Pirates - how many figures are really needed?

[FifteensAway]

Helping sell off a massive estate of miniatures collection has thoroughly invigorated my resolve to bring my own collection into a more manageable size, not by reducing periods but by reducing total numbers of figures within a period.  This will be occurring on multiple fronts.

I have a ridiculously large number of painted figures for my Pirate gaming, multiple based.  But having so many figures sort of misses out on the more characterful pirate gaming options.  While in part this is because of using 15 mm figures, which will not change, it is more because of building the collection for massive convention games.

Time to reduce to something smaller - and hopefully more fun.  So, given the above, what do you pirate aficionados here on LAF consider a good mix to maintain a variety of scenario options? 

I already have lots of Spanish troops and lots of pirates and a nice bit of civilians.  Would 100 figures be better than 50, or 200 be better than 100.  Keep in mind, the goal is reduction, please.  I might push to keep as many as 400-500 figures but feel free to argue for fewer.

Can still have massive convention games, just each player has a lot fewer - and more characterful, hopefully - figures.  More likely, just smaller convention games.  And a smaller collection is likely to lead to getting the collection on the table more often.

[Inkpaduta]

I guess it would depend on the rulesets you were intending to use. If you were doing ship to ship you probably would need 60-70 figures. If you are doing battles on land then it would be what size units do you want, how many units, again, what rules are you intending to use. I would find the rules you want and keep as many figures as the rules call for to have a good game.

[FifteensAway]

Rules will be either Fistful of Lead: Bigger Battles or just the FFOL basic rules.

And, while I have a plentitude of ships, I am more focused on land actions as my personal preference. 

Storage space is part of the motivation - and I can reduce my ships and gain quite a bit of storage space!

[Hatemonger]

But having so many figures sort of misses out on the more characterful pirate gaming options.

I think you hit on an idea right there.

Part of the appeal of pirates - or at least, our fantasy notion of pirates, made into figures - is the quirky individuality. It's what made Long John Silver and the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean so attractive and so much fun.

So, I would say one starting point would be to cull some duplicate miniatures, especially on the pirate side - maybe less so when looking at the army regulars. If you keep one of every interesting pirate, and balance your other forces against those, where does that get you? At minimum, you could be content to know that you're not giving up some fun figures.

- H8

[SteveBurt]

Depends strongly on the rules.
Donnybrook needs quite a few figures; maybe 60 per side, but other rules need only a dozen or so.
If you want to do Henry Morgan’s attack on Panama you need a small army.

[fusilierdan]

I would say using Donnybrook as a guide. 60 figures or so per player. Plan on 4 players. Keep a number of the civilian types as extras. 2-3 ships and the buildings.

This give a decent 4 player game a good size 2 player game and if you go down to more skirmish type games you'll have the character and NPC figures for games.

good luck! 

[NickNascati]

The problem, especially with 15mm figures is the way they are packaged.   I don’t think anyone but AB sells individual 15mm.  You can’t help but end up with more than you need.

[fred]

Not wanting to de-rail your rationalisation plans, but, with 15mm (and smaller) figures I doubt the storage of the figures is really the major space factor, it tends far more to be terrain items - and in this case pirate ships and forts are both large and quite specialised in which games they work in.

I’d take careful consideration before getting rid of painted figures. Unpainted are a different matter, especially if you already have plenty of painted figures.

[FifteensAway]

Rules are fully settled: Fistful of Lead as stated - and can be a handful of figures or scores of them if using Bigger Battles.

As to how many figures, let this picture speak its 1,000 words:



Most of those are already painted, what's not is primed or almost finished.  Each of those lined up "units" are 6 stands of 18 figures total.  I think you can see the issue.

I have the full range of Bluemoon pirates so no issue in getting lots of character.  Also Rebel Minis and quite a few of the smaller Peter Pig pirates. 

I am debating having figures at 1, 2, and 3 to a base on circular steel discs, 3/4", 1", and 1 1/4" - at least for some.  Keep the most characterful at 1 per stand. 

And if I sell these, they will go cheap to guys in the local club that helped paint them for a nominal charge for a club project - or just give them to some of them. 

[The Dozing Dragon]

Until recently I worked on the principle of if it was a pirate miniature (25mm+) then it was needed. Not being a gamer doesn't help having boundaries 

[fred]

OK - that is a whole other scale of a problem!

If you are playing FFoL Bigger battles you have a view of what a side in a game would be - and how many sides you need. Add in a bit of variance to those sides. But each of your blocks of figures is probably a FFoL BB army. So I’d say you have 3-4x more figures than are likely to be needed.

Keep some for single basing - but 50 single based figs probably gives you plenty of options for FFoL games. That is 10 gangs.