So I’ve been looking at getting into Black Powder at the 6mm scale but have tried thinking about creating realistic base sizes (when compared to the other units of the period).
So my first point of reference is the number of men in each countries line infantry.
Infantry Battalion Strength
Based on this I can then calculate the bases I need. Bearing in mind that only the British formed on two ranks when in line as opposed to the other countries mostly forming in two ranks.
I therefore need to show this on the bases. So I decided to use a simple equation of a single Baccus figure representing 12 men. Therefore I could calculate how many models I would need per unit.
I’m very new to Napoleonic Wargaming (but have a fairly decent knowledge base of the history) and very new to Black Powderany
I’ve decided to play Black Powder at 6mm. I’m only collecting a couple of small forces so that I can play against friends and family without them needing to collect army as well.
But how to go about this?
I’ve already decided that all the measurements will be carried out in centimetres rather than inches. So what about basing?
Here’s where you can meet issues. The general consensus between Napoleonic players of 6mm is to base your miniatures on 60mm or 40mm wide bases. This allows them to be used in other game systems as well. That’s great, if I decide to try out another ruleset then I can.
Looking at the Black Powder rulebook, there are three unit sizes; Small, Standard and Large. As there are three unit sizes the simplest method would be to have a number of bases relative to the size. So 3 bases for large, 2 for standard and 1 for small.
This should result in a smaller game with the ability to fit more units on the table. I will post it updated of the Miniatures of once I’ve painted and based them.
Solo Wargaming for your Favourite Games
I’m in the process of creating a series of Wargaming Aids which allow players to play their favourite games in a single player format against an AI controlled enemy army. To find out more on this click here.
For as little as £1 a month (the price of a chocolate bar) you can help support me in this endeavour and receive cool perks as a thank you, such as access to our Discord Server as well as downloadable copies of the gaming aids which you can print out and use at home.
Why not pop over to Patreon and sign up and help me in this project? Money raised will go towards making these as physical products.
Welcome to Woehammer – have you noticed the lovely feeling of no adverts (ads), no pop-ups and no auto-playing videos? Well, that’s the norm here at Woehammer.
But this is only possible because of our wonderful Patreons. So, some articles over 1 year old will now display our Patreon request at the top of the article… like this one! Don’t worry, we are not adding ads – but if you can afford to donate to the site, we would definitely appreciate it.Membership is available from just £1/month (plus taxes!!)
The pre-order of Waterloo Epic Battles has reignited an urge to play this period.
However it can be daunting to approach this period. I want to put together a few thoughts on how to get into Napoleonic Wargames.
Scale
Your first thought before perhaps even considering the rules, is what scale do you want to play?
Napoleonics can be played at any scale with manufacturers producing miniatures at everything from 2mm to 54mm and beyond.
So to answer this, how do you imagine your battles to look? Do you want small skirmishes between groups of soldiers? Or would you like to recreate the battle of Waterloo in detail? If the former is your option then perhaps look at 28mm miniatures and up. If you’re inclined by the latter then perhaps try 15mm and smaller.
To give you an idea of how these different scales look on the tabletop I’ve included a gallery below to show games at each level.
Your next question is what type of game are you after? Would you like to play an accurate simulation of the battles at the time or would you like a game you can play in a couple of hours?
There are so many different Rulesets on the market for Napoleonic wargames you’re spoilt for choice. I’ve included a list of the most popular systems below.
Black Powder by Warlord Games (Rick Priestley & Jervis Johnson)
Black Powder (2nd Edition)
Black Powder is a game which can be played in a couple of hours and is designed really for Brigade or Division level games. What does that mean? Well a brigade is a small army of perhaps 3-5 units in total (up to 5,000 men roughly). A Division is perhaps two or three Brigades.
To give you more of an idea of what this means the Battle of Waterloo involved nearly 200,000 men across three armies. The French had five Corp (being 5+ Divisions each) and four reserve Corp.
Introduction to Black Powder
Blucher by Sam Mastafa
Blucher
Blucher is focused on giving you a game at the Corp level. In this each base represents a Brigade rather than a Battalion, meaning the amount of men that can be represented on the battlefield is much greater.
Typical Blucher bases using 6mm miniatures
Blucher, again, is fast play rather than simulation meaning that you should be able to complete a game on an hour or so.
Storm of Steel Blucher Battle Report
Polemos by Baccus (Chris Grice)
Marechal d’Empire
The Polemos series have rules for perhaps every era of historical Wargames. They have two sets of rules in the one book for Napoleonic. Marechal d’Empire focuses on gaming at Corp level or above enabling you to recreate the big battles of the age. General de Division gives you rules for fighting smaller encounters of Division level. The game is focused on using the Baccus 6mm miniatures as a basis.
