Go Big Or Go Home?

 It is often said 'Go Big Or Go Home'...

The look of a 28m army en masse, is something to behold. There's no question about it, but all too often you see games with massive units crammed into a space where there are claims of a groundscale, totally out of sync with the frontage of these units.

Play is sluggish and manoeuvres almost impossible, and the feel of a period can be lost.

Now, I love 28mm, and I now have a table which is much larger than that used for the average 'club' game, but I've recently been having a bit of a back and forth (all in good will you understand) with Roger, about what scale to play Renaissance battles in.

Gut reaction for both of us was of course, 28mm, and I was looking at Connoisseur castings as they are for me the epitome of the period models available when I first found out about the fun to be had with pike and shot. But then again, we both had - have - a fondness for the Mike's Models 15mm ranges, bordering on religious fervor. So where to go?

64-96 pikemen make a nice block in 28mm, but you are going to need a lot of space to deploy them. Added to that, if you look at renaissance paintings of battles, you are often struck by how much terrain is free from troops. Indeed, you seem to be looking sometimes at multiple smaller confrontations across a vast swathe of land.

So, the answer I have argued - too successfully I fear - is that it is better to have 2000 15mm figures per side on the same sized table as 1000 28mm. Even at 15mm, a 96 figure block with all it's attached sub units is impressive. As Roger said, towns can be shown in a convincing way, and baggage trains can be modelled and deployed properly. 

In the long run, the 15mm project will be every bit as expensive as 28mm - especially with the piratical cost of the Mikes Models range from Essex, who seem a bit peeved that people often prefer these to their own later ranges - but imagine standing back, and looking at two massive armies in full array, with command vignettes, baggae, large artillery parks and hordes of colourful troops, on what is a massive play area. Those pike blocks will lumber onwards and the passage of time will feel more in keeping with the real world, light cavalry will sneak around the flanks of their opponents to take stategic points or raid the baggage lines. All of this looks less convincing when the play area is compressed due to figure scale.

Now I need to argue the case for the 40x30 element with Roger, but I fear he's set in his ways in that regard, but as you can see it really is true, you really should 'go big or go home' but there is more to it than just the figure scale, it's about creating a 'big picture'.

TTFN