"Figures per player?" Topic

What is a good amount of figures per player in SP? Looking at getting some forces together for the Alamo.

We generally give a player 4-6 groups for games of this kind.

Minimum would be a Unit of two Groups(16 to 20 Figures total. A lot depends on how many players you have. For one player per side, you could easily go 9 to 10 Groups per player. Game works best for two players per side and Extra Crispy's suggestion above would be right on for that.

A close order group of 30+ is not more intellectually troubling than one 6 sk group. Provided you have unit stands/ magnets😜.

More independant groups strain your game, not the figures number. Or rather leaders. Our fine member here who has wonderful games in GA(?) used a trick of not using the cards of the 1 class sub leaders in huge units till they get separated, but adding them to the main leader for shock recup.
It works fine with 4-7 independant groups/ leaders per side.
If to few the dice can take over skills.

Pardon my confusion with some of these answers, but I'm still trying to figure out how many figures an individual player should/could control for a small game.

One answer is a "Unit" of 16-20 total figures, but another answer states that 9-10 "Units" per player works. So 9 x 20 = 180 figures for one player?

So two players could be a total of 360, etc?

This doesn't sound like a skirmish game to me. This sounds like a large game to me. Am I missing something?

Where does the role playing element come in with so many figures on the table.

I'm wanting to get started in SP but I had the impression that each player might command about a dozen figures. Maybe SP is not the set of rules that I'm looking for to play a skirmish game.

In SP, figures are organized in Groups,8 figures per Group for most, but Militia are in Groups of 10 and skirmishers only 6. A fair amount of Groups for a player to control is 4 to 6, so somewhere around 40 figures per player. More experienced players could easily handle more Groups, but to start out, four Groups is a good number. Keep in mind that some Groups will be organized into a formation so will all be doing the same thing with their normal two actions per turn(move, fire, load, present, etc. If you have a lot of players you could start out with just two Groups per player, but you will soon find yourself with units that can't do much. Even so, its a good way to learn the rules.

After re-reading your last post, I see I didn't really answer the latter part of your question. So to clarify,there is no reason you have to use Formations in SP. You could run it completely using skirmish units or even a combination of single groups and skirmishers. For a small game a player could have three to four groups so about 28 figures per player. You could easily go smaller, say two groups of skirmishers each would give twelve figures total per player.

Not using Formations makes the game easier to play(less complicated) and some gamers prefer it that way. It does get it back closer to the feel of 1st Edition of SP rather than the small unit tactical of the 2nd Edition.