233 : Austrian Skirmishers

I’m a little quiet about the rules that my 1809 troops are based for. Anyone who has studied the Journals will know that I’ve written my own rule-set. I have to admit that these are heavily influenced by how I like my 10mm armies to look.

A good example of this are my skirmish markers. There’s every reason to dispense with skirmishers and skirmish lines when it comes to small-scale big battles. It can be seen as a level of complexity that only goes to slow down a corps level game.

However, I want to retain something of the eye candy of a skirmish line on my 1809 tabletop. I mentioned this in Post 159 (more than a decade ago!) I’ve written an advantage into my rules that awards a positive modifier to either a firing unit or its target unit. This modifier is marked with a skirmisher miniature – or however much eye candy you wish! I base my skirmishers on Supreme Littleness 20mm round bases. Therefore, skirmish duels are part of gameplay but skirmishers are only placed on the tabletop as a sign of who won a duel.

Highfield Miniature’s 1809 range (see the last post) with its wealth of skirmish poses gives the opportunity to produce a real variety of skirmish markers – the like of which I could only have dreamt of back when I began my 10mm 1809 project. No need now to have the same firing figure on every marker base! The Highfield figure poses are a joy.

I painted a pack of Highfield Austrian line infantry in skirmish poses. It was great fun basing them in skirmish pairs. I gave the figures on each base different facing colours to match my regiments. Now I have one marker for each regiment. Although one marker may not be enough for a regiment, I don’t think there will be much disappointment round the table if skirmish markers are treated a little less, shall we say, regimentally.