"How Many Poses in a 24-Man Unit?" Topic

Another one that depends – for irregular units I would like to see as many different poses as possible, but for regulars, just a few different poses.

I put six as I use Perry figures for the bulk of my AWI armies but I'm happy with the five Warfare do for GNW. My Shiny Toy Soldiers units have one and it looks fine.

There's a lot of variables too. Are they all marching, charging, or in a firing line? From a manufacturers' view I would say make at least three poses but that's another poll.

Oddly enough, I too would want a large number of poses for tribal bands, and possibly only one for marching SYW infantry. No one said this in the infamous "pre-poll discussion" which gets blamed for everything?

Oh. I see almost everyone did, actually. And whoever put the poll together paid no attention.

+1 robert.

Rather dependent on scale and unit type. (Why "24 man"?)

As a 10mm aficionado, my units vary in size from 12 to 36 or even 42 man units, and are typically strips (indeed, I prefer strips as easier to paint and base). And, like others, it depends on the type as to poses.

In general, I either prefer to have all the figures on a strip essentially identical, as it's the mass block effect that works best at this scale (line infantry and cavalry), or have a variety that makes it difficult to realize that any of the figures are identical in pose (random mobs and skirmishers).
But one of the keys in 10mm is ease of painting— too much detail makes a 10mm strip hard to paint, especially when the detail changes from tiny little fig to tiny little fig. Keep ‘em the same, and it's an easy "assembly line" process. (10mm fig sculptors, please take note… less is more!)

In irregular units I quite like everyone in a different pose, even if, historically, it's a bit silly (even irregular units would need most people to do the same thing most of the time), whereas for regulars, then predominantly one pose is ideal (though I generally add one of two 'one off' poses – really, I guess, to draw attention to the uniformity of the others) …

So it isn't as simple as 'how many?', more 'how many of each pose?' …

Phil

ne of two 'one off' poses

Like that one dude in formation who is scratching his butt.

Agreed that they should all be doing the same thing--firing, marching or whatever--Phil, but I have a strong dislike of irregulars who are all identically dressed and equipped. Regulars too, in some instances. I have a Napoleonic French battalion in which every man is using the same gourd for an improvised canteen, and it never fails to annoy me.

I'd concede the "one off" but otherwise, I think there's a question of how many different poses you need for them to appear to be all different. For me, it's about five, and more if any are very distinct. The inevitable "no shako and a bandaged head" for instance, can't be repeated in any formation.

Depends also on the period. For horse and musket and pike and shot eras I would say one or two – also for most ancients but my Wars of the Roses units have figures doing the same thing but no two exactly the same. That's a tribute to the versatility of Perry plastics or my OCD – I'm not sure which!

It really depends. Like the majority here, if I could get 21 poses for a unit of Gauls I would be happy. Regular soldiers would be great with one or two poses.

dislike of irregulars who are all identically dressed and equipped. Regulars too, in some instances

I completely agree and would probably go further about the regulars. They're all the same height and build, too. grrrr.

Paint can help a bit with variety in addition to variations in sculpt (maybe not so much with height and build). After all my time as a US Navy officer, the only thing I know about khaki uniforms is if you're wearing five khaki things, you're wearing six shades of khaki.

As a guy who wore both, the khaki was never as bad that way as Woodland BDU. And I saw a piece by Simcoe of the Queen's Rangers discussing how different his greens were in spring and fall. (Do all those people who worry about getting exactly the right uniform for a particular battle concern themselves with fade?) I've been known to do 1813 Prussians with three slightly different dark blues and four different washes.

But I think we tend to overstate the height and build problem. First, we're doing 24 castings to represent 500-700, and the vast majority of us are less than 10% off the average. Place me in formation in all my 5'10" glory and say I'm a 28mm. A 30mm is about 6'3" and a 26mm has to be enlisted pretty early in the morning. Are they currently taking them at 5'5"?

