I have used the Warlord Games rules for years, Hail Caesar, Pike and Shotte, Black Powder. All of these use a unit is a unit, so stands/figures have no individual value in terms of men/ratios etc.
Which suits me fine, as I hated the old days of fussing around over dubious orbats listing men, scenarios, figure and stand removal.
I know that units can be small, standard, or large, but I will address that mostly through using one more or one less stamina point, rather than extra stands, I'm just not that bothered about exact frontages at this level of game.
But maybe there will be exceptions. One of which will probably be the Swedish 12 Squadron life cavalry regiment, who will probably get an extra stand and stamina 4.
I want things to move fast, not for the players to be moving ten stands for one infantry battalion. I see too many players base their figures on stands containing a few figures, even in small scales like 10mm, and for me that misses the point of grand-scale figures: you get to use them in a grand manner!
So I decided, after much messing around test-spacing figures out on various mdf base sizes, on the following.
1. Infantry in 30 figure battalions, using three stands, each 40mm x 30mm, allowing good representations of line/march column with the minimum of stands that still looked "right" for length and depth (the units in the photos are Russian):
2. Cavalry in 20 figure regiments. I know some people use squadrons as the base cavalry unit, but for me that is again missing the point of the grand scale opportunities that small scale figures + unit-based rules offer. So a cavalry unit is just two 50mm x 50mm stands, allowing a good representation of line and column:
As you can see, I decided to put the pikes in the centre, in a block. I am pretty sure that both the Russians, and especially the Swedes who used the offensively, spread them out on a company basis, but trying to represent that seems madness to me, so they are in a block. I'll just have to make sure that the ECW players I game with don't think of them as defensive hedgehogs!
I hope you can see from these photos why I am so excited about the possibilities of the fantastic Pendraken figures, which allow good sized units in a small footprint, which will be quick to move.
I look forward to following your project with interest. You might have to rethink the horse for the Swedes if you want to depict them in the wedge formation they were known for using.
ReplyDeleteHi Paul, squadron, or maybe even company level cavalry tactics re not something I wanted to represent. Its the same as my reasoning for placing Pikes in the centre of the battalion, rather than by company, or in a fourth rank, or allowing the infantry enough stands to form up six deep/double depth. It's below the level I want to worry about representing visually or in-game in what will be a large scale game.
DeletePlus on a side note, if I'm honest I think personally the wedge is a bit of a myth and certainly not the reason for their success. Every person with a horse I've spoken to, or read from on forums, says that rising in that formation at anything more than a trot for a short distance would break it up pretty quickly, so in battle I'm dubious how often you would have spotted it. But anyway, that's another topic.