Big project at a small scale
I’ve been tinkering with some fantasy large battle rules and it’s needs a new scale rather than my usual 28mm, and I eventually settled on 10mm as I’ve seen some lovely looking figures at Cromarty Forge.
This will have some challenges of course. Firstly 10mm is very small! Can I even paint figures at that scale that don’t look pants? Then there’s my total lack of terrain. Oh and how should I base the figures? What size units do I want? What armies shall I do?
Anyhow, I thought it might be interesting to log this all here in one place.
First I had to do some work on the rules, while my 28mm scale skirmish campaign (Protect the Realm) has 12 battles against four enemies, and I think I’ve settled on a single enemy who has sent 3 armies to invade. My Realm will then deploy armies to counter this, and there is a map system where the armies will march about until they face each other.
I say “armies” on purpose, this is not a skirmish game, I want it to feel much bigger. Which means lots of troops, separate units, formations, support, supplies, etc. I want to make this as agnostic as possible so settling on how they are based rather than numbers of figures seems to be the way to go. So I am using and Effectiveness stat (EFF) instead of numbers of troops.
I did a 28mm Narnian army that was fun to do, so I’m looking at that as my Realm, while what first drew me to Cromarty were the stunning Undead Norse. So an Undead invasion of Narnia is my theme!
Basing
10mm figures seem to often come as strips and Warlord Atlantic do some nifty 40x20mm bases that are inset and can have a couple of magnets, so that seems like the basing sorted. So here we have a WA base, one with two 3mmx1mm magnets installed (I got mine off Amazon in a pack of 100), and finally with two strips of figures (10mm Cromarty Forge Zombies). Plus a 28mm figure for scale!
This and the concept of units having Formations implies being able to shuffle bases around, so a standard foot unit will be on 4 bases, this also allows for removal of bases every time the units’s EFF is reduced by a quarter.
The Armies
Without overstating the obvious, 10mm is damned small, but here’s my first efforts on the Cromarty Forge Numidians (as human contingent in the Narnian army). The basic foot soldiers have 5 colours on them, using my trusty Army Painter Speedpaints. The cavalry I went a little mad and each has 10 (I have this hang up about doing horse hooves where the hoof on a white leg has to be a different colour to normal as they are naturally, so that doesn’t help).
You’ll note from these undead (Zombies and Norse Reanimated Warriors) I’m doing the undead army in darker tones of clothing.
The Mechanics
As I want all units to be based the same way and want people to be able to make those bases up with however many actual figures as they want, then I need a mechanism to determine the current ‘strength’ of the unit. So Effectiveness is the term and the maximum (for a full strength Veteran unit) is 20. Now counting down on a D20 is a pain so instead I went looking for a better solution and found these from a little supplier called Nmills3Tokens on Etsy. They can be in multiple colour selection (I picked these to match my armies), do 20-11 on one side and flip over for 10-1 on the other, with a very satisfying click to the turning mechanism.
A fundamental part of these rules will be the manoeuvring of the armies until they come into conflict. The enemy have three armies that will march around seemingly randomly (it’s probably just that you don’t understand their cunning strategy), and you will have three armies and a reserve to face them. Battles will not just be when two armies finally meet, there are also towns and supply lines you need to protect with your reserve force. Oh and to add to the fun there are some initially neutral parties that you will want to visit and try to swing to your side.
The Individual Units
As I finish each unit I’ll put it here, starting with these Hamadryads for the Narnians
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