In the book Table Top Battles there is a points chart. This evaluates troop types of every era. For example;
Heavy Cavalry 4 points per stand, light cavalry 2 points per stand.
Assessing the size of an army to recreate we would at first look at the actual total say, 40,000. You can use this total in two ways.
1) 40,000 is converted to 40 points. This total is then divided by the individual points value of the stands making up the army
2) 40,000 can be converted to 40 points. This total can be doubled up to 80 points. This helps if you want to include more diverse troop types.
Each stand in this size of army would be representing roughly Brigade size units.
3) At another level, should you wish to recreate a small force of maybe 1000 men,
then start with 10 points and keep multiplying by 10 until you reach a level that recreates the force you want. This would consist of a number of platoons or companies.
Now, this works fine for an evening game playing a one off battle. The system also works for a pre-planned solo game but I had to change things around a bit when doing these historical battles. For example;
I want to recreate the battle of Waterloo in the near future ( we are painting the figures ). The cavalry of the French Army was 14,000. That's 14 points. I think there were 6000 Cuirassiers. Now, under the normal points system, a stand of heavy cavalry are 4 points so that would be one stand.
There has to be more than one stand of cuirassiers so how to get round the problem?
In the actual battle the cuirassiers, much as they were terrifying were not very effective so I downgraded them to 2 points each which gives me three stands.
Therefore I have the numbers, I still have the cavalry but ,as in real life they will not achieve a lot.
Another section of an army to take into account is the Artillery. This is always a bit difficult to assess. Very often the numbers of guns, their position and use in battle is blurred or completely ignored. This makes it hard to give a points value and to allocate models.
From my own perspective, if the total of guns is known I divide the actual number of guns by either 10, 20 or 50 depending on the size of the battle. The designation of Heavy or Light I assign depending on their function i.e. whether they were static or constantly moving.
The points total for the artillery are taken from the Infantry total. This is because;
Artillery personnel are lumped together with the infantry.
Infantry were sometimes assigned to the artillery to provide extra muscle to haul the guns about.
I have a generic sci-fi section which can be adapted for any era of mechanized warfare. Tanks have an attack and defense value which is added together to give a points value to the model.
Using the points system you can field a "Heavy " army against a "light" one. Within the Table Top Battle system neither side has an overwhelming advantage. Although die driven ( 12 sided) tactics and terrain do have some influence.
Above all, I am fitting this onto a 3 foot by 2 foot ( 90cm x 60cm ) board. The size of the playing area also has an influence on the size of the armies.
The battle of Manassas is a similar situation. Sigel,s Corp were all normal line infantry which would be three points.and would only be two or three stands.
However his Corps were deployed in a long line and despite hard fighting struggled at the railway embankment. So, I downgraded the stands to 2points each to give me enough stands to cover the position.
As you can see, the system is pretty flexible and adaptable to any situation. Having written that, I hope those battles I have presented and those I hope to do will give you ideas for your own interpretations of these events.
This photo is of Roman Heavy Cavalry. I made this group of four stands from Ceaser Miniatures Sarmatian horses and Hat horses. The figures are Hat with different heads. The lances are North Star Javelins ( 50mm ). As you can see the bases are four points each which means they are Heavy Cavalry. Each stand is used individually in a big battle, but could equally be a Regiment of cavalry in a smaller action.
