Hornblower update - Go Big or, OK just go Big

I mentioned the Napoleonic Naval Landing Party (Royal Navy of course) I was putting together for Sharp Practice. 

One of the units I think I'll take is an artillery piece. This is not much of a revelation as it's a staple of the Hornblower stories, a naval gun landed to support the sailors ashore. I have a 28mm gun on a naval carriage ready to go, which I'm classing as a "light" gun. I suspect this is actually a 6 or 9 Pdr so is possibly a medium gun in Sharpe Practice but there is a bonus in flexibility I suppose.  I based it on a 40x20mm base (just the gun) with the five crew on 20x20 bases, and chuck in a bit of based scatter gives me enough bases to fill a standard movement tray from Warbases which I like using to speed movement up. 

I was digging through the spares box and found a rather larger naval gun. This came originally from (of all places) a Dungeons and Dragons miniatures blister pack. No idea why they did it but gift horses etc. This got me thinking. In Sharp Practice you can get bigger guns, and the big ones are very intimidating indeed on the receiving end. The other factor involved is no matter the size, in game terms they all have five crew - a box I have already ticked. I figure if I can get the big gun on a 40x20 base I can swap it out with the same crew so I have the option of a heavy gun!

There is rather a lot of handwaving and fast talking that will be needed at this point as to how \ why such a big gun is ashore, as it looks like it may even be a 24 or 32 Pdr

and I will probably have to put some planking on the base to at least show willing that the crew have thought about the size and weight of the thing. 

Next I'll have to think about Deployment Points........

Hornblower update - a bit of a rethink

My initial thoughts on the makeup of my Naval Landing Party for Sharp Practice were as follows:

1 unit of 3 bases of 8 Royal Marines

1 unit of 6 skirmishing sailors with muskets

1 unit of 12 sailors with mixed weapons - boarding pikes, pistols etc.

1 Light gun and crew - I have a couple of bullocks to stand in as a limber team

The Marines were to be classed the same as normal British Line troops. The skirmishing sailors as Irregular skirmishers, and the other sailors as "Tribal" massed infantry with tomahawks as suggested on the Lard Island forum. So far so good. The sizes of the units is based more on what is available in the blisters from Perry Miniatures as much as anything else.

I've been rethinking this a bit. The proportions feel a bit wrong, particularly the preponderance of Marines over sailors, so I an thinking about a reshuffle. I'll reduce the Marines to only 2 bases of Marines and possibly using the excess to form a unit of skirmishers (Do RMs train as skirmishers???), and adding a second group of both musket armed sailors and melee types. That will change the mix up a bit and give me some options for some support points. This is all dependent on Andy Parkes agreeing to paint some more figures to match the ones he already has done, but he is a Fine Chap so I have some hope there.

What do you think?