The Perils of Downsizing

As a slight break from the incessant wargames of the War of Stuart Succession, I have been pondering a little. Although you would never believe it if you saw us in the flesh, the Estimable Mrs P and I are approaching that certain age when we start to wonder what we are going to do with ourselves when retirement has done more than loom. We are not there yet, but there is a certain question on the horizon.

As we live in what is essentially a tied cottage (which looks like a suburban house), the question of where we go when the inevitable happens is present. And the inevitable seems to include that terrible word: downsizing.

Now, many of you are probably aware that the both of us collect books in profusion, and also that I have an extensive collection of 6 mm figures, terrain and buildings. We can both find books that we would trim from our collections, although we both have non-negotiables. But the figures are a bit more of a problem.

The biggest problem, which I cannot at present see a way of solving, is my collection of 20 mm card buildings to go with the 25+ mm figures. I need a better solution than the large plastic boxes they currently reside in. But that is a bit of a side order. Another problem, which I suppose I shall have to find a way of solving, is my ancient collection of 15 mm, mostly Peter Laing ECW, medieval, and a few ancients. I am aware of a few collectors of these who might possibly be interested. If that is you, drop me a comment with your email address (I won’t publish it) and we can talk about them.

The real issue is the quantity of 6 mm figures. I offered, as an opening gambit, to replace them with 2 mm figures, but the Estimable Mrs P rejected that. Then we went and looked at the size of the problem. I thought I had a fairly modest collection, but a more objective examination revealed that the size of the problem was larger than expected, but not massive. It also revealed that there are some actions that could be taken to ameliorate the situation.

Firstly, and most obviously, the bulk of the armies are stored in A4 box files. These are cheap, convenient (because they are recycled from other uses within the household), and fairly robust. However, they are about 3 inches in height, which for even the largest 6 mm figures means that there is around 2.5 inches of wasted space. So the initial plan is to get more of those A4 plastic boxes, which are half the height, and transfer the collections to them. I already have a fair quantity of them, but obviously need more.

A second, partial solution to the problem is to rebase the Aztecs. Again. I like the Aztecs and their campaigns – the Mexica campaign I wrote ages ago is one of the few I have actually re-run. But I have always had a bit of a problem with basing the soldiers. When I rebased onto plastic card, I based one strip to a 20 by 40 mm base. This, for the militia, makes them look a but underwhelming, particularly as I found I have vast quantities of them.

This will be, by my calculations the fourth rebasing of the Aztecs. They started off on flimsy card stands, one Irregular strip to a base. Then I rebased them to two strips per base for the militia, and one for the skirmishers and ‘knights’. Then, as I switched to plastic stands, as I said, I recall thinking briefly as to how many strips to put on a stand, and decided on one. This, as now seems apparent, was a mistake. Humbug.

Mind you, I am still not really sure how the Aztecs and their ilk fought. The ‘knights’ were, of course, the protagonists of the Flower Wars, the professional soldiers. The militia were, it seems to me, largely untrained, a mass levy. Thus, it is possible, at least in my mind, that the ‘knights’ were the officers and did not fight independently of the masses. After all, quite a lot of the Aztec fighting (before the Conquistadors came and spoiled the fun) was to do with capturing victims for sacrifice. During a battle, this would surely be done by the ‘knights’, presumably leader against leader, before the more massed brawl started.

I do wonder if this is a way forward for specific rules for Aztecs. A unit has a base of troops, plus an officer, if it expects to move. The officer, before the units come into combat, may elect to have one-to-one combat with an officer on the opposition side. If he wins, he gets both kudos and an attack at an officer-less, and hence demoralised, enemy unit. Otherwise, the Aztecs have simply ‘knights’, militia, and skirmishers, which can be a little dull, I suppose.

I suppose before going much further down this route, I should reread Hassig’s Aztec Warfare again. The thing is, I am not sure it is really known how the Aztecs fought other Mexica, so it is all a bit speculative. Mind you, I suspect that the same might be true of the Samurai – were, say, the archers of a specific lord brigaded into a mass of bowmen, or did they fight with the rest of the lord’s men? Opinions, so far as I have seen, vary. Plus the Samurai themselves were very interested in single combat, just like the Aztec ‘knights’. Room for some comparative history here, perhaps.

Still, this does not really matter for the rebasing project. The militia needs rebasing, the ‘footprint’ of my toys needs reducing, and this could just be the start of it. With a project like this, of course, you cannot really tell where you are going to end up. But sometime I might write my own rules for Aztec warfare. Just don’t hold your breath for them.