I am an avid fan of Seven Years War battles gaming. While not a game that I get to play as much as I like, it is one of my favorites. There is just something about lines and lines of troops in tricornes! One of the troop types in the period are skirmish infantry battalions. There do not function the same as you see in the latter napoleonic or mass army periods and need to be reflected a little differently on the battlefield. They should not be seen as covering huge amounts of the terrain or large screens in front of battle lines. Instead, they did not really cover that much frontage, but had a great deal of depth. However, they need to be obviously different on the tabletop.
Most of my skirmish SYW figures are mounted to standard Koenigkrieg basing (I play using my own rules, but kept the basing). This means one inch wide by half inch deep base with two figures each. The problem with this basing is that it does not protect the figures (they tend to overhang). I tried to mount them on the standard 3/4″ x 1″ bases, but had similar issues with the dynamic poses skirmish models have. It also did not look as good on the table when spacing them out to represent skirmish.
The two man bases also had the issue of players wanting to spread out they’re battalions one line deep and using them in unhistorical ways. This required a whole set of special rules for the models that then became band aid solutions. The easy solution was to just fixe the basing, so that is what I did!
I decided to go with one inch square bases for the units. This allowed by to attach the figures in such a way as to protect them better. It also allowed them to cover slighting more frontage, without going crazy. Finally, it makes it easy to see who is in skirmish and streamline the rules within the standard game mechanics!
I am now goring through my armies and doing the rebasing. I started with my Austrian Grenz battalions. I had some of these on the two man bases and others on the smaller four man bases. An exacto allowed me to pop them off and I just glued them to new metal bases and flocked those. I am very happy with the look and now just have to go through the rest of my armies!
- Manteuffel