Scale and Basing Decisions

 

So the decision is made - A campaign recreating the whole of the Civil War both on the board and the tabletop it is. 

I got very bogged down for a quite a while recently by questions around scale and basing. These seem to take up a lot of time and cause and an amount of angst for us wargamers. It's easy when you know what ruleset you want to use all the time, its scale and you have opponents where the options are just all too obvious to all of you. If you want to play  the excelent AK47 you generally get the rules, buy some African Militia from Peter Pig in 15 mm and base them as suggested on 1 inch squares - job done.

Buy a copy of Pony Wars, the equally excellent system for a fun afternoon of cowboys and Indians by B-Troop games (available through Baccus) however and you first have some tough decisions on scale unless you simply want to throw in your lot with the 6 mm gang. But then a game like Pony Wars lends itself to having a few characters so I have always thought 10 mm and possibly 15 mm would be better ? But then one card can generate a marauding gang of 100 plains Indians - in 15 mm ? You get my point - and then what sized bases for gangs of Indians and how large should the table be ? There is a lot to be said for 6 mm again and again for fun games. 

I have painted a lot of 15 mm in my time. It's a decent scale but I was simply led to it by its dominance of DBX type ancient games. I will be honest and say that 28 mm for a big battle game leaves me a bit cold. I can see the attraction for a skirmish but for a recreation say of Shiloh and on what sized table ? Big battles at an epic scale need smaller figures. To get that massed effect, to say reimagine at some scale  a  Picket's charge with 15,000 rebel troops then 28 mm figures on even the biggest table just do not create that look. I'd love a sheriffs posse in  a Western Main Street in 28 mm with a perfectly modelled town but not a massed battle. You have to come down to 15 mm or 10 mm or 6 mm in my view to give a good showing for a massed battle. I understand the painting advantages of 28 mm for the button counters and lapel trackers. I think perhaps a small scale English Civil War battle or American Revolution clash of 2-3,000 men a side then are fine ? But Austerlitz - the assault at the Pratzen heights ? 

Let's come back to the project in hand. What I want to do is to be able to manoeuvre large armies - perhaps at times of 80,000 bayonet strength across half of the American continent and then to transpose each collision of forces onto the tabletop. Clearly the tabletop scale of rules is going to be brigade scale much of the time as the lowest manoeuvre unit - thats broadly 2-3,000 men. A regiment of  perhaps 300-1000 men would cause the tabletop and battlefield to have to cope with 100-200 manoeuvre units at times.  That points me towards games such as Volley & Bayonet or Fire and Fury in its second edition Brigade scale rather than it's Regimental scale format. 

Volley and Bayonet works on simple bases without any prescribed figure numbers - essentially you are free to set up figures within the base as you want. It is also somewhat agnostic in figure scale. As long as you work to the base template you can create a diarama of your brigade or Demi-battalion if you are looking a French Napoleonics.

The standard infantry base for Volley & Bayonet in the American Civil War is 3 inches square. The smaller 3 " x 1.5 " linear stand really only applies to skirmish infantry stands (possibly also dismounted cavalry or skirmish cavalry in this context). For Napoleonics I have been painting up pre-1806 Austrians so these tend to be on linear stands in the listings for units in Volley and Bayonet. All of the measurements in any event within the the game are in inches. Below is an example of small Austrian Battalion for Volley and Bayonet I painted up recently - a linear stand 1.5 inch 3 inch (or so) stand). 

I have problem though - I love Johnny Reb III and I would love to also set up and play a game of Fire and Fury for a colleague up the club. My copy of Johnny Reb III is worn but in fairness barely used in anger.  I have played a couple of games of Fire and Fury and I find it an excellent set. Those rulesets don't work on a large base and roster system like Volley and Bayonet where strength points (each of 500 men) are taken away. In Johny Reb III 4 individual bases are used of varying size with each figure representing 30 men. Each individual 4 man base is supposed to be around 7/8 ths of an inch in width x 3/4 inch deep to give an average frontage of 175 yards for a 480 men regiment in a battle line (2 ranks deep).  The size of bases and numbers of figures can vary to create four base regiments representing different bayonet strengths. Essentially a 360 man regiment has four smaller bases of equal size with 3 figures instead. 

