"How many armies?" Topic

For any historical period, how many armies do you need?

Some people raise one & their wargaming pals/opponents raise an opposition. The more cautious will create two armies, so they alwayshave someone to fight with.

And then we get to megalomania. For Napoleonics, I had ten armies (this did count 3 French Corps & the Imperial Guard but in numbers each was a stand alone army). Other periods were nearly as bad.

In the Great Sell-off, I sold several complete armies – an ECW Parliamentarian (Keeping my Royalists & Covenanters), my WW2 US (keeping German & British forces) etc. I'm down to six Napoleonic (too many but I love them).

You & your opinion?

Not counting the ones I sold off for food and disinterest in the local group. Nothing remains, except oddly enough a few Ancient Indian MC. 🤷🙄
I used to have massive Zulu, Sudan, and NW Frontier. (Boomers!)

I still have massive American and British (all flavours) Flames of War armies, although I stopped playing over a year ago. Don't miss them. (PM me for selling price. 😄)

Currently, I'm exclusively musket and sword and ship. All 28mm.
Pirates.
French and Indian War.
Spanish vs Comanche vs Texas Ranger etc.
Tons of Plains Indians.
Cowboy stuff.
Prussian vs Austrian border wars.
American Revolution.

"Just when I thought I was done, they drag me back in!"

I mainly stick to Ancients. Then it depends on how you define a period. I have eight "classical" armies, currently working on a 1066 project of four armies, and might next do Ancient Egypt and an enemy. Are they all one period ?

It's easier if you do ACW. Not much point in having more than two !!

Two is a minimum. If you only raise one, either you or your opponent gets transferred.

Above that, I'd say it was a matter of tactical variety and shelf space. If there are no unique units or national advantages--true in a lot of old and/or simple rules--I'd say stop at two. But six different WW2 or Napoleonic seems quite reasonable.

You don't NEED any, WANT is very different. If you want to play a period that nobody else in your group does then you need at least 2, possibly more if there are allies. If, like Napoleonics, lots of people have armies in various scales you may need none at all. I play lots of Nap game but don't have any Nap armies; others in our small group have them in various scales so no need.
Also, what is an 'army' ? Depends on the rules and the type of battles you want to play. Too many possibilities to give any meaningful answer.

Two at a minimum. In my experience, group projects don't work in the long run.

Ordinarily two, so that I can take it to a convention or a game with friends and provide everything.

It's actually "at least two", because I may want to present different factions on the same table, such as NVA, VC, ARVN, and USMC.

I tend to have both sides because I grew up/spent my young adult life in places where gamers were few and far between, so I had to have both sides

So right now I have

Medieval – enough troops for 4 different armies or one really really big army
Seven Years War – five armies (Prussian, British, French, Austrian, Russian)
Napoleonics – four armies (French, Austrian, Russian, really tiny Prussian)
ACW – two armies (like there were more)
Mexican Revolution – kind of like Medieval – enough troops for four armies or one really big one
Colonial – six armies (Brits, Canadian, First Nations/Metis, French, Japanese, Chinese/Boxer)
WWII – three armies (Brits/Canadians, Germans, Soviets)
Modern – enough figs for two or three skirmish gamers

Fantasy – four (humans, dwarves, Orks/goblins, amazons)
Sci-Fi – three or four (humans/renegades, Orks, Marines)

Plus enough Wings of Glory planes for lots of dogfights

"It's easier if you do ACW. Not much point in having more than two !!"

Even easier for me. I sold *both* my ACW armies off. No offence but I found the period boring to game & though I enjoyed painting them (well, the Rebs at any rate), I don't miss them.

I still have 3 Bronze Age armies (NKE, Mycs & Hittites) & 3 SYW (Austrians, French & Prussians).

Good sense says I should sell one of each….but which one?

The minimum is two. You need to have both sides so you can play a game and not be dependent on anyone. Some periods call for more. Some rules offer the opportunity to build more.

I've got

_28MM Ancients_
Early Imperial Roman
Ancient Briton
Romano-British
Dark Age Saxons

_AWI_
10mm British
10MM Colonial

_ACW_
6mm Union
6mm Confederate
15mm Union
15mm Confederate

_19th Century Colonial_
15mm Pathans
15mm Plains Indians
15mm Zulu
15mm US Cavalry
15mm British

_WWII_
6mm German
6mm US & US Airborne
6mm British
6mm French
15mm German
15mm French

_1/6000 Fleets_
WWI British
WWI German
WWII German
WWII British
WWII Italian
WWII Japanese
WWII US

On the workbench are 28MM Medieval French and British HYW armies and 15mm Napoleonic British, Spanish, French armies

Fair point, Gildas. For discussion purposes, shall we define "army" as enough troops for one side in whatever one's normal tabletop is?

