This is the story of a compulsion that I am sure we have all endured at some time. To take on a new project that I lacked the time for. In a new scale (that I wasn't sure about). Using an unusual basing system (that means I am stuck with the toys now I have bought them). The only normal things about this story are the rules. It all started one day when we went on a trip to the Globe Theatre. Walking along the Embankment by the River Thames we came to an open-air book fair. There was a copy of Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy in good condition for less than half what it would cost new. So of course I bought it. I then started to think as I read the book that perhaps there was something to the ACW after all. Previously the idea of a bunch of amateurs lining up to shoot one another had held little appeal. So I went through my back issues of Miniature Wargames and Wargames Illustrated checking out the articles. Then a quick surf to MagWeb.com and The Zouave completed the ensnaring process. I really did not need another period (I have 15mm Ancients, 20mm WWII, and 25mm SYW - all incomplete) - I have a large pile of lead at the foot of the wardrobe waiting to be painted. I am a slow painter and it is a rare day when I complete a unit. A visit to my local games store produced Johnny Reb III, Fire and Fury and the F&F Scenario books. Studying these produced nirvana for me - rules that I liked and which looked like they would give a realistic result. My problem with wargaming is that I usually love the figures and hate the rules. DBA/DBM with its PIP rolls and anachronistic terms leaves me cold. Warfare in the Age of Reason with its pathetic 12 figure battalions - how can one hope to capture the problems of manoeuvring lines of troops with 12 men? 37 men in two rows is more like it. So far everything was going superbly well. I had found a period, found rules that I liked and now needed figures. This was where I began to hit problems - my local store (Leisure Games in Finchley, London) has an excellent stock of rules etc but few figures (well, plenty of Dungeons and Dragons rubbish but not real soldiers). They only had Minifigs 15mm figures which I thought were pretty crap - okay for "bulking out" a quality manufacturers products but no good on their own. At this point two things I had read coalesced into a thought (these moments are rare for me). There had been an article in Miniature Wargames about 6mm troops and how great they were. This is, of course, rubbish to anyone who has lost a German tank battalion under some lichen, only to have it reappear three months later in the midst of a French 25mm battalion during a different battle. This chap suggested that shrinking the base size to squeeze a larger area onto the table (but still have 12 figures representing an 800 man Prussian unit) is a mistake. Instead, you should keep the larger base sizes and fit more small figures onto them (so you have more figures representing the Prussian unit). This looks much better on the table. Well I thought "with F&F at 15mm you can fit Shiloh onto a 6'x8' table" how much bigger a battle would you want? So no need to do that. Anyway who fights ACW in 6mm? Everyone uses 15mm or perhaps 25's for regimental actions. I then remembered a couple of reviews in The Zouave that had raved about GHQ's 10mm figures. At this point I did not want to start a new scale (while I could not see how Roman bath-houses could have much utility on the ACW battlefield I did not want to add another box of buildings to the others I already had). I thought I could keep this under control by buying enough Peter Pig 15mm troops to commit me irrevocably to this scale. Other wargamers fought ACW at this scale and with these rules - I could come out of the closet and fight other people, at last! There was a wargames show that Saturday. It all seemed so easy ... You will note that I moved from "No way. No how." to considering possible scales in the blink of an eye. I am sure that all true wargamers know exactly how I felt. I walked into the hall and the first thing I saw was the UK distributor for GHQ having a sale of (you guessed it) 10mm ACW figures. They had some painted ones... They were gorgeous ... Much nicer looking than most 15mm figures I had seen. And only E3.00 per bag.... The only thing I bought from Peter Pig were some 30mm by 30mm bases for my 20mm WWII project. I was mad enough to consider buying some of their figures, even after my first purchase of the day. I got the GHQ figures home and began painting. The articles I had read were true. 10mm figures are easier to paint. I dashed off a bag of infantry in an evening and then began to think more seriously about basing them. I could do what F&F and JRIII suggested and shrink the 15mm base size but did not think I could live with thumb-nail sized bases. So I began to stand the GHQ men on my 30x30mm bases. JRIII specifies 3 or 4 figures to a base (at a scale of 1:30ish) with four bases making a regiment. This gives from 360 - 480 real men in each unit. F&F simply said each base was either 150 or 200 real men represented by 3 - 5 figures depending on what took your fancy. I found I could line up 8 figures in two ranks but they were pretty closely packed. Then I remembered good ole Shelby saying that ACW officers were still working from Napoleonic drill manuals so this might not be too unrealistic. The thought crossed my brain that if I were to use the 30mm by 30mm bases I could mount 6 or 8 figures to a base. This in turn would allow me to use JRIII - all I would need to do would be to edit the firing tables so that all the numbers were doubled (both firers and casualties). As F&F just works by bases the number of figures does not matter. In each case I would use the sets as written re ranges and movement rates (they both regard 15mm as standard) but with 10mm troops. So I would use 10mm troops based on 30mm by 30mm bases which are fractionally larger than the recommended frontage for 15mm (but neither the F&F nor JRIII chaps seem to be rule Nazis so who cares) but are deeper than either rule-set provided for. Still my fertile little mind was on a roll and I got out a sharp knife and a ruler and I scored a line 10mm from the rear of the base. I stuck the figures to the front 20mm and terrained the base up to the line. I then painted the rear of the base light grey (this was a Southern unit after all) and wrote the name of the regiment and brigade in the left 10mm x 20mm. Eg: 28 Va. (1) Garnett This indicated that the stand was the first stand of the 28 th Virginia Regiment of Garnett's Brigade. I had a book (Gettysburg 1863 by Carl Smith) that gave the strength for each regiment present at the battle and I decided to use this as the basis for my figure strengths. The 28th Virginia had 333 men