Basing for The Age of Eagles follows similar basing conventions to the popular Napoleon’s Battles. There are some subtle differences, but theseare onlyimportant if you are basing from scratch. Many new rule sets use the basing standards from popular earlier rule sets since it is a time consuming process to re-base whole armies.
Basing for the majority of infantry (those that fought in 3 ranks) is the same as for Napoleon’s Battles – 4 figures (2 ranks of 2) on a base with 3/4″ frontage x 1″ deep (19mm x 25mm). Basing for infantry that fought in 2 ranks (such as British and later Portuguese) is slightly wider at 1-1/8″ than the 1″ of Napoleon’s Battles. This is so close that rebasing is not essential. For those metrically inclined, 1″ = 25.4mm.
Napoleon’s Battles was very popular in recent years but has fallen out of favour. This often occurs after people become too familiar with the good and bad points of a set of rules and look to try something new.
New rule sets often use similar basing to previous rule sets so as to encourage players to try the new rules and to reduce the amount of re-basing required.
Cavalry has 2 figures (1 rank of 2) on a 1″ x 1″ base. This looks much better than the 1″ frontage x 2″ deep base with 4 figures used for Napoleon’s Battles. By cutting the Napoleon’s Battles bases in half, they can be easily converted to Age of Eagles.
Artillery bases have the same number of figures as Napoleon’s Battles, but differ slightly in size. The frontage of a base depends on the number of guns in the historical battery. A cannon or howitzer model has 2 figures if it is light artillery or 3 figures if it is heavy artillery.
Divisional commanders are usually a single figure on a 1″ x 1″ base. Higher commanders usually have more figures and a larger base to suit.