For myself, that's
In 28mm, enough for a 4x6 table.
In 10 & 6mm, enough for a 3x3 table.
In 2mm, enough for a 2x2 table.

Smaller forces are regarded as auxilliaries.

Back in the 1970-80s, I had just finished Guard du Corps and was playtesting and demo them at shows. I ended up raising forces from every country. I ain't Ed at least 10 battalions each and 30 battalions with support for major peers. All 15mm and how I wish 10mm had been around them.

Ancients: 4
Medieval: 4
WW2: 4
Fantasy: many

I currently have 28mm AWI (skirmish), 28mm Arthurian (skirmish/battles), 13.5MM TYW (battles), and 8mm Napoleonics (grand battles).
For horse & musket period armies, my favorite, I would suggest 28mm for skirmish, 10-15mm for battles, 6-8mm for grand battles or possibly twin battles (example: Jena/Auerstadt).

For purposes of a poll, this should cover us diehard convention GMs:
* 8 or more.

As many as I can build! I do most of my gaming running events at the FLGS and conventions. So generally aim for at least 8 sides, and often wind up going a bit overboard and doing 12 or 16.

85 finished DBA armies, plus as many or more in various stages of work. I build them primarily in campaign sets of historical enemies and extended enemies of enemies. The larger campaign sets are:

Hyksos Dawn: 8–10 plus some duplicates.
Campaigns of Thutmose III: 12–15 plus some triplicates.
Hoplite Heyday: Many
Punic Wars: Many
Early & Mid Imperial Rome: Many
Viking Raids: only about 4–5, but with triplicates
Medieval SE Asia 7–9 in the works plus some triplicates
HYW: only 5 built, but more in the stash.
Meso-America: 7–8
South America: 4–5, plus quintuple Inca.
various other periods apanning all of 3000BCE to 1500CE in lesser numbers.

Test of Honour: 9–10 different factions

The Silver Bayonet: 5 done, another 5–6 in the works.

Lunar: 9 countries with 1 corporation, plus Little Green Men.

Gangs from The Warriors Movie: 12–14 done, more in the works.

French & Indian Wars, many skirmish commands from a goodly variety of regiments, tribes, and locals.

Plus a handful of Napoleonics, 2 WW2 in 1/87, and another 2 in 28; but commands that can be divided up amongst numerous players. And so on, and so on, and scooby dooby dooby.

My numbers are down. I have 15 28mm forces, 17 15mm armies and fleets for 9 naval wars.

Can I extrapolate?

1. You can only fight (most) wargame battles with two armies.

2. You (rarely) have only one side because it makes me reliant on others.

3. Those with multiple armies for the one war/campaign collect for – – Show & large,multi-player games
– forces for different theatres
– enjoy collecting for its own sake/love of painting etc
– You can't help yourself

NB "army" is defined as a force used by one side in a standard game.
-

Gildas Facit brought up two of my main points – "need" and "army" (which still is amorphous). So I will throw in "period".

A period (in this sense) is a span of time. We always tie that to a region and often to a specific conflict.

I am guessing 0.2 armies/period.

My WWI (that's a period, right?) Brits also fight Boer Wars, Boxer Rebellion, Sudan campaigns (including my hypothetical Fashoda), and Russian Civil War interventions. I want to do some colonial policing actions, too.

But if you want the time period of WWI, there are several other conflicts at the time unrelated to the Great War that would require enitrely separate forces.

Ochoin, your extrapolation looks about right to me.

Generally I want both sides for a given war/period/campaign, for the same reasons Robert P made about opponents/yourself moving. However, I have a special interest in some periods/wars/campaigns, and may be considered to have collected figures rather than raised armies. My SYW collection is one of the latter.

I surrendered to the gods of lead miniatures, plastic ships and tanks, plastic miniatures and paint decades ago. A recent count and printout of the "Collections" by era, type, or nationality identified 156 of them. Some have thousands of painted miniatures, in different sub-era (think Imperial French in 1805, 1809 and 1812+ uniforms), while others have only 20-40 models…like Italian Navy in 1/700 scale.

Hmmmm…….too many to count. I think they should be placed with me as grave goods to serve me in the afterlife.

