"Getting Pike Blocks" Topic
10 Posts
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17 Apr 2019 10:23 a.m. PST by Editor in Chief Bill
- Changed title from "Getting Pike Blocked" to "Getting Pike Blocks"Removed from Renaissance Battle Reports board
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Au pas de Charge | 17 Apr 2019 10:01 a.m. PST |
What sized Pike blocks (Number of figures, ranks and files) look good in different scales, 28mm, 15mm, 6mm etc? Im thinking Italian Wars. Not what can a gamer afford, this is more like if I could design any sized pike formation I wanted, what dimensions make for the best looking pike units on the tabletop? |
Griefbringer | 17 Apr 2019 10:24 a.m. PST |
In the past there have been people posting pics of their 48 or even 96 man pike blocks in 28 mm, and they certainly look impressive. |
MajorB | 17 Apr 2019 10:26 a.m. PST |
I think you need at least 4 ranks for a pike block. With at least 4 figures in each rank, that's a minimum of 16. |
Martyn K | 17 Apr 2019 12:03 p.m. PST |
I am painting up an Italian wars army in 28mm. My plan was to have large pike blocks of 8x8 (64 figures) and standard pike blocks of 6x6 (36 figures). I put all of my figures on magnetic 20mm x 20mm bases and use movement trays, so I do have some flexibility to change. I quickly realized that it was going to take me forever to paint enough figures for a club game, so I have changed to large pike blocks of 6x6 and standard pike blocks of 4x6 (the 4 being the width). I use three flags on the large pike blocks and two flags on the standard pike blocks. I think that this amount of figures and flags is a good compromise so that I can get enough units on the table. I can always increase the size of units once I have enough units to fight a battle. The size still looks quite impressive to me in 28mm. With 10-15 of these sized pikes blocks on a table, the game looks impressive, which stops people looking too closely at the painting of individual figures. Here are two large (6x6) Papal States pike blocks together to give an idea of how they look:
and here are two standard (4x6) French pike blocks to show how they look.
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Shagnasty | 17 Apr 2019 1:09 p.m. PST |
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Alcibiades | 17 Apr 2019 9:08 p.m. PST |
My Italian Wars armies are in 15mm and inspired by fellow TMPer, James Roach. My Swiss are in blocks of 108; my Landsknechts, Romagnol in blocks of 96 and others in blocks of 72. |
Puster | 18 Apr 2019 2:50 a.m. PST |
During the Italian wars the pike blocks were pretty large, numbering from 3-5000 – so making them BIG is always a good idea – as they will make up a large portion of your army anyway. Imho 6 ranks and 8 files are a minimum for a proper "block" or "Haufen". I use them on 6*3 cm bases with 4 men, with the front ranks going with 3 ranks on a 6*6 base to achieve a good density of pikes (front ranks often closed – some of these have ~5 per rank), and in my main armies the big units have 3 bases (12) wide and 5 ranks behind that front, for 96 minis (108 for another rank). For what its worth, units of 6*6 were actually used by the Portugese in India and Indonesia, among others for streetfighting. |
JonFreitag | 18 Apr 2019 6:55 a.m. PST |
In 28mm, my pike blocks muster 39 figures in three stands of 13 each. Formed up, these essentially make a 6x6 format.
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Geechrules | 18 Apr 2019 7:07 a.m. PST |
We use 40x40 stands with 4 models per stand. This way you can scale up or down the number of stands to accommodate the unit size. It is the standard Pike and Shotte basing. |
Au pas de Charge | 11 May 2019 1:56 p.m. PST |
So…is a 36 figure pike unit big enough visually to get the point across? |
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