General de Brigade rule amendments for 6mm

I have previously commented about the command and control mechanism I use for my 6mm Napoleonic and ACW games to replace those contained within General de Brigade and Guns at Gettysburg rules. I include here some of my thoughts on using 6mm figures and other rule amendment I have made.

For me, the pleasure of using 6mm figures is that it enables me to field large forces on a standard wargames table (for me that is maximum 7'6" x 4'6" but most are played on less than that). This means fielding several Corps but still having the battalion as the base unit. A frequent comment is heard that when playing such a large level game, you, as the army commander, will not be interested in what individual battalions are doing. Therefore the base unit tends to be the Brigade with abstract mechanisms to represent combat. I can fully understand the reasons for those comments and this is not meant as any criticism, but I am interested in what is happening at battalion level simply because it is part of the fun of wargaming. It can provide for intense drama with an almost cinematic feel to a game.





E.g. I recently played a game with almost 4,000 figures on the table and a single French battalion under the command of an ADC was holding a wood on the extreme right flank of the French line. As the battle played out it became imperative for that French unit to hold otherwise there was a real danger that the attacking Prussians could roll up the flank. It managed to rout an entire Prussian Landwehr regt (3 battalions), and resisted attacks from two regular line battalions despite being bombarded by a Prussian artillery battery. By the end of the battle it was almost down to half strength but still formed and still holding the flank!

My approach would not be suited to playing a game on a club night over 2 or 3 hours (it can take me almost as long to complete one move when using several thousand figures!) but as a mainly solo gamer, time is not a problem for me. I did feel though that some changes needed to be made otherwise a game could get severely bogged down and there was also practicalities when handling such large numbers of small scale figures. Especially when basing as I do on 15mm square bases for infantry (20mm x 15mm for cav and 15mm x 20mm for arty).

The first to go was skirmishers. They were just too small to handle and slowed play. So far I have not experienced any obscure results by omitting them. Battles still feel right. I had considered adopting an abstract system similar to that contained in the Grande Armee rules. i.e. allocating each unit an 'SK' value, but it would have still slowed play a little too much.

The firing chart in General de Brigade and Guns at Gettysburg lists the number of figures firing to calculate casualties. To speed this process I replaced the number of figures with an appropriate number of stands. It was far easier to see and also removed the need to keep referring to the orbats.

I wanted to avoid as much as possible clutter on the tabletop so I record casualties on an orbat and remove bases when an appropriate number of figures has been lost.

To illustrate why I have made the changes I have, I include this photo of a fictional action I played as part of a campaign which included a total of 5,000 figures on the table (French v Prussians). Trying to play skirmishers etc. would have been mind boggling! This table was 6' x 3'9". Or 12' x 7'6" if I had used 15mm, or 24' x 15' in 28mm!!! Thumbs up for 6mm!