French 1809 grenadiers & voltigeurs

[Enigmatic Gamer]

Just seen this.  I concur that, first of all base your figures so they look right, it's your ball and your game after all.  Second, and this is vitally important, make sure you get it right because rebasing is the way to madness.  In the past I've modified rules to reflect my bases, rather than the other way round.  I've stuck with the same rules now for several years and have no intention of ever changing them.  For what it is worth these are the dimensions I use.  I use actual orders of battle so units are not be all the same.  I use a ratio of roughly 1:10 and I mount my infantry figures in two or three ranks as appropriate simply because I like the look.  The depth is simply what is necessary to mount the number of figures - while it is possible to try and reflect scale frontages it is impossible to do the same with depths, unless you are into 6mm figures or smaller.
 
Artillery 6 horse team 17mm x 85mm deep
Artillery 4 horse team 17mm x 65mm deep
Artillery piece with crew 30mm x 30mm
Infantry 3 ranks 7mm frontage per figure (in the front rank) x 28mm deep
Infantry 2 ranks 7mm frontage per figure (in the front rank) x 20mm deep
Skirmishers 10mm frontage per file x 20mm
Cavalry 10mm frontage per figure x 22mm

With 10mm it is perfectly possible to have one stand representing a sub-unit, sometimes two with small battalions.  The French compagnie was an administrative sub-unit and on a war footing they were equalised by taking men from other companies so that a battalion comprised a number of equal sized peletons.  Prior to 1808 it comprised seven fusilier compagnies and one voltigeur compagnie, producing eight peletons.  The grenadiers, originally a division (two compagnies) per regiment, were often used to form separate elite bataillons together with the grenadier divisions from other regiments.  This changed in 1808 when the organisation became six compagnies, a grenadier compagnie, four fusilier compagnies and a voltigeur compagnie, all of which were equalised to make six similarly sized peletons in war.  Peletons were equalized because having sub-units of an equal size was fundamental to executing the various conversions from one formation to another.  The six companies of the Austrian battalion became six halb-divisionen each of two halb-kompanien.  A halb-kompanien comprised two zuge.  Two halb-divisionen formed a division, for three divisionen per bataillon.  The skirmish element in the Austrian battalion was provided from the third rank.
Wargaming started for me with Featherstone's Wargames too, although I was already playing with toy soldiers using HG Well's Little Wars, which I stumbled on in the local library.  Things were somehow simpler in those days.

Hi John

Thank you very much for your sage advice which I will certainly bear in mind before settling on a basing system.

I'm very grateful to all of the members of the forum who have taken the trouble to provide such detailed information and advice.

Cheers
Keith

[Last Hussar]

Agree with modify rules to basing

"A unit is 4 bases, each 30mm square."

Nope, it's 3 of 40x20