Is Enough Ever Enough?

Last Wednesday’s post seems to have provoked a bit of a reaction, at least, as much of a reaction as this blog ever gets. To the comment that I am thinking about retiring my paintbrushes, there seem to have been two distinct reactions. Firstly, that this could never be. Stopping painting, and, I suppose, by extension buying new model soldiers, launching new projects, and so on, was simply unthinkable.

The other reaction was along the lines of ‘Good for you. I’m hoping to complete my armies soon as well’. This seems to be rather tied up with a decision to focus on a given period, or set of periods, and having sufficient resources to play whatever wargame the wargamer requires within the framework of period, time, size of game, and so on.

I have no doubt that my reader will be aware of which of these camps I fall into, but I thought it might be worthwhile to explore why that might be. Alternatively, those who cannot conceive of ever finishing their collections might find something in the mirror image of these musings. Or, maybe, not.

Firstly, I must confess to having rather changed camps in the last few years. This is partly imposed, of course, by the imminent threat of having to downsize, which really does focus the mind somewhat. I was also provoked by the Estimable Mrs P who, upon peering into one of the cupboards last year, inquired, ‘Do you actually know what is in some of these boxes?’ Actually, I probably did, or would have done upon opening them, but it was certainly true that some of the armies had barely been in action at all, particularly the ancients.

There was also a growing feeling that I did have a big project in me, and that project would be set in the early modern period. I will not now go into the gestation of the 1600 – Something campaign, but I did know in advance that it would be an all-encompassing wargame project. And so it has proved. I did try to gain some enthusiasm for a similar sort of ancients campaign, but it just was not there to be found. I suppose my first real wargame period was early modern, and thence I have returned.

I happen to be in possession of a very wide range of early modern period 6 mm armies. Indeed, I suspect that the project would be next door to impossible in any larger scale, or would, at least, cost large sums of money. Mind you, I suspect that what I have now would cost a fair bit, given inflation in the last 30 years or so, but I do not want to digress to wargaming economics just now. I have not counted how many actors there are in the campaign at present, but the last number was 28, I think, and I have added Africa and the Americas to that since, not to mention a number of smaller actors in Europe and Asia. While I do use many figures interchangeably, you do need a fair number. Not even I can shamelessly pass off an elephant as a unit of Ottoman cavalry.

The other side of this pondering is real life time and space. As those of you who have looked at any of the photographs will have seen, my playing space, while nearly in a dedicated room of its own (at least at present) is not particularly big, and the usual table is about thirty inches square. As I have discovered, this makes the maximum army size about 18 bases or so. This gives a maximum size for the armies, of course, although in the campaign it is not quite that simple, as the theoretical maximum is more like 40.

An army in the campaign is 12 bases (inspired by DBA, of course). However, the army can also have an artillery train of 6 bases (two of which are guns) and a siege train of another six (two of which are heavy guns). So a total so far of 24. A province may contain a garrison as well, which can support a field army for another 6 bases, so we are up to 30. There may also be units (fleets or armies) supporting from adjacent provinces (this is lifted from Machiavelli). The first support gives 6 bases, the second 3, the third 2, and any subsequent support gives one extra base. However, if a garrison is giving support, the first external support is 3 bases, and so on. So, if the support is maximised, there could be 36 bases in a force, depending on the number of provinces there are with friendly units in them. On the other hand, this is quite unlikely to happen, I suspect. The maximum so far has been 24 bases a side.

This, then, has guided my expansion in recent months. The Japanese can now deploy, if needed, two supported armies of 18 bases each. I have not counted the Chinese, but I think they could do at least 18 and probably 24 bases, or more if I borrow from the Southeast Asians. And so on around the world.

Given that I cannot really see the actors getting sufficiently organised to be able to put up such huge (relatively speaking) forces, I think I am now fairly safe from having to expand any more. And so I can focus a little bit on the ‘nice to haves’, such as turbaned singly mounted officers for order markers in Asia and Africa, creating a few more camps (just because I like them), rebasing yet more artillery (I know, I hardly use any, but I have them so why not) and, crucially, playing more wargames.

As for the campaign, it has no end point in sight, in case you were wondering. In that it is a bit like real history – it just keeps on going. I cannot imagine one actor really winning, whatever that might mean. I have thought that I might stop around 1650, as that is when uniforms started to change. As I am in 1607 at present (the write-ups are running behind), that is a fair way off, and anyway, I have already thought that I would simply rewind to either 1550 or 1500 and have another go. After all, the map would be more or less the same.

So, in my wargaming world, I do have, more or less, enough, in the sense of sufficient wargame figures (etc.) for my purposes. But my style will not suit everyone; many prefer multiple projects, many periods, and so on. And that is fine. After all, someone has to keep the figure makers in business.