Planning a Napoleonic Adventure....Part 7

One of the best wargaming books in my collection and what will be a cornerstone of my Napoleonic adventure.

I am feeling a whole lot better than earlier in the week and as a result have been able to catch up on a number of outstanding issues as well as formalising what I am going to do with the Del Prado collection.

All the Prussian cavalry are now off their bases and I have made a start on the British. I have a couple of minor repair jobs to attend to but plan to do this when I get to the painting and basing stage. The bases will be painted in my standard Humbrol Satin 131 - the same as for my ACW figures - and will not be flocked.

After having looked through the collection for the umpteenth time I have come to the conclusion that I have been looking at it from the wrong direction. I had all these good ideas about using the figures for all manner of games because having the figures based individually meant that there was plenty of flexibility about what I gamed and how I gamed it. This is fine in theory but realistically my focus is pitched squarely in what I would call the ‘traditional battle’ style of game. For me this is around a dozen or so units a side which is basically anything above battalion level.

I like the idea of commanding brigades, divisions and even corps so of necessity using a scalable rule set where the number of figures in a unit merely serve as an indicator of the general type works well rather than saying 1 figure equals x real troops. Bob Cordery’s book does this very well indeed so it makes sense for me to look to this as my first point of reference. Given the vagaries of the Del Prado collection and the increasing scarcity of the figures it makes sense to utilise what is available as fully as possible. Whilst my collection is considerably smaller than his the same principle applies.

With this in mind I have taken the decision to base my armies using the Portable Napoleonic Wargame as a guide rather than basing figures individually. Bob’s rules contain much to commend them but - and I am sure he will welcome this - there are a few things I will be incorporating for my own benefit and based on my own understanding of the period but his suggested basing strikes many chords with me.

This will mean 6 figure infantry units with 2 bases of 3 and 4 figure cavalry units with 2 bases of 2. Artillery will have a pair of gunners and rifle armed or dedicated skirmish infantry will be based individually. The latter deviates slightly from what Bob suggests but I want to be able to reflect the effect of skirmish infantry.

I will tinker with a number of other parts of Bob’s rules simply because I have a few ideas I want to try out but this will not be a problem.

There are rule elements from such sources as Volley and Bayonet and from the pen of Charles Wesencraft that appeal and this collection will be an ideal way to embrace these concepts whilst being anchored in the Portable Napoleonic Wargame.