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Basing for Grande Armee

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Basing troops for Grande Armee

How other people do it.

As discussed on the "How we do it page" we have decided to use 6mm troops mounted on 2 inch squares bases for Grande Armee.

Other people have different ways of doing things and the one of the good things about Grande Armee system is that it is flexible enough to handle all sorts of different tastes.

The offiicial Grande Armee web site has a page which discusses the basing system and it includes a picture comparing three different scales, 6mm, 15mm and 25mm.

6mm

		Barrie Lovell, a regular contributor to the Grande Armee Yahoo Group, has taken a different approach to using 6mm figures (left). He has stuck with the official 3"x3" bases on which he mounts large units of fifty odd infantry or twenty plus cavalry. Rather nice looking mini-dioramas.
		In one posting to the group Barrie explained "I am using contemporary illustrations from my own book collection and trying to emulate the pictures - to my mind several bases with large units seems to look more like the pictures than bases with several smaller units". He uses 1.5"x3" bases for his artillery on which he mounts two guns, two crews and two caissons

You can see more pictures of Barrie's units here, though you do have to be a member of the Grande Armee Yahoo Group to access them.

15mm

As well as my 6mm forces I own a large number of 15mm troops which I use for Napoleon's Battles and a Napoleonic Fire and Fury variant which uses the same basing system. I made up an experimental movement tray (sometimes called a sabot) to see how I could use these figures for Grande Armee. The tray is made up from plasticard and plastic rod and is textured, drybrushed and decorated with static grass.
The picture above left shows some Italian Guard Dragoons I have based for Napoleon's Battles. Placing these figures in a 3" square movement tray means I can also use them for Grande Armee.
The same thing with a unit of Italian Guard Infantry.

There's loads of pictures of 15mm figures on 3"x3" bases at the John Crouch's kkk Armee site. Look in the section entitled Photos.

25mm

Some people even play Grande Armee with 25mm figures. These too can look excellent as shown by this picture from John Martin, another member of the Yahoo Group. John doesn't share my liking for 6mm figures. He explained why not and discussed why he chose to go down the 25mm route in another Yahoo Group posting.

"I understand why people use 6mm...because you get more figures per base (the massed look)...but your brigade bases have about 30 figures on them. To me, they look like some re-enactor buddies that went out to practice battalion maneuvers.

"That means your 30 figures don't really look like a brigade either...I admit they look MORE like a brigade than 10 figures but you are still fudging the look...it's just a matter of degree.

"Given that 30 figures or 10 figures isn't "perfect" I have to ask myself what do I give up for making things look closer to a reality neither scale achieves 100%

"* Quality. I've never seen 6mm figures painted well and if I want to look at badly painted figures I can do that with 25mm too.

Now 6mm probably does win on price but this is a hobby and how much I spend (or don't spend) is irrelevant, after all 3" cardboard squares would be cheaper but very few people play that way so obviously the hobby isn't only about price.

"In the end, I need to be able to look myself in the mirror after painting figures and be happy with the results. I can paint 10 25mm figures in 1 hour AND paint 96 6mm figures in that same time and after looking at the results I have to say the 10 figures were painted better and I can be happy with the result."

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