I have been reading, and thinking hard, since my last post. I have a number of 'fundamental' questions to answer before I can really get on with this project.
First of all, I'm fairly sure I want a 'tactical' game - with no more than a division a side involved (if I want bigger games, I'd prefer to use my 6 mm collection). But I'll start really small - no more than a brigade (three battalions or so) a side, with a gun or two and some cavalry.
What about rules? There are lots of rules available. I own a copy of Black Powder. Supposedly for 'bigger' games, I know of people who use it quite successfully for 'tactical' games of the size I'm thinking of starting with - for instance the West Tokyo Gamers (I kid you not! - that's where they're from) have posted this rather splendid battle report. Perhaps, to avoid too much anguish and soul-searching (and wasting of money on rule-sets I don't end up using), I should just stick with them. At least they're set up to be 'tweakable' - so if there's something I don't like I won't be haunted by the ghost of Rick Priestley for eternity for daring to change some aspect of the rules.
One advantage of Black Powder is that it is, in the words of the authors, 'quite cavalier about basing conventions and unit sizes', which means that whatever I decide to use will work okay. The disadvantage of this approach is that I have to decide for myself how big to make the units and how to base them. If I was using almost any other set of rules, I'd have no choice.
I suppose, first of all, that I should state that I intend to use my normal basing method - figures on steel bases, organised on magnetic movement trays. That allows me plenty of flexibility, and reduces the likelihood of needing to re-base if I change my mind about basing or rules. Infantry will go on pennies (i.e. 20 mm round), I expect. Cavalry - there's an issue to be dealt with. Most of my ancients cavalry are on 38 mm round, with the heaviest on 25 x 50 mm 'pill' shaped (like the two colonels in the previous post). The round bases might be appropriate for cavalry which are only going to skirmish, but I'm not sure that applies to any in our period - even hussars would charge 'en masse' at times. So perhaps I'll put all cavalry on 25 x 50 mm 'pill' shaped bases - I could go for rectangular, but that would seem odd, aesthetically, when they're placed alongside infantry on round bases.
What about unit sizes? Black Powder suggests 'standard' unit sizes of 24-30 for infantry and 12-16 for cavalry. 24 seems good for infantry, particularly the French, since that'll mean six companies of four figures, which feels right - and will give nice little 'flank' companies. It doesn't work so well for the British though - their battalions had eight fusileer and two flank companies. 2.4 Grenadiers doesn't seem quite right somehow - nor to be honest, does 3! But, on the other hand, going for much bigger battalions means more painting, less battalions in total (or a bigger table - for which I don't have room). It's not easy! Going with the 'minimum' unit sizes from above, I guess one ends up with infantry unit frontages of 240 mm, and cavalry frontages (assuming two ranks) of 150 mm. Seems reasonable, I suppose.
Victrix British annoyances. I have a box of Victrix Peninsular centre company to build, but on their own they're not all that useful, because I need to buy a box of flank company in order to make a proper battalion. But I don't need a whole box of flank company... Unless I buy a load more boxes of centre company. It seems expensive and wasteful. Why couldn't they have done like the Perrys, or even later Victrix sets, and put the flank company in with the centre company, to make 'generic' British infantry boxes? On the other hand, I suppose that if one was to buy a set of the Victrix Light Infantry heads along with the flank company box, one could use some of the figures to provide flank companies for a line battalion, and make the rest into a light battalion.
The Victrix plastics seem a bit fiddlier to assemble than is strictly necessary too - I don't mind lots of parts, if you really need lots of parts, but the Perry plastics show that you can make very nice figures with less parts. And, lastly, I think the poses in the box are a bit too diverse - you can't make a battalion which looks as though it belongs together from the contents of a single box.
So that's where my thinking has got to, so far!