Musing on basing

Earlier this month, I was looking at my Redbox Stradiots and wondering how I would base them. They are light cavalry and certainly some might skirmish. In the end I decided that I would deep base them like my other skirmish cavalry.

However I realised that although I was probably going to use them with my Thirty Years Wars figures,to start with,I might want to use them for the earlier Italian wars. This is where the problem arises as my late medievals are based as WRG ancients frontages (2 cavalry on a 40mm wide base) but the TYW are based to my own DBA style system (3 heavy cavalry, 2 light cavalry or 6 foot on a 45mm wide base) so I would have to decide which to choose.

Also I'm not entirely happy with my TYW basing as the cavalry are too squashed and the infantry "regiments" have to be reorganised to use the Black Powder "Pike & Shotte" rules. But this is also complicated by the fact I now use them against my Poles.

In the end I decided on 40mm x 60mm for the Stradiots. This came as a result of deciding on a suitable rebasing standard for my TYW figures. I decided to go for a unit frontage of 180mm, which is 4 x 45mm bases so no immediate need to change much. However I will use 60mm bases for my TYW infantry and cavalry. This will contain 3 cavalry (so less cramped) 12 pikes (on a deeper base) or 9 musketeers. For foot regiments will be made up of one pike and two musket bases giving a pike/shot ratio of 2:3, which is my current ratio for my armies of the period, although it varies by regiment. This size is still compatible with my ancients/medievals where the unit frontage are 120mm made up of two 60mm wide bases.

I also decided that normal musketeers would be based in three ranks of three figures and "Salvee" firing musketeers would be based in two ranks of four.