"The organization of miniature collection" Topic

So a buddy and I always discuss this; to us, uniformity and organization and a certain… well, pattern, is essential in a toy soldier collection.

When I say uniformity I do not mean accurately painted uniforms. I mean the fact that your armies are just organized well and with a coherent structure.

For example, my buddy has a pair of 25mm ACW armies that are perfectly organized into brigades, divisions, and corps, with officers for each division neatly divided and represented the same way, with brigade commanders mounted in one distinct pattern, division in another, and corps in another, but the same structure and mounting across both armies. This leads to a very nice, organized, military feel to the collection.

Another example; my Napoleonic French army is neatly able to be divided into two neat sections, each under the command of three officers who serve under a single commander, two of whom serve under my marshal. Both sections are identical in their basic layouts, and contain the same units (1 unit of cuirassiers, 1 unit of lancers, 1 unit of chasseurs, 1 unit of legere, 1 unit of guard, 2 units of ligne, 2 artillery pieces.) This neat, even split adds a nice sense of uniformity to the army.

A third example; all artillery pieces must have at least limbers painted for them. Otherwise your artillery isn't properly equipped. And when artillery is put on the table with the proper officers and support equipment it is nicely organized.

So that is sort of what I mean. There is a certain fun to the "organization" of a toy soldier collection, and there are a number of aspects of "organization," including the breakdown of troops and the standards of basing and the military nature of the force. You guys share the same basic feelings about it? Or are you more haphazard?

My only comment is that while it sounds very nice and neat, it also does not sound very historically accurate.

Totally depends on how you acquire your collection.

My Napoleonic stuff might meet your definition of "uniformity". However limbers in 25mm? Not a good idea for a lot of reasons.

My ACW (first 1300 figs) was purchased from another individual and frankly has twice as many Rebs as Yankees. Got limbers for all the guns though!! I have worked off and on over the years to even things up but I have trouble getting fired up about painting stuff when what I have is generally more than enough.

WWII collection covers the entire war and I have a little of everything and not much of anything. I tend to play low level games and organization of a Kampfgruppe or Task Force can be pretty free form.

My WWI airplanes have grown and are organized based on the rules being played at the time. Depending on how you look at things they are a very comprehensive collection of single aircraft or a mess (when you start looking at squadrons). Oh well, as long as I can play the game that is all that matters.

mjc

Not necessarily talking about the military breakdown; more the collection breakdown. A collection needs, for me, to have a certain uniformity in composition, if that makes sense.

Hmm.. by this definition..

I have mnore of an agglomeration, sorta..:-)

"Miniature collection" and "organisation" are contradictory terms..

It always appealed to me too Lord Ashram. My Romans and ww2 armies were in permanent organisations. However the Napoleonics have always suffered from me changing rules and scales. I'm just happy that I've settled on a permanent basing for them. :OP

My only collection is 15mm ACW. I have the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of Tennessee at Chickamauga based for JR2 (I prefer JR2 over JR3- I can always remove a stand and play JR3).

Regiments are individually labeled. Batteries are labelled, and have all the appropriate limbers. Each division has a supply wagon.

The bases of each division are painted their own color. Brigades in each division have tick marks painted on them. So for example, the 2nd Brigade 1st Division 14th Corps has red bases with 2 white tick marks on each base.

I'm two divisions shy of having the whole AotC. I'm two corps short of having the complete AoT (Buckner and Longstreets) This doesn't include cavalry. I only have 1 brigade each, and the Union brigade is technically the Lightning Brigade of mounted infantry.

So yeah, I prefer permanent organizations. You can always still make a good random scenario out of them.

Lord Ashram,

all of my horse and musket armies and acw armies, I have picked a battle and than built off that orbat, so some btns are 12 some 40, 5 batns in some brigades some 10, I also paint figs in a campaign look so I look for non uniformity, the only parade ground stuff I have is my 7YW, which still vary btn to btn in size.

My organized armies are organized (or at least a plan exists for them to be and I am in the process of accomplishing it), while my un-organized armies are not organized.

