Red vs. Black - a Drum & Shakos Large Battle tryout

I wanted to get my experimental "freelance Napoleonic" 54mm figures in use but also wanted to try another horse and musket era ruleset. All the King's Menis a clean and simple ruleset designed specifically with 54mm figures in mind, but the activation system (drawing playing cards) is a bit limiting. For one thing, there are no group activations and this tends to isolate units with the result that action tends to become centered around one or two units who are the fray and other units (which you did not move earlier) end up forgotten at the edges. 

I'd read the Black Powder rules and at least those have the option for group orders and movement, but I have also recently become more aware of the large family of skirmish rules based on the Song of Blades & Heroes "engine".  This led me to purchase the PDF version of the relation Drums & Shakoes: Large Battles on the inkling it could be adapted to 54mm. 

The first conversions were easy enough: DS:LB features infantry battalions of four stands with a width-to-depth ratios of 3:1 with about 3 or 4 figures per stand.  This translates pretty easily into the AtKM standard of 12-man infantry units. Cavalry are two stands of the same width as infantry stands, which will give you a four-figure cavalry unit (which is an immediate economy over AtKM's six-figure cavalry units).  DS:LBuses a VS-S-M-L movement scale (similar to SAGA) which I translated into 3"-6"-8”-12".  Artillerty is DS:LB is two stands per battery with one gun each – this caused a slight problem because I have only three guns completed at this point. For the purposes of figuring out the rules I used a single gun.

I really like D&S:LB!  The reaction moves created a nice simulation of simultaneous movement, with both sides' front lines drifting towards each other at roughly the same speed.  The group activations were also nice, with the red side in particular being able to move thier left flank up in an orderly fashion.  The 12-figure single file line formation took some getting used to visually, but make the line tactics and formations more in your face.  I went through a few combats and they were interesting. Red was able to drive back Black, but in one case Red took more disorder markers than Black (there is no figure removal), so I thought that was a different take on things (victorious at a cost).