Thirty Years War 6mm basing: Swedish Pike+shot

A test base of Swedish Pike+shot sitting temporarily
on Blu-Tac. Command strip forms second row of
the pikes.

I've been looking forward to receiving my first orders of Baccus 6mm figures for the Tilly's Very Bad Day Thirty Years War project, not least because I wanted to see how many figures I'd actually end up putting on a 60mm x 30mm base.

But firstly let me say that the Baccus figures are very nice and remarkably well detailed for their scale. I'm no fan of cast pikes, however, and hope that enough layers of paint and varnish will provide a little protection for them against floppy spaghetti syndrome.

First up to consider, and most importantly, were the Pike+shot units. As my friend Ian pointed out, it's good to have the pikes looking really solid and I can't see that being achieved without having them at least four deep and roughly square. (There's enough room to have five ranks but that would probably an unnecessary extravagance.)

A slightly more aerial view. For the Swedes, some figures
in Monmouth caps will be mixed in.

Historically ensigns were placed somewhere behind the front ranks. With four ranks of figures, I can have the command strip with the ensigns as the second rank.

There isn't enough room to have any supernumeries standing outside the ranks. In theory these could look good, but I think you would need vastly more figures in rank to prevent the extra figures from over-balancing them.