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.