SYW using Blackpowder

When starting a new period there are a few key questions to answer:

1. What period?
2. What scale?
3. Which rules?
1. Any customisations?
2. Are there options with unit size?

I've always had a soft spot for Austrians in the Seven years war (SYW).  I think it's because they were one of my first horse & musket armies.  My friend Paul and I use to wargame on a little table in a very small studio flat, when I first got married  30+ years ago.  Recently I got the opportunity to rebuild my  SYW armies and decided to build up both Austrian and Prussian forces in Baccus 6mm.

Once I'd decided on scale and period I had to find some rules.  I'd heard a few good things about Black Powder (BP)and I knew they had a supplement "The Last Argument of Kings" which covered the period.  I also had John, another friend, interested in Napoleonic.  As BP covers both periods it seems a good choice to provide a common set of rules, only requiring period specific customisations.  Lucky I was signed up for a BP weekend at the Wargames Holiday Centre, refighting the battle of Blenheim, which would be an excellent way to check out the rules.

Reading through the various BP Napoleonic supplements, Albion Triumphant and Clash of Eagles, I came across a points system for BP which is handy for balancing pick-up battles.  It wasn't too difficult to work how to apply it to the SYW (with a few guesses).

Like all wargamers  I was unable to resist putting my own spin on troop statistics and cherry picking the various supplementary rules I liked, resulting in a set of rules which felt right, to me, for the SYW .

My Seven Years War – Unit Statistics & Point costs for Black power
My Seven years War - Scenario Specific Rules

The next question was how big would my units be?  I'm a fan of big battles and battalions which look like battalions and not an understrength platoon. But this needs to be balanced against playing space, cost of models and time to paint them. I decided that the way forward was to fight a number of  proof of concept battle to check if my proposed customisations  played as well as I though they would and which size units to use.