at the battle and was represented by four 6 figure bases (remember as we have doubled the number of figures we have halved the figure scale from 1:30 to 1:15). And here is where I have my big complaint against 10mm. The 28th Virginia in 10mm just has no heft to it. I mean I painted the little blighters and even I am not excited by them. 10mm just cannot compare in the visual stakes to 25mm on a man for man basis. However when you paint up the remaining units in Garnett's Brigade (an additional 3 regiments with 24 figures in each and a unit - 8 th Virginia - with 12) and line them up then you start to get somewhere. Of course Garnett's Brigade in F&F is only seven bases strong so the impact is not as great when using that rule-set. I still needed to add flags and hit another problem. The Confederate battle-flags were, historically, wimpy little things that looked tiny in 10mm scale. I could not see my forces marching into battle with titchy flags like that. So I used 15mm flags (which are thus 40% oversized) which look great. After all I was going with the extra figures largely for the look of the thing. I have painted a number of Union regiments and labelled them as units from Harrow's Brigade in Gibbon's Division. Of these units only one regiment (19~h Maine) has needed 8 figures per stand. So far I have fought a small number of engagements but with infantry only. Soon after taking the plunge I contacted Mr Burgess at The Old North State Figure Company who sent me a sample of his figures for $25 (or £ 16). He was kind enough to send me some pictures of his 10mm riverboats (if I had seen these boats earlier I might have based my units on those fighting at Shiloh!). These figures are not as detailed as the GHQ figures but are much cheaper and with a better variety of poses. I found that by opening the six bags (each with 60 infantry) he sent me, separating the figures with kepis and then mixing the contents of the individual bags I got a real variety in poses throughout my units. Mr Burgess also included some artillery and some cavalry (I had asked for a selection from his range) and this has brought a problem to a head. The guns will fit quite nicely on the 30mm by 30mm bases but crewing them is a problem. Both JRIII and F&F just specify 2 or 3 figures per gun which translates as 4 or 6 figures if I stick to the same ratio as with the infantry. Mr Burgess packs four crew per gun so this is the strength I will be using throughout. In JRIII the number of crewmen has a significance - each figure visually represents a two gun section, so a four gun battery would have two crew figures whereas a six gun battery would have three. I got around this in two ways. First I used a 40mm by 40mm base for the larger batteries to reflect the increased frontage (80 yards as opposed to 50 yards) of the three section battery. Secondly I note the number of sections in my labelling: A Btty 3 1 RI Arty 3R The above indicates that A Battery, 1st Rhode Island Artillery had 3 sections equipped with 3" Rifles. This works well for the Union batteries which were largely composed of a single variety of gun. The Southern batteries often used mixed calibre weaponry within each battery. I therefore have had to "fudge" the composition of Confederate batteries so that each battery is composed of guns of a single calibre. JRIII specifies 2 or 3 mounted figures for a cavalry base, which would translate out to four to six 10mm figures. I found I could base 4 mounted figures on a 40mm by 40mm stand and this would translate to a 240 man battalion for JRIII. I have not actually added any cavalry to my forces but looking at the Gettysburg book I can use the four man mounting by splitting the 450 man strength of most Northern cavalry regiments into two battalions each. This is consistent with JRIII in terms of numbers of figures but is wrong in terms of base size. So I am still mulling this particular problem over. My references to regimental strengths and organisations present at Gettysburg have probably told you where I am going with this project. Previously when I have taken up a period I have painted whatever units took my fancy in no particular order. For instance when I was painting my French SYW army in 25mm I added some Irish units purely because I was bored painting grey coats and thought red coats and green cuffs would make a nice change. This time I decided that I would add units to some kind of plan. That plan, initially is to be able to do the Fire & Fury scenario for Pickett's charge and to expand from there. Although I am thinking in terms of F&F initially when labelling I have been careful to include the details for using each base in the same scenario for JRIII. So Garnett's Brigade for F&F is the JRIII 28th Virginia plus three bases from 18 th Virginia. According to the Gettysburg scenario description in Fire & Fury you need "fairly large armies" (their words not mine - I regard them as bloody huge) to play all of Gettysburg out. The statistic that leapt out at me is 582 infantry stands (or between 3500 and 4650 10mm men) plus cavalry, divisional and corps commanders and marker stands. I have not dared to do the same calculations for JRIII but figure around 1000 figures are needed just on the Confederate side to do Pickett's Charge in JRIII terms. At a scale of 1:15 you are talking 7,500 Union troops and 4,650 Southerners for the battle as a whole. Of course, JRIII is not really intended (I believe) for huge battles but for smaller brigade. and divisional actions. But think how it would look with 12,000 figures on the table! Recently I saw the two Osprey books on Gettysburg from their "Order of Battle" Series (6&7 Army of N.Virginia and Army of the Potomac 2nd July 1863). These books not only list the OB for each army down to regimental level and below but also list the moves made by each unit as the day went on. There is what appears to be an excellent large-scale map of the field. This could well be the basis of a model of the terrain as the maps include contour lines etc. Of course, the terrain would be interesting. With a horizontal scale of 50 to 60 yards to the inch both sets of rules makes the normal compromise between vertical and horizontal scale (if a six foot man is 10mm then 25mm should be 15 feet, or five yards). Several hills on the battlefield were about a hundred feet high - this translates to around 15cms tall on the table using the vertical scale of the figures but much less if using the horizontal scale of the rules. I guess I need to think about a vertical scale for the terrain that allows things like trees to remain in scale but which does not result in the ridgelines being near-vertical cliffs. Back to MWAN #109 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 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