"World record for most figures in a war-game?" Topic

I can't find any data online about it, so I thought I'd ask here.
What is the most figures ever used in a single war game?
I've seen over ten thousand 6mm figures.
I'm just curious.

We should have a weight system
So 8 6mm equals, 4 15mm equals, 1 25mm
Then decide whats the biggest game

The more figures in a game the harder the game becomes to manage. I should know. Now if I can just find the resolve…

…resolve, I used to know what that was but I just can't remember what it is…

…or where I put it.

Re: OP, no idea but agree it varies by scale, though 4:1 15:25 is too high, maybe 2.5:1.

Management has more to do with maneuver elements than number of figs.

There was a giant Borodino game several years back that was purportedly going for the record. I don't recall the final
tally, however.

Have had CLS games at my home with 3,000 +/- 28mm figures on a 24'x6' table in my garage.

Toxteth O'Grady, USA.

We played a Napoleonic game at my my school about 35 years ago with about 10000 figures on the table. The table filled a classroom and the game ran over 5 days in a half term holiday

DesertScrb for the win….. :-)

Wargames Digest reported on a Leipzig game,back in the mid 70's,with 10,000 25's. I believe Rudy Nelson said here he participated in it. It was played on a gym floor. IIRC they didn't get through many turns.

I'm looking at doing Wagram at 10:1 infantry, 14:1 cavalry and 2:1 artillery. 30,000 x 3mm figures. Every battalion and squadron will be represented, and be able to change formation.

I've got about 10k done so far…

Here's about 3000 figures, an Austrian corps and the French heavy cav reserve (minus the carabiniers):

Aiming for HCON 2018, hopefully, but I may run a few test games in the Bay Area first. Well, I should say rather that I need to run some test games out here first…

I have no idea what rules I will be using, however. I don't know what would work. My intent with the game is to set it up one day as a display, then leave it out overnight and have a council-of-war style intro session where the registered players will get a brief about how the game will go down. It would be nice to get at least one player for every corps, and do the battle in one day. I will need a referee team though, because it will be too big for one person to run- one ref for every two or three players might be ideal to keep the game moving. There will be well over 500 maneuver units.

This summer I'm planning on finishing up the bulk of the figures I need. First, the Austrians, then the French infantry. After that all the cavalry, finally the artillery and last the officers and terrain.

Four, but that was like the very first attempt, a very long time ago and from what I hear it didn't hold the record for long.

Way back when I was still a young wargamer, me an my pals thought it would be an uber-cool idea to do a battle with ALL our combined fantasy figures and ALL our scenery.

So we set out all our stuff on the ping-pong table we were using for wargaming at the time.

Then we realized there was no room left for manoeuvring. Ever since then I try to limit the number of troops on the table.

The best games are not about how many figures you have, but about what you can do with them.

The OP was about the greatest number of miniature figures used in a single wargame. That is a fair question, but I doubt it can ever be certainly resolved for lack of anyone keeping systematic records.

Fergal made a good point about the number of separate maneuver elements being really more pertinent in judging the scope of the game. Leipzig may be actually playable if each maneuver element represents a brigade or division--or not, depending on the quality of the rules. But if the maneuver elements represents companies, you might as well forget trying to actually play a game.

Companies or brigades certainly determines the command management phase. Regardless of the command level, if a brigade is given one order or its 20(?) companies are given fifty separate orders, all the minis still have to move. I think that is what was meant earlier by "management" of the minis getting out of hand. After all, if I have 20 "company commanders" on one side executing their commands simultaneously, the company level game could move faster than one dude trying to move a brigade by himself.

But if the maneuver elements represents companies, you might as well forget trying to actually play a game.

This gets at a good point about "world records". Many of them (not all) are really "stunts" and have no real practical relevance. World record for largest number of babies delivered in a night – real world accomplishment. World record for the larges pizza pie – stunt.

So for a very large game, where is the border between "stunt" (we just did it to do it so we could say we did it) and "spectacle", which is a legitimate desirable player experience outcome (not one that I am particularly in to, but others aren't really constrained by my druthers)?

To the OP: I tend to go for lower numbers of figures, with a max of 20 per player giving a command, usually more like 5-8, or often, one. We have played a few games with "hordes" – orcs, supervillain minions, or just a (metric) butt-ton of civilians. In such a case, many figures may be on the board but not "active" for every turn. Our largest is probably about 250, well under the numbers discussed here.

I'm going for spectacle for the players, but a very good dichotomy. I want to avoid "stunt" territory.

I like the idea of not every unit being "active" each turn- I wonder how that could work for Napoleonics. That would allow players to come to the table and leave as needed. The game is large enough so that big commands will be idle for periods of time… and this is going to be probably an 8-12 hours game, and maybe two days.

I'm also wondering how scripted the game ought to be. A lot of iconic things happened at Wagram (Massenas flank defense, MacDonald's mega-column, Davout's flank attack), and the question is whether to force them into being or allow a team of generals on each side to come up with their own battle plan.

many decades ago we played a game in my friend attic…in which each side could be whatever he had…in face of our 3 opponents fielding at least 4 WRG ancient armies plus a pair of napoleonics ones and some WW2 mixed Airfix US, Germans and British including plenty of shermans and obviously their reserve of Airfix tigers…i must admit everything carefully painted ,…me and a friend, with far less minis, carried the day thanks to my lazly constructed and spray painted ESCI 1:72 AC-13 Spectre Gunship plus other few elements..in total masses of minis..impossible to manoeuvre and to finish the game

My local group did the battle of Waterloo in the summer of 2015 using CLS, with roughly 10,000. 25mm mini figs with some Hinchliff, Scruby and Hinton Hunt/Kreigpielers mixed in. It took three weeks with four hours per week. About 16 players.

Maneuver is a major issue- I chose Wagram over Borodino for a few reasons, one being that Wagram had a bit more space to maneuver in. The table will be very large- Wagram village by itself will be two feet by eight inches. I have a ground scale where 60mm= 100m, so 24"= 1km, 6'= 3km. This, combined with some dog-legging and maybe some side-tables, should allow me to capture most of the battle. Fortunately the battle, other than Massena's march to the rear, was fought over a fairly static area that fits within my ground scale. Mason's maneuvers in front of Kollorat and Klenau, and Davout's flank attack and the cavalry battle on the far right of the French position, will both call for dog-legs. this is going to be very table-heavy, clearly. I'm using my cloth-and-chalk method of terrain, so it will be easier than it sounds to cover that much space with terrain.
It will look like this but be more tidy and maybe have some more detailed farm fields and the like:

This is a display I set up at HCON last year. It is 6 feet wide and 4 feet across. In other words, as you look across the table in this picture, that is how deep the Wagram battlefield table will be.

Bobgnar must have a very unusually disciplined group to stick to such an undertaking over the course of 3 weeks!

There were 40,000 x 10mm figures on the table in a game earlier this year: link

link

link

It helps that about 90% of them were our figures as well…! ;)

YAY! theres me in the picture…I'll narrow it down for you..
I'm 3 of the following 4:
A: a little bit overweight
B: a little bit over forty
C: wearing glasses
D: have a lot less hair than I once did.

Great game, Gerry's rules do actually handle that number of figures…Doing Dresden next year…

BACK IN 1977 on October 29-31, at Fort Hood Texas, I played in a 10,000 casting Napoleonic game using Empire 2. I was the Prussians. I remember it so clearly because I was on my honeymoon. I also still have the newspaper article that ran in the newspaper.