The basing of artillery and other conundrums...

[Count Belisarius]

As part of my prep for Ayton I am planning on rebasing my artillery. I think there are four options (excluding the miriad of weird and wonderful EB options...)

1. Gun and gunners all on one base. Fixed.
2. Gunners on base but gun removable to allow placing with a limber etc...
3. All separate with individually based gunners and loose gun (or cannon...)
4. All loose but placed on a sabot base...

There may be others...

Pros and cons of each?

A

[Essex Boy]

And yet.............

It's only a matter of time.

[Tim Hall]

Alternatively, you could spare yourself the stress of resolving this conundrum by eschewing artillery altogether. Artillerists are notorious eccentric prima donnas, (Napoleon as an example), and trust to the goodwill of your fellow players. Surely they are gentlemen enough to respect your decision and not engage your forces with shot or shell, merely desultory musketry, and the occasional harsh language?

[World2dave]

Yes, wot Tim says +1.
You can trust us Andy. Just line your troops up all pretty like.

Which Ayton does that remind me of, you know - the one where the guns were wheel to wheel and you did your back in carting your casualties off the table?

Mwahahahaha!
Etc

[levied troop]

1. Easy to move but then artillery doesn’t move much. Can be made to look stylish because the figures can be placed right up to the gun. You can add all the paraphernalia (buckets, shot piles etc) so even more stylish. But, you need extra guns for the limbers.

2. Still stylish, still paraphernalia-friendly, still easy to move but only requires 1 gun.

3. Slightly stylish, useful for small skirmish games where the crew need to fight H2H but how often does that happen?

4. Not stylish at all but easy-ish to move, until the figures fall off.

I go 2, 1, 3 but not 4.

[BaronVonWreckedoften]

Charlie Foxtrot do some nice artillery-and-crew sabot bases - but weirdly, none with the correct drill positions.

A removable gun also removes the need for a separate gun for the limber base.

I suppose it depends on which rules you use - SP2, for example, would require a system that allowed individual gunners to be removed as casualties, thus reducing the gun's effectiveness.

So, not much help I'm afraid.....

[Jeremy]

Not quite true Baron. I often base the gun and crew together and then use a casualty marker. I do the same with infantry and cavalry.

[Count Belisarius]

Some useful comments (apart from EB...) there. Especially the melon induced one. I'd thought of single basing to allow casualties for skirmish type actions but to be honest I only use my C18th stuff at most once a year! And it tends to be a big battle... I've tried sabot bases which I think can look good but you still have the faff of moving each figure but how often would/should guns move?

Now, don't be shocked here... but Iain's fixed figure reversable crew bases work well but only because the static poses suit it.

Hmmm.... Pondering...

A

[Shahbahraz]

Playing SP as I (occasionally am allowed out to)do, I use sabot bases with the gun fixed in place, and gunners loose. It's almost as nice as a fully based gun and crew, but obviously SP scale means you are going to lose the odd gunner and generally don't need to worry about limbers.. where I don't want to faff about, I base everything and add a discreet 7mm dice frame so casualties can be marked if necessary.

[Penda]

Option 1. Why make life difficult?