Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've become quite interested in Black Powder's rules recently; however, I don't think I can really afford to really have 24-man units as what seems to be the norm. Do you think I can get away with slicing unit sizes in half, so the average infantry has 12 models and whatnot?

I believe BP, like Kings of War, does not have casualty removal. If that's the case, then only the footprint of the unit matters. As long as you/your group are fine with it, I don't see why you couldn't do that.

Aesthetics of miniatures being cool set aside, I've wondered why somebody hasn't come up with a cool laser etch for unit footprints. That way you could play huge battles and/or test drive units in games that have no casualty removal.

The link shows what I'm talking about (imagine the units depicted are snazzy movement trays with unit icons)

http://battlereporter.blogspot.com/2010/09/battle-report-writing-software.html

BP, as an element-based game, depends more on unit width (in that they should be the same for same-sized units) than figure basing. So cutting a unit size down to something more acceptable is totally fine, as long as all of your 12-man units have the same frontage.

It's incrediably useful to do when starting out, since a single box of Victrix or a couple Perry/Wargames Factory plastics can provide the better part of a playable force.

What's your situation as far as your approach to other opponents goes? Are you providing both sides? Do you have an existing group of players you are playing with? Have you already started painting or made some purchases?

The most obvious means of reducing the price is to reduce the miniature size. It's entirely possible that this isn't an option at this point though.

If you want to play with other people who already have armies or intend to build them, you need to match your force to theirs so it all looks good on the table top.

As said above, changing to smaller scale miniatures will greatly reduce the cost.

For example, a pack of 96 infantry in 6mm costs only £5 from Baccus 6mm. Cavalry is £7 for a pack of 45 figures. You can easily make unit bases with a lot more individual figures on them that still end up a lot cheaper than 28mm.

You can make 28mm size bases with say 24 infantry figures on each of them, and still have a much cheaper army than using 28mm models.

If you're interested in saving money then 1/72 plastics may well be the answer. Available for most of the back powder periods and amazingly cheap, especially if you peruse internet auction sites.

Admittedly they may no be to everyone's taste, but if you want to save money it's worth considering.

We played black powder with units of 6mm from baccus, we had around 48 figures based on two 60x30 bases. We found this helped as the join between the bases was easy to see and we found knowing the middle of a unit was fairly important in black powder / hail ceasar.

It was also rather cheap, for £6.00 you where getting two full infantry units, also once the army was built it was a lovely affect to look down on so many figures even if they are tiny, made it feel like an army not a strangely formal skirmish.

Couple weeks ago we played out a BP WWI based scenario using 6mm. It was playtesting, and their were a few kinks to work out, but no real issues cropped up.

That is the real beauty of that system. It's more concerned about getting what you have on the table to play with, and less about "do I have enough of this to make a unit".

Late to the party, but Black Powder is scale agnostic so reducing scale is the way to go. I personally have started work on 10mm stuff.

If you are trying to get into an existing group of players, then you will want to touchbase with them.

As someone who is starting to play a bit of KoW these days, I take full advantage of the element-style basing with my figures. I strongly prefer the 28mm models over smaller scales, and I also prefer 25mm round bases, so I just use appropriately-sized movement trays and fit as many figures as fit with my own preferred individual bases on as works - so a unit of "20" models actually becomes 12 25mm-round-based models.

A lot of others who play KoW use multibased models and thematic unit fillers - both of which have their origins in historical gaming anyway and are explicitly encouraged and talked about in the Hail Caesar rulebook, so I imagine that it'd be just as explicit or at least allowable, given that the same people are behind the rules.

I've got the BP rules on their way to me at the moment, and although I probably won't ever play it seriously, the element-based element (see what I did there?) of the game might encourage me to have a go with it.

I highly recommend getting into the War of Spanish Succession. You can get the boxes of 36 infantry, or boxes of 12 cavalry, or boxes of 2 cannons w/ crew and bonus 2 officers from Wargames Factory for $20 (or $15 from most online discounters). They come with enough different heads and accessories to be able to make 90% of the French, Dutch, British, etc units that fought. Effectively getting an entire army in plastic.

The infantry are not the best plastics but are dirt cheap and paint up really quickly - for example:

Paint job looks great. Viewers need to remember the actual figures are about half the size shown on screen. I would have bevelled the bases with filler before flocking.

Yeah, definitely bevel the bases. It adds so much to the overall appearance to integrate the base.

The WGF 18th century stuff is awesome though. Definitely a great way to do Black Powder in 28mm.

Lord Castellan wrote:I've become quite interested in Black Powder's rules recently; however, I don't think I can really afford to really have 24-man units as what seems to be the norm. Do you think I can get away with slicing unit sizes in half, so the average infantry has 12 models and whatnot?

Oh, absolutely, as long as your opponents agree. As mentioned, it's more about the frontage of units than strict numbers, and even frontage is flexible. In fact, the whole system is intended to be free 'n' easy, and quickly houseruled. Good thing too, 'cos it's basically the private rules of Rick Priestly & Chums, played on huge tables with huge collections, that happen to have been printed for general sale. E.g. upon buying them, my club immediately agreed to half the movement rates. Infantry scooting up to 36" across the table in one go just didn't seem right.

frozenwastes wrote:The WGF 18th century stuff is awesome though. Definitely a great way to do Black Powder in 28mm.

Don't forget that other BP periods are well catered for in polystyrene, too.