I have sold some large armies and fleets over the years. Haven't done it lately. As I grow older that will likely change.

Thanks.

John

Too many and not enough! 😬

Defining things…..
See Humpty Dumpty's famous line, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean."

For Napoleonics – 20+, I started as the group's "odds and ends" man, painting all the interesting little outfits like the Hanseatic Legion, the Russo-German Legion, the Swedes, etc. Then I inherited Russians and the Prussian and Austrian guys moved on, so I added some of those, too. And Spanish (both sides). And Portuguese. And Turks and Egyptians, which led to Honorable East Indian Company troops. And then Americans and Canadians. And so on and so forth.

O Lordy. I am afraid to respond to this one. It will bring me face to face with my failings and hubris.

I have always bought at least two "sides" for any period I am interested in playing because like others here, I couldn't rely on a partner or group taking up half the job.

And when you talk about skirmish or fantasy or Pulp games, there's always more than two "sides" potentially. So you're building lots of "armies". To handle multi-player games or scenarios.

I am interested in LOTS of periods -- so I must buy LOTS of armies. Therein lies the tragic flaw.

What I have, if I don't overlook anything:

20mm (plastics): Napoleonic: French and allies (1809 to 1815); Anglo-Allies (1815); and probably some I've forgotten, since that particular group project didn't last very long, only long enough for me to go crazy and buy a ton of boxes of soldiers and paint about two hundred or so.

20mm (plastics): Texas War of Independence, Texians and Mexicans (Alamo)

25mm (95% metal):
Fantasy: Good guys, bad guys, in betweens, neutrals, animals, monsters. How many armies is this? Thousands of figures.

Ancients: Greeks, Persians, Romans (Caesarian and Imperial), Gauls, Britons, Picts, Germans

Medieval: a lot of generic types (double as fantasy); English; Scottish; Welsh/Irish; French

18th Century: Jacobites; Hanoverians

19th Century: Colonial British (Zulu war; Northwest Frontier); French Foreign Legion; pan-Islamic horde (Pathans, Tuaregs, Arab bedouins); Zulu kingdom; Wild West (whites, Apaches, Mexicans)

20th Century: WWI British; "Pulp"/Gangsters/Horror/Sci-Fi (many, many units and individuals)

I hope I haven't overlooked anything. These are all mostly assembled and mostly painted. Around 6,800 painted minis by my recent census. That's a bunch of armies! At least three times as many lie waiting in bins unassembled/painted. But these are not "new" armies from the above, only reinforcements/extras/variants.

Two is the mimimum. I have tried just doing one a few times but on every single occasion, I ended up being a ng stuck with an unusable army. So two.

I actually have far more than two for most periods, as they generally feature multiple combatants. Off the top of head

Ancients: at least 12, including early and late Romans
Napoleonic: five
APW/FPW: five
WW1: eight
SCW: eight factions
WW2: I lose count,, at least a dozen,, more
Cold War: four

Defining things…..
See Humpty Dumpty's famous line, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean."

Got it. You're going for ""the reductio ad absurdum of circular narcissism."

link

Nope.I'm going for reminding the nit pickers that this is footling hobby.
Alvin Toffler: " Anyone nit-picking enough to write a forum post of correction to the OP doubtless deserves the error that provoked it."

3. Those with multiple armies for the one war/campaign collect for – – Show & large,multi-player games
– forces for different theatres
– enjoy collecting for its own sake/love of painting etc
– You can't help yourself

Actually, you missed a fairly big one, Ochoin--building different armies because the armies play differently. Late Napoleonic Prussians aren't late Napoleonic Russians or Austrians, let alone Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Western Desert Germans and not Western Desert Italians.

And Eto's right: no point in a discussion if there is no mutual agreement on the meaning of the words. Without that, you might as well post in Cretan Linear A.

I am in the "at least 2" camp. Mostly a solo (and skirmish) gamer so I have always collected both major sides.

My largest collection, AWI, I have most all the combatants/unique units and continue to add/collect more. French & Spanish at some point in the near future.

AWI
FIW
ACW
WW2

AWI – Hessian, British, Rebels
ACW – Both sides
SYW – Prussian, Russian, Saxon, Austrian, Reichsarmee
Ancients – Alexandrian Macedonian, All Successors, Thracian, Greek, Kappadokian and Scythian WIP.

+1 on the 'they play different' motivation.

That's why I don't have as many different armies for WW2 as for DBA and points in between.