Another set I would love to use, Altar of Freedom models brigades at a smaller 60 mm x 30 mm size - I think to use a ground scale that can fit even bigger battles onto a smaller table and to use a lower figure density. which makes it easier to get a game on the table.  Having said that Altar of Freedom tends to be played at 6 mm scale. 

Fire and Fury uses multiple bases as well - sometimes up to a dozen for a brigade which are removed individually as losses. To square the circle it became very clear to me that I would need to come up with a system of movement trays sized for bases that work for Volley and Bayonet or Altar of Freedom and that fit individual bases that could sensibly be used for Johnny Reb or Fire and Fury - Black Powder as well for what it's worth. 

Getting to grips with the pre-made mdf bases and movement trays at the excellent Warbases company I did various bits of mdf tray and insert maths once I had settled on a scale and bought some test figures. This was a whole other wrestling match in my head. Perhaps I over think things but this is a big decision given the amount of figures I am planning to buy and paint. I like 15 mm figures but in my heart of hearts I knew I wanted to go just a little smaller for that mass effect. 15 mm figures are more like 18 mm these days - take AB e.g. which is a gold mark for ACW figures. I like the detail you can get on a 15 mm figure but coming down in scale I find the detail on a 6 mm figure a little lacking. I settled on compromise at 10 mm. I am really pleased with the 10 mm ACW figures from Pendraken. You can get a lot of detail on the figure but they are small enough to create a decent massed effect. The sculpts are great and there are lots of options. 

My initial decision was to try for the standard Johnny Reb fraction of inch sized bases but this then caused a problem with movement trays which would have to be in all sorts of odd sizes with their inserts when converting to use for Volley and Bayonet. For starters there is a 5 mm lip around the insert on an mdf tray. I didn't want to be pegged into non-standard sizes which leads to individual discussions with the Warbases people over custom builds. One idea of standard 3/4 inch square bases (four of which would create a regiment or 16 of which would come together for a roughly 3 1/2 inch total square base for Volley and Bayonet) just didn't work. 4 Pendraken 10 mm ACW figures were a bit of a squeeze on a 3/4 inch wide base. I have a lot of 3/4 inch bases I will need to repurpose. Equally ending up with fully 64 figures on each volley and bayonet base didn't seem viable in terms of time. I would be happy to pay the figure cost but it was a huge mark up in painting time. 

So lots of questions - what was the final solution ? 20 mm square bases and a slight denting of my standard Volley and Bayonet base to a size of around 3 inches x 2 inches when the tray lip is taken into effect. This doesn't affect the frontage. In effect 6 x 20 mm square bases can make up a Volley and Bayonet brigade base. 3 x 20 mm square bases work perfectly for Altar of Freedom. For Regiment sized games I can spring out the bases to make up 4 base Johnny Reb Regiments (again in trays for ease of movement or dispersed for skirmish lines etc or when they take casualties). Fire and Fury with its larger collection of bases both at the Brigade and Regiment format can also be catered for. I think the results look good. 

If I had one gripe it might be that for the Volley and Bayonet base I might have wanted to throw out some brigade level skirmishers within the base. I have seen this achieved at 6 mm in a small diorama. At 10 mm perhaps I would need to make the tray three rows deep but then insert a 60 mm x 20 flocked blank in the middle row and have full four man bases in the rear row  of three bases and then make  three 1-2 man bases for the front row to represent a skirmish line. There are a multitude of options once you start to tonic on it. A four base arrangement with the colour party out front and two blanks in the front corners reducing a brigade stand to having four bases.  For now my 480 man Johnny Reb 3 regiment is on the left above and my Volley and Bayonet 1,500-3,000 man brigade is on the right consisting of 24 figures (So between 3 and 6, five hundred man strength points at a figure scale with this set up of perhaps 80-100 men on average per figure. I also keep coming back to Brigade level Fire and Fury ? It needs more bases and is perhaps very material hungry at a level above that of a single Corps. It is a great set of rules though and very intuitive.  I can delay the final decision while I am painting as you have seen as a 20 mm square base works perfectly well for Fire and Fury. 

