"How many to make a legion?" Topic

How many figures would you use to represent a Marian (Caesarian) legion in 28mm? This could be for any gaming system I suppose that uses 28mm. Thanks.

depends on man to figure ratio I would think.

On paper the Marian legion was 5120, but usually understrength so around 4000. at 1:50=80 figures or 1:25=160 figures

Ideally I think centuries of 12-16 men is the way to go.

that would give you 72-96 men in a cohort and about 10 cohorts in a Legion, would give about 1,000 figs to a Legion.

With the new plastics from Wargames Factory that would only be 20 boxes of figs. Not too shabby.

but if you want to field multiple Legions on a table and not have to play in a gym, you are probably better off with 16-20 man cohorts cutting the total number of figs down to 160-200 for the Legion.

Then putting a couple of Legions on the table becomes a lot more realistic for the average gamer interested in the period.

I went for 10 x 24 man cohorts. However as Pictor says, one rarely sees a single legion in a battle, so I sometimes call a group of 3 cohorts a "legion" on the table; I've painted up extra command stands to give each group of 3 "cohorts" an Eagle, and am painting some extra cohorts, too.

Simon

With the advent of low priced plastics, the temptation to do a Century or even a Cohort up at 1 to 1 is growing.

I 1=20 ratio, so 10x24=240 figures. I also have 3 legions to game with. Mike Adams

If you play a system like FoG in 25/28mm a battle group (which may or may not represent a legion)is 4-8 bases with 4 guys on each base so any where from 16-32 figures.

If you play a game like tactica a cohort has 6 bases with 4 figures per base. (with 8 or nine cohorts per legion?!?) so 216 figures if you take that route.

Anyone know how WAB represents a legion?

It's up to you. There's no official figure scale in WAB. My army (copied from the army list in the back of the rulebook) has 2 units of 16 legionaries, a unit of 10 auxiliaries, 10 auxiliary archers, 5 auxiliary cavalry, a commander and a ballista. Whether that represents 2 full legions with attached support, cavalry squadrons and artillery batteries, or just a couple of centuries and whatever the Legate could scrounge up, is up to me.

Depends on the element:figure ratio, at 1:1000 that is five elements so 20 figures?

As mentioned above, pretty rare for just one legion to be fighting in a battle.

I like to use FoG to represent large battles such as the Sambre or Pharsalus, with 8 bases (32 figures) per full-strength legion.

Cheers,
Scott

As others have implied, it depends on the kind of game you want to play. For army level action, e.g., tournament gaming, I do the following

2nd Punic War Republican Roman consular army (2 legions):
2x8 figures Velites
2x16 figures Hastati
2x16 figures Principes
1x16 or 2x8) Triarii
1x6 Equites
That's 108 figures for 2 legions, counting horse and rider as two figures.

Latin allies for rest of allowed points total, may not end up with a full complement of allies. I recommend something like:

Try to buy at least this much
2x8 figures Skirmishers
1x16 Extraordinarii
1x6 or 1x12 Cavalry
last
2x16 figures "Hastati"
2x16 figures "Principes"

Ooops, for Marian Roman legion:
6x8 or 3x16 figures or 48 legionaries per legion. Roughly 100 men per stand or 25 per figure

The idea that cheap plastic figures allow for big armies is a bit ridiculous. One still has to paint them!!

Since I like representing large battles I tend to build to 1:150 scale. A Marian legion would be approximately 32 figures or 8 stands of 4 that could be represented in one or two units.

I was cautiously impressed with the "Army Painter" system I saw at Salute; whilst the miniatures I saw weren't painted to anything like the standard I and my friends manage, they were painted at something like 100 times the rate I achieve. So maybe there is something in the cheap plastic approach…

Simon