Back To Bases
I like bases. Actually, it’s true. A wargame has a number of essential elements and none more crucial than the playing pieces that do the actual interacting with the landscape. I think the reason figure bases cause so much heartache amongst wargamers is simply because while they are fixed, the actual troop numbers and formations that we are trying to represent were more fluid. There’s no escaping the fact that we’re trying to achieve too much with too little. But hey, that’s wargaming! But there’s no getting away from how important bases are to a game and how much they impact on terrain making and game-play. What wargamers really hunger for is a solution that does a good job at representing our idea of history, a solution we’re happy with, plays well, and one we won’t regret by the time we’ve got round to actually finishing an army or two. For my 10mm 1809 project, I didn’t have any ready-written rules in mind any more so I was free to find my own basing solution. As I mentioned back in Post 4, I wanted a ground scale that worked well with square bases, six foot figures to a base, and with my existing 200mm square terrain tiles. I cut my own square-cut MDF bases so they could be any size. However, I wanted to stick with conventional 20 and 25mm base widths.
Base Units
Using my preferred figure to men ration of 1:50, the French and Austrian orders of battle for Aspern-Essling break down very neatly to these base unit sizes: 6 (300) Close-Order Infantry 3 (150) Open-Order Infantry 3 (150) Heavy/Medium Cavalry 2 (100) Light Cavalry 1 (6) Gun And each of these units share a similar 60m formation frontage based on the following assumptions: 0.6m frontage per close-order infantryman 1.2m frontage per open-order infantryman 0.9m frontage per heavy/medium cavalryman 1.2m frontage per light cavalryman 10m frontage per gun
POST 37
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