New Member from Chippenham, Wiltshire!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Hello and welcome

[d_Guy]

Welcome to the forum! If fsn had a table big enough he would do a ratio of 1:1 

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Hello and welcome

[fsn]

Welcome to the forum! If fsn had a table big enough he would do a ratio of 1:1 

  I did set up a 1:1 battallion for my British infantry, just to see how it looks, you understand.  600 figures, 2 deep gives a 3m (10') frontage. Had to go diagonally across my 8' x 4' table. The two flags looks awfully insignificant, and it's a long way from the first grenadier to the last light bob.

Couldn't fit a battallion at full strength onto my table.

[Last Hussar]

If FSN had a table big enough he would do 1:2!

I Have considered just setting up a 1:1 with the Little Wooden Men. I would have to do 4 ranks deep though as they are based 2 strips on 40x20

600 men = 150 frontage
7 figures wide to a base - 150/7 = 21 1/2

21 bases x 40mm = 840mm (84 cm) for a 4 deep line. 2 deep obviously 1m64


As to formations;
I tend to play Blucher. A unit of infantry represents about 4,000 men. There is no 'Square' formation in the rules. Infantry can go 'Prepared', which may include squares, but not necessarily all of them - it may be just a couple of battalions on one flank. You don't rearrange the men, you just add something to remind you they are Prepared- I use little squares of 2 men on a flank.

[T13A]

Hi

From FSN:

I did set up a 1:1 battallion for my British infantry, just to see how it looks, you understand.  600 figures, 2 deep gives a 3m (10') frontage. Had to go diagonally across my 8' x 4' table. The two flags looks awfully insignificant, and it's a long way from the first grenadier to the last light bob.

And can you just immagine how difficult it would be to march them across any terrain (other than Horseguards) and keeping them in any reasonable order.   

Cheers Paul

[fsn]

Exactly and precisely so!

I did try to mimic line to column and line to square, and it's a bit of of a faff to be honest. 

[Keraunos]

Welcome.  Good to see a wargamer in Chippenham.   I am, temporarily, just down the road from you near Corsham.
I certainly think 10mm is the direction to go in for large battles.  Have had great fun making up 30 years war armies with them.
On Napoleonics, allow some flexibility in brigade sizes if you want to represent the differences in organization between the armies of different nations.  I have brigades between 24 and 48 strong for infantry, 12 to 18 for cavalry.  When you are doing large battles I don't think you need to worry about trying to achieve accurate battalion square formations - unless you have time and table space for the figures and the fiddling around needed to deploy out of line or column into squares and back again.