Jumping Back In With 6mm Napoleonics

After a two-year hiatus from painting (for which I mostly blame professional issues) I ordered two army sets of Baccus 6mm Napoleonics – one French, one Austrian – which arrived in the mail yesterday. I plan to use these with Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames Rules (1HW).

Opposing French and Austrians in 6mm on a 2' x 2' battlefield.

Armies in 1HW consist of 6 units, though with variable composition a complete "army set" for any given nationality requires 10 units. For the horse and musket era, this comes out to:

4 x line infantry
2 x light infantry
2 x artillery
2 x cavalry

In practice an army will have on the table 3-4 units of line infantry plus 2-3 units of other types for a total of 6 units in a game.

6mm French from Baccus

Normally played with 15-25mm models in units with a frontage of 4-6 inches each on a 3' x 3' battlefield, I'm going a bit smaller, using 6mm models on a 2' x 2' battlefield (and of course all movement rates and weapon ranges cut to 2/3).

6mm Austrians from Baccus

I have a ton of bases on hand and I worked out my basing last night by experimenting with different configurations. What I liked best were 2" square bases (i.e. a 2" frontage) with the following numbers of models in each one-base unit.

32 foot figures for line infantry
16 foot figures for light infantry
12 mounted figures for cavalry
2 guns + 8 crew for artillery

A close-up of line infantry, light infantry and cavalry.

Today I hope to get all the models stuck on to tongue depressors with blu-tack and primed in black. Painting "the unit not the man" will be a new experience for me. Everyone seems to assert that painting 6mm models is faster and easier than painting larger minis. I'll find out for myself in the next couple weeks.