"What figure ratio did you fight Blenheim at?" Topic

Been considering a Blenheim big battle for the local gamestore. Wondering what figure ratio people have played it at. We are building 28mm.

I've seen a lot of big horse & musket battles, and you may want to start with a different question--two questions, actually. "How long was the historical frontage?" and "How big a table can I fit in the available space?" (I make the historical frontage 4 miles/6.5 Km, but check.) Anyway, once you know your ground scale--well, my guess would be your battalions will have a frontage of 2" or less, so you'll have to decide whether to use brigades/regiments as your units per V&B or GA--eight figures to a 3" stand, perhaps?--or bathtub the thing.

For big historical battles in a large scale, always start by asking about table size. The alternative is asking "how many castings are we prepared to buy and paint for this project?" which makes figure ratio purely a problem in long division. But most wargamers run out of table before they run out of troops.

Robert is very prudent – for our SYW battles we have a lot more troops than table

Once you have worked out table size then you need to look at number of units; the Allies had 51 infantry battalions and 92 squadrons of horse with 52 guns while the Franco-Bavarians had 69 infantry battalions and 128 cavalry squadrons and about 60 guns – so I guessing an 1:1 ratio for battalions is off unless they have a very small number of figs per battalion! I am guessing by brigade would be most practical – and then you have to sort out how many figs per brigade. At 28mm I am thinking again fairly small numbers – again highly dependent on table size

Thank you gents, the store can provide a 6x20 table for us.

That is a nice big table!

Based on the Order of Battle you could do it by Commands – about 12 or so for the Alllies, about 16 or so for the Franco-Bavarians; table that size you could have 18-24 figs per infantry 12 – 16 cavalry

Just a thought

I did Blenheim with brigade sized units, so however many figures you think looks like a brigade and is appropriate for your ground scale.

I am impressed! With a table that size, you could be at about 1:50, which would make organization by either battalions or brigades feasible. But it does raise the build question again. Does the club really want to raise 2,000 28mm Marlburians?

The exact numbers at Blenheim are debatable but probably the best OOB had the Confederates with 66 battalions, 178 squadrons and 60 guns. The French and allies had 84 battalions, 151 squadrons and 90 guns.

Source: Marlborough Goes To War, Stanford from the Pike & Shot society.

Played it a couple of times with 10mm figures. Used infantry bases as "brigades" of approx 2000 men and cavalry brigades representing 1000 troopers. About 1figure to represent 80 soldiers.

Thank to all for the advice.

I am doing Ramillies in 10mm, but hope to move onto Blenheim. I can also do a table up to 20ft long, but only 6ft deep is is practical. Trying to reflect the depths of deployment gives me a table about 9ft by 6ft. My units have ended up representing 2battalions or c5squadrons , so 1,000 foot or 500 horse. This means a scale of around 1:50. It still works out at a total of 86 foot units and 80 horse, so some 2,500 figures +!

Have a look at'Twilight of the Sun King' rules by Nick Dorrell.