My dream for 'Black Powder'

[Last Hussar]

Black Powder basing is individual figures on 20x20mm, or 2x2 on 40mm square.

With my Pendraken Romans I get 2 rows of 6 on WM 40x20mm, so thats 4x6 on 40mm square, or 2x3 on 20mm

18th Century used 4 ranks deep, so that works

If I based to BP base sizes, but using 10mm my battalions would have a frontage of 36, and depth of 4 = 144 figures

What would look better? 24 25mm, or LOTS of massed 10mm

Plus metal figures ar in excess of a £1 each - £1.20+ for many.

6 figs on the footprint of 1 28mm = 60p.

Cheaper, same footprint, less height.

Bugger to paint though (and of course you are looking at 12 units at £15 a throw, plus horses and artillery)

A man can dream, a man can dream!

[nikharwood]

It's a good dream - not as good as the ones with Kate Beckinsale, Sienna Guillory & Kiera Knightley fighting each other in - but good nonetheless 

You could always drop to 2x2 on 20mm square base to drop the figure count...and don't forget: army packs are your friend 

[Last Hussar]

It's a good dream - not as good as the ones with Kate Beckinsale, Sienna Guillory & Kiera Knightley fighting each other in - but good nonetheless 

Helena Bonham Carter in a corset- best bit in Harry Potter!

I'm going to try the 3 man per base frontage with the units I am painting now.  I have 1 army pack, and two more will get me enough for a Black Powder army.  I'm doing Prussians, and have decided dark blue is boring and not very impressive to look at, so the next army pack will be various other minor german states, and the third Austrians

[nikharwood]

Coolio - I'm halfway through assembling my SYW Prussians & Austrians...got distracted by the Blues winning the double though & now am incapable of operating anything more lethal than a laptop <hic> 

[Leon]

Coolio - I'm halfway through assembling my SYW Prussians & Austrians...got distracted by the Blues winning the double though & now am incapable of operating anything more lethal than a laptop <hic> 

Good job done this season.  It'll be an interesting transfer window this summer, with the World Cup and the new regulations on foreign players.

[nikharwood]

Too right...interesting times indeed 

[Dazza]

I'm quite happy with my 6 bases of 4 (24 figures)  on 20x20mm bases





gives me more room to move on the battlefield 

Dazza

[Last Hussar]

Nick - it's not really the price - like I say still half the cost of metal 28's. Well OK the cost is still part of it, but even at 2x2 I'd have to paint near on a hundred.  Also I have rejected 1 per cm - that one man every 5ft of real ground. and I feel that they should really be packed shoulder to shoulder - didn't one person here say he files his bases to get men in tighter.

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

For SYW I think I'm going for 6 figures on 25mm x 20mm bases - battalions of 24/30.  This gives a battalion for £3 and an army pack would provide 4 line and a grenadier battalion plus 2 squadrons of cavalry and battalion guns.  I've already got an SYP1 pack being test painted as Brunswickers.  I thnk the 4 on a 20x20 base would look really good for AWI with the looser order.

Note that the depth of SYW infantry varied - Austrian, French and (I think) Hanoverian started at 4 ranks plus supernumaries but changed reasonably quickly to 3 ranks plus supernumaries - with a 36 figure frontage this would give 108 infantry.

Regards

Edward

[Last Hussar]

ooh you pictures didn't show before - pretty.  It's the sort of thing that makes me thing 'why do I bother?'

[Dragoon]

I'm using 40mm. x 25mm. Bases for Age of Eagles that's a double Base. single is 20mm x 25mm. that's  6 to 8 figures in 2 ranks on a 20mm base. but it works just as well using 3 figures in a single rank. use different poses. I'm a figure short on 1 stand so I've cut a gun wheel in half and stuck it to the base. (OK so it follows 'em around).
Just a point, when painting tunic buttons, remember that the Kings cypher throws a shadow on the lighter brass of the button.

[Aart Brouwer]

With Black Powder you can base your models any way you like as long as the frontage is consistent, no? That's what they say on page 12 and 13 of the book.

So you could toss 237 Brits onto a 3,6" x 2,4" base with Kiera Knightley in the middle, as long as the French opposition has a similar number on a similar base and something like Charlotte Gainsbourg in the middle. Or Sophie Marceau. Or Audrey Tatou. Or..

Anyway, where was I?

Cheers,
Aart

[Last Hussar]

The point I was making Aart was that my basing happens to match BPs but at a smaller scale.  The game is written in inches with 25/28mm figures (ie inch figures). To fit on the table we use cms instead of inches and to fit in our wallets Pendraken instead of 25s. (ie 40% of the designers' original ground and figure scales)

The rules show a basing system of 1 fig on 20mm = 2 on 40mm, OR 3 on 45mm. 45mmx40% =18mm. I can get 3x2 figs on 20mm- close as dammit to  18mm.    That means my '40%' bases are the same size as the individual bases.  So if I had the time and money to paint that many figures I could do the rules in the inch ground scale, but each of the 24 bases holding 6 10mm not 1 28mm.

If you wish to Ikea Knightly in your lines do so, but Helena Bonham-Carter will be at the Chateau with me!

[Aart Brouwer]

The point I was making Aart was that my basing happens to match BPs but at a smaller scale.

Point taken, Lieutenant. Some people will always have issues with BP basing, but you apparently have not.

My own issue was with the casualty markers. I hated the idea of my units schlepping their dead (let alone equivalent markers such as coloured beans) around the gaming table. Teh ugleh. So I devised a scheme where I spread my units over bigger and smaller stands, one of two of which can be removed to show depletion of the unit.

For instance a classic Prussian grenadier battalion of 60 models (I use a 1:10 ratio) will have four companies of two stands each: one large stand of 5 models wide and 2 deep, and one stand of 5 wide and 1 deep. This way I have three ranks in each company, and successive casualties of a company are marked by (1) removing a small stand, (2) replacing a large stand by a small one, and (3) removing the company altogether, thus thinning out the battalion. This scheme works very well for the various BP formations, too. And it isn't too fidgety in 10mm.

Cheers,
Aart

[DanJ]

I've just got my copy of BP and it looks good, 7YW French in 10mm look like a nice alternative to WW1.

I was considering 2 rows of 3 figs on a 20x20mm base with about half of the bases 20x40 for ease of manouvering.  This would give me 36 fig units which I think will look ok but won't know until I get some figures and see how they look.

Unfortunately I was at Phalanx on Saturday with the intention of spending lots of cash.....

Now I'll have to wait until I get back from holiday to get the figs.  At leat I can take BP with me as "holiday reading"