"3mm - Distinguishing between troop types?" Topic

I am interested in Oddzial Osmy's 3mm Napoleonic sculpt from Pico Armour but I have a question for others who game the horse and musket era in this scale.

How do you distinguish between different troop types on such small figures from normal tabletop distances?

In other words, how do you tell the difference between guard, line or second rate troops? At this scale, does a black grenadier bearskin look the same as a black shako from about three feet away? Can you really see plumes etc on 3mm figures on the tabletop?

My first question would be, "why 3mm, why not 6mm or 15mm?".

If I recall correctly there is some advice on this in Horse Foot and Guns by Phil Barker. Perhaps a thin line of colour on the rear of the base e.g gold for guard red for grenadiers etc would be the way to go.

That is a good question

For 6mm it is easy enough if you plan your basing/painting right; plus for the rules we use there are a limited number of troop types you have to distinguish

I think some rules were just not meant for 3/6mm

For 12mm figures, Jack Scruby used to paint the topside corners of the bases-- red for elite infantry or heavy cavalry, white for light infantry or light cavalry. Line infantry were left unmarked, while elite light infantry would be marked with a combination of white and red. No limit to the variety of colors if you need more levels of distinction.

Some options:

1) Label your bases. What does 1 base represent in your rules?
2) Use Skirmishers in front of your main line to indicate better troops. Maybe use the number of skirmishers to indicate better quality?
3) Add commanders on horseback to the rear of the line, more = better troops?

Let us now how you get on!

For my 2mm stuff (never mind your great big fancy modern '3mm' figures) I:

1. paint coloured strips on the back edge of the bases. Along with nationality, it helps keep them facing the right way.

2. I put different formations on the bases, either in terms of figure dispersion of the arrangement of the blocks. So e.g. light cavalry will have a different arrangement to heavies.

3. Different coloured flags can help.

As noted above, it partly depends what 'one base' represents. Mine tend to be a bit grandiose, at least a battalion per base.

Would the enemy have been able to see which type of troops they were facing at a table scale of 3 feet ? If not then why should a player need to !

Surely it is enough that you can ID the troops on your own side and when the actually get into combat.

Hats, my good man!

Guards obviously wear bearskins, Ligne in bicorns, Legere are in shakos. Or whatever.

If you going to collect and play the period Napoleonics,
it makes sense to be able to distinguish the units.
That was the purpose behind the elaborate uniforms anyway yes?
If one must have markers to tell cuirassiers from Dragoons from CaC then might as well save the time and pain of painting these items that are too small and just play a nice board game.
A cardboard play pc with a 3D flag will give almost the same thing.
My limit was ACW with Grey on one side and blue on the other… but changed to 10mm at the last minute though.
Sorry, I do not agree mfg of 2/3mm was a good direction to go for figure play, especially for 7 yr, AWI & NAPs!

I'd go blind playing with 2-3mm figures. 6mm would be the bare minimum but, I like the ABs

labels work well for me. This is what I do for WWII:

I'd recommend my eBases. I'm working on some rules for my 2mm range that'll use these. They work with 2mm, 3mm, and even 6mm.

https://1809in3mm.blogspot.com

See an entire refight of the Katzbach with O8 miniatures and my bases here:

link

My bases are also free to download if you follow the link. Just print out and laminate and you're ready to go.

Used to game micro-armour but my club was doing 15mm and some 25mm Napoleonic. I chose the 15mm because the guys doing 25s didn't get into the shop much. Good thing too, my eyes started going to hell around 40 and have gone from a 1.50 to a 2.50 in the intervening years and I currently use a 3.00 or higher for painting. Now 25s were an option but no one in my group were doing 25s or 28s so, there ya have it. I tried some Biblical Libyans in 25, I generally suck at painting so that experiment did not end well.

I can tell the difference. link

Looking good!

I can barely see to paint my 6mm, never mind 3mm!

I think some armies are easier than others, to tell apart. I deliberately did all my Russian line in greatcoats, but Jaegers in green to tell them apart.

Cuirassiers are white, Dragoons are Green and Hussars are colourful. We also only use caissons for the horse artillery so you can see who they are.

Also agree with colour code the back base strip for info, also the flags help (if you are Russian, anyway – others not so much I guess).

For those with good enough eyesight to see them, all power to you. But for me, the manufacturers of 3mm or 2mm figures might as well label their products: "Small metal lumps we are calling French Infantry, Small metal lumps we are calling British Infantry, etc." :)

Agree 100% with Scott, "wait till you get old sonny", he said as he tottered on his cane.

So if I'm reading this correctly as I paint and game in 2mm for ECW I can't be old. I'm going to be 64 in a month's time. Thank you, its the nicest thing anyone has said about me all day! :-)

Why bother with figures at all if they're only 3mm tall and you can't see what they are?

Why not just use the bases?

Because you can do stuff like this in 3mm/2mm:

Another angle:

And I can tell what these are:

(actually the flags are wrong on those Russians, those are Prussian flags – which is easy to see!)

And these…

In my (very subjective) opinion, the larger scales are played out; the future of the hobby is in smaller scales. Younger people live in small apartments, lack a large amount of space, need portable armies, and don't have room for the mess of the hobby. Small scales solve a lot of those problems.

I have tens of thousands of 3mm O8 figures and could use them just as easily on the same terrain.

Telling troop types apart is not an issue; organizing a gigantic army by a historic OOB is the problem. in teh H&M period you only really have a few "troop types." As far as troop class goes, in the majority of games troop quality can be by division or even corps, and in any event kept close to a baseline. That's possible with a simple color-coding technique drawn onto the backs of the bases. The fact is, even if a body of troops performed well in a historical battle, on another day they may not have faired as well for a myriad of reasons. Pinpointing which units are going to over-perform above average is sort of lame, IMHO; but then, I like hidden information during games because I think it adds to realism. As far as actually organizing stuff goes, I have a system of three colors that lets me organize hundreds of battalions in just a few minutes.

Hi Desert Fox

I just stumbled across your question. I distinguish my troop types with the number and formation of battalions and the number of skirmishers on my bases.

My Austrian Line Infantry for example is based 3 battalions in column each 4 lines deep, the Grenzer and Tiroler have got the front battalion in line formation and the Avant Garde brigade some horses mixed in.

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The grenadiers are based 4 battalions 4 deep. Heavy cav is based in 2 squadrons per base while light cav only one.

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Also I consider the order of battle of some battles I want to play.
The british guard brigades only had 2 battalions each at Waterloo so I 2 took lines. The british line brigades mostly had three and I put the first in line formation to show the firepower trait in the Blucher rules. Dutch and Hannover militia brigades had more battalions per brigade so 4 x 3 deep. The Nassauer and Braunschweiger had three if I remember correctly. But all in column as they don't have the firepower trait. Units with skirmish bonus get 8 skirmishers models no bonus gets 4.
This system works very well from playing distance. I can also easily tell apart the french green dragoons from the blue cuirassiers although they are based the same way. The only problem is your opponent is not familiar with your coding system if that matters.
This is my Quatre Bras allied army.

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The French line is mostly 4 x 3 deep, light Infantry has the front battalion in line formation, and the guard infantry is all 4 x 4 deep to show some oomph. Hope this gives you another view.

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