see it, and buy anything you may have a partial interest in" because it will be expensive and a headache to find sets once the stock dries up.

Somehow I envision all us 1/72 collectors hunkered down with boxes and boxes of figures we will all never use, for those just in case periods.

Agree with this. I have found this with all ranges TBH. When I started out gaming we used Airfix 1/72 figures because they were what we could buy; we used the box art and the Airfix catalogue pictures of 54mm figures as a painting guide. The main problem with these figures, which slowly dawned on us then, is that the range is both incomplete, inaccurate of uniform, inconsistently sized, and in some cases anatomically dodgy. We switched to Hinchliffe metal 25mm and of course all the same problems persisted with those too, except the armies were now smaller and had taken longer to buy.

I have just started selling off my unpainted 1/32 Waterloo stash because much of what I need either doesn't exist or is too expensive. Or if it exists it is a different size to everything else you need. The Call to Arms British Guards and French Line appear to be two quite different scales, both are smaller than anything Italeri make, and all three of those are taller than HaT.

So if there's a way to make an accurate army it makes sense to seize it. In 1/72 at least the size differences aren't too bad.

@ Rod: how do I get hold of your spreadsheet? It sounds like you have already done what I am trying to do. I am planning armies based on the Airfix Waterloo figures but my parameters are

1/ I don't use certain figures, eg the moonwalking British line guy, the skateboarding Highlander, the Frenchman taking-a-dump, the Frenchman listening-to-the-musket figures
2/ All centre companies in the same pose
3/ As far as possible, all centre companies of the same regiment in the same pose
4/ Elite companies are always in a firing pose
5/ Light infantry are always kneeling (hence French legere carabiniers would be kneeling firing)
6/ Company bases of 2 figures (British), 3 figures (French) and 5 figures (Prussian)
7/ One company depicted as the command company with at least 2 command figures
8/ 1st battalion command company has a flag, 2nd and onward may have a flag if available

Otherwise useless figures can be useful as donors of cut-down muskets to provide the cavalry with carbines, for example.

The idea then is to work out how many of each set I need so I know how many of the Waterloo sets to buy next time Amazon knocks them down to £25.00 GBP

4th Cuirassier,

Send me an e-mail through the contact page on my website and I will send you the spreadsheet.

If you look at the Horse & Musket/Napoleonic/Infantry section of my website you can see that my ideas are almost the same as yours. I do modify some figures to use a few which you would be discarding. I presume your "moonwalking" Airfix Brit is the one which looks as though he is doing a slow march. I cut his left foot free from the stand, bent the leg back (and welded it), then welded the foot back. It creates a much more realistic and perfectly useable marching figure.

I have already sent a spreadsheet to "Col Scott ret" earlier today.

Rod