Hi,

Regarding the ruleset "CHOSEN MEN, WELL DISPOSED" I'm a little uncertain about the proper historical unit frontages. For example, would British battalions of 500-600 men be depicted as 2 bases?

Thanks!

Hi Dave,

I think the idea is that you are flexible in how you do this and also to some extent chose for yourself - this is certainly what I did. 

You need to be flexible as unit sizes varied and the idea is too represent the number of men and not neccessarily the individual battalions, but you should be able to do both with a bit of thought. For example 10 British battalions in Flanders could easily be 6000 men but 10 battalions in Spain would be more like 4000 men. So what I did was go for a standard ratio per base, 400 in my case, and then go from there.

So taking the assault/defence force that attacked Blenheim village at the 1704 battle. The French are easy they have 16 battalions in the village at the start of the battle and these are probably around 400 men each. So 16 bases - 1 per real battalion. There were also 3 units of dismounted dragoons which were also around 400 strong - so another 3 bases.

The 'British' had 20 battalions - 10 English, 6 Hanoverian and 4 Hessian. These were probably around 500 to 600 men per unit, with the English the stronger. So I went with 10 English battalions at 600 and 10 German battalions at 500. This I represented as 15 English bases and 13 German bases. So 1 battalion = 1 and a fraction bases overall but I gave some individual units 2 bases. For the Germans there were 2 Hanoverian and 1 Hessian guard units so these had 2 bases and the 7 'Line' only a single base. Similarly I gave the English guard unit 2 bases and also 4 of the others also had 2 bases but the rest only had 1 base.

I also had in mind to fight the Spanish battles and as mentioned abovethe unit sizes of the British are smaller there. So the same 10 battalions fighting in Spain would all be 1 battalion = 1 base. Similarly in other battles it is possible that some battalions might be only 300 strong - some believe that the French at Malplaquet were only about 300 per battalion. In most cases this is no problem as many units have multiple battalions. Looking again at the 16 battalions in Blenheim these are from 8 regiments (1 of 3, 6 of 2 and 1 of 1 battalion). If they were 300 men strong then they would be represented as 12 bases and I would 'lose' 4 bases - 1 each from some of the regiments with 2 or more battalions.

I don't know if this is correct but it worked for me - although on reflection I might have gone for 500 per base. In any case I hope it helps a little.

That helps alot, actually. Thanks!