Using BP rules with 15mm or 10mm

This topic has 8 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 1 month ago by Paul Sutcliffe.

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March 21, 2021 at 1:58 pm #185005

Nigel Heather
Participant

Are there any good recommendations for use BP rules (Napoleonic is my particular favourite) for 15mm.

I’ve tried googling, seen plenty of discussions and opinions but nothing really solid.

One suggestion is to use centimetres instead of inches – but unlear what should be done with frontages as these are expessed in mm in the rules – do you convert them to inches and then to centimetres (like 250mm becomes 10 inches which then becomes 10cm or 100mm). The discussions also suggested than musket and atillery ranges would need to be adjusted with respect to the frontage sizes – suggesting that changing inches to centimetres doesn’t quite work.

Wondering that now that ACW is out, which I believe is roughly 15mm, whether there has been some firming up how BP rules can work with 15mm.

Cheers,

Nigel

March 21, 2021 at 2:22 pm #185006

Garry Wills
Participant

I play with 15mm figures and convert everything to centimetres. For the frontages I do as you suggested, convert to inches and change that to centimetres. Seems to work well. I make two other changes that work for me. With 15mm scale the normal 6×4 battlefield represents a bigger space and consequently I increase artillery ranges by 25%, as these seem to have been artificially reduced for 28mm tables. The other change I make is to increase the brigade order distance from 6cm to 12cm.

March 21, 2021 at 3:16 pm #185007

Big Al
Participant

I would just convert to centimetres because it is easier and you have no maths to work out. I don’t care how simple the maths is, not having to do any at all is always easiest!

If you’re going with the ACW sets, the base sizes have been sorted out for you. The only thing I would suggest and it is what I am going to do, is to reduce the number of bases from 5 (I really don’t understand the decision to use this odd number for a unit) to 4 bases per standard unit. This brings the unit front down to a more realistic size and also keeps things simple – add 2 bases for a large unit, remove 2 bases for a small unit.

March 21, 2021 at 4:28 pm #185009

Nigel Heather
Participant

Just to be clear, I’m not thinking of ACW, it just peaked my interest because being roughly 15mm WG must have done some good research into how best to convert the BP rules.

On the subject of increasing artillery range, I’d heard similar about musket range too.

Cheers,

Nigel

March 21, 2021 at 7:22 pm #185010

Big Al
Participant

You’d like to think, wouldn’t you.

It is quite possible that should the ACW thing take off, they may bring out Napoleonic in this scale, too.

Now, as you May know, Warlord have been vague on how to deal with distances with smaller scales, suggesting all of the things that you mentioned, without coming off the fence and declaring one or the other.

As I have already mentioned, though, they have made a definite statement on base size by creating the ones for the ACW sets.

March 22, 2021 at 9:23 am #185014

Charge The Guns
Participant

We used BP quite a lot for 15mm Naps and ACW. We’ve halved the number of inches (perhaps some club members don’t have rules with centimetres? 😉 ). We have never really worried about the relationship of move / weapon ranges and unit frontages. The key thing we’ve tried to do with unit frontages is have the two sides have the same basic frontages for units of the same size.

We have also used 10mm for WW1 early 1914 games. In this case we have halved movement in inches again, but have kept weapon ranges the same. This makes firepower a lot more deadly, which seems appropriate for 1914. Once again unit frontages were kept consistent between the two armies, but we didn’t worry about any relation between frontages and move/range.

March 23, 2021 at 7:36 pm #185052

Nigel Heather
Participant

A basing question.

For 28mm the rulebook recommends putting 4 infantry figures in a 2 x 2 pattern on a 40mm x 40mm base.

And then it gives the unit frontages as

Standard 200-250mm (5 to 6 bases)
Large 260-325mm (7 to 8 bases)
Small 120-150mm (3 bases)

Firstly, a question for seasoned players – how many bases would you go for in each unit, is it best to have an even number or an odd number?

If I go for 15 mm there are two approaches, half everything or change inches for centimetres.

So then I might have a base with 2 x 2 infantry figures on a 20mm x 20mm base

So a 28mm standard unit would have the same number of figures as a 15mm unit – does that sound right?

Cheers,

Nigel

March 23, 2021 at 11:16 pm #185056

Charge The Guns
Participant

Hi Nigel. In my group we also use 4 x 28mm on a 40mm by 40mm base. We typically have 6 bases for a regular unit (24 figs), 4 bases for a small (16 figs) and 8 bases for a large unit (32 figs). You will note that two small units equal one large. This makes sense to us as a small unit is typically 2 stamina and a large is 4 (for ‘normal’ troops).

It is a long time since I based 15mm but I would go for something similar.

March 29, 2021 at 8:24 am #185103
Paul Sutcliffe
Participant
Hi Nigel,

Hope you’re well.

We use Black Powder for playing big games in 15mm so I thought it might be useful to share how we’ve done it.

All our Napoleonics are 15mm and are based in a DBx type way. 40x20mm bases for foot with 4 men on each base. Can are on 40x30mm with 3 horse and command and guns on 40×40. one gun, command 2 or 3 minis. A unit of foot or horse is then 4 bases big giving an 80mm frontage. Guns we use individual bases to represent a battery.

We then play on a 12 x 4 foot table (fortunately my main game partner has a big open room in his house!). We use around 60 units a side and starting late morning we can get through a full big game by around half five fish including adult beer breaks in the afternoon.

We halve all distances but still measure in inches and this seems to work quite well. You do still get the occasional crazy cavalry dash across the full table but these don’t happen too often.

We use the national characteristics from the various supplements and I’ve added these into a handy quick read document with basic rules summarised that are stuck to the wall to stop us from flicking through rulebooks too much mid play.

Hope that helps!
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