Thursday, April 12, 2007

More Unit Size Pondering

Here's what I'm considering currently. Thoughts?

Each battalion to consist of:

24 Musketeers in 4 companies of 6, and 6 grenadiers in 1 company. Each company to be commanded by a Lieutenant (officer with spontoon figure), who will stand to the left of the first row. The 4 companies to be divided into 2 grand divisions, each commanded by a Captain (officer with sword figure). The whole to be commanded by a Major (mounted officer figure).

I'm dithering, however, over where and how many to deploy of the standard bearer and drummer figures. For the standard bearers, it's either deploy one per battalion, or have the first battalion deploy both a unit standard and a Hesse-Engelburg standard. Drummers though....I dunno. I don't really want to have to do 5 drummers to get one per company. One option would be to stick with the two that come in a standard bag, and just assign one to each division commander. Another would be to assign both drummers to accompany the standard bearer and the battalion commander.

4 comments:

old-tidders said...

I usually order up figures for my foot battalions to have the following:

1st cy : 5 musketeers + 1 officer with spontoon.
2nd cy : 6 musketeers.
Command stand: Mounted officer, two standard bearers, foot officer, drummer.
3rd cy : 6 musketeers.
4th cy : 5 musketeers + 1 officer with spontoon.


Allan (Wittenberg)

MurdocK said...

In the end this is all about look on the tabletop and in photos and feel that you desire in your formations.

Ultimately you can go with it either way.

Having gone thru this exercise before, I have since decided to dispense with it entirely.

All my 25mm minis formations have been and will continue to be mounted to fender washers and then I use tiny rare-earth magnets to 'stick' them to a 20ga steel base.

This way I can 'mix and match' as I please to form the companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, inspections, mobs, etc ...

Painting all the troops certain ways will allow for different types of flexibility also.

For example, my own Mieczyslaw troops are actually early Napoleonic Prussians and late 7 yw Prussians. They were prepared originally for a tabletop fight of Auerstadt, since then they have been used as French allied battalions in a fight of Eylau, then now reformed into larger formations as the Mieczyslaw arms.

The increased flexibility from not having the minis "permanently attached" to the bases has been of great advantage.

Bloggerator said...

I'm experimenting with a company* organisation these days that has an Officer, an NCO and a drummer with 12 fusiliers or grenadiers. The fusiliers or grenadiers are drawn up in a two-deep line. The Officer is on the right flank, the drummer on the left while the NCO stands behind them stopping any rascals from running away.

ie:
N
FFFFFF
OFFFFFFD

On drummers, I'd be tempted to post them on the flanks of the flanking (oh, you know what I mean!) companies per the French practise of the day. Failing that, I'd group them all together at the rear of the firing line.

As Murdock says, you can't go far wrong with induvidually based figures as they allow you so much flexibility and room to experiment.

*three companies of fusiliers plus one of grenadiers makes a battalion. At the moment, my battalions are all only about three companies strong! I have some painting to do..!

Bloggerator said...

Naturally the diagram didn't come out as it ought to. Please insert a couple of tabs in the first line and one in the second...

Sheesh.

:^|

Greg