Hi.

I am looking at making my first steps into painting some 6mm Napoleonic Austrians and basing them using the Polemos rules but i have a couple of questions.

Firstly, the rules for Polemos GdB state that a 60x30mm base represents a battalion of infantry, or a regiment of2-3 squadrons of cavalry. Larger cavalry regiments, such as Austrian or Russian, could be represented by 2 or 3 bases. My question is how other players felt about this, and whether it is the general consensus to create bigger regeiments for these two nations?

And secondly, Austrian regiments i believe, used to be comprised of 2 battalions, one commanded by the Inhaber and one by the Senior Major, each with a seperate colour (yellow and white?). In the 1809 campaign Austrian regiments fielded 3 combat battalions. What were the colours of the battalaion flags, and did the 3rd battalion carry a flag? So far on the megre book collection i have i cannot find an answer.

Really looking forward to your responses, and getting my figures painted up to recreate the 1809 campaign.

Hello Brasak!

Congratulations, great choices! The road ahead is full of excitement and enjoyment. 

In order to obtain a reasonable balance in the dynamics of the game the Polemos system uses the 60x30 bases for both infantry and cavalry. They are "battalion like and regiment like". You find a common number that works for the battle/period you are trying to represent. In most cases that will probably be 500 men for an infantry battalion and 250 men for a cavalry regiment. You half the number of cavalry as in general a mounted man occupies twice the space of a man on foot.

Although your starting with 1809 throughout the Napoleonic era the size of battalions and regiments varied from country to country and campaign to campaign and went down in size as a campaign progressed.

So the common option is to build generic units and simply use the regimental number of men present for the particular regiment on the day of the battle as your guide to the number of bases to use. Any regiments that normally fielded more men then 500 foot or 250 mounted you can paint more units if you want. Keep in mind however that in 6mm you can generally use subs. 

As you mentioned the Austrians generally had 2 battalions but they could be roughly 1,000 men each. So you would build 4 bases. Three battalions for roughly 3,000 men 6 bases. Although the Austrian cavalry regiments were large they often didn't fight as one unit. You would still use the same number of bases just they might be seperated on the field of battle and under different commands. 

Most people who mount formed infantry on a base give them a flag. Partly because Baccus gives you the figure and they more than likely carried one. It also looks nice. Again for most of your line or regulars pretty generic works just fine. However, you would need to find a reliable source about who carried which flags for Austrians. I think it was line was yellow and elites were white, but I'm only guessing. 

Hopefully this helps you out. If not let me know and I'll try and do better. 

Best regards,

Glenn

Hi Brasak,

                after 1805, only the 1st (leib) battalion of an infantry regiment carried the white colour, (the leibfahne). All of the other battalions in the regiment carried a yellow colour, (the ordinfahne).

The following links provide really useful details for the Austrian army:

https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-information/organization-strategy-tactics/#austria

http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/

http://obscurebattles.blogspot.com/2016/05/aspern-essling-1809.html

Hope this helps,

                         Peter.