Battalion Structure for Drums of War

With my up-and-coming French and Indian War antics in mind, I have been looking at unit organisations for my French and British Armies.

My favoured RSM miniatures come in three main poses for the infantry; marching, advancing with the bayonet forward and a stand- and kneel-and-fire pose. I've been thinking of how to make this work for me.

In the "Drums of War" rules, a batallion is made up of two or more "Grand Divisions" and small five figure "elite companies. I had been thinking of how to make the figure poses work for me to help identify units by type on the table-top and came up with the following:

Centre Company troops (to use an anachronism) would be represented by troops in a firing-line pose.

Grenadiers would be represented by figures in the stately "march attack" pose.

Skirmishers or light troops might be represented by troops in the advancing pose.

The uniformity of pose means that there might be no gross dissimilarities of pose when elite companies were formed into ad hoc Grenadier or light batallions. Furthermore, I very much like the idea of one day being able to do the defense of the hieghts of Carillon with the Lights forming their historical piquet duties, whilst the Line fire over the log entrenchment and the Grenadiers stand steadfastly behind them, ready to seal any breach that might be made in their order. Note here that at the left of the line is the light company.

At the right are the Grenadiers.

The battallion from above; the "hatmen" or centre companies have been grouped in two Grand Divisions, flanked by the elite corps.

The sharp-eyed among you will note that the centre companies are in a three-deep line with the induvidual figures offset to allow the rear ranks not to perforate the skulls of the front when offering fire.

The Niagara Campaign

RSM British infantry painted as 44th Foot

I've been thinking a little about the material resources I'll need to to my Fort Niagara Campaign next year.

I have been asking myself the usual questions about the sort of things I'd like to represent on the tabletop, what I am able to do on a map and what I would like to see played out in a demonstration game.

Starting with Fort Little Niagara, it seems to me that this was a simple palisaded for that guarded the start of the portage road. There seems little information on it's ground-plan, so I am assuming it was a square/rectangular palisade with a timber blockhouse at each corner. I hope that Rene Chartrands' projected third Osprey on the forts of New France can shed a little light in tim for me.

This volume will also cover Fort Niagara itself, although I have the book on the siege which reproduces the many excellent maps and cross sections of the works as they were in 1759. I hope it can resolve certain matters of detail for me. It's a model I really want to build for myself; perhaps eventually as a demonsration game, and I've enough information on it to do a reasonable reporduction.

In conjunction with this (and perhaps expanding on the thought of making this a demo game) I like the idea of using the two brigs the French had available to them to stage some amphibous operations; I find myself inspired by Hornblower.

I'm more and more tempted to use Bill Protz's "Drums of War" rules, although I have just lost my second copy. I've about torn the house apart looking for them, but no luck!

Rogers' Rangers

Not too much to do on the weekend except watch Season 1 of Battlestar Glactica on DVD and do a little painting. I fished a few Rogers' Rangers out of my lead pile and cleaned them up. With only three poses to play with as can be seen here, you ned to vary their colour schemes to give them a little more visual interest.

As usual, nice clean figures with a minimum of clutter to subtract from the basics - good anatomy and an elegant line. RSM Figures from the chaps at DPC. There is a URL in the comments section of this post.

I bought these because I'd both not settled on a French and Indian War project for next year at the ime and also becaise I'd never painted any of these figures - heaven knows, I think I've painted at least one or two of every other figure that DPC put out! I also think it'd be nice to use them in skirmish games.