Friday 23 May 2008

Unit Sizes

I've had a bit of a re-think on unit sizes and fig-actual ratio. I've been using 1:20 with 12figs (240 men) for horse regiments and 27figs (540 men) for foot regiments. This is fine but with the size of my wargames table and the overall plan to have larger battles I wanted to go for less tabletop space per unit.

After mulling things over I went for a ratio of 1:33. This gives:
1. Horse 9figs - ~300men (5 troops of 60 men)
2. Foot 18figs - ~600men (10 cys of 60 men)

This come close to actual average unit sizes I worked out from various sources. I tried out how the regiments look with the new sizes and they are ok. Mind you anything smaller than 18 figures for foot regiments and the stand of pikes effect is lost.


5 comments:

Bluebear Jeff said...

I've been considering similarly sized units. But my thoughts on the mix differs a bit with the infantry.

I'm thinking of only using 5 gunners on each wing . . . with three in the front and two behind in the gaps. I'm also thinking of having seven pikemen (well six and a standard-bearer) in a really close clump for the middle stand (possibly in three tight ranks 2/3/2).

Yes, I know that this isn't the real mix of troops . . . but you're right that pikes need to look substantial; and five staggered gunners on each side pretty much look as substantial as six per side.

Anyway, it is something to think about.


-- Jeff

old-tidders said...

Jeff

the ideal ratio of pike to shot was 1:2. However this was not always achieved and in some regiments it could be 1:1. Most regiments were somewhere in between; so your foot units are probably closer to what occurred.

-- Allan :)

Anonymous said...

I can sympathize with the unit size issue. I started out using 24 figures in a foot unit. But since I'm doing this in 54mm I knew I was going to have table space problems. The nice think about 24 man units is that they easily make two 12 man units made up of three 4 man sub units (almost called them 'companies') and that fits in nicely with shot-pike-shot formations.

t'other jeff

dave said...

Thank you gentlemen. You have helped me resolve my own unit composition issues.

I plan on using the Quindia Victory Without Quarter rules as well as Very Civille Actions/Tinker Fox from the Perfect Captain and gaming in 40mm.

I like these rules as I can use what would be a "unit" in WECW, forlorn Hope, or 1644 to form much of an "army" instead.

Nice and more variety in painting for me!

Bluebear Jeff said...

Dave,

We played a couple of games with the "Victory Without Quarter" rules and enjoyed them.

One thing that I particularly liked was that the "lead" flowed back and forth a number of times in both games.

If you check out the April 6 and April 10 posts on my blog (scroll down to them) you can see a photo or two and read my reports:

http://saxe-bearstein.blogspot.com/

Do note that we had to use substitute troops -- but that didn't affect the rules.

A further account of the first battle -- with lots of photos -- can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/5khdjq

I hope that these help.


-- Jeff