Pulse of Battle Basing!

After messing around with the large single stand units, I was not satisfied with the feel.  For one, I noticed bent swords and loosened spears just from simple stand movements.  The weight of the single stand unit seemed to create more damage from handling than from handling multiple stands per unit.

So - inspired by James Roach's blog post on basing for his Italian Wars collection, I started playing around with base sizes.  I decided that I wanted all foot units to have 12 figures, and all cavalry units to have 8 figures - regardless of their weight (light, medium, heavy). 

Using James' original inspiration, I started messing with base depth to differentiate by weight, which allows units to have the same frontage.

While equal frontage is not a requirement in game terms, it sure makes things easy....and if I'm about anything, I'm about easy!

So - my base sizes for PoB are:

Light Infantry:  1.5" wide, 2 1/2 " deep
Medium Infantry:  1.5" wide, 2" deep
Heavy Infantry:  1.5" wide, 1.5" deep

Light Cavalry:  1.5" wide, 3.5" deep
Medium Cavalry:  1.5" wide, 3" deep
Heavy Cavalry:  1.5" wide, 2.5" deep

Elephant:  1.5" wide, 3" deep.

The base terraining isn't completed yet, but the following pictures show the effect. I like being able to differentiate unit weight quickly by just noting the depth of the unit.  To me, this makes sense, as lighter units would expand "sponge like", in depth and not necessarily width.  After all, in an era where voice and visual sighting limitations would be the determining factor on how large a unit could be and still be commanded, it makes sense to me that frontages for x number of men would be somewhat equal, with lighter troops expanding deeper to looser deployments - but the cloud remaining "close" to the leader.

The 4 stand units will also let me show disorder easily (jumble the stands) and also mark losses (remove a single stand and replace with the appropriate level of UI loss stand).

I need to get to work on painting more troops, and finishing bases!