"Mass Battle Rules for Small Scale Figures?" Topic

Hi everyone,

I hope you can help me out on this issue.

I am looking for a ruleset to cover "army" level games for a small scale of miniature, i.e. 2-6mm figures, and was wondering if people had any recomendations?

Preferably a set geared towards the Thirty Years War or English Civil War would be ideal but earlier or later would be great as well.

Thanks a lot,

Rob

I use DBR for my 6mm ECW armies. My preference is for the condensed figure scale, although the normal scale also works well.

I use the base sizes for 15mm figures. Pike and shot have 24 figures in 3 ranks of 8 on a 40mm x 20mm base. Cavalry has 12 figures in 2 ranks of 6 on a 40mm x 30mm base. (Royalist cavalry is in irregular lines whereas parliamentary cavalry is in straight lines.

I sell a number of suitable rules sets:

Maximilian: In style like DBR but armies are composed of 24 elements. Figure scale is irrelevant as it is an element based game.

link

Polemos: English Civil War: Also element based and published by Baccus the 6mm figure manufacturer. Well received and easy to adapt to other periods.

Mark "Extra Crispy" Severin
Owner, Scale Creep Miniatures
ScaleCreep.com
DeepFriedHappyMice.com

The Polemos system works very nicely, although I must admit I'm waiting for "In The Buff" from Toofatlardies.

I have used For God, King and Country by Canadian Wargamers for my 6mm ECW figs. I also have used Chipco's Age of Gunpowder and Victory without Quarter. the first two deal with both the 30YW and ECW.

Thanks,

John

I like Warmaster for this, it works really well for 10mm scale ECW games with some small mods. I have some adaptations for it on my website.

pictorsstudio.com/WMECW.htm

also the base rules can be downloaded online from GW so the whole thing is free to boot!

Principles of War Renaissance Rules seem to have a mass battle feel to them, I have them but have never played them.

link

D~

Has anyone tried using the Warhammer Historical rules but puting 6mm figures on the bases?
Mick

You can give a try to Basic Baroque, that you can download free at dadiepiombo.com/bbaroq1.html
It is an expaniosn so you should dowload also the basic rules here dadiepiombo.com/basic2.html

Has anyone tried using the Warhammer Historical rules but puting 6mm figures on the bases?

To be honest I'm not overly keen on them; very pretty, but they didn't float my boat. If they're your cup of tea, though, they should work perfectly; basically 20mm frontage infantry and 25mm cavalry, so a doddle to substitute bases, of, say, 2 Baccus infantry strips, or half a dozen cavalry in 2 ranks. I like Pictors' idea though; Warmaster could be just the ticket….

I would think any set of rules that deals with higher levels and is not overly reliant on actual figure count may work. I'm using 10mm on Regiment of Foots standard bases written for PP 15mm figures. If its a base system then it is immaterial if there are 16 x 10mm or 4 x 15mm. (I maintain WH40K would make more sense with 2-3 6mm/10mm figs on a base than 1 28mm)

I would certainly recommend renaissance Principles of War for your experiment.

Forlorn Hope is an excellent set of ECW rules that can easily handle even the largest battles. It also has a pretty slick way of handling 6mm armies

The first time we used the Warmaster rules for this we did Edgehill and the game played out almost exactly the way the actual battle did. The difference was in the cavalry, instead of the cavalry running away and the royalist cavalry was almost eliminated in the scrum. So the effect was the same as the majority of both cavalry forces were eliminated. It was amazing to watch it unfold like the real thing.

Some really helpful suggestions. Thanks guys!

My only concern with Warmaster is the speed of units. From my own (albeit limited experience) of the system units seemed quite manouverable which seems a bit odd for Renaissance battles.

Am I right in thinking this or can it be easily avoided by limiting commanders etc?

and yes, I am looking more for a game concerned with base sizes than the number of figures on it.

Thanks again!

If you can find a set, cos it's currently OOP, then get hold of Polemos ECW rules.

They were designed specifically to handle big battles, so you concentrate on trying to handle brigades rather than individual battalia/regiments as has been traditional for this period.

It's all about getting the focus of command set at the right level.

And, surprise, surprise, I think you'll find that they suit 6mm figures perfectly…

Cheers

Peter

I would second the suggestion to use Basic Baroque. And they are free.

I should clarify. The 6mm rules for Forlorn Hope uses stands, not caring about the number of figures on them

1066.us Our rules go from ancients to the end of the 15th century. But I have transcribed Rocky Russo's Renaissance appendix, complete with armies lists, which goes up to the ECW. If you buy the rules PDF I will send along the Ren appendix for free.

And yes, our rules don't care which scale of miniatures you use, or if you use miniatures at all! The tactical companies are determined by frontage and depth of the base (or marker, if there isn't a miniature on it), not miniature number of scale….

ECW Polemos atm worked well although I didn't find it very exciting to play. For many years I loved FH but we played a modified set. I don't think it was good for games of over 600 figures as it gets very slow and there's no higher level C&C.

We tried a big game of about 900 figures IIRC and gave up after a day and a bit of gaming.

Ditto Dom 'waiting for TFL's set'.

A free set for large battles called For Parliament, King or Glory is available by joining the dedicated Yahoo egroup, and looks quite good. The basic system has been proved through use as an ACW and Napoleonics rules set. It adapts very well to ECW with its extensive use of morale points and activations for just about everything in the game.

Worth looking at, since the price is right!

Warmaster units can be pretty maneuverable, you see this mostly with elves and dwarf armies in the fantasy version. With lower leadership commanders you don't see much of this as they just don't have the command to get the job done.

Also with the way my pike rules work you make sure you have your units facing towards the enemy as much as possible. We haven't really had much of a problem with units just jumping behind others and messing them up.