Why play a whole big battle at all?

[Harry Faversham]

If memory serves, from the dawn of time, Charlie Wesencraft's book had some great ideas?
The KISS Principle's not always a bad thing, if you love playing toy sowjers.
 

[CapnJim]

For me, personally, I gladly play in someone else's BIG battle.  I've played in the whole battles of Leipzig and Gettysburg (for example), both run by someone else.  In both these cases, we "changed" history.  In Leipzig, the Russian grand battery (commanded by a middle-schooler) absolutely smoked the French Imperial Guard, while at Gettysburg, the Rebs took Culp's and cemetery hills on Day 2.

My own relevant collections limit me to division-sized (or maybe, corps-sized, depending on the rules used) fights.  My regular gaming group wanders from individual skirmish fights up to those division-sized fights.

As to the original question - in my experience, one plays the really big battles because one A. Has a collection capable of doing so, and B. If A. applies, one wants to.  But A. seems to be the limiting factor.   

 

[ChrisBBB]

Thank you all very much for your thoughtful and perceptive replies. I also posted on TMP and got over 50 replies there.
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=580904
Let me share with you the same response I sent to those:

===

A big thank you to everyone who responded. I appreciate all your comments (including the critical and dismissive ones – I care about your opinions too). Judging by the quantity and quality of replies, it was evidently a worthwhile question.

As far as the charge of shameless self-promotion/advertising is concerned: guilty as charged, sorry – can I make a plea in mitigation? It genuinely wasn’t my original prime intention, but I struggled a bit to structure the essay, was under time pressure, then saw Jim Owczarski’s remarks, got over-excited and lapsed into stream-of-consciousness anecdotes and enthusing. There is a better essay to be written on this question that actually answers it properly, perhaps enumerating types of battle and game, listing what features each provides to players, addressing limitations and practicalities …

Nevertheless, I feel my decision to just publish and be damned is partially vindicated by the wealth of ideas in all your great comments. I hoped and expected that the resulting discussion would be better than what I’d bashed out in haste, and you didn’t let me down. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t reply in great detail to the multitude of points in 50+ posts. I have just a few remarks to make now:

First: I should have made a clear distinction between big battle and big game – these are not necessarily the same thing! Small games of big battles are possible, as are big games of small battles, etc.

Second: I’ll readily acknowledge BBB’s limitations (e.g., the lack of fog of war, albeit the activation mechanism introduces enough uncertainty to compensate for that to some degree). Other ways of fighting big battles are possible and other rules are available. All have their merits and which is the right tool for the job depends on the job and the craftsman.

Third and finally: absolutely no disparagement of anybody else’s fun was intended. Tournament games, skirmishes, monster marathons on basketball courts – it’s all good and all part of our rich hobby. I ain’t telling anyone else how to play toy soldiers. Have fun your way! Happy gaming!

[fred]

I’ve not visited TMP in some time - and given the type of reply you have had to craft - I can’t say I’m missing it.

Strange how some people see a viewpoint as an order for them to do something - or perhaps they just want to be offended / contrary.

[ChrisBBB]

I’ve not visited TMP in some time - and given the type of reply you have had to craft - I can’t say I’m missing it.

Strange how some people see a viewpoint as an order for them to do something - or perhaps they just want to be offended / contrary.

TMP has its share of time-wasters, axe-grinders and the obnoxious, of course. But I can live with a few negative remarks if that's the price for getting lots of more positive and interesting responses.

[Khusru2]

Because we prefer to play Napoleon to playing Sharpe

[fred]

TMP has its share of time-wasters, axe-grinders and the obnoxious, of course. But I can live with a few negative remarks if that's the price for getting lots of more positive and interesting responses.

Glad overall the answers were useful - perhaps I was reading too much into your reply which seemed to be needing to re-explain the basic premise

[ChrisBBB]

Glad overall the answers were useful - perhaps I was reading too much into your reply which seemed to be needing to re-explain the basic premise

Thanks for your concern, Fred. I was more annoyed with myself because the essay hadn't turned out the way I originally intended. Still a worthwhile contribution that produced some interesting discussion, I think.

[olicana]

I think I play big battles because, when I was a nipper and a novice, it's what the big boys did. I aspired to it.

Almost 50 years later, I'm pretty much there - though I very much doubt any 11 year olds aspire to emulate me. That, of course, is a different story: I can clearly see why the prospect of painting a new box of plastic soldiers isn't the most exciting thing in today's world - whole ready to go armies, that actually move on their own across realist terrain, being available at the click of a mouse.

[Freddy]

I enjoy all kind of a wargame battles: from the 10 minutes runs of 2 figures cleaning up a dungeon section/zombie house to the big battles of hundreds of models.

