"Small Troops Big Battles Advice Needed" Topic

The time has come for me to admit individually basing 2mm Napoleonic stands was a mistake. But where do I go from here? Primary concerns are portability and small playing area. (Why fool with 2mm otherwise?)

I can do 2" or 1.5" square bases easily. This works for 2/3 or 1/2 scale V&B, but V&B does not thrill. I remember Grande Armee as having compatible basing, but I'm not finding it for sale. What else have we got out there at the stand=brigade battle on a card table level?

Thanks.

Blucher?

Bob,

Blucher (by Sam Mustafa), as suggested by coopman, may fit your requirements. The troop bases for all types are approximately 3" wide by 2" deep. I ran a convention game several years ago of the Prussian attack against the French right flank at Placenoit (Waterloo) using 25mm figures. Here is a brief battle report: link

With smaller figures (10mm or less) you could have some very nice looking "diorama" style bases.

sammustafa.com is Sam's web site.

Jim

There is also Bloody Big Battles.

Grande Armee is available as a PDF at FlagshipGames.com/shop

Scenarios are here:

link

For very small games, convert inches to centimeters. Then a base is a 30mm square and you'll get quite a good game in a 3x4 space.

I'm working on Leipzig at this scale on a 6 x 8 table.

I would go with Grande Armee (which I think is a better game than Blucher) using Extra Crispy's suggestion for basing.

Thank you all! Several possibilities here.

TWC, thank you, but let me explain why yours isn't one this time out--not to run down what seems to be a popular game, but to show why one size doesn't fit all. Your base battalion is 30mm. 2mm battalions from Irregular range to almost 20mm, so my minimum board would be about 2/3 your regular depth and width. But scaling down from a 3" GA or Blucher base, I can get as low as 50% or even 40% of frontage, and a consequent reduction in board size. If a "standard" table is 4x6, 2/3 needs 32"x 48". 40% needs 20" x 30".

ESR in 2mm would be an inexpensive game, be visually striking and is perfectly doable, but it won't get me the portability and minimum board space requirements I'm shooting for in a 2mm project this time out.

I'll have to keep it in mind, though.

Horse Foot & Guns meets all your requirements with no changes, but obviously it depends on how you feel about DBx mechanisms. A brigade has a a frontage of 40mm.

Polemos Marechal d'Empire will work well too. Its recommended basing is 60mm x 60mm but the mechanics will work for half that. Waterloo/Austerlitz type battles fit onto a 3'x2' table with a 30mm x 30mm base size.

Major Mike, thanks for mentioning BBB, though I don't think standard BBB would meet the requirement.

However, the set of nine operational games I did for the 1796 campaign using a stripped-down version of BBB would. I used 2mm brigade bases for these: they were 2" square and on 6'x4', but you could go 1.5" square on 48"x32". The scenarios are all freely available via the BBB Yahoo group.

A report on one of the games is here:
link
You can find others by searching the blog for 1796. These games were created to accompany Clausewitz's history of the campaign:
link

Of course this is a very specific set of scenarios, so if you like the mechanisms but want to fight campaigns other than 1796, you'd need to create your own. The other rulesets mentioned above might be better for your purpose.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
link

I would go with 30mm squares like Extra Crispy said. Read down inches into cm. My opinion being irrelevant, I prefer Grande Armee over Blucher.