"What's a Small Battle?" Topic

Less than six hours??? Man, how long do your large battles last?

How many different ways can you say the same thing? 🙄

I chose, "Other", because I rarely play "small games", at all. I play huge games, with as many figures as I can pack into the scenario. I own 1,300+ figures which are table-ready, and I want to get them onto the gaming table as often as I can.

When I play a "small" miniatures game, it is because it is a part of an RPG game, or I a playing a one-off 2e BAttleSystem Skirmishes game -- a fantasy miniatures game with a veneer of RPG atop it; for these games, I use either 2D, 2.75D, or full 3D terrain.

Other than my 2e BS Skirmishes games, I don't play small games otherwise. Cheers!

A small battle can be either one with few figures or representing a small number of combatants. What's it's not is a skirmish game; albeit small by some standard, it's not small enough to count as a skirmish.

This is why on-line discussion tends to be less productive than face to face--especially when it's "posting" something rather than exchanging e-mails. We throw around terms like "big battle" or "small battle" and it takes days or even months to find out we're using the same words for very different things.

Mind you, it lets me talk with people I might otherwise never meet. But the opportunities for misunderstanding are numerous.

But the opportunities for misunderstanding are numerous.

So very true! My ,imdest in hearing "small battles" is a recount in history where a skirmish occured. In Dyer's Compendium of the Civil War, he uses terms like "Affair", Skirmish" "Battles" since all engagements were named- to help commanders to be able to tell actions apart in their reports.

Obviously, "small battles" can have meny different meanings to us wargamers. "I want to put on a small battle but I still need 2 more regiments painted up" as an example.

We just played Brandywine at the battalion level. It took us about 7 hours before one side threw in the towel. 6 x 9 plus table. That was one of the biggest battles during the AWI. That was a large battle. We played Princeton which for me is a small battle.

I could not tell you the definition of a small battle. Too many variables. But I know one when I see it. One person's large battle is another's skirmish.

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Is DBA a "small" battle? It's 12 elements a side on a 2 foot square table in 15mm.

Compare to Age of Hannibal where an army can have 50-100 bases depending on scenario. A "big" battle game in my book.

Both games can be used to model what we would all agree were "Big" battles with thousands of combatants on both sides.

DBA is a small game, Age of Hannibal is a large game. Both can model big battles.

For me a skirmish game is tens, a small battle is hundreds to low thousands a big battle is thousands to tens of thousands. These numbers are for combatants not necessarily figures. But there is a lot of fuzzy overlap between sizes.