British Infantry Question
Chaps, Despite my better inclinations, I have been persuaded to build a small British force. I am now uncertain what to do about basing the infantry. Given that British infantry fought in 2 ranks (excluding the fileclosers) as opposed to the French in 3 ranks, a British battalion should be approximately 50% longer than a French battalion of the same strength. I can see three options for dealing with this, as follows: 1. Base the figures further apart (15mm per figure rather than 10mm). Advantage: It covers the appropriate distance. Disadvantage: It looks too loose. 2. Increase the number of figures per battalion by 50% and maintain the basing per figure. The additional figures could also be used to represent the alleged advantage of firing in 2 ranks rather than 3 (although the 1791 regulations describe the 3rd rank as firing). Advantages: It covers the appropriate distance and looks ok. Disadvantages: It involves more figures and might make the unit too powerful when firing and taking casualties. 3. Ignore it and just keep the battalions the same size as similar sized French battalions. Advantage: Simplicity Disadvantage: It is a mis-representation of the ground covered by the unit. Could any of you with a British army give me some advice on how you deal with this? Colin

I must admit I have opted for simplicity; the issues I can see with your option 1 and 2 based on our groups experience: - Option one - the British bases being dispportionately large will cause a greater chance of unforming troops to the rear when lines are broken - our experience is that line formations are incredibly brittle and even the British in line bonus doesn't have much effect on advancing columns (or it could be my dice throwing!!). We have found that some of our group base to the maximum size as offered in the rules, whereas others try to have the smallest bases possible to increase manoeuvreability and the amount of units that can be packed into a given frontage. - Option 2 - Increasing the number of figures is just going to exacerbate the disadvantage the British are at under this ruleset (in my opinion). Whilst the rules do state that no nationalities trained troops are any better than another, in points based games (which we mostly play in an evening) the British are singled out for a 10 points per unit penalty for non-skirmish infantry (again in my opinion the plus 1 British in line bonus does not compnsate for the in built outnumbering effect of the 10 point penalty). In a typical evening game the British are at least outnumbered by a couple of battalions, so to increase the figures in one unit will compound this problem.

Colin, I am using the same size bases as my French, just smaller units, so a battalion is 5 bases of 6 for a 30 figure unit.

Hi Colin I have also followed jezamonos and based my 30s in 5 bases of 6 figures. My guards are in 40s and 5 bases of 8 figures, this does seem to work well with the rules. A line could only bring so much of its firepower to bear on an advancing foe and with the 30° arc it does compensate for the line length. It does mean you can have more of a line and use the wheel to the flank to good effect (if you roll good dice). I have some of my Brits on our website, please check it out. Cheers Kev