Any woodcarver knows that the wood doesn't change; you can cooperate or not as you choose, and you'd best cooperate when possible. To a photographer, "grainy" implies something else: the point at which the detail gives out in a photograph. Wargamers have this too. the player of Volley and Bayonet resolves a brigade attack by rolling one die. His opponent either loses a strength point or not. The player of Complete Brigadier might happily spend an afternoon making that same brigade assault, where the skirmish gamer might spend the day with one of the light companies in a woods on the flank of the assault. One system is not better than another, anymore than a 1:25,000 map is better or worse than a glove. Each serves a purpose on its level. Chippewa should not be fought out with Volley and Bayonet, nor should Borodino be done with Chef de Battalion. On the other hand, either can be a fun battle with the appropriate rules. Problem is, most of us are happy in a period, but not quite happy enough to build one army for Maida and another for Wagram if we can avoid it. how can we as wargamers and rules writers help one another out here. The answer lies in basing, and the grain of a wargame. Just as eventually any picture dissolves into bits of light and dark (or colors) so a wargame has a distinct "grain" determined by the smallest units that can maneuver, the ground scale, and easiest to keep track of - the smallest number of soldiers than can be lost at a time. If the smallest formations are regiments and the least casualties 150 - 200 men, you are well advised not to fight Sandlemarkt with those rules. On the other hand, recording 20 men lost at Gravelotte St. Privat or Solferino, is the work of a masochist with a drill hall, not a wargamer with a basement. Most of us would like to lose weight and be in better shape, but have little enthusiasm for diet and exercise. As wargamers, most of us want to fight huge battles in a limited area without losing track of minor tactics and individual battalions. Guys, you can no more fight Waterloo in your den and keep track of battalion formations than I can do fried food and get rid of my love handles. Cleverness helps you make the hard choices, not avoid them. you can fight Borodino and still keep track of the Voltigeur Company of the 1/105th, of course. You just can't do both at the same time. Let's take a couple of easy examples. I feel like Second Empire today. Going through the shelves, I find Napoleon the Little. Single stands are the smallest units, and the stands are 1.5" wide, representing battalions, and take four hits. All I have are l0mm. castings mounted four infantry to a V stand. I can reduce distances by 1/3, and mark a casualty for each hit. If I have enough castings and table, I can make 16 castings in a two ranks a stand and increase distances by a third. A good system for Magenta or Sedan, if I can ever understand the musketry rules. But I'd rather fight a corps size action. No problem! In the Age of Bismark and Napoleon III is 1: 100 or 1: 120, and mounts two infantry (I 5mm) on a I " stand. I use a 4-casting I Omm stand instead, maintaining all distances, but doubling firers and casualties. I now have a 1:50/60 game, and I've eliminated the pesky 1/2 casting casualty. But there are still interesting battles of the period too small for BNIII. Fear not! Grande Battaille, Grande Victoire is a 1:60 game which mounts two 15mm infantry on stand 7/8" by 1/2". Once more fetching out my trusty 10mils, I substitute a I" stand for the 7/8" - surely formation widths and firing ranges aren't that precise - and double the required castings. Understand, none of this affects the grain of the games. My 1,000 man Prussian battalion still dies in 200 man chunks in GBGV, but by making intelligent adjustments I can fight a larger swathe of the battles of the Second Empire than if I relied on a single rules set. Working against the grain, example 1: A rules set in which each stand may sustain five casualties (being removed with the fifth) but has only three castings on the base. Thus a written record must be maintained or a marker follow every individual stand of the army. Solutions? Three. (1) Since stands are battalions, keep a roster for each brigade and remove a stand with every fifth casualty. (2) Alter the ground scale and use stands containing four or five castings. The old "right of the toothpick is alive" system provides a visual status report without a roster. (3) Keep the ground scale and stand size, but reduce the casting scale, placing five or ten castings on each stand. On to the the age of reason. To fight a full-scale battle in a really confined space, I use (ahem) "Zorndorf" out of MWAN. One stand = 1 battalion, and the available stands are 1" with 10 or 12 5mm castings. Say I have a bit more room available, Arofan Gregory's Frederick the Great uses two stands per battalion, each of which takes three hits. Marking of four casualties per hit is easy enough, and Gregory's preferred stands were within 1/8" of mine. But I've still got room, or I want to fight a smaller battle. Fear not! By switching to Age of Reason, you have 4" battalion frontages using the 15mm scale. One more set is needed, though: something suitable for Braddock or Bushy Run, with multiple stands per company. Any suggestions? I cheated on both examples, of course. Except for NTL, my bases are the same width as those called for in the rules, and my number of castings is a whole-number multiple of those called for in the rules. Fewer castings than the allowable number of hits makes rosters necessary, and changing frontages shifts distances. Now, can someone lend me a hand in Napoleonics? Good luck, and those of you who are writing rules, PLEASE don't invent a new basing system!  Back to MWAN #108 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com