PlaymoFriends
General => Collector's Corner => Topic started by: Bolingbroke on May 30, 2012, 16:01:02
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My wife told me I should get rid of some of my playmo, maybe sell it on ebay or something.
I think she's right, especially when it comes to the armies. I got a couple of armies going ... nothing Giorginetto-sized mind you, but I was thinking ... how big can an army possibly be, realistically, without sacrifing playability. I was maybe thinking 10-strong (including captain).
Thing is ... I'm sure my kids (when I finally get round to producing some), will hate me for selling off those 30 redcoats, or those 30 tower footsoldiers! BUT ... I am running out of space, and I could do withe some spare cash too. Started to collect the Western sets now, and there's never enough money for those.
What do you think?
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Well, 10 strong seems a bit on the small side to me. I'm trying to remember what size I planned to use for my New Ralgian and New Monian armies, but I can't, but it was more than 10. Maybe 20 infantry and 5 cavalry and 2 artillery pieces (plus crew, say, 3-5 men), plus a general staff of 3 would work.
In his book "Little Wars", H G Wells suggests a minimum of 10 men. You can find the rules for "Little Wars" here:
http://gardenwargaming.com/wargame/intro.html
(If you apply the Playmobil scale size to physical numbers, then 20 men works out at between 450 and 480 men, so overall the above figures would give approx 500 infantry and approx 120 cavalry. For artillery, the Playmobil scale is a bit unrealistic at about 50 artillery pieces, so maybe here you work to a scale of between 5 [10 pieces] and 10 [20 pieces] or you could increase the artillery to one piece for every 100 infantry, which would give you 4 artillery pieces.)
EDIT: Of course, you'd need officers and NCOs, maybe 2 NCOs per 10 men and 2 officers per 10 men.)
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Mmm. I wasn't really thinking about garden wargaming, though: that would complicate things greatly :P
The only proper army I have like that is the Roman one, with cavalry and so on - and I'm gonna keep that. Gah! I need more space!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, though.
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Noooooo, DO NOT SELL. :lol: Keep the playmobil and get a second job or sell some blood ;D An army is never big enough and you never have enough playmobil.
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Mmm. I wasn't really thinking about garden wargaming, though: that would complicate things greatly :P
Sorry, I don't understand. How does it complicate things?
The only proper army I have like that is the Roman one, with cavalry and so on - and I'm gonna keep that. Gah! I need more space!
So your non-Roman armies will just be infantry? Then I'm suggesting 20 plus 5 officers if you want.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, though.
I'm not suggesting hundreds with the scale idea, just suggesting that you can look on one Playmobil figure as 22 to 24 real life ones.
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i would say a company has around 800 soldiers.. so u still have place to sleep at home :P :o
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My favorite thing is to building Playmo armies!
Until now i have created 20 factions of Knights in different numbers.
My biggest has almost 900 soldiers but the size is so big in order to battle all the rest.
So my opinion is that an army must have Infantry,Cavalry and long range troops.
Infantry must be 40-50% of total size,Cavalry must be 30-35% and lond range troops 20-25% of total size.
A playmobil army looks like a real one from 80 klickies and more.
This army is becoming difficult to handle when it counts more than 160 figures
Also a playmo battle between two factions/armies must have 200 klickies.
PS.I will agree also with my friend Giorginetto who always saying that Klickies looks spectacular in great numbers.When i have set up my armies for the Northern Passage Battle was a beauty to see them all lined up.But it took me 54 hours to build them and more than 48 hours to put them back in boxes.
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Any size would be fine so long as you have fun, Bolingbroke. I don't have nearly as large factions as most of you, but it's still alright. I reckon twenty to a side is plenty if you want to have battles. ;)
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Maybe you have a theme you dont mind dropping, focusing on less themes can help to slim down the collection.
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the choice is yours my friend but if you want to spare good Knight let us know it first ,in order to offer them a good home to stay.Ebay is a very cruel place for klickies;D
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I think it all depends on the reason one is composing "armies", imho:
* If it is for displaying different forces (factions) in a cabinet, a few dozen of each force (faction) would be more then sufficient. I do that with a few specific forces, like 18th C. spanish troops and french pre-revolution troops, and medieval knights.
* When for play (with or without your kids ;) ), well then it doesn't matter, but a few dozen of each would be ideal. When more it becomes difficult to play with without having hundreds of klickies all scattered around the room, which the wife won't like much :lol: .
* If it is to build big/huge war-dioramas, then batallion- and regiment-sizes can be required. :o And if it has to be a really enormous diorama (or for having them in boxes, to show off when fellow collectors come on a visit), then you could extend into brigades and divisions, and perhaps even into complete armies! ;D Moving into a castle or buying a few appartments in the Burj Khalifa might then be a good idea though.
* Other option: specific purpose-build troops/factions.
For example:
My main plan-in-work is a large mid-to-late 18th-century Carribean Island, under English government. So the island's fortresses need soldiers, the harbour and city needs defensive and partrolling forces (and of course some drunk forces in the taverns ;) ). Therefore I've decided that - for the size of the island I've in mind - my English army should be mostly composed of infantry & artillery, and I've estimated about 250 to 300 soldiers and about 50 officers should be more then sufficient.
Then there is a need for a Royal Navy fleet, with some ships anchored, and others on patrol or in battle. I'm not gonna provide details here about the full size of my English fleet (that's top-secret ;) ), but let's say a standard-size 3940/5135-shiptype will have 5 officers (the other crewmembers are enlisted non-uniformed sailors), and there will be some navy-men in the harbour and town, and an admiralty-detachment in one of the fortresses.