When I designed my 1848 Hungarian project, I chose a roughly 1:50 representation with the 28 mm figures, making a battalion into 10 figures. Based on this I made some calculations maybe worth to share here:
-for the true "scale" representation of the battle of Pákozd, I would need 1000 soldiers, for the battle of Isaszeg around 1500. For Waterloo 3000, for Leipzig 5000
-from my experience as a Warhammer player tending towards the horde style armies I know that 200 figure per side can play on a table of 6'*4', more not really. As the human arm has a figure moving range of about 3', pushing three tables together (6'*12') is maybe the biggest battlefield you can play a pitched battle on (with the usual 6-10-12" pace for infantry). Above that you either use air cavalry movement distances or simply have a fancy way of playing several battles parallel as some of the units won't even have a mathematical chance to interact. ...which is historically not wrong (half the soldiers of First Bull Run never met the enemy), one just does not paint figures not to play with them.

So for 28mm  the limit for a reasonable 1v1 battle is 6'*12' and around 1200 figures total (so 600 per side). Above that come the multiplayer battles, display battles, tricky tables with trapdoors or unusual size, etc. Which is cool, just a different game design.

[Pattus Magnus]

I agree with Freddy about the maximum practical size of a battle game (I wouldn’t be able to meet the 6x12 foot table size anyway).

Of course, the option is there to take another well established approach and drop the figures scale by an increment or two to 15mm or 10mm or 6mm to reduce the footprint of each unit (which is the direction I went with my 7YW project). A problem is the need to build a collection in the new scale (if it wasn’t already your scale of choice).

Using smaller figures doesn’t really solve the difficulty of having a massive number of units in play slowing down the game, though, even if they can physically fit on the table. I’m sure that everyone reading this thread is well aware that a way to fix an unmanageable number of units is to change the ‘command scale’ by making brigades or divisions the units for play, rather than regiments.

My personal preference for full battles is for rules that are designed to represent that higher level and abstractly represent tactical details (skirmisher screens, for example). It makes playing the battle more feasible for me to actually achieve, even if the spectacle isn’t quite as spectacular!

[olicana]

This was the biggest battle I've ever been involved in. Dresden 1813. Staged by The League of Gentlemen Wargamers back in 2019.

Set up on three 16x6 tables with a similar reserve table (Allied centre rear) which got used when the French broke through. Apparently, at peak, there were 12,000 figures in play - reserves totalling another 2,000 were never called on.

Got to a finish (from memory), a French victory, after two full day's play. There were 10 or 12 of us playing; there should have been more players but the game clashed (the LOGW always meet three times yearly, always on the same weekends) with the big Waterloo game on Glasgow which some members of LOGW had helped organise - that game involved 22,000 figures, so games do come bigger!

The thing about games this big is the social side which often goes on to the early hours.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Of course the definition of a Big Battle will vary from person to person, but generally speaking - to me, the big battle always will be the thing to aspire to. It's just the spectacle, isn't it. I love the look of ranked infantry and larger bodies of cavalry. A 4'x4' table full of 28mm WW2 figures and a tank generally can't evoke the same emotions as a proper large table. And funnily enough, it's probably the table size to me even more than the number of figures. a big table with figures lined up from flank to flank doesn't look quite right either, right? You need flanks, that's the thing.

Very small skirmish games are really popular with companies who want to sell figures and with people who like combos of abilities and so on, but that's not quite my bag. I'll gladly play a fun skirmish game, but if given the choice, I'd rather play a big battle with several people per side (as long as people are committed to actually playing rather than sitting and chatting for 4 hours after the figures have been set up). Not to downplay the social aspect, but the game should still be at the centre. It happens too rarely anyway we get to play big games, at least that's the case for me.

[Khusru2]

[quote author=Pattus Magnus link=topic=146381.msg1873260#msg1873260 date=1724

My personal preference for full battles is for rules that are designed to represent that higher level and abstractly represent tactical details (skirmishescreens, for example). It makes playing the battle more feasible for me to actually achieve, even if the spectacle isn’t quite as spectacular!
[/quote]
Blucher for the win on this one.

[syrinx0]

When our gaming group was younger (and larger) we met weekly and frequently had large ancient battles of 1000 to 2000 figures mostly because the members had the collections.  A few large scale WWII or Warhammer battles as well but those tended to be less figures.  The original 12x12 table usually had an impassible terrain feature in the middle or we hoisted one of our founders daughters into the middle for measuring, movement and even scatter dice rolls. If only we took pictures of that. 

We used empty garage floors for a few really large battles but the largest was in my college's ballroom over a holiday break. I worked there and was allowed access for free (we had to clean it afterwards). 180 by 300 ft battle area for a theoretical NATO modern (1980's) engagement in Germany. Sighting was by binoculars from your furthest surviving unit. Sixteen players with only a few hundred vehicles, helicopters & planes (infantry were abstract markers). It was fun but so physically draining we never repeated it.

Largest recent battle was only 700 figures and that was in 2016.  On one of our infrequent gatherings now it's a skirmish game, on a table and with comfortable chairs.