The Great Wargames Figure Count

[Yarkshire Gamer]

https://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-great-wargames-figure-count.html

Lockdown does strange things with the brain, and following a question I was asked in a Podcast style interview I have been pondering "how many painted figures have I got"

So in a moment of madness (well a couple of weeks) I started counting, painted only and part of my own collection (there are a few others who have stuff stored here).

I estimated 20,000, I was a way off, in true click bait style () the final figure is at the end of blog post, why not have a guess before you look and let me know how close you were.

People will have more I know, this was more of a cathartic exercise for myself.

There's at least one picture of each collection, so if you are wondering what my 15mm War of the Roses project that was abandoned in the late 1980s looks like today come on down.

Regards Ken
The Yarkshire Gamer

[Inkpaduta]

Wow! And I thought I had a lot with my 5,000.

[RSDean]

My incomplete records suggest that I have ~3500 in 54mm down to 1/72 scale at this point, plus three minor 6mm projects with no counts recorded.  Honestly, storage is the main concern at this point, since I would like to have everything easily pulled out from well labeled boxes, and the secondary concern is that most of my games are on smallish tables (90cm x 150 cm, or 3 ft by 5 ft), so there are some physical limits to mhow many figures can be profitably employed at once.

I’m comfortable with the idea that I have a more limited choice of projects to take to a convention and use to host a 6x10 foot 6-8 player participation game.

[FlyXwire]

I don't want to know how many I have, as I'll then be more apt to start thinking of when to start passing them along in the near (or distant future). 

[Elbows]

I only started keeping track recently (see signature).  However, I occasionally sell off old ill-painted minis that I've lost interest in...so I don't know how many minis I currently own.  I could count them relatively easily - maybe I will do!

[syrinx0]

Good to know what you have.  A great collection.  I started tracking only in 2011 and never got up enough energy to actually count what I have painted from before.  Most of my earlier stuff was sold though to other club members but even then it's under 3000 figures. 

[Dr Mathias]

Holy Smokes, was I off on my guess. Far too low!

[Roo]

Having checked your blog and some videos it is the quality of the collection as well as the size that astounds...great job and always worth counting up for insurance purposes!  Keep them coming.

[tomrommel1]

So many!!!!!! I only have about 1000 painted ,but I lost all the figures I had in 2010 during a plodding of my basement wargames room. Couldn't recover any as the basement was flooded with waist water.

[Dr. Zombie]

Holy smokes! I thought I had a large collection. Turns out I don't - at all!

At the end of the year I usually do a tally of what I have painted all year. Perhaps this year I should do a grand total like this.

[levied troop]

For any wargamer, the correct answer to the question "how many painted figures have I got" is always:

“Not enough”.

[fred]

That is a lot of figures! Very impressive in quality and scale.

I have a question about methodology of counting (and I admit I am overthinking this) What is your definition of a figure for this? So is a 28mm figure and a 6mm figure counted as 1, and a 28mm tank counts as 1, what about guns with crews, is that 1 for the gun and 3 (or how many) for the crew? The same with cavalry is it 1 mounted figure, or is it 1 horse and 1 rider?

I’ve only counted figures on 1 of my 10mm armies, which is too big to be playable, and it is 980 figures. So the size of some of your armies feels huge!

[Yarkshire Gamer]

That is a lot of figures! Very impressive in quality and scale.

I have a question about methodology of counting (and I admit I am overthinking this) What is your definition of a figure for this? So is a 28mm figure and a 6mm figure counted as 1, and a 28mm tank counts as 1, what about guns with crews, is that 1 for the gun and 3 (or how many) for the crew? The same with cavalry is it 1 mounted figure, or is it 1 horse and 1 rider?

I’ve only counted figures on 1 of my 10mm armies, which is too big to be playable, and it is 980 figures. So the size of some of your armies feels huge!

Hi,

I tried to not get too complicated and kept it as one model = 1 figure in the count. So a rigged Napoleonic ship which would take me say a week to complete counts as 1 when I could paint 40 or so 28mm in the same time frame and even more of a smaller scale, I think I have an even spread of scales to make that a reasonable way of counting, if they were all 6mm it would be a valid point but they are not.

A horse and a rider count as 1 figure, a tank / vehicle and crew count as 1 figure, a crew served gun counts as individual figures plus one for the gun.

The reason Some of my armies seem huge is, because they are  , my Napoleonic figures at my gaming ratio of 33:1 represent close to 200,000 men.

Regards Ken
The Yarkshire Gamer

[fred]

Thanks for explanation Ken. Yes, there is no real way of comparing a sailing ship to a 6mm infantry man, so as you say, just counting models is the only practical way.

I can’t decide if I’m tempted to count figures or not. I did do some cataloguing not that long ago, and just did it at layers in boxes - with each layer being approximately A4, and got to 113 layers IIRC.

[Yarkshire Gamer]

Thanks for explanation Ken. Yes, there is no real way of comparing a sailing ship to a 6mm infantry man, so as you say, just counting models is the only practical way.

I can’t decide if I’m tempted to count figures or not. I did do some cataloguing not that long ago, and just did it at layers in boxes - with each layer being approximately A4, and got to 113 layers IIRC.

If it wasn't for lockdown madness I probably wouldn't have bothered, but it was fun to do and I found some stuff I had forgotten about. I had to use and airbrush to blow the dust off the Riders of Rohan 

But it's done now and easy enough to keep up to date.

Regards Ken
The Yarkshire Gamer