Going Small - Reducing Army Size

Part 5 of the Lazy Gamer’s Guide

When I first started dabbling with miniature wargaming in the 1980s most wargames seemed to adopt the standard of infantry units consisting of 20 – 24 miniatures. I purchased a box each of 1/72 scale British and French Napoleonic soldiers. It probably took me a year before I managed to finish painting them, and if I wanted a full army I needed a bunch more units, not to mention cavalry and artillery. By that time, I had lost interest in Napoleonic wargames!

As the story above illustrates, one of the impediments I faced with becoming a miniatures wargamer was preparing the armies. It was a revelation to me when the De Bellis Antiquitatis rules were released; an entire army could consist of fewer than 50 figures. Since then, I have been a proponent of smaller army sizes – it takes far less work to get the army prepared for battle.

There are two methods I use to reduce the size of my army:

• Reduce the number of miniatures per unit
• Reduce the number of units per army

Reducing the Number of Miniatures per Unit
Not so long ago I had a grandiose vision of creating units akin to the Command & Colors series, meaning that infantry would consist of 4 bases of miniatures. In my version, each base would consist of 3 to 4 figures. This meant that I would need 12 to 16 figures per unit and probably over a hundred figures per army. Naturally, these plans fizzled out.

I then realized that De Bellis Antiquitatis held the key to my predicament – use just one base per unit. Even if I kept the standard of 3 to 4 figures per base, I would now need less than 50 figures to complete my army. Viola, I have reduced my preparations workload by 75%!

Reducing the Number of Units per Army
I also tried to emulate the DBA standard of 12 units per army. Even though that number is small, I struggled to meet that standard. Then I started playing scenarios from Neil Thomas’s One Hour Wargames. His scenarios feature 4 to 6 units per army. Despite the reduced army size, I found the scenarios to be very enjoyable. Also, set up was easier and less space was needed. I realized that I could further reduce my army size!

My New Standard
I have since adopted the One Hour Wargames' approach of fielding 6-unit armies. Thomas does allow for some variation by using random army composition – 3-4 infantry plus 0-2 skirmishers, cavalry, and artillery per army. To account for all variations I need a maximum of 10 units per army. Still quite doable.

I have also adopted the standard of 1 base of figures = 1 unit.

With my latest rules, this is a complete 6-unit army (general not shown)

This can be a little limiting; I cannot represent formation changes. Nevertheless, that does not matter to me. My rules are more grand tactical in nature. Formation changes would feature at lower levels of command but are not really appropriate for grand tactical. Thus, my approach works fine for me. Furthermore, this means that I can build an entire army with just 10 bases!

NEXT
Another way to reduce your preparations is to go with smaller sized miniatures. I’ll discuss this method next time.