"Black Powder/Rebels and Patriots blend" Topic

Hello guys. After playing Napoleonic's sea battles for the past 2 years (Sails of Glory, Kiss me Hardy) mostly. I decided I want to try Nap land warfare starting 2020.

So, I am a big fan of Warlord's Bolt Action and also a fan of Daniel Mersey's Rampant series. I am going for skirmish size-level at 28mmish. I plan to get the Black Powder starter 2nd edition box and start from there.

I know BP is 4 models per base and R&P is single based infantry but that can be fixed with casualty markers I guess. Problem is that Black Powder minis all come in marching formation and that can be a little boring and monotonous. What other manufacturers brand of miniatures are compatible with BP ones? Shall I look or go in another range/mm/manufacturer direction? Thanks for your advice.

IF you are looking at 28mm, there are plenty of ranges that are compatible with Warlord. I've found that most 28mm miniatures can be fielded in the same army, even if they are slightly different sizes, as long as you don't mix them in the same units.

I play mostly 28mm fielding French and their allies. I mix Warlord with several other ranges: Perry and Victrix for plastics, and metal miniatures from Calpe, Murawski, Avanpost, Brigade, Front Rank, Black Hussar, Wargames Foundry and probably even more that I forgot about.

For skirmish games, you can always mix in figures in wilder poses if you don't like the look of marching formations. The Victrix plastic boxes comes with a lot of more "action" poses, as well as the new Perry French infantry (the 1807-14 box). Both are solid foundations for a skirmish force.

You can see some of the minis I and my clubmates have painted up for our Napoleonics games here:

link

BP bases can be any size that you want them to be.

As 79thPA says, in BP there is no standard basing- the rules writers use 4 to a base to make it easier to handle units with 20-30 figures. I use single- based myself, or multi based 6mm and play using cm. In BP units don't even need to have identical frontage (within reason), as long as everyone can identify the difference between small, medium and large units.

Yes, I'm sabot basing my individual figures 8 to a base, 3 bases to a regular unit. They'll do for Black Powder, Sharp Practice and Rebels and Patriots.

I see, thanks, very interesting opinions and advice my friends. So if I purchase the BP Waterloo starter set, does it come with single bases too? I do not recall seeing those in the website info/pics.

No, afaik there are no napoleonic manufacturer who includes single bases with their minis. I buy 20mm round bases, either plastic (like Renedra) or MDF ones (2mm thick is pretty nice IMHO).

Ok, I think I will go with a mix of figures per base in rectangular shape, I don't know maybe 4's,2's,1's per squad. The reason is that in rectangular shaped bases when the unit is marching in formation it looks more uniform.

Perhaps I could combine the rectangular bases provided by Warlords with individual MDF ones made by myself. Or maybe a good rectangular bases manufactures you might recommend?

What do you guys think?

THX Cheers!

That approach to basing should work- it seems very similar to the "3-2-1" approach shown in some of the pictures in Rebels and Patriots.

For whatever it is worth, my experience was that square bases were a huge nuisance for napoleonic period figs. It seemed like the square bases would help keep ranks straight, but for anything other than marching poses it was really difficult to get the figs to line up- someone's musket was always in someone else's back… You mentioned in the original post that you want some figures in active poses and I can see those being hard to form up if they're on squares or rectangles.

Eventually I rebased on 20mm circles and found that the lines and ranks were actually tidier because I could just pivot an offending fusilier a bit to get the musket clear. I find if I measure the move, put a ruler or straight edge down then move up the figures, it isn't difficult to get figs on circles to look properly disciplined.

Alright, you have a very solid point of view Pattus Magnus. I think you are right and I should value more playability than aesthetics.

I am still considering all opinions and options.\\Thx

At your service, sir!

One thing you have in your favor is that BP and Rebs and Patriots are both very forgiving games as far as basing goes – the game mechanics don't depend on any specific format. You could probably play R&P using 6 or 8- figure diorama bases and still have a great game, it would just need a little more record keeping.

In any case, have fun with it!