Polemos has a fantastic army building system where the army you use is generated through dice rolls. Meaning that your armies may not be balanced, after all many battles in the Napoleonic age weren’t balanced themselves.
Polemos based 6mm Baccus Miniatures
Sharp Practice by Too Fat Lardies
Sharp Practice
Aimed at giving you an experience of small skirmishes with heroes full of character much like the beloved TV series Sharpe from which it derives its name.
A game of Sharp Practice will take an hour or two to complete.
Miniatures based for Sharp Practice
The benefit of Sharp Practice is that through using a relatively low model count you’re not going to be painting the same colour scheme and model for 100+ times.
Introduction to Sharp Practice
Miniature Manufacturers
There are again do many great companies out there. Here are a selection of the most popular.
Victrix do both 28mm and 54mm miniatures for Napoleonic wargames. With a pack of 16 54mm miniatures costing £25 and a pack of 56 28mm miniatures will set you back around £25-£30. A Brigade would cost roughly £100-£120 through Victrix.
The Perry Twins do various 28mm box sets for Napoleonics with a pack of 40 plastic minis setting you back £20. A Brigade would cost roughly £100 through the Perry’s.
Old Glory produce excellent 10mm and 15mm miniatures. With 100 10mm miniatures setting you back £15 and 30 15mm miniatures costing £16 (command is separate at £6). Meaning a Brigade at 15mm will cost around £80-£90 or at 10mm around £40-£50.
Baccus focus on 6mm miniatures for a variety of wargame eras. They are possibly the very best 6mm miniatures you can get and are relatively cost effective as well.
Baccus 6mm
With four battalions to a pack which itself costs only £7.20 for 96 figures you’ll have small force ready for as little as £30.
I hope you’ve found this useful. I’ll hopefully be doing other articles much like this in the future.
I’ve personally been waiting for this day for a long time. Ever since Warlord Games created the Epic Scale American Civil War sets I was praying and hoping they would do them for Napoleonics.
As it is the most popular gaming period outside of Fantasy and Sci-fi I thought I wouldn’t have long to wait.
The new sets go on sale on Friday and they look wonderful. All the models are in 15mm scale and when ranked up into Battalions and Brigades they really look the part.
The French Starter Bundle
I’m looking forward to getting into this myself as I’ve always been a fan of the Napoleonic era after watching Sharpe as a boy. I never started with Black Powder before however as the scale felt off for Grand Battles and the games always looked like skirmishes to me. No more! With this set I can enjoy the games of Napoleonics I always envisioned!
Solo Wargaming for your Favourite Games
I’m in the process of creating a series of Wargaming Aids which allow players to play their favourite games in a single player format against an AI controlled enemy army. To find out more on this click here.
For as little as £1 a month (the price of a chocolate bar) you can help support me in this endeavour and receive cool perks as a thank you, such as access to our Discord Server as well as downloadable copies of the gaming aids which you can print out and use at home.
Why not pop over to Patreon and sign up and help me in this project? Money raised will go towards making these as physical products.
Welcome to Woehammer – have you noticed the lovely feeling of no adverts (ads), no pop-ups and no auto-playing videos? Well, that’s the norm here at Woehammer.
But this is only possible because of our wonderful Patreons. So, some articles over 1 year old will now display our Patreon request at the top of the article… like this one! Don’t worry, we are not adding ads – but if you can afford to donate to the site, we would definitely appreciate it.Membership is available from just £1/month (plus taxes!!)
Rick Priestley grew up in Lincoln and dtart d writing wargames as a teenager with his friend Richard Halliwell. In 1979 the pair wrote their first game Reaper while still in school. Tabletop Games (a small games publishing company with no sales output) printed their rules and they contacted Brian Ansell who worked for Asgard Miniatures at the time before his move to Citadel Miniatures. Brian Ansell put them in contact with Nottingham Toy Soldier Shop who agreed to sell the Reaper rules.
Halliwell & Preistley’s first game
With one rulebook for sale, Halliwell and Priestley collaborated on a second effort, a science fiction miniatures wargame titled Combat 3000, also published by Tabletop, that used 15mm/25mm “space marine” miniatures from Asgard. Around this time Brian Ansell left Asgard Miniatures, and with backing from Games Workshop set up Citadel Miniatures.
