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Characters for Pike & Shotte
Super DBA,Micro FOG/WAB = Impetus
Super DBA, Micro FOG/WAB = Impetus
Strange title for an article, but maybe I can explain. The BIGGEST bugbear with wargaming no matter what set of rules we use, is basing the miniatures, and by that I mean base sizes. Consider this, you have an idea for a set of rules, its brilliant, its unique, but will anyone buy it if you don’t conform to the unwritten law of base sizes handed down to us by WRG for 15mm and GW for 28mm figures. It takes a strong person to fly in the face of it all as not many wargamers want to buy into a system that uses anything different from the norm when it comes to base sizes. Warlord Games have tried to overcome this problem by veering away from head counting and using the overall frontage of a unit as the guide, but this still falls far short of a real solution, but it is a start, and even they have to concede to the GW basing dogma as their suggested base sizes for 28mm figures. If as a wargamer you decide to base your figures differently from the accepted norm then your wargaming buddies just love to point out repeatedly ‘what if you ever come to sell them?’ and ‘what if you move area?’. I get this all the time from some of my wargaming mates but still I base my figures to suit my take on a given period although having said that I will conform to others ideas especially if they already have an army, so I am not too inflexible I hope.
Anyway the point is I made a little discovery recently that made me think long and hard about bases, especially for 15mm ancients/medieval games, with DBA or FOG. Basically I had a load of Romano British and Saxons I didn’t want and I decided to paint them up and sell them, so as there were several hundred I wondered how best to divide them for selling, either per unit or DBA sized armies? I opted for the DBA approach, but after looking at the FOG lists and starter armies I found that they were almost identical albeit 4 times larger than DBA armies in their make up, and this carried through to other armies, lots of them or at least all those I checked. Now I do know a bit about FOG and I know that with very little or no alteration you can play them using single elements as 4 element battle-groups and then halving the ranges etc. it works fine, just like DBA but with step losses. Thinking further afield Hail Caesar use an element system really with their units all being of set frontages etc. and so do Impetus and even WAB players tend to go with similar 12 man cavalry units and 24 man infantry units etc.
So, having said all of that, the appeal of DBA was its ability to have an army for very little money and effort which was a refreshing change from other rules whereby you had to invest tons of time and money bringing an army to the table. Thing is though DBA didn’t look anywhere near as good with its 12 element, 50 figure army compared to a WAB or FOG type 200 figure plus army. So, my brilliant idea is to take a leaf out of Impetus’ book and build smaller armies on more vignette style bases, only smaller than impetus bases as I want to have a battle on a smaller table. So here is the plan, take DBA 28mm sized bases and use them with 15mm, basically a 60mm front x 30mm deep base for infantry and a 60mm front by 45-50mm (or whatever looks right) size base for cavalry and everything else. Infantry bases would have 4-6 men for skirmishers and 8-10 men for other infantry, cavalry would be 4-5 for skirmish cavalry and 6-8 for other cavalry, elephants, chariots, artillery all 1 per base. In terms of looks it can look pretty damn fine to say the least, and in terms of cost it would only be about double the cost of a DBA army or half the cost of a FOG army. Each element would be worth one DBA element or 4 (or 2 for elephants, art and chariots) FOG elements. You could play either games, depending on taste and you can then spend more of the rest of your time and money on another army or armies. Okay, you won’t be allowed into wargames competitions and ‘if ever you leave’ or 'if ever you want to sell them?’ you may find it harder, but if you have some like minded wargames buddies, you will be able to build up some pretty spectacular armies in no time at all and also have more fun playing as one element per unit means less time fiddling around with setting up, movement and packing away. I will be building up a couple of armies to test out my idea and I will post this as a separate article including photo’s to show how they look in the very near future. To all Impetus gamers, you already know all of this, and you are the truly enlightened ones among us.
Strange title for an article, but maybe I can explain. The BIGGEST bugbear with wargaming no matter what set of rules we use, is basing the miniatures, and by that I mean base sizes. Consider this, you have an idea for a set of rules, its brilliant, its unique, but will anyone buy it if you don’t conform to the unwritten law of base sizes handed down to us by WRG for 15mm and GW for 28mm figures. It takes a strong person to fly in the face of it all as not many wargamers want to buy into a system that uses anything different from the norm when it comes to base sizes. Warlord Games have tried to overcome this problem by veering away from head counting and using the overall frontage of a unit as the guide, but this still falls far short of a real solution, but it is a start, and even they have to concede to the GW basing dogma as their suggested base sizes for 28mm figures. If as a wargamer you decide to base your figures differently from the accepted norm then your wargaming buddies just love to point out repeatedly ‘what if you ever come to sell them?’ and ‘what if you move area?’. I get this all the time from some of my wargaming mates but still I base my figures to suit my take on a given period although having said that I will conform to others ideas especially if they already have an army, so I am not too inflexible I hope.
Anyway the point is I made a little discovery recently that made me think long and hard about bases, especially for 15mm ancients/medieval games, with DBA or FOG. Basically I had a load of Romano British and Saxons I didn’t want and I decided to paint them up and sell them, so as there were several hundred I wondered how best to divide them for selling, either per unit or DBA sized armies? I opted for the DBA approach, but after looking at the FOG lists and starter armies I found that they were almost identical albeit 4 times larger than DBA armies in their make up, and this carried through to other armies, lots of them or at least all those I checked. Now I do know a bit about FOG and I know that with very little or no alteration you can play them using single elements as 4 element battle-groups and then halving the ranges etc. it works fine, just like DBA but with step losses. Thinking further afield Hail Caesar use an element system really with their units all being of set frontages etc. and so do Impetus and even WAB players tend to go with similar 12 man cavalry units and 24 man infantry units etc.
So, having said all of that, the appeal of DBA was its ability to have an army for very little money and effort which was a refreshing change from other rules whereby you had to invest tons of time and money bringing an army to the table. Thing is though DBA didn’t look anywhere near as good with its 12 element, 50 figure army compared to a WAB or FOG type 200 figure plus army. So, my brilliant idea is to take a leaf out of Impetus’ book and build smaller armies on more vignette style bases, only smaller than impetus bases as I want to have a battle on a smaller table. So here is the plan, take DBA 28mm sized bases and use them with 15mm, basically a 60mm front x 30mm deep base for infantry and a 60mm front by 45-50mm (or whatever looks right) size base for cavalry and everything else. Infantry bases would have 4-6 men for skirmishers and 8-10 men for other infantry, cavalry would be 4-5 for skirmish cavalry and 6-8 for other cavalry, elephants, chariots, artillery all 1 per base. In terms of looks it can look pretty damn fine to say the least, and in terms of cost it would only be about double the cost of a DBA army or half the cost of a FOG army. Each element would be worth one DBA element or 4 (or 2 for elephants, art and chariots) FOG elements. You could play either games, depending on taste and you can then spend more of the rest of your time and money on another army or armies. Okay, you won’t be allowed into wargames competitions and ‘if ever you leave’ or 'if ever you want to sell them?’ you may find it harder, but if you have some like minded wargames buddies, you will be able to build up some pretty spectacular armies in no time at all and also have more fun playing as one element per unit means less time fiddling around with setting up, movement and packing away. I will be building up a couple of armies to test out my idea and I will post this as a separate article including photo’s to show how they look in the very near future. To all Impetus gamers, you already know all of this, and you are the truly enlightened ones among us.