Saturday 15 April 2017

The Model Soldiers – What is available



18mm and 28mm figures and scenery

The number and type of model soldiers you already have, or are prepared to obtain, will determine how you will plan your wargame system.

Having decided what you want to achieve you must now list what figures you have available to achieve it.  
6x6 foot wargames table

Again I will use what I did to illustrate what I mean.

First I made a list of what figures I had available.   I found that I had 1296 infantry, 120 cavalry, 26 guns manned by 104 gunners.   And of course they are duplicated in 28mm, 18mm and 6mm.

I have a comprehensive collection which represents most of the armies of the Napoleonic Wars.   The infantry were organised in units of 36, the cavalry in units of 8 and the artillery one gun and 4 crew.

The breakdown of figures by nationality and numbers was as follows

French          288 infantry   32 cavalry     6 guns 24 gunners
Austrian        144 infantry   16 cavalry     4 guns 16 gunners
British           144 infantry   16 cavalry     4 guns 16 gunners
Prussian       144 infantry   16 cavalry     4 guns 16 gunners
Russian        144 infantry   16 cavalry     4 guns 16 gunners
Spanish        144 infantry    8 cavalry      4 guns 16 gunners
Bavarian       108 infantry   8 cavalry     
Polish             72 infantry   8 cavalry
Baden             36 infantry  
Italian              36 infantry
Westphalian    36 infantry
28mm battle of Talavera

The good news was that the ratio of cavalry to infantry was reasonable at roughly 1 cavalry to 10 infantry.

The main problem was that they were organised and painted as 36 figure infantry battalions and 8 figure cavalry squadrons.      

2 comments:

  1. Maybe you should expand your cavalry units?
    Me, I only have a small Napoleonic army (Dutch-Belgians for 1815), having other armies across history from ancient times op to WW1. My Napoleonic troops are infantry units of between 24 and 36 figures and cavalry units of 12. I think it all depends on the rules you use.

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  2. You are quite right that what you will start with will usually be collected to be used with a particular rule set. But next week you will see that any combination can be redesigned to use with a different rule set, or indeed to fit in with a new campaign system. I did not want to purchase or paint any new figures, so I would look to convert what I already had on my shelves to create a new order of battle

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