OK, to clarify. I do try to have neat, tidy units for regular armies, like my colonial British, with a command structure above the basic unit. From a strict organizational point of view this modified by the existence of extra character figures, usually officers and civilians. My non-regular forces, like Vikings and pirates have pretty much whatever I bought and didn't sell off. there are adequate command figures for me to use most of the figures I have, given the rules I use, but no permanent units and command structure.
Grelber

Cleburne1863

There is some evidence that the ANV troops that Longstreet brought with him had recently recieved some kind of new uniform issue before ending up at Chickamaugua. Since they moved by train there was not the same wear and tear that overland marching and camping might cause. So maybe they should appear more regular in some way than the reported "scarecrows" of the Army of Tenn! It was described as a medium blue or blue gray short jacket that resembled faded union dark blue from a distance. It did cause some hesitation among some union troops for a while as to which side they were, but only for a short period. Good luck with this worthy project!!

My 15mm ACW (about 18 units each of Union and Rebs, 24 figures per unit) are all painted generically and can be used to represent any unit from any battle. When recreating a battle on the tabletop I will try to choose units who might more closely represent the real-life unit (for example, if a unit in "real life" wore Hardee hats then I will try to choose a unit that is modeled with Hardee hats). When standing over the game table, you really can't tell exactly what a 15mm figure is wearing (at least I can't) so it's not a big deal.

When I store them I just line all the regiments up 1 behind the other. All the leader stands go in a separate area.

Well I always say-show me a wargamer and I,ll show you a trainspotter who doesnt like getting rained on

Yeah Doc, I can't wait to get them painted in more uniform greys and blue-greys! They should really stand out from the rest of my AoT.

Since my collection got started in the days before mail and website orders got you exactly what you want every time, a lot of my stuff consists of things I just happened upon at one store or another. This pretty much goes against any real uniformity.
My best experience was coming back to the States after a visit to London in 1984. At Gatwick, the metal detector went crazy when I tried to go through with about 400 figures from five different stores. I had to dig them all out from each pocket of my carry-on bag,much to the chagrin of the long line of passengers behind me. Now I'm content to let the postman do the heavy lifting.

I usually went by historical organization within the rules I was using in my early years. I began doing that with my ACW troops since I began collecting them for Brother Against Brother.

I have not played for a long time but I keep collecting. I have basically collected Union and Confederate mirror image armies: especially the infantry. I use foundry Greatcoated figs and make one Confederate unit for every Union unit I make.

Sometimes it seems very boring with the unis being the same basic figs but I would never paint them if I went for more aesthetically appealing uniformed figs.

I do not have limbers because at 28mm, I would have little room under normal circumstances. Also, I keep finding the need for fighting infantry and therefore limbers are a "later" kind of item.

My 15mm Napoleonics are based on 2"x2" stands for Grande Armee rules, and represent the forces actually at the battle of Waterloo. (Just finishing off the Brits and have a lot of work to do on the Prussians yet.) They can be seen here:
link

Each base has a label identifying the unit, but these can be pulled off and replaced by something different. So I do not feel I am condemned to continually refighting Waterloo. I just wanted realistically organized (or disorganized) armies of roughly equal sizes.

I hope eventually to expand to all the forces of all 3 armies in the 100 Days Campaign (i.e. to include the forces that fought at Wavre, and the Brits and D-Bs at Hal), not that I have room on my table for all those, but it will give me more flexibility.

PS: One thing I like about Grande Armee is that is does NOT require limbers! I have enough figures to paint without adding those in.

Ahhh Rusty, the old "mirror" armies! Who hasn't fallen prey to THAT one before?:)

Limbers are seldom required; it is just that they make everything feel more… proper:)

My 15mm Napoleonics (just over one thousand at last count) are "built" and stored in a specific organization. They are all done for the 1:60 mounting scheme and are stored in large bins by corps assignment. Each bin constitutes one army corps, a bin for the Guard, a bin for the cavalry reserve (though if I ever complete the whole thing it will span into another bin).

I have, thus far, shunned limbers and caissons for my artillery due to cost. Once I have completed the project (ever increasing portions of the 1806-7 French Army), I may revisit that decision.

I also keep a bin of spare units that are not assigned to a given corps, for instance, Hussar regiments, random officers, etc. so that should the need arise I can create different formations.

