6mm WSS Census

Click on over to The Miniatures Page and add to the 6mm WSS census on the 18th Century Discussion message board.

I'm on travel this week, so my posts are going to be abbreviated.

My Workspace

Here's my workspace. I need to clean up a bit. It seems to be an LZ for whatever I don't want to deal with completely at the moment. It's a heavy-duty computer table that I salvaged. I needed more storage space, so I cobbled together a hutch out of two shoe stacker units and a wall cabinet from Home Depot. Works in progress go on short shelves on the left. Paints, CDs, and the "grey hoards go on the right.


The left hand drawers have tools, brushes, and basing materials.

And here are my "supervisors"...


Oh, I just updated the list of links on the right. Take a look.

A few quick looks at the armies

France
Well, being the senior partner on the pro-Bourbon side, they are my largest single contingent.

Twenty-two battalions of infantry from 14 different regiments (2 @ 4 bn, 1 @ 3bn, 11 @ 1bn)
For example, here's Regiment le Roi


Sixteen squadrons of cavalerie legere from 7 regiments (5 @ 2 sq, 2 @ 3 sq)
Twenty-one squadrons of dragoons in 7 regiments
Artillery: 24 guns and 8 mortars (with more lurking in the wings)

Seems dragoon heavy when standing alone, but they can get help from ...

Bavaria
I have enough foot, I think, to do any battle before 1705, and too much for the period of exile in Flanders. Here is the Leibregiment.
I also have a large artillery contingent for them, too much: 20 guns

Plus,
3 squadrons Leibgarde, (here they are, in column of squadrons)


15 squadrons Kurassiere, and 3 squadrons of dragoons.

That's not all the blue coats out there...

Cologne
That's another 3 sqdn of horse and 2 of dragoons.

There's still more...
Spain
All I have for them is 3 squadrons of cavalry from Flanders.

Time for a grand review of the army. Later.

Fleeing Troops, New Book

I need markers for fleeing or routed troops. I see that Irregular Miniatures does a base of routing troops. Probably time to give them a try.

Also, the new edition of "The Spanish Armies of Philip V" by James Hinds is a significant update to the first edition. I'm still not quite ready to commit to expanding my War of the Spanish Succession into Spain proper, so I don't think I'll go beyond the few Spanish troops in Flanders and Italy (and maybe not even Italy).

Quiet Evening, Accomplishing Little

Well, my casualty figures make nice markers to indicate casualty levels before checking for a step loss. I just finished the "Mark II" casualty markers, which put the figures on a background of red, orange, or yellow, rather than painting the base edge. They are all mounted on 20mm round bases and the color doesn't show up very well on the edge of the "Mark I".

I finally got the divider built for the box holding most of my building collection.


Lastly, I'm in the market for upgrades to my "troop carrier". Years ago, I found an old Letraset display case at a flea market. It had an open front and inside rails that let it hold 12 boxes, like transparency film. I put a door and hasp on it and added a handle on top and have carried troops around in it for years. I'm on the look-out for a 9x12 baking sheet with a 3/4 to 1" rim on it for new troop trays. The old masonite trays I'm using, with the thick plywood unit bases, mean that the infantry's flags are dragging on the tray above.

Musings

Since I created my 4-page summary of G� P� I don't open the rulebook very often. In fact, I just picked it up and found a napkin from Independence Air inside the front cover.

On the other hand, I'm digging through the army list volume so much, the binding is starting to go. Before anything bad, like losing a page, happens, I'm going to finish pulling it apart and put it in a notebook: if I can find one for A4 paper.


Yeah! I finally got a picture to post.


This is the siege of Bethune. This would be a cool city/fortress to model with all the marshlands and the ancient castle built into the citadel.

Basing and Second Thoughts

I don't like fooling with smaller bases than I feel I have to. So, every base is a single battalion, squadron, or battery of 4 cannon. I like big units of 6mm figures. So, every battalion has 3-4 ranks and every squadron has 3 ranks.

At 1cm =25 paces, my squadrons and batteries are crowded. Also, my squadron depth of 4cm is inconvenient for a lot of things, including movement and formation change mechanics and also cross-compatibility with Polemos.

I'm thinking of reducing my squadrons and batteries to 3cm depth. Then my squadrons would be 6 figures and I could nearly instantly expand my cavalry by 50%. Reducing the depth of batteries would only make a bad situation worse. Perhaps this could be alleviated by widening them to 3cm at the same time. I need to look into the relative effects of making a 4-gun battery take up 50% more frontage, versus increasing the Fire Points of the battery to account for 6 guns.

Lastly, if I sought cross-compatibilty of basing with Polemos, my Anglo-Dutch are going to need a rebasing, and a slight reduction in figures from 40 in an 8cm front to 30 in a 6cm front. Presto! A 33% increase in battalions. (OK, not so fast, there's a bit of repainting and painful rebasing involved in all this.)

Casualty markers

For my primary ruleset, I decided to create markers to indicate casualty levels. They are 20mm round markers with a single casualty figure from Baccus in the middle. There are three levels of casualties and so I represent them by basing the figure on a field of yellow, orange or red as the level of severity goes up. Also, since the casualty level adds up and 3 of one level trades in for 1 of the next, I have painted up 4 yellow and 2 orange for each red casualty level marker. Hmm, maybe that's not quite the right way to do it, but I always seem to have lots of units with 1-2 yellow markers. It's only paint - I can redo some later.

Pictures to follow... as soon as I figure out blogger's inexplicable picture posting errors.


I figured it out! See how the newer ones just "pop"?

What Additional Figures I'd Like to See

Spanish Dragoons
Spanish Grenadiers
Hungarian Hussars
Hungarian Hayduks
kettledrummers!
Austrian cavalry musicians with the pillbox hats

I'll take suggestions for suitable surrogate figures.