Mind you, some of my SF, which I do mean for skirmish, are almost cartoonish. But that's not massed battle.

dislike of irregulars who are all identically dressed and equipped. Regulars too, in some instances

BDUs (any type) have a wide variety of fade, grunge, etc. colour variation. That's why I try to vary the base coluring for regular units.

(Do all those people who worry about getting exactly the right uniform for a particular battle concern themselves with fade?

Camouflage is supposed to break up your outline, not make you blend. As long as you're in the the right broad tone space (not black and dark grey in show, etc.), that effect is fine. At least according to the people who do experimentation on it. Maybe not the person who is performing a personnel inspection. Then again, I never understood a personnel inspection of any type of working uniform.

First, we're doing 24 castings to represent 500-700

Some are, some are not. Even if you have a big ratio, you still visually see variation. If you're doing abstraction, like figures instead of TDA symbology, I can accept the uniformity better.

the vast majority of us are less than 10% off the average

That depends on what you assume about the distribution of height. If you assume normal distribution (which is not always a good assumption in military settings), and use a common human height standard distribution of 7-8cm (like this data set link), only 68% of the people are within 16cm. So let's round that up to 70% within about 10% of the mean and you have 3 of 10, or 7 (rounded down) of 24 outside 10%.

Military units that have stringent physical requirements tend to reject shorter and slighter build people. Thus they tend to have a narrower variation by biasing the sample, which leads to less difference in height, but more people outside 10% of the mean. So you might be alright with only two heights (normal, tall), but need more tall figures, something like 10 or 11 of 24.

This is why photographers learn how to arrange people's order and pose in a photograph to minimize the visual effect of this variance. If you draw vertical height lines on such military photos, you can actually pull out the variance the shot is designed to hide.

There is a great classic 19thC photo of some Mexican soldiers from a unit lined up by height where the chin of the tallest is above the top of the shako of the shortest. I assume the photographer picked and arranged the subject for effect, but he also was picking from within an actual unit.

Good points, eto. Please note that I am philosophically opposed to actual camouflage on a wargame table--though I'm pretty well stuck with it for tanks. No point in using miniatures if you can't see them on the table. So I jump from 1944 to SF, skipping my own entire career.

Point remains that Simcoe, who was there, says his people were wearing a different green by fall than had been issued them in spring, and I think the sort of wargamer who gets upset over Belgic shakoes in the Peninsula or British tricornes at Guilford is cheating by his own standard if he doesn't take that into account. (I of course, adhere to no such standard.)

But height. I followed and read you link. 68% of males in one country are plus or minus 3" of the norm, and 95% plus or minus 6" (Look under "Height is normally distributed.") I'd call that a vast majority within 10%. And I'd expect a lot more variety in boots.

As noted above it totally depends

For my 28mm Celtic warbands, every fig is different

For my 6mm Napoleonic Austrian and French infantry, every one is the same

I picked 6 as a compromise – for my 28mm Horse and Musket armies I like most figs about the same with a few variants (the "Hey Steve" figure here and there – or the guy scratching his butt)

68% of males in one country are plus or minus 3" of the norm, and 95% plus or minus 6"

So, since that's plus or minus, the 68% range is 6" which is about 2.7mm for 1:56, and the 95%, its roughly 25.6mm-31.4mm.

Six inch total range is 1:12, or 8.3%, and the 12" (+/-6") is a:6 or 16.6%, well past 10% with the 25mm-32mm range being very visually noticable.

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I agree about the boots, and usually migrate paint for them. And sometimes, my poor painting lets the boot colour bleed less than 1mm up the pants, or the pants bleed down similarly, which is noticable in formation.

Same thing with skin tone. Two people don't have the exact came skin tone. Heck, no one person has one skin tone. I migrate paint for that as well.

Plus, there's always this …
YouTube link

I want as many different models as possible, but I want them doing the same thing, standing, advancing or firing.

As noted by others, it depends on the time period. If I have a Prussian SYW musketeer battalion, they should all be doing the same thing. If I've got a horde of charging tribesmen, a lot of variation would be the norm.

Nobody voted for 17. 17 sad :-(