6mm Colonial gaming

[Arbedark]

Hi folks,
I'm thinking of giving 6mm Colonial gaming a go using black powder as I picked up a copy of the latest rules and the Zulu sup. nice and cheap on ebay.
I'm more of an ancients player and have been wondering about basing units in this new realm. As I'm not part of a gaming group or such it will be purely a one man band when it comes to games and was hoping someone here could help me out in basing ideas? Would 40x20 and 40x40 be an ideal size for bases, the smaller for British units and the latter for cavalry, artillery and the Zulus? My thought is 4 for a standard infantry unit, 2 for a small and 1 for tiny. 6 or 9 for Zulu "warbands" and 1 gun per base with crew. Limbers and wagons on 40x80.
I would use cm for movement and half all ranges and movement allowance as I only have room for a 6x4 foot table.

All thoughts and further ideas are welcome.

Cheers,  Jim

[fred]

I tend to game in 10mm, but my thinking should apply down to 6mm well enough.

I’d suggest going with 30mm square bases for the British, with a bit of extra depth as needed for wagons - I don’t think you will need anything like 80mm depth, a 10mm wagon can fit on 20x40mm base, and nearly always will fit on 20x60mm base - unless you are planning on multi-basing your wagons.

For Zulus round bases might work better to give you more irregular formations - I think I went with 25mm bases for mine (aka 2p coins).

But what really matters is the look of the units to you, so I’d suggest getting some figures and blu-tack, and cutting some cardboard squares and rectangles, arranging the figures on them, and seeing what looks good to you.

If you aren’t set on rules, then square bases are probably a bit more flexible across rule sets, but basing seems far less critical in colonial period rules than in ancients / medieval ones.

[Arbedark]

Thanks for this.
I only went with those base sizes as I have more than my fair share of them sat around doing nothing!!
Your ideas are car more sensible and I will be able to get more units this way in the same storage space, which is a winner for me.

I'm off to order some new bases...