What does this actually mean in terms of numbers of figures ? What would be a good initial target to aim for in terms of numbers of bases/brigades ? I can start to look ahead to the initial deployments in the Summer of 1861. Early on in the War the Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley  under Joe Johnson managed to slip away  from their Union "markers" by rail to join Beauregard's forces at Manassas Junction or Bull Run as the Union termed the subsequent battle. Irvin Macdowell's force of roughly 20,000 men was approaching from Washington hounded into an early battle by President Lincoln. "You are Green but they are Green also" is the famous admonishment to Macdowell to get moving on to Richmond.  The historic result was a victory for the South. One aim of this blog will be to look at some history as we go along in parallel with the real events of the Civil War as well as to look at the strategic options presented by the set up and development of results.  I do not expect that the Union or Confederate side will try a hugely different strategy. Stacking limits, supply, political considerations and in particular the defence of two capitals, Richmond and Washington are just 100 miles apart dictated a lot of the early strategy. It took the Union army several days to march to Bull Run but just a single night for the "Great Skedaddle" to see the disorganised union army streaming back along the Washington boulevards to the consternation of President Lincoln. 

It is likely from the deployments in the Volley and Bayonet campaign game along the Potomac and the counter deployments on the map in my Boardgame of War Between the States that a re-run of Bull Run is likely to be on the cards within the first  game month. I have copied the Orders of Battle from the free Volley and Bayonet scenario at their website here . 

The confederate forces comprise of the 6 brigades of the Army of Potomac under Beauregard and a further 5 brigades from the Army of the Shenandoah (one of these a small cavalry regiment under Stuart). In total then 10 of my new Volley Bayonet trays which fully filled would hold 60 bases or 240 or so infantry figures. 45 strength points of infantry total about 22,500 men. The sides were then fairly evenly matched at First Bull Run. The artillery is modelled in the game as "Dedicated Guns" which are not modelled separately but considered to be included within the combat dice. Later on with the formation of artillery reserves within divisions separate Batteries and Battalions of artillery will be modelled on bases. The good news is that I have so far painted 25 confederate infantry bases - I am almost half way there with another package from Pendraken on the way. 

The order of battle for the Union side is a little more complicated. Rather than two armies we have a single Washington Army broken into 3 divisions. The union artillery needs to be modelled separately but there is no cavalry to contend with. There are 8 brigade bases of infantry and and 3 batteries (single strength point) artillery stands (two R-F or Rifled Field and one Rifled Heavy). Thats 192 infantry and I will some guns and crewman. There is a little more work to do on the union side and I will need to order some appropriate guns. 

That's it for the union army at home- a single test base that I knocked out today. The conveyor belt is just about to be set up ! Unless there is a significant concentration of troops early on I do not believe that I will need to get more than 10-15 brigade stands on either side during my first "half year" comprising 1861. I may need a lot of scenery, some cavalry (with dismounted figures and householders), artillery and I may need a fort or two ! The "production spiral" (more to follow) for the Campaign game will have a built in delay for realism. You cannot press a button and squirt out a marching infantry division. So while new brigades, divisions and corps will appear they will neither materialise that quickly nor should they all be capable of concentrating in one place for some time to give me a painting headache. Reinforcements should be spread between departments evenly in any rules I have seen. The union will need to send troops both East and West across a thousand mile front. The huge 80-100,000 strong armies of 1862/1863 that require 1,000 figures or 250 bases a side should not appear for a good year if I play the game in parallel real time.

Production spirals, drafts and call-ups. All of this to come as I start to address the rules. Or do I look at bolting Fire and Fury to the brigade rules ? I think in the end this may be too complicated. 

See you in Hell Johnny Reb. See you in hell Billy Yank.