"Battalion sizes in your SYW miniature armies." Topic

It is always a struggle for me to make a decision should I make the Battalions for each nation represent what they had historically. My Austrians are larger than my Prussians. My French are the same size as my Prussian but not sure if the French should be smaller. I am fixing to build a Russian Army and not sure how to handle them.

I am almost to a point of just making them all the same size and rationalizing it to on campaign none were at full strength.

How do you handle it.

I use Grant's rules, mate, and all the units are a uniform strength for each type. So an infantry battalion is 53 strong- a mounted colonel, two ensigns and two dismounted officers with 48 other ranks. For other rules the battalions and cavalry regiments (four officers and 24 OR) can be broken down to a brigade of two units, with the mounted officer to act as brigadier.

Once a campaign started it was rare for any unit to be at full strength, so making your units a uniform size wouldn't be totally ahistorical.

2mm and 6mm, standard frontages looking like a single battalion, but usually representing two. In 28mm, a "half Grant" of officer, musician, standard-bearer and minimum 21 rank and file, but everyone's based individually, so I can adjust battalion size if I feel the need.

I think Dal's right: campaign strengths and not book strengths, and you're going to have to "bathtub" almost any SYW battle anyway. Your concern should be the relative sizes of the armies, not the battalions.

Although I can see the good sense from the above 2 posts, to suit myself, I vary unit sizes for game mechanics reasons.

eg Prussian infantry are in 24 figure battalions, whilst the French are in 20 figure units. This gives the Prussians an edge that hopefully mirrors their performance.

Grenadiers in all nations are in 16 figure units.
I found their superior fighting & morale made them too strong & this smaller side made them a tad more vulnerable. Lights are in 10 figure units as, again, I don't want them to be unhistorically powerful.

url=https://postimg.cc/R34FrLKn]

All a bit quirky, I know, but adding or subtracting a base can be used for individual scenarios.

For me, it depends upon the rules I'm using. For some games it makes sense to give (for example) the Austrians an extra stand, but since most of the time I'm playing a 7YW Black Powder variant with the local club, then I just have all battalions of equal size. I almost always do the same with cavalry as well, with one unit representing arbitrarily about half a regiment.

They're your troops it's your choice.

Mine area all the same size – to make up for it for the Austrians I use a few more

I make all of mine at a 1:30 figure radio, based on average actual field strength, rounded up to give even numbers of figures.

Rod

Nice photo's, Ochoin. Varying the bases is a simple way of showing the different nation's abilities.

Let the rules you use decide.