"Black powder/Pike Shotte for 2mm, 3mm or 6mm" Topic

For those of you playing either of these games in the little bitty scales, how did you handle movement and firing ranges?

No changes.

Won't the fire ranges seem crazy long or am I worrying about nothing?

Ahh…. my favorite topic…

My blog has a lot on this topic, if you want to scan through it.

1809in3mm.blogspot.com

That said, it depends what you want to do, but in general, assume each French battalion is ~100m in frontage at campaign strength, which also gives you your basic musket range. Multiply that by x5 for canister, and x12 or x 16 for round shot range.

I play with 60mm frontage French battalions based on (3) 20mm x 10mm bases with 20 figures on each base. So, 12" is 500m, 24" is 1km, 48" is 2km. It's a good scale for doing historically accurate tactical games- most larger scale games don't really represent what they're purporting to represent. Table depth is the issue. If you're 28mm battalions are 12" in frontage then the table is probably no more than 600m across. So, you start already in canister range.

You can use my basing with 6mm easy- I love my 3mm figs and have too many to justify re-do anything in 6mm at this point, but for some people it might be preferable.

Also, you can use the same ranges, just make your units bigger. For instance, if you want, you can do a 1:1 3mm Napoleonic battalion. It's the exact same size as a 36 figure 28mm battalion.

Take (6) 60mm x 40mm bases, and put (9) 3mm infantry strips in three ranks on each base. Put some NCOs behind them, and make a 40mm x 40mm HQ base and musician base that you can move around as needed. You can make a 6mm battalion on the same basing.

But keep in mind, if your French battalion is (6) 60mm bases, an Austrian battalion will be (12) of them. An average cavalry squadron will be (8). A 1:1 cuirassier brigade is a lot of work, but it looks awesome. I've done exactly one of them- lots of work, but the end result was great.

It's a game for gentleman.

FMS, nice posting and very interesting, I have bookmarked your blog to study in detail. My own armies are in 15mm and I simply cannot be bothered selling them on to restart in a smaller scale, but I have bought a small pile of 2mm C17th and am interested in how you apply scales and ranges.

Ivan, I have played with 6mm at 1/3 ranges without issue. Battalions had a 3 inch frontage and I think musket range was 6 inches. A bit long but at the same ratio as BP.

It was not too fiddly (movement and firing ranges in BP are HUGE), almost everything in Black Powder seems to be divisible by 2 and 3 at the same time, so easy to scale down how every much you want. For AWI, I am going with 4 inch frontage regiments and will cut ranges in half.

Here are pictures: link

Won't the fire ranges seem crazy long or am I worrying about nothing?

Since as gamers we are used to unrealistic short ranges, yes. Game ranges that vaguely resemble the figure scale will look large.

Haha, good call and thanks for all the links guys :-)

The idea of being able to play on a small table by halving ranges is rather tempting though.

In 6mm, 18" would be 135 meters, so a bit far for musketry but not too bad.
Halving it would be about perfect then.

Looks like in 15mm, just use everything "as is" and it should feel pretty good.

Weasel- Just bear in mind that if you're figuring your weapon ranges based on the size of the mini, you're also looking at a 1:1 figure ratio/ground-scale.

Nice cat by the way. I'm sure you saw Dubs the Destroyer?

Good call as well, though in 3mm that'd be possible to do :-)

And thanks but no, not familiar with Dubs?

He's the cat in the top pic on my blog.
He hates 3mm figures. Or maybe he likes them and was trying for a better view. Lame joke, sorry. :P

Our other cat would flop her considerable mass on top of any board game we tried to play, then purr loudly and try to chomp our hands if we tried to retrieve our stuff :)

This guy just swats at the dice when he gets a chance.

Your guy looks like a little trouble maker :-)

edit: Really liking the "models eye view" shots you have in some of the older posts. Very revealing isn't it, just how little you can actually see