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Painting log: 12 Bavarians, and some musing on wargame unit structure

January 13, 2010 10:50 AM - Posted by Robartes - Category: Painting Log

I finished 12 Bavarians last evening (well 11 Bavarians and one — presumable — Bavarian horse), which until about a week ago would have completed the 1st Battalion of the 1st Regiment, König or Leib.

However, I decided that 24 figures is a bit meager for a single unit, and that at the ‘classical’ 1:20 ratio 36 figures better represent a battalion: the average Bavarian battalion that entered Russia in 1812 had about 750 men (they came back with a lot less, of course — the Russian campaign was a disaster for the Bavarian army), which at 1:20 is 37,5 figures, close enough to 36 to not matter. So, both of my ‘finished’ battalions will be expanded with another three stands of 4 figures to bring them up to 36 figures each.

As to basing, I’m going to keep them as 4 figures to a base of 30x40mm (15mm frontage per figure). The rules I’m eyeing, Republic to Empire, work with ‘combat groups’ of four figures, which fits perfectly with that basing, and it would also mean no rebasing of the figures (which I already did once for the first unit — they were initially based on 20mm frontage but looked, in the words of a member of the Steve Dean forum, looked like a skirmish line instead of a ranked unit).

Another advantage is that a number of formations in the rules actually look pretty good when executed with 4 figure stands. More on that later.

The disadvantage of staying with 4 figure bases is that this no longer reflects the theoretical company structure (6 companies, 4 of fusiliers, 1 of grenadiers and 1 of lights) of a Bavarian battalion — 6 figure stands would reflect this perfectly. But as not all battalions would have adopted this company structure, and real life military units of course varied wildly from theoretical establishments, I don’t feel that weighs heavily enough to abandon the 4 figure basing.

So, that’s 12 points for January. Up next is another battalion of GNW Swedes, and probably the first GNW Russians after that (the Preobrazhenski Guard Grenadiers).

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