"Poses in a 24-Man Unit? 21!" Topic

You were asked – TMP link

When building a number of 24-man units (let's say from Ancients to Napoleonics), how many individual poses do you like to have available? For the purpose of the poll, we won't count three command figures (officer, musician, standard bearer). So you really have 21 figures left. How many poses of figures would you like to see out of that group?

15% said "21 poses"
13% [TIE] said "1 pose" or "3 poses" or "6 poses"

That's a fine number for Vikings or Gauls, but an insane number for phalangites or Grenadiers.

I love ranges that offer 8-10 or more variant poses, but since I mostly do DBx type ancient/medival gaming, my expectation is to have a minimum of 3-4 figure poses in a pack (not counting a separate command blister), which allows for variation from base to base. It its close order, drilled infantry like Greek Hoplites, Roman legionaries or Macedonian phalanx, one good pose plus officers is sufficient although I still prefer more. If its irregular or "barbarian" foot, I like as many poses as I can get for variety, and will mix manufacturers to achieve. And for mounted, at least two and preferrably three mounted figure poses and three different horse poses per pack.

If figures were coming 24 figures to a pack, I'd look for 1 each of the command figures, and at least 6 different poses optimally (more would be even better).

Young'uns are spoiled.

GHQs 10mm Napoleonic and ACW ranges have four poses plus cadre in their advancing pack. The poses are similar but slightly different.

When I was commanding my battalion of ACW reenactors I was always striving for just one pose. :)

I look at many of the poses that are offered in a pack and think this one is going to fall flat on his face, that one is going to do hurt somebody on his own side or others I just look at them and shake my head.

I also wonder how many people tried to throw the poll since it is so meaningless out of context.

Depends on the unit, the scale… and, although this is 'Ancients', the period.

'Individualist' warriors, eg. Celts, Vikings, etc. …the more, the merrier! Formed units, such as Romans, Greeks… pretty uniform… with some variations on pose.

In 10mm / 15m I like to see most figs in similar poses. In larger scales… fewer figures, a bit more lassitude, although, for ME, I do not like the 'mini-diorama' base, with major differences in action… and casualties!

In later periods with formed troops, eg. Naps / ACW, etc. I would have very little variation from a particular pose. I just don't 'like' the 'modern', 'March Attack' poses so popular, now… Musket/Rifle 'presented' is what I go for… being 'brought up' on pics of 1960's/70's units books/mags!

One of the reasons why I 'fell out of love' with 20mm plastics a long time ago, was the huge variety of 'action' poses in a box. Some manufacturers, now, are making boxes in 'similar' poses… or, with the possibility of making up similarly posed figs.

'Each To Their Own', however…and enjoy your own choice!

i'm in to 1-10- so unit of 400 men wil be 40 figs yes painting them up to 40 years now

@ horseman

I'm with you. 24 figures each doing their own thing in 21 poses don't look a military unit, they look like a group of football hooligans.

One voltigeur pose, one grenadier pose, one centre company pose. Job done.

I'm working through a few thousand plastics right now and faced this problem getting there. All units have elites firing and light infantry kneeling, so flank companies are standing firing or kneeling firing. A couple of command figures aside a 20-figure British unit then needs 14 centre company guys, an 18-figure French unit 10. I don't mind if the centre company pose is different from one battalion to another but I like them all to be in the same one per battalion.

Only three of the other Airfix French figures are useful – the marching, bayonet levelled and kneeling poses. So I find about half a box can't be used. The British are better but there are fewer of each pose, so in either case you need loads of sets to form the type of units I like.

The small differences between individual mouldings then give me as much pose variation as I need.

There should be a poll for the most useless pose in a box of figures. My vote goes to the guy who's using his musket as a club.

The guy on the left, shuffle-dancing on one leg while listening to the touch hole, is pretty useless too.

The third from left thinks he's Gene Simmons and his musket's a guitar.

The old plastic poses were pretty awful. Lots of guns being swung like clubs, some random crouched poses.

