Small Soldiers, Epic Battles

I can’t lie, I’m a sucker for a really big battle. Who doesn’t love a table covered in toy soldiers? Whether it’s an ancient battle where the numbers given by writers lean to the ridiculous, a meticulously documented Napoleonic engagement, or a full-scale company attack in Bolt Action, there’s something about the site of absolutely loads of models duking it out that brings a proud swell to any heart.

Our ‘rank-and-flank’ or ‘mass battle’ games (Black Powder, Hail Caesar, and Pike & Shotte) are designed for big battles, and the rules are deliberately less ‘zoomed in’ than something like Bolt Action because of that. They’re supposed to make you feel like a general, rather than a platoon commander, issuing orders to entire divisions rather than individual squads. This means, to get the most out of the games, you want to have dozens, if not scores, of battalions per side.

There’s just one problem, though. If you want a lot of models, you do need to paint them and store them all! Now, one or two big 28mm collections isn’t a problem – we can all manage to find space for a few Bolt Action armies, a couple of Konflikt ‘47 forces, and the odd division of Black Powder troops – but putting together enough models to properly represent a really big battle can be a daunting task, and we aren’t all lucky enough to have gargantuan gaming rooms. If only the models could be a little smaller… Oh, wait!

Epic Battles exists, at its core, to let you put huge armies on the table without the space and time requirements of 28mm. We wanted to make vast forces accessible to everyone, and thereby unlock all of those enormous historical battles in their full glory. The simplest way to do this is to make the miniatures and units themselves smaller, which means you get relatively more of them in a given space. The smaller models mean we can also get more individual soldiers on a base, giving you the appearance of serried ranks of men, and enhancing that ‘general’s eye view’ of the battlefield. This in turn makes painting significantly faster and simpler, because you don’t need to go into anything like the level of detail required for 28mm.

So what do these bigger games actually feel like? Well, first off, if you’ve played any of our rank-and-flank games, you’ll be relieved to know that the rules themselves are functionally identical – the only modification you really need to make is to convert measurement distances from the traditional inches into centimetres, and as in any scale, make sure you’re using consistent unit frontages. Other than that, the Epic Battles games are fundamentally the same as their 28mm counterparts!

Because our mass battle games are designed to replicate just that – mass battles! – the feeling they evoke is of grand manoeuvres, great flanking marches, and huge masses of men facing off as the distance between the lines closes. It really is all about the feeling, too – these games are designed as much as sandboxes for you to play in as they are hard-and-fast rulesets. The one guiding rule is to go forth boldly, and have fun!

The hardest thing about Epic Battles is picking where to start. For my money, the best thing to do is just pick the period of history you think is the coolest, and go from there. If you (like me) grew up playing Rome: Total War, then the Punic Wars range is the obvious starting point. Alatriste fan? Pike & Shotte will give you your tercio fix. If you prefer your games to be close-run things, or just really like funky moustaches and yelling “BAYONEEEEEEETS!”, then I’ve got great news for you about the Waterloo and American Civil War ranges. Of course, with the 4th of July coming up, there’s a little matter of independence to be settled – and Revolution! lets you do it.