Liberators: Basing for the Quick Play Rules

The supplement to Liberators (Fletcher, 2006) includes a set of Quick Play Rules (QPR). The basing is similar to that I use for Basing for Shako in the Carlist War although the units are potentially larger.

Infantry Battalions

In QPR each infantry stand of 3 figures represents 100 men. So an infantry battalion represents 400-1,000 men will have 4-10 stands of each. By coincidence battalions of the South American Wars of Liberation had eight companies, so at full strength one stand = one company.

A full strength infantry battalion would look like the following when deployed in column. It has eight stands, one of which is a command stand, one a cazadore stand (C) and one a grenadier stand (G). the other stands are fusilier.

A battalion that has been reduced in strength will have less stands. For example, the following is a battalion with only three stands (approximately 300 men). The battalion might also look like this if it has had its flank companies detached to form a separate unit.

On occasion grenadier and cazadore companies were detached to form converged battalions. I am getting separate command stands for these battalions, however, the grenadiers and cazadores come from other units. Notice that the command stand lacks a standard bearer; these converged units were ad hoc formations and didn't have flags. I substituted a grenadier or cazadore figure as appropriate.

Here are three examples of converged battalions. The first is a combined grenadier and cazadore unit, the second is a grenadier unit, and the third is a cazadore unit.

Mixed grenadier and cazadore battalion

Grenadier battalion

Cazadore battalion

Cavalry Squadrons

Like the artillery I've also based my Cavalry on a narrower frontage than Shako or QPR suggests, and for the same sort of reasons:

To make it consistent with the infantry frontage.
To make it consistent with other rule sets.
To make a cavalry column look like a column.

In QPR a stand of 2 figures of cavalry represents about 60 men, so a squadron of 120 would have two stands, and a unit of 180 men would have three stands. I use a mix of command figures (M for Musician but could be an officer or standard bearer) and troopers (T).

Artillery Batteries

In QPR an artillery stand represents 2 pieces. So a 6 gun battery will have three stands.

I've based my Artillery on a narrower frontage than Shako suggests, but wider than QPR. I had several motivations for this:

To make it consistent with the infantry frontage (too much DBM I suppose).
To make it consistent with other rule sets (don't ask me why).

I used the number of crew (A) to indicate the size of weapon.

Heavy Gun section

12lb or bigger. 4 crew

Medium Gun section

6 - 9lbs. 3 crew

Light Gun section

2 - 4lb. 2 crew

Rocket Troop

Congreve rockets. 1 crew

General staff

I've used consistent basing to my Carlist War Shako armies, so they are interchangeable. This does mean the bases are slightly bigger than official Shako or QPR. (QPR doesn't have Aides, but just in case.) And John McClennan is trying to convince me to do round bases instead.

C-in-C	Brigade / Divisional commander	Aide

Key to diagrams

	Officer. Painted as Centre company
	Standard Bearer. Painted as Centre company. .
	Musician (usually Drummers, but could be Buglers or Pipers depending on the unit). Painted as Centre company although might have reversed colours.
	Fusilier / Centre Company
	Grenadier / Right Flank Company
	Cazadore / Left Flank Company
	Trooper
	Artillery Crew