The stabbing down over the head with the musket with bayonet was pretty useless too.

Another was holding the rifle/musket at hip height flat across the body like below figure second from right.

Far right figure is useless too.

Yeah, but I miss those figures from childhood

The Airfix British paratrooper shooting into the sky (at his colleagues????) seemed odd.

It also depends on the overall stance of the unit. If it's a unit standing around with spears upright, a smaller number of poses is fine. A unit attacking (eg hoplites thrusting spears, javelinmen throwing javelins etc) is better with more poses.

Consequently I was annoyed to find that when I needed a whole bunch of 15mm shieldless javelinmen for my 11th Century Spanish, the 9 Essex packs contained a grand total of two poses.

Cheers,
John

I've noticed over the decades I've been gaming, that there is an effect (although slight) of the position of the figures on the aggressiveness of the player. I player given units of figures in a charging pose are more likely to attack, while those with units of figures at rest tend to be defensive.
Anyone else notice this, or is it just my view through a beer glass?

What happens if both players have at-rest units? Presumably not a lot?

The Foundry packs Perry made Landsknechts are a pretty good indication what can be done with "rank & file" – 8 minis in the same general pose but with different clothing and slight variations of head & arms. Sufficient that any base will have no doubles.

I bought some miniatures from "Bohemian troops" for Thirty Years War gaming (Tercio rules),and you can have that many different poses for pikeman and musketeers, even more if you use arquebusiers.
For the pikes it doesn´t make sense to combine some poses (as some are relaxed and others expecting cavalry), but for the loading process it is awesome.
Really awesome!
And those miniatures are easy to paint, a blessing after fighting with Warlordgames plastic bleep.
Also Tercio miniatures offers a lot of different poses, but their miniatures are still on the way to my home, so I hold my judgement.
Thanx Brexit.

I always hated firing poses, since an entire unit looks silly when advancing into contact. Lately I've worked around it by mixing on the same stand figures firing, loading, standing at ready etc. It makes the stands look more active, especially if they are in two ranks.

I had bought some 15mm ACW Rebs. that were "advancing", again multiple poses. One of them is running holding the rifle out in front of him, vertically, with both hands. What do you do with him? How many men waving their hat/cap do you need?

What is with all the "port arms" figures? It isn't even the 19thc. version used by the Americans and the British, but often the WWI WWII version. Port arms is used when advancing and then at the command to charge the front rank levels its bayonets or holds the musket with the bayonet at eye level. Most other nations would advance at the recover, that is the musket held vertically against the right shoulder, as you will see in period prints.

I agree with @major bloodnok and @4th Cuirassier.
The problem is to be limited by the producers of figures. Personnally, doing by myself my papersoliders I tried to find a solution.
Firts point is which period you want to represent: one thing is a group of Gauls charging (so multiple poses are good) another thing is to represent a Prussian Battalion at the Battle of Leuthen.

For this last case – period I love – I did the unit (1:1 ratio) with the musket held vertically; this was the way they were moving on battlefields until the shooting. So mostly of the time were in this pose:
Example:

and

Only officers and NCO have different pose.

Then for Napoleonic period (where the charges were more used) I turned to some kind of mixing the previous figure with other, giving some movement impression but neve using firing positions.
Example:

In the case, they were fighting with swords and spears, I did fighting positions:

You have to consider that my papersoldier are fixed on a magnet that holds them on a metal basis; this allows the units to be revoved/changes at my pleasure. This possibility gave me the last solution: to set up a regiment with tw0 different poses: 1 advancing and 1 resting, simply substituting the front raks. This was particularly important for shot & pike, where the units really changed according to the moment of the fight;
Here some Danish at the Battle of Halmstad 1676:

and

In any case – coming back to the XVIII Century armies, even when the unit is on marching positin (i.e. with musket held on shoulders) it will give you a good effect to add – when firing – some cotton to provide you the idea of a fighting unit.

and again with Roman Legion you have to mantain some sort of fix position

Depends entirely on the period and the army.