Nope.I'm going for reminding the nit pickers that this is footling hobby.

You certainly have the right to have your own opinion of the value of the hobby. You don't have the right to foist your opinion of the value of the hobby on others.

You certainly also have the right to think asking for what you mean by army and period is "nit-picking" when there are half a dozen incompatibly different definitions for each in the responses.

It's a great quote, though. I can't find it in Future Shock, The Third Wave, Powershift … where's it from?

All 15mm ('true' end of the sliding scale)

Wars of 3 Kingdoms (aka ECW)
* Early Parliamentarian
* Early Royalist
* Covenanter
* Montrose's Royalists
* Irish Catholic Confederacy
* Clubmen

Napoleonic
* French
* British
* Prussian #
* Austrian #
* Russian #
* Confederation of the Rhine
* Duchy of Warsaw
* Westphalian
* Swedish #
* Hanover
* Bavarian
* Wurtemburg
* Belgian/Dutch

Those marked # aren't finished, they are a combination of 'lead pile of shame' and work in progress. Everything else is painted, based and playable.

I am a odd one as only have Napoleonic era allies who have to fight each other.
Russian 5 infantry 3 cavalry corps
3 Prussian corps and guard
Wallmoden Corp
British 1 division 2 cavalry brigades
Bavarian division

Also, what is an 'army' ? Depends on the rules and the type of battles you want to play. Too many possibilities to give any meaningful answer.

Whatever I say it is.
If I have 5 battalions of Austrians and 2 squadrons of cavalry, as far as I'm concerned, it's an "army".
Ditto a shipload of pirates is an army.
I see no need to tie myself in knots trying to shoehorn my "project" into someone else's definition.
If I call my 100 figures an "army", you are free to disagree. And I'm free to ignore your disagreement. 😄

I knew I'd miss something:

I also have armies for the British army in Ireland/WWI and Irish wars forces -- RIC, Black and Tans, Irish Republican Volunteers (uniformed and in mufti).

@ Ethiopi

Thanks for outlining my rights. I'm pretty sure you don't have the right to do that. As for the quote – keep looking & regard that as therapy.

Here's another quote for you from Dallas Willard: "I'm practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.". I know you really, really need to have it.

@ OFM

John, as usual, you are right.

After the obvious 'at least a pair of armies', it's horses for courses.
12 base DBA armies? As many matching groups as you can manage.
24-48 base armies? 4 who can fight each other, especially if you can match twpairs against each other for a large battle. Think Romans, Carthginians, Gauls, Spaniards or Italians, for example. 18th Century Prussians, British, French and Austrians, perhaps.
World War II is more pairs of armies in different periods and environments.

Whoops. Pirates. The OFM reminded me. I can field several ship's crews of buccaneers, corsairs, freebooters, and sea wolves!

I realise I'd completely forgotten my Pike and Shot, eighteenth century, Sci fiction, WW2 skirmish and naval 'armies'.

Add another 15 to 20, I can't be bothered to add them all up.

I have so many WW1 and WW2 armies because, early war and late wwr are different and the desert is not the same as europe. Russia is not the same as Europe. I have at least managed to get it down to two scales now I stead of four. Same for WW1, except that is three scales.

I see no need to tie myself in knots trying to shoehorn my "project" into someone else's definition.
If I call my 100 figures an "army", you are free to disagree. And I'm free to ignore your disagreement.

Please quote back the part where someone told you you have to conform to someone else's ideas in your gaming.

NASA, JPL, and Lockheed Martin are perfectly allowed to work in Newton-Seconds or Pound Force-Seconds whenever and wherever they want. But if they are going to collaborate on something, they need to have consensus on terms (not change how they think or act, simply have the same reference for interactions), or we get "Cleanup on Aisle Mars".

As many as you can afford and have the time to paint, but haven't grown bored of [or your local club hasn't grown bored of].

Personally I'd rather expand existing armies to give me more force options for the same game than get into new periods, but that's in part because there are whole swathes of history that I don't want to wargame because I don't believe there are any meaningful tactics in the period and I don't want to play a 'wargame' that pretends there are.

I'm lucky in that my periods of interest are quite limited.

Causing problems for Rome in Britain, Gaul and Hispania. This one I fight in 2mm and have huge armies for it. Started out as a travel set but quickly morphed to 7 legions at 1:2 figure/man ratio yet based for RL in 2mm

Post Roman Britain. 5 Armies here. 10mm, average 550 figures each.

All were painted years back. Improving scenery and terrain is my lot now.