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. In particular they have enabled me to refight many of the famous battles of the period including Salamanca, Aspern-Essling, Waterloo, Ligny, Gettysburg, Antietam and Chickamauga, to name a few. This is not just part of the battle, but rather the entire battle. 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 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.

A battle from the Hundred Days Campaign.

The rule mechanics are simple yet subtle. They provide a solid historical recreation of battles during the black powder era and capture the ebb and flow of real historical 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. These simple changes ensure a Napoleonic battle plays very differently from an American Civil War engagement.

French and Austrians engaged during an 1813 battle.

A typical Volley & Bayonet unit of infantry or cavalry is mounted on 3” square bases. Others may be classed as linear and represented by bases that are 3” across and 1.5” deep. These dimensions are 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 typically represents fewer men. A turn represents an hour.

However, my Volley & Bayonet armies, all in 6mm, use a reduced scale which is 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. 

A Seven Years War engagement in 6mm.

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, these stands represent 1,000 to 1,500 men. Artillery stands, on narrower bases, represent around 12 guns. On occasion though may represent smaller formations of six guns. As noted previously in the basing convention I 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. If you wish to look at my other wargaming interest consider visiting my wargaming portal Across the Table.

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.