Priestley joined Games Workshop in 1982 as part of their subsidiary company Citadel Miniatures. At that time Citadel produced the miniatures for use in Dungeons and Dragons. Brian Ansell the manager of Citadel asked Richard Halliwell to develop Games Workshops’ first in-house game, Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Rick Priestley and Tony Ackland developed the product. Warhammer Fantasy contained many of the core mechanics or Priestley and Halliwell’s earlier game Reaper. Warhammer Fantasy was released in 1983 and was a huge success.
It allowed them a vehicle through which they could sell their own Citadel Miniatures. Earlier miniature wargames were designed to be played using generic models that could be bought from any manufacturer, but Warhammer Fantasy’s setting featured original characters with distinctive visual designs, and their models were produced exclusively by Games Workshop. This paved the way for Games Workshop to become the company it is today – all thanks to the three men who developed that first game.
Since before his time at Games Workshop Priestley had been working on a set of rules of Spaceship Combat called Rogue Trader which mixed Science fiction and fantasy elements. Priestley incorporated many aspects of this setting such as the lore and space travel into Warhammer 40,000 and dropped the ship combat element due to not having enough room in the book.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
Games Workshop planned to sell conversion kits for their fantasy line to make them useable in Rogue Trader but eventually decided to instead dedicate an entire production line to the game and in 1987 Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader was born.
During his years with Games Workshop he was involved in the design of virtually all of their top games such as Necromunda, Mordheim, Warmaster, Lord of the Rings, Gorkamorka, Mighty Empires and Warhammer Ancient Battles (affectionately known as WAB by those in Historical gaming circles).
Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB)
Rick Priestley left Games Workshop in 2009 stating that the corporate culture had grown too focused on sales and no longer cared about innovation in Games Design. He expanded on his view of Games Workshop in an article with Bell of Lost Souls in March 2015. In that, his thoughts on where Games Workshop was heading, was as a manufacturer of collectible miniatures and not games design.
After Games Workshop, Priestley co-founded Warlord Games which after Games Workshop is arguably the next biggest games and miniature manufacturer in Europe.
With Warlord Games, Rick Priestley has continued to develop fantastic wargame rulesets and being no longer held back by Games Workshop, these have included historical as well as Fantasy and Sci-Fi. The biggest games at Warlord such as Bolt Action, Black Powder, Gates of Antares, Hail Caesar, Pike and Shotte and Warlords or Erehwon have all been designed with Priestley’s input.
Bolt Action
In 2011 Rick Priestley was elected to the committee of the Society of Ancients. The Society of Ancients is a non-profit organisation that intends to promote interest in Ancient and Medieval history and wargaming.
This man is a true legend of Wargaming, is the father of Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 and has done a lot that Games Workshop fans and historical wargaming fans have to thank him for.
I have tried to give a flavour of the 115+ rules and add-on’s he’s developed below. But as with Jervis’ article, this really does not even scrape the surface as to the lore and depth of his many games. Rick, thank you! I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.
I’m in the process of creating a series of Wargaming Aids which allow players to play their favourite games in a single player format against an AI controlled enemy army. To find out more on this click here.
For as little as £1 a month (the price of a chocolate bar) you can help support me in this endeavour and receive cool perks as a thank you, such as access to our Discord Server as well as downloadable copies of the gaming aids which you can print out and use at home.
Why not pop over to Patreon and sign up and help me in this project? Money raised will go towards making these as physical products.
Welcome to Woehammer – have you noticed the lovely feeling of no adverts (ads), no pop-ups and no auto-playing videos? Well, that’s the norm here at Woehammer.
But this is only possible because of our wonderful Patreons. So, some articles over 1 year old will now display our Patreon request at the top of the article… like this one! Don’t worry, we are not adding ads – but if you can afford to donate to the site, we would definitely appreciate it.Membership is available from just £1/month (plus taxes!!)
The only major miniatures company releasing miniatures for pre-order this weekend is Games Workshop. However, I will keep an eye on the other companies in the upcoming weeks.
The Orks take centre stage this week with some very nice kits being released for the beast snaggas.
This week’s GW releases
Warlord Games have released limited edition miniature, which is available only for this weekend. Make sure to grab it while you can!
Lucky Jack
Para-Bellum miniatures, have a number of pre-orders up which I have failed to cover previously. All of these are for their title game Conquest.
Another company I have previously missed is Reaper Miniatures. There are a couple of upcoming September releases here for their Bones Black range.
The Woeful Brush Painting Competition Sponsored by SCN Hobby World
Closing date for entries 30th November. £1 entry, win your choice of a Start Collecting or Combat Patrol box set!
