"ECW Wargaming Unit Sizes" Topic

It seems like most units are 18-24 figures for infantry and 6-12 for cavalry. Is that sort of the period standard that carries across most rules? Is it just a habit?

Depend what rules you use. Many have multi-based figures and it is the number of stands, not the number of figures which matters.
My foot units have 2 stands of pike and 4 of muskets for units with a 2:1 ratio, but the number of figures per stand doesn't matter at all

Hi

My 'standard' foot battalia are 40 figures strong, 'Swedish' horse 18 and 'Dutch' horse 27 figures strong. That's 15mm figures for use with 'For King and Parliament' rules. I just like the 'look' although the actual number of figures per unit is irrelevant for the rules.

Cheers Paul

Some units you may want to represent as double sized units if your rules allow .
Manchester's Foot at Marston Moor was around 1500 strong with the average full strength unit being around 750- 1000 .Some units were also much smaller too .Some of those being from Lord Fairfax's army being examples .

I keep going back to the math. What size is your table, and how big was that battle?

But I'd agree that 24 infantry for a maneuver unit is very common in systems which count castings. It gives you a comfortable number of maneuver units on a 5x9 table in 25/28mm or on a 4x6 in 15mm. We're all pretty much used to it, and smaller starts looking like a command stand.

It depends what rules you are using. My guys are all based as elements, I don't really care how many figures are on there, although there are a lot, as they are 2mm.

I use 10mm and my figure count is much higher lol