Sunday, August 17, 2008

Thoughts on 15mm WSS Project --

As I believe I mentioned some time ago, I have been thinking off-and-on about doing a "War of Spanish Succession" or "Nine Years War" project in 15mm.

Now this is not something that I'll be tackling immediately . . . it is a future project . . . but I've been reading and looking at various rule sets. So far I've not found a set of rules that I'm sure I like.

Too many rule sets are either too complex or use a basing system that I dislike or don't operate at the level I want.

I want battalions and squadrons to be the basic units (not brigades and regiments). I want enough figures in a battalion that it looks to me like something other than skirmishers -- which means two ranks of figures. And most of all I don't want to spend all of my time looking up tables and figuring out a laundry list of modifiers. I want something simple and fun.

So I've been thinking of adapting my "Tricorne Wars" rules to 15mm. I happen to have a lot of Editions Brokaw figures (which are smallish 15s). Four of these (at least for certain poses) will fit on a 20mm square stand.

If I use that for the "volley fire" armies and 25mm square troops for the "platoon fire" armies, the rough frontage differences will not be far off. At a rough 1:30 scale, this would mean most battalions would fall in the 5 to 6 stand (20-24 figure) range . . . some smaller and some larger, but a lot would be about that size.

Now at the same scale, typical squadrons would be 4, 5 or 6 figures in size (representing squadrons of 120, 150 and 180 respectively). Of course this difference will require a few changes in my mechanics, but these sizes should fit historical units.

As the above suggests, my thought for the WSS is to use historical armies as opposed to Imagi-Nations.

Of course, I'm still reading and this project is for some time in the future . . . but at least I've made a mental start on it.


-- Jeff

5 comments:

Capt Bill said...

Bluebear Jeff,
Although my infantry units are 11 figure and cavalry 6 figure unit, if we play a small battle we put two two unit together which gives a very solid look.
Best regards...Bill

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Jeff - did you see this on TMP?

http://theminiaturespage.com/news/236073/

I checked with Mike at Black Hat and he sent me the following:

"I am working through the master castings at the moment and then will move on to making production moulds, hopefully next week.

I hope to have some of the infantry ready for Colours, but do have a number of other moulds and releases to sort out as well.

I'll let you know nearer to the time how I'm getting on!

There are some more photos of the greens here:

British Artillery:

http://www.blackhat.co.uk/images/bits/marlburian/BritishArtillery.jpg

French Artillery and Labourers (who will be in the British Artillery Crew pack as well)

http://www.blackhat.co.uk/images/bits/marlburian/FrenchArtillery.jpg

French Infantry:

http://www.blackhat.co.uk/images/bits/marlburian/FrenchInfantry.jpg

French Infantry Command:

http://www.blackhat.co.uk/images/bits/marlburian/FrenchCommand.jpg

British Command:

http://www.blackhat.co.uk/images/bits/marlburian/BritishCommand.jpg

as a sneak peek of some of the other figures"

Lovely figures!

Bluebear Jeff said...

Steve,

They are lovely indeed . . . but I suspect that their cost to me will put them out of reach.

And "thank you" since I had NOT seen this information.


-- Jeff

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

Hello there Jeff,

Have you considered Charge or BAR rules? I imagine that they could be easily modified to suit your eventual figure/unit sizes and to reflect the peculiarities of early 18th century combat. Just a thought.

Best Regards,

Stokes

Anonymous said...

Hullo, Jeff

First, thanks for posting the Catalan link. Very useful. As to the WSS project, have you considered the Koening Krieg adaptation - I think that it's called Jeu du Roi or something similar. Koenig Krieg is being updated and republished soon by an Australian group, and on their website there is comment about using the rules with bigger units. Might be worth a look - the rules are simple and fun (well, they are to my mind).

John