I've been a miniature gamer on and off since the mid '70s. And during that time, I've based and rebased figures as I've changed rulesets, never quite finishing each project. Sound familiar? Well, the latest "rebasing" project was kicked off by playtesting Horse, Foot, and Guns.

Here it is - an infantry regiment going into action. I game with miniatures to get this kind of look. Otherwise, why not play board or computer games? Over the years, I had accumulated both 25mm and 15mm figures, and I had started basing them for several different rule sets. I figured HFG gave me a shot at actually completing an army and I just needed to pick a scale.

First, I considered 25mm. When I first started 25mm ACW, I mounted 3 figures on a 2.25" wide base, 4 stands per regiment. I also tried 4 figs on a 1.5" square base, which I liked the looks of better. But I had never rebased all my figs, so simply adding a few more 2.25" stands was an option.

Each stand fails to convey the feeling of an infantry brigade to me. Take a look at that infantry regiment pictured on top again. So, I looked at my 15mm collection - a few dozen stands that I had started mounting for Fire and Fury or Johnny Reb. Hmmm. What about saboting two stands together and calling their 2" frontage a 400 pace basewidth? I would need to go buy some more figures (aw shucks!) and make a bunch more 1" square stands. But I had stacks of 60mm wide bases (gotta love power tools) that I had made for 25mm DBA. Rather than cut more 1" square stands, I decided to try remounting my 15s onto the 60mm wide stands.

MUCH BETTER! Going for that elbow to elbow look, I found I could squeeze a dozen infantry onto a stand. In addition, this mounting will work well with Volley and Bayonet. I just need to sabot two infantry bases together to get a square base.

NEW SCALE, FURTHER THOUGHTS.
"In HFG, troops are assumed to attempt at all times to be in their preferred formation for their current situation. Whether they achieved this is sometimes shown by their combat results." - Horse, Foot and Guns Game Philosophy.

I've given further thought to Mr. Barker's element bases. First, I assume an element represents a brigade of infantry, or an artillery battalion. Doing some double checking of the ground scale confirms to me that an element frontage allows enough space for four 500 man regiments to be deployed in line of battle. Figure and ground scale seems appropriate, so far so good. However, the infantry element base really should be square. It represents the area taken up by a brigade of 4-6 infantry regiments that could be deployed in line, column or some combination of formations, and with enough space to re-deploy. The limits should be defined by the frontage of the entire brigade drawn up in a battleline and the depth of a column properly spaced to deploy into a battleline on the flank.

Going to a square base opens up the opportunity for more diorama like basing of units that even better represents tactical formations. Logically, if I'm after that massed figure effect, then I should also consider smaller scales. The recent growth in 10mm has me intrigued. For me, anything mounted on a stand smaller than 1" x 1" and 1/8" thick becomes difficult to handle, and the base thickness relative to figure height begins to detract from the figures. For grins, I purchased some 10mm figures from Old Glory.

The Old Glory figs come in 1" long strips of 5 figs. I considered mounting two of these strips on 1" x 3/4" stands, which makes them usable for Fire and Fury, Regimental Fire and Rury, Mr. Lincoln's War, and JRIII. I planned to sabot several stands together for HFG or Volley and Bayonet. But after looking at four bases saboted together to form a 2"x2" infantry element, I realized that the space the base takes up should be largely empty. So, I tried a 60mm square base, with two ranks (four strips) of infantry and a command strip in front, representing the color guard of a battlion 6 paces in front of the line. There's also enough room on this base and with this scale of figures to try adding a couple of file closers and maybe even a couple of skirmishers.

Afterword
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Page created 23 July 2002. Last Updated 20Sep04.
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