"number of 40mm figures for game" Topic

Hi

I am starting a 40mm collection of AWI figures for a set of home rules on the American Revolution. How many figures should the regiments/battalions be? I am thinking that specialist units (lights, grenadiers, cavalry, indians) would be half the number of figs of a regular infantry regiment/battalion.

Thanks.

Paul

Paul,
I'd say 8 – 12 figures, including an officer and a flag for infantry units, and 4 – 6 for cavalry units.

A lot would depend on the ruleset and its style of play.

I would work in multiples of companies. A regular unit could be 8 companies if at full strength whereas light/grenadier units would be, in theory, one company each per regular unit in the theatre of operations.

Cavalry would be few and far between and Indians varied depending on allied relations at the time of conflict.

Normally I'd say that it depends on the rules, but since these are home grown…
Line infantry are going to be your basic unit. You'll want 10-12 or so per side. Company? Battalion? Brigade? Doesn't really matter, but that's the sort of number of manoeuvre units I'd expect to handle. How many figures you put in a unit depends on a) how much space you have and b) how much painting you want to do. Some people have 48 man battalions: Volley & Bayonet puts a regiment on 3 by 1.5". Really, it's your call.

I'm going with 24,without flank companies,and 20-24 for grenadiers and lights. Roughly 1 to 10-1 to 15 figure scale,depending on actual strengths.

What figures are you using, BTW? Mine are S&S,which is how I could afford to do fair-sized units!

For our home grown 40mm AWI rules we have 16 man units and 16 man units of combined Grenadiers or combined Light Inf. For Cav. we have 8 man units and for artillery we have four men per gun.

If you can find a copy of WRG's Fire and Steel. "Squad" size is 5-6 figures.
It's relatively complicated.
If you don't care for it, at least your figures will be painted and based.

How many figures should the regiments/battalions be?

Dunno. You tell me. The rules define unit size. They're your rules so write 'em how you like.

Got to agree with the Major on this one. Do what you want, but 12-16 is pretty "normal" for unit sizes.

I would probably use infantry in multiples of 12 and cavalry in multiples of 6

For light companies/elite, same unit size, just fewer units

Thank you all for your advice!

Sharp Practice 2 requires units of 8 figs each, single based positioned 2x4. Then individual named officer figures (for the Great Men, ie Heroes/Leaders). The commanding officer of a formation of multiple 8 figure units then has the Color Bearer and drummer/bugler assigned.

Example AWI Scenario: link

Doug at the MSC is THE man to listen to regarding 40 mm AWI. Sooo – listen to him.

I think the over all theme here from people is we have to know what type of game you want to depict or if you have a set of rules what are they? I game in 40mm and have S&S and MSC and even some Irregular Miniatures.

I play my own game called Light Bobs with 40's. Units are 4 to 12 figures in strength depending on the morale type. These represent a company. You can find some designer notes at link

The page looks like it will cost you something for them but ti just lets me capture an e-mail for my mailing list.

Good luck whatever you choose to do :)

Chris