Wednesday 26 November 2008

Plains, Terrain and ..er Cuirassiers

A beyond cheesy title: the fact that I was amused by it is probably an indication of how badly one's sense of humour deteriorates with age. It vaguely relates to my being in the middle of making the terrain tiles and units necessary for the next battle. Action! was a small affair by the standards of the Grants. To me it represents a major step forwards, both in the amount of terrain needed and the number of troops.



Work in Progress - Terrain Pieces


There are a few details that make reproducing this battle more awkward. The rules in 'The Wargame' were, for their time, unusually precise in their use of distance. Charles Grant specifies a frontage of 12.5 inches for an infantry battalion. My battalions measure 16 inches. I should therefore either increase all other distances (movement, ranges and the size of the table) or else reduce my 48 man battalions to 38. The first of these is not practical: I don't have the room to do this. The second is (for me anyway) undesirable: I want to use as many of the figures I have as possible.


I shall therefore mull all these things over in my mind, and come to whatever grudging conclusion best suits me at a later date.

13 comments:

littlejohn said...

Nice approach to those tree hexes. Is that foamcore on the bases?
--Dave

Andy Mitchell said...

Yes, the tiles are made from a base of 4mm MDF with 5mm foamcore on top. The foamcore makes it easy to create streams (by cutting into it) or making detachable trees by embedding a nut in it.

Fitz-Badger said...

It looks like the hex tiles, trees, ruin, walls, etc. are all homemade. Is that true? Excellent work!

Andy Mitchell said...

Yes everything is homemade - I save my pennies for the figures.

It also allows me to have terrain pieces that fit exactly with my requirements. Some devastating criticism of commercial terrain by the late Ian Weekly had a big impact on my ideas.

Snickering Corpses said...

I wouldn't worry too terribly over whether you've got a little too much frontage. It will reduce your maneuver room a bit, but the point is to adapt Action! to be a battle you can enjoy, moreso than precisely mirroring every aspect. It's your game, after all :)

andygamer said...

How about reducing your unit frontages, Andy, by taking the excess figures and using them in a third rank?

Andy Mitchell said...

A 3rd rank would work for me if I could form a complete third rank. But I'd have a 18-18-12 formation that would ruin the aesthetic. It's an interesting idea though, and shows that there are more options than I had considered.

CWT said...

Is there any link to Ian Weekly's comments on terrain that so inspired you? Excellent stuff, by the way.

Andy Mitchell said...

I don't think there is: it was in his monthly articles in a wargames or modelling magazine several decades ago. Up until Ian Weekly's comments I had been happy with the resin buildings of the day: when he pointed out that surface detail should look like part of the building's construction and not merely something plastered on afterwards I changed my ideas.

andygamer said...

How about three ranks of 16 figures each, then?

Andy Mitchell said...

I think you could be right here, and the only change required to the rules would be to allow 3 ranks to file.

Cavalry would, similarly, have to be in 3 ranks as they are oversized as well. But as melee units, they might have no incentive to adopt the 3 rank formation.

I wonder what effect this would have on melee.

Andy Mitchell said...

erm that was 'fire' not 'file' in the last comment.

andygamer said...

I don't know how the firing is done in The Wargame, but I assume allowing three ranks to fire still using the same 48 in-range muskets as when the unit was still in two ranks wouldn't be a strain on the rules' philosphy (the first rank could be kneeling, after all).

For the cavalry I think that you could retain the two ranks deep (that I assume is the optimum melee formation for mounted).

It won't look aesthetically out of place with the infantry being 3 ranks in line because the 2 ranks of riders is much deeper to start with.

And because you're much more likely to use a regiment's squadrons separately rather than having them all doing the same thing at once, as is more usual with an infantry regiment, your cavalry regiment frontage being wider than an infantry battalion's isn't as crucial.

For example, in your battle of the bridge crossing, your cuirassier regiment was using some (two?) of its sqdns versus the infantry defending the bridge and another versus a dragoon sqdn (acting on its own too).

Luckily, with your individually-mounted figures, you can layout the figures in the new way and see how it works out for infantry vs infantry and cavalry versus infantry combats first before making up your mind permanently. (Cavalry versus cavalry would be unaffected.)