"Sidi Rezegh with BKC4: Questions of scale Vs spectacle" Topic

How many units is too many?

Is game more important than spectacle when it comes to numbers?

These are questions I'm asking myself midway through a re-fight of the battle of Sidi Rezegh on 22nd November 1941.

The quality of the figures in play isn't in question, I don't think – though I say it myself, for 15 mm, they are pretty good. I'm not talking that kind of eye candy, I'm talking about the spectacle that large numbers alone bring to a table.

The game looks great; the rules are great; the number of units means the game turns are taking an hour each to play through – that's too long by half.

More thoughts and pics here:

link

Well, you do have a pretty spectacular table!

When we did Sidi Rezegh it was 1:285 and Spearhead rules

Beautiful table and models.
List out what is most important for you when playing a game. It appears from what I read on your site, that large numbers of units and beautiful terrain to gaze at while playing is very important. The time it takes to do 1 turn seems to be the big issue. If that's the case, either use another ruleset or if wanting only BKC4, the rules need to be revised to shorten the time to do a turn. Whether it be limiting the number of times units can activate per turn, somehow revising the firing and saving mechanics, or revising something else (I only know basics of BKC4 so cant comment specifically) is where you'll need to tinker.

I know what you mean. I always want to fight big battles too rather than parts of an action. So my pick would be keep it big and endure the drawback of it being slow. Afterall you can keep the game set up.

But in the end, it has to be what you think is best. It's your hard work, money spent, toys painted etc.

We do this hobby for fun (well, I hope so anyhow)

Good luck on your decisions.

You mentioned rescaling (1:10 instead of 1:5?) and reduced scope (dividing a scenario into smaller parts to be played separately or ignored), but there are a couple more ideas:

1. Add players. Get 2-4 more players at the table, and scale the game to playable per-player force allocations.
   
2. Bathtubbing. Instead of running a real-life battle with all the units actually there, play a similarly-proportioned fictional action that reduces the size to the minimum forces necessary but gives the same (or analogous) tactical options/events to the player-commanders.
   
3. Different representational scale. Instead of using one-stand-per-unit, use multi-stand units, and make each "unit" represent a larger formation (thus reducing the number of units without reducing the number of miniatures). In the case of BKC this would probably require some adjustments to shooting/movement/command ranges, but you're an accomplished rules writer/tinkerer, I think you could handle it.

I tend to design fictional-but-plausible scenarios that scale up or down depending on how many players show up, but I do this because I often don't know how many players I'll have. Sometimes I want to play the "real" battle or a very specific "what if" and that sets a floor and ceiling for the number of players.

I've never successfully rescaled a game by changing mechanics to alter representational scale, but it's easy to rescale a game by using a bunch of extra miniatures to represent each unit. Sometimes having extra "stuff" in each unit improves other game mechanics (e.g., instead of having a bunch of boxes to check off a roster represented by a single indivisible stand, you can use stand count to represent unit strength and stand removal to represent "hits").

- Ix

Option 3 works really well.

Or use a set of rules designed for the level of action depicted.

Very nice looking table and models.

The topic of optimal game size is one which has perplexed me for many years. My final conclusion is that, on average over the length of a game, the number of elements should not exceed 100 and should be less. This means two sides with 50 elements each for the entire game, or one side with 50 and the other with 25 for the 1st half, followed by an addition 50 elements for the 2nd half. This should give you 12 game-turn game lasting for 4-6 hours.

As for rules, if both players are experienced the complexity of the rules does not have a major impact, but if both players are not experienced the rules complexity has a major impact on game length.

As for element density as a factor of the playing area size, that's much harder to determine. A good rule is line up all the on-playing area elements you will be using across the greatest length of your playing area, in a single line. If they fit you have a reasonable density game, if they do not, then your element density on the playing area is probabaly too great.

For example, 50 elements in 6mm forms a single line 150 cm wide (50 x 3 cm). Note that a number of elements will be off-playing area artillery and aircraft, so in this example the actual playing area will probably be 120 cm to 140 cm. Also note that you should use the greatest axis length, so if your playing are is 90 cm x 120 cm, use 120 cm, irrespective of where the player edges are.