My ACW collection of about 700 figures is far more haphazard. I keep organized brigades with attached artillery but no higher level formations are static. A lot of it has to do with the rules I like. For ACW it is Johnny Reb 2, for Napoleonics Legacy of Glory. So for LoG one wants to be ready to deploy a corps or two while with JR2 tossing together a division from spare brigades is perfectly adequate.

Cheers,

The Bandit

I start a collection with the best of motives, usually an army based on a particular year or battle. But I have to admit that though my intentions are grand, I have the soul of a packrat and the heart of a magpie.

Witness my Napoleonics collection. Years ago I started out by deciding to build Soults Corp of 1806, and Klenau's Corp of 1809. But then I would come across figures that were just too pretty or interesting to turn away from. What am I going to do with 24 figures of Fr Genie of the Guard! Unless I build something much later in time. So I got them painted anyway. They look terrific.

And it goes like that. I never intended on getting involved with Poles, Bavarians and Wurtemburgers but I keep adding them in. And after all this time I still am missing a Chasseur a Ceval unit, and the Tirailleurs de Po and Tirraileurs Corse. A whole 24 infantry and 8 cavalry to finish the Corps, and the collection is easily four times as large as it needed to be. I simply cannot resist adding more Legere and Ligne. I already have too much cavalry. The last time period of great armies and great uniforms. It's no wonder I have no money for beer and Hooters! Wife's pleased, though. <grin>

My 6mm Napoleonic armies, after the first few random choices, settled down into a slow pursuit of the goal of building a complete 1809 French (Massena's 4th) and Austrian (Hiller/Klenau' 6th) corps. Both follow the historical OOBs, with named commanders at every level. The Austrian OOB is "nearly historical" because it changed quite a bit in the course of the campaign. I've also done a side order of 3 complete Anglo-Portuguese divisions (3rd, 6th and 7th), and cavalry brigades made of units that did, at one time or another, serve alongside each other.

And having done them, I'm more likely to pull out parts of what I've done and mix 'n' match for whatever sort of battle I might feel like.

I tend to organize my armies around an order of battle for a particular battle that interests me. For example, my 1805/06 French were based on Soult's IV Corps at Austerlitz; my American Revwar British and Continentals were based on the OOB for Brandywine (Greene's Division and parts of Cornwallis's wing); my ACW armies were organized around the first day of Gettysburg (Heth's Division for the Confederates and Reynolds' Corps).

On the otherhand, my SYW armies are more haphazzard in the unit selection, especially since there was no permanent organization of corps, divisions or brigades during this war.

And yes, all of my 28/30mm armies have limbers. No limber means that the gun has to be prolonged around the tabletop. This gives one great incentive to paint the limbers. Once you have limbers, you can't imagine going without them.

In my ACW armies, I have a uniform command stand system: brigade command is two mounted figures. Division command is two mounted figures with a divisional flag. Corps or army command stands have three mounted figures with a corps flag. I used a similar system for Revwar and Napoleonics.

Since my armies are for Grande Armee or one of its derivatives (FPGA or LGG), I follow its system with command stands: Army CO 3 mounted figures, wing or corps CO 2 mtd figures. Division and lower COs are not usually represented, but spare generals can be deployed to command temporary detachments, and these stands have 1 mtd figure (same for Napoleon's aides, who can also be used to command detachments).

You got to love the Union Army for organization. I have about 40 or so command stands for each side with General and flagbearer. The flagbearer just has the staff of piano wire. I then have all the Army, Corps, Division and Brigade flags for all; mounted around a hollow tube that slips over the piano wire and thus can create any unit I want. The Confederate Army somewhat the same but I use a lot of State flags at the Brigade level and then of course the different Eastern/Western flags at the higher levels.

mine is fairly hap hazard I must confess, I play many games with the forces being involved varied so much that trying to organize them has been a problem for me. I am missing so much and over abundant in other areas that I need to work on this before I can create any sense of order in my figure collection. Saying that, one of my friends has an 1812 Russian army in total order down to the last figure, generals and composition, very base of every element of every unit has the name of the unit displayed on the rear or each. Looks awesome.