And I Once Met A Wargamer Who Said 'Isn't That Too Many Figures'?

 When I first got into wargaming and found Sheffield Wargames Society amongst others, I was bowled over by the sight (and who wouldn't be?) of 28mm armies as far as the eye could see, on a Wednesday night as well as those little ones - you know, 15mm - covering tables, painted apple green and using what was really rudimentary terrain, but which still spoke to me. It was worlds in miniature, and if you are not the sporty type like my brother from another dice roll, Roger the idea of tiny worlds recreated on a table would bring a tear of pleasure to a young eye.

I understand that there are people who get this way over watching 22 men chasing a pig's bladder around a fiels, or watching men in white pyjamas kick each other until one twists their ankle - it takes all sorts I suppose.

The thing was, if you stopped and did a proper count of the models on each side, you'd find there were 150-200. Now they certainly looked like more, and they certainly looked like armies to the neophyte, but they packed away into a cantilever toolbox.

Anyway, there were people out there like Peter Gilder and Terry Wise, even Stuart Asquith who played games with many, many more figures. And I recall that SWS did sometimes play massive weekend games with a few thousand Medieval figures - and yes they used WRG rules for them - but they were special events.

Over the years, as I have recounted previously, several of us fell under the spell of the original 'Chequebook Wargamers' and whilst we pretty much gave up on the 'armies for every period' approach, we did begin to get a taste fo playing as large a game as was possible, and amassing stupid amounts of lead for every period which took our fancy. Quite often the vast majority of that lead remained unpainted of course, representing 'wargamer wealth', but in actual fact it was - and let's not put a varnish on it - a total fucking waste of money.

The minute you buy that lead or plastic, it drops in value by 1/3. No 'ifs', no 'buts', it loses value and unless you get paint on it, it's scrap metal. Play with unpainted figures? Bolocks! Not on my table or the tables of any right thinking and dedicated gamer.

Anyway, a few years ago, I decided - as you know by now - to plan and fund armies in a new way. I have never been one for the 'buy a unit, paint a unit' approach, so that was never going to happen. But as I hit the age of 50 I knew that something had to change. 

I paint for a living, but don't want to spend my spare time doing the same for myself. So, after finding a painter who I could work with at a creative level, I chose to purchase two opposing forces, and send the to be painted, adding the bases, flags and assorted 'atmospheric' pices such as baggage, camp scenes etc myself. And it's worked. It's meant that I have had to commit to banking up the cost of the project before I could spend a penny on it. This has generally meant that I have had an inbuilt cooling off preiod, so that when I got the funds together I had the whole project mapped out as far as possible and could send away the money and figures, and sit back and await their return a few montsh later.

I also realised that there is a finite number of figures that can be used at any one time, so I set a standard of a single army being 600-800 models, which in 28mm is actually bloody impressive as you can see here with my ECW Scots, which are around 750 strong, and when displayed, require a 6x5 foot wall unit.

It's a reasonable representation of an army of the period with 12 pike & shot regiments, 10 units of horse, 2 units of dragoons and 10 artillery pieces. The Scots had a lot of gns and not so much horse, thus the units are smaller than I would typically field for ECW cavalry. It's what gives the army it's personality and play style.

Conventional thinking and pointed games would use around 25-30% of these figures - hell, modern gamers may even call one of the pike and shot regiments an 'army', but they can just be waved away with a sharp 'SHOO!' - and there's some merit in those numbers.

If you want to have a multii-player game, you need to consider the number of models a player can handle. If we take a fairly average 24-36 man unit - depending on period - then 10-12 units will be more than enough per player, possibly less. They will get the feel of a large command coupled with a very respectable visual spectcle. Multiply this by the number of players involved and you have an awesome sight indeed.

Now, I'd decided that ECW was a 'must' and it it's the only project where I have bought a single army. My wife and Roger both have large Royalist forces, and my brother is working on an army composed of Parliamentarian 'Trained Bands'.

Beyond that, there's a tendency to buy both sides. This works well, and means that I always have a game I can play.

I've also decided that I will pare down the number of different periods I'll collect. After al, I am 2/3 of the way through my life and my painter is only mortal. This has made me realy think about the periods I truly enjoy, or which I want to play.

So, I decided that this year, I would focus on the Wars Of The Roses. You have good looking units, a similarity of troop types, with the 'wild card' of assorted allied and mercenary unitsand with 1200 models, more than enough for a fine representation of the battles of the period.

I also have a hankering for something around the 1860s, with nice uniforms and meatgrinder tactics due to the insane leaps in ways to kill a lot of men who still used essentialy Napoleonic tactics. ACW was considered - a bit overdone. Franco Prussian - there are limits to just how much slaughter a man can take. And finally, I settled upon the War Of The Triple Alliance - Large battles, lovely uniforms, several nations on the field at the same time, and just the right level of wholsale butchery.

Using 18 figure infantry units, 1200 models would provide a very nice looking game with period feel. And so, it was decided, and the plans put into place.

Of course, it couldn't be that simple...

I'd been let down over two nice armies a few months ago - Swiss & Burgundian - which was what led to my commissioning of the WOTR armies and my locust like stripping of every box set of plastics and a good few metal figures from the stand of Dave Thomas at Hammerhead.

Well, the models came back on the market this last week, and then got marked as sold - So far, so good.

Then on Friday, they were available again, no longer on the way to Australia. Okaaaaaaaay.

So, it's like this you see... I loved those models. They were good castings, well painted and tastefully based. But they were 15th century were they not? And I already have 1200 - remembering my earlier comments - so why buy more?

The price was fair and they were historically matched armies, but you know, 1200 already etc, etc...

The Memsahib liked them, my brother liked them and so it was time to defer to the arbiter of all things gaming where the Memsahib has given the nod - Roger.

I laid it out before him and Solomon like, he decreed that 1200 was indeed a good collection, but the addition of Swiss and Burgundian would add depth and texture, allowing for the creation of other armies, into the outbreak of the Italian Wars. He was right of course - He knows me that well, even despite our 20+ years of estrangement as we grew up and got over the stresses of youth.

So, the deal was done, but not before I did the 'big picture' mathematics.

I have a reasonable sum left in my warchest.

It will need more popping in to fund the Triple Alliance project.

Aha! But my painter could not possibly take on another project until 2023.

I would have the whole project funded by early 2023.

RESUL-TAH!

And so, I have kind of broken my rule, only I haven't because they are two projects which just happen to be able to cross pollenate nicely, thus adding longevity and interest to each other mutually.

Anyway, the shopping trip bgged me:

BURGUNDIAN

1 mounted general
24 mounted knights
24 foot knights
48 halberdiers
60 Burgundian pikemen
60 Low Countries pikemen
24 crossbowmen
24 longbowmen
24 handgunners
4 handgunners in 2 man teams
24 gunners with 8 guns and seven pavises
4 heralds
6 individual commanders on foot
25 horses

SWISS

20  knights on horseback and
24 knights on foot,
90 halberdiers,
240 pikemen,
30  handgunners,
30 crossbowmen,
12 mounted crossbowmen,
4 cannons with crews  

8 Ian Weekly pavilions

And so, I was that man who said 'Isn't that too many figures?' and it was I who was roundly set in his place by my peers and betters...

TTFN