I've also build up an adversary French force, including ships with naval officers and army-landing troops, to attack the island, and try to invade & conquer it. Theoretically an attacking force should be numerically superior to a defending one (unless they have far superior technology), but I'm not planning to go as far as that.
As I'm also quite interested in what was going on in the Americas in the 16th century, I'm also building up a 'conquistadores'-army, but I've not decided yet on the final numbers. I think I won't go much further then ca. 50 - 75 men, as that number should be sufficient for some beach or jungle scenes. And it is rather a spin-off of my primary 18th C. island-plan.
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I try to build so called 'knight houses' consisting of 3 or 5 knights, accompanied by 8 or 10 soldiers of the same heraldic type. Combined, these fractions form bigger armies to resist the large armies (yellow/purple dragons, templars/teutons). The biggest advantage of these small army units is the vast number of coalitions I can make. For instance, 12 allied knight houses can split into 8 / 4 or 7 / 5 due to heritage fights, wedding stress, etc. ;D
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Noooooo, DO NOT SELL. :lol: Keep the playmobil and get a second job or sell some blood ;D An army is never big enough and you never have enough playmobil.
Lol
I only can second that ;D
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I think 10 is too little too.
A good army for playability and photostories should be around 25 clickies IMHO. :)
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Sounds about right. with 25 you can already quite well show a knight adressing his men.
Still.. I wouldnt sell it though. Maybe its best to just take a break from buying new things for a while? that way you dont need to get rid of anything but just stop spending money on playmo untill theres more money for it, and maybe you can look at better ways to store it in the meanwhile.
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Still.. I wouldnt sell it though. Maybe its best to just take a break from buying new things for a while? that way you dont need to get rid of anything but just stop spending money on playmo untill theres more money for it, and maybe you can look at better ways to store it in the meanwhile.
Yes, I would store it in boxes for a little while as something out of sight does not weigh heavy on the mind. Then when you re-group you can slowly bring it all out again and play army
The only problem of not buying new sets is you may miss some great new sets, western comes to mind.
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:-X :-X :-X
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I love to see massive armies but there is a price to pay for them. Lots of storage space and room. To set them up it takes a lot of time and space. I think the. Biggest faction I have is 100. Most of the others are 25 to 50. I like to combine smaller factions so to make a larger army. 20 to 30 would suffice. I once saw a pic on this forum of a battle with 18,000 klickies. It looked impressive, but can you imagine the cost?
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well with some handy placement you don't need too many clickies to make it seem like a large army. You won't see many in single shots anyways unless its an overview shot. Maybe photoshop can help for such shots to make it appear like there are more clickies.
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:-X :-X :-X
:lol: :lol: :lol:
If you really need more space and want a little extra cash,
Slim down on the number of Themes you collect.
I could really help myself by only collecting Romans and Knights.
However, I am about to launch myself into spending maybe $100s
on a Napoleonic army/navy theme.
And I want to collect other themes!
So you see my prdicament.
However. Were I to sell the few Napoleonic pieces I currently own,
And any other themes besides Romans and Knights,
Then I could have maybe $50 in pocket immediately.
Combine that with not spending money on Playmobil for a while
and I could really save up.
Maybe this will also work for you?
If you really need more space then this is what I suggest.
Sell the less important themes and take a break from buying for a while.
It's gonna be tough no matter what you do...
God Speed. :wave:
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WoT has a good point. With reference my collection i have only about 50-60 tall hats and i would love to have much much more especially now with the hussars making a comeback . Same with western i have always wanted to have more union soldiers and increase confederate too
BUT i have focuccsed in the medieval army and also secondary to the romans . I just hope the tall hats stay for a while so i buy some more in the distant future !!!
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I think you may grow to regret selling your klickies. Thirty to fifty klickies is a nice number for an army. As others have suggested, try limiting your collection to only a few favorite themes. This is what I have done primarily due to space considerations. (Storing lots of buildings and ships takes a lot of room and large numbers of klickies and parts take up space too.)
Regarding army size, while huge armies like Giorginetto's look very impressive, they're expensive to create, bulky to store, and time consuming to set up and move. My largest army is my Romans which consists of around 500 klickies. While I'm glad to have them and would never sell them, it's a lot of effort to set them up and move them. I've found that I can have just as much fun, and maybe more, with a few dozen men as I can with a few hundred.
Regardless of an army's size, I like to break it down into units with officers. Generally speaking, I've decided on around 20 men for a unit. I've found this to be a good number because it looks fairly substantial but is easy to set up and move. (It just so happens that I've got 20+ Roman units, which is honestly too many. My British redcoat army of 2 units is much more manageable.) Some of my knight units (lances) have as few as three men and, when combined with other lances, are perfectly fine.
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I still need more medieval soldiers sometimes, not too much but just a few. Enough to actually portray a siege battle or give the illusion of a war. I believe right now my largest faction army is 6-7 soldiers led by two knights.
There's no rush though, theres still plenty of medieval stories to tell that don't require more soldiers than just a few guards to stand in the background.
Simply having the option to deploy an army can be nice though, but I certainly wouldnt need more than maybe 12 soldiers for a faction.
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Justindo you just reminded me i have some romans to collect from the funpark !!!! :loco: :loco: :loco:
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Justindo you just reminded me i have some romans to collect from the funpark !!!! :loco: :loco: :loco:
:lol: