About

This blog is an occasional record of my 18th and 19th Century era games played using 6mm miniatures and the “Volley & Bayonet Road to Glory” rules. The aim with this blog is to compliment my main Volley & Bayonet Website focusing here on battle reports.

I have been using Volley & Bayonet for a number of years and during this time the rules have provided many hours of entertainment. They have enabled me to refight many of the famous battles of the period. Some of the larger battles have included Salamanca, Aspern-Essling, Waterloo, Ligny, Gettysburg, Antietam and Chickamauga, to name a few. Many have been refought several times. These battles have been supplemented by many smaller historical engagements and numerous fictional encounters. Volley & Bayonet is without doubt one of my favourite rule systems.

For me Volley & Bayonet combines both realism and playability. It places you in command of an army and allows the player to refight the great battles of history - not a small section of an historic battle. It provides an enjoyable game with one player per side, but equally works well for multiplayer engagements. Our typical games, be they historical refights or fictional engagements, almost always involve multiple corps on each side yet are usually fought to a conclusion in an evening. Only the very large or multi-day battles take longer.

The rule mechanics are simple yet subtle. They provide a solid historical recreation of battles during the black powder era capturing the ebb and flow of real battles. Additional period specific rules allow the same basic mechanics to be used to model warfare from 1700-1890 reducing complexity for those players interested in different wars of the period. Yet a Napoleonic battle, such as the ones illustrated above and below, plays very differently from an American Civil War engagement.

Volley & Bayonet requires stands comprising massed infantry to be mounted on 3” square bases while linear infantry stands are 3” across and 1.5” deep. This is almost universally used for 15mm or 25mm miniatures and by many people for smaller scales. At this scale 1” represents 100 yards and a massed stand of infantry 1,500 to 3,000 men while cavalry or linear infantry fewer men. A turn represents an hour.

However, my Volley & Bayonet 6mm armies use a reduced scale, often called half scale. In the games illustrated on this site each massed infantry base measures 1.5” square but still represents 1,500 to 3,000 men. Now, 1” represents 200 yards. Each turn still represents an hour. Below, Seven Years War engagement with regiments represented by linear stands. Typically these represent 1,000 to 1,500 infantry per base. 

As you navigate this site you will also see cavalry and artillery stands. Typically the cavalry represent brigades and are based 1.5” square stands, they represent 1,000 to 1,500 men. Artillery stands, on narrower bases represent around 12 guns, though may represent smaller formations of six guns on occasion.

As noted previously in the basing convention we use each inch on the table represents 200 yards. With these scales many of the great battles of the period can be refought on a table 1.8m x 1.2m or less.

To explore the rules further I encourage you to visit my main Volley & Bayonet Website where you will find all manner of material including free scenarios, guides to building armies, my current projects, rule and scenario errata and much more. 

I hope you enjoy exploring this site and find the summaries of our games of interest. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question, and of course bookmark or follow this blog.