Troubling Decision

[iowa_grognard]

I had planned to start purchasing my FoGR armies this week, but I'm having a difficult time deciding in which scale to collect them. Below is the information I'm chewing on at the moment. Any help you could lend me in the decision would be great; any opinions, questions I might not have asked myself, basically anything that would help.

I think both scales are great for the period.
Space is not a problem so a larger table than 6x4 is okay.
I will be building the armies within period myself, not many gamers here.
Did I mention some great looking 25mm figures out there?
Does 15mm cover troop types effectively? Any Finnish Hackapell?
There are some 25mm plastics, but I've heard grumbling about accuracy.
I like larger battles, 800pt in FoG and looking at the FoG:R lists, I'd like to shoot for 800pts with options.
Painting 15mm would be quicker to the table, along with my other projects I would like to complete these by May.

The armies I want to collect in order:
Early Swedish (wor)
Later German (wor)
Scots Royalist (wor)
Ottoman (coe)
maybe, maybe, some Russian (coe)

[nickdives]

Do both! I have 15mm and 28 mm armies to cover Swedes, "German" states and Denmark, Polish and Muscovites (28mm)
There are plenty of lovely figures out there in all scales. (See my photos on an earlier thread)

In 15mm there are some superb figure ranges, my Swedes are Testudo (With 2 units of Old Glory "Hackapells"), "Germans" Essex, Danes are Donnington and Polish Legio Heroica and Wargames Poland.

There has been some interesting discussion on the "Hackapells" and I do suspect that Daniel S is right in that they were quite probably drerssed as standard cavalry and that the Osprey "Hackapell" may not be 100% accurate. However both Olg Glory and Donnington do specific Hackapell/Finnish Cavalry as per the Osprey book.

In 28mm the plastics are lovely and I have a good mix of metal and plastic in seperate units. The latest Warlord figures are apparently the origional ECW sprues with metal command figures and extra helmets. However a Pike and Shot unit is a Pike and Shot unit whatever the colour. shape,shade or hang of the cloth!

We have had some huge battles, our last was a 1,260 pts of Early Imperial Germans being defeated by 1,262 points of early Swedes. (15mm) We have also had some large 28mm battles, all have gone well, on either 6 x 4 or my 12 x 6 table. Have a look on TMP there is a post about a large 10 player FOG (R) game

[rbodleyscott]

However a Pike and Shot unit is a Pike and Shot unit whatever the colour. shape,shade or hang of the cloth!

Heresy! Burn the witch!

But I tend to agree - for ordinary wargames purposes anyway.

[nickdives]

I'm not a witch, no wart!

I think that when we to Breitenfeld in a couple of weeks I may have to utilise some ECW Cavalry to boost my Swedes and the Saxon contingent will look very "Danish"!!!

[timmy1]

I would say do 15mm. The Testudo Swedes are a real joy. Doing 15mm means that you will be able to more quickly add another army if you find your initial pairing is not delivering what you want.

[Blathergut]

28mm!

They do look sooOooo good on the battlefield. I've played both and would never do 15s personally.

700pts of 28s will fill a 4 x 6 table and you won't have all that much flank space when you go up to 4 x 8!

[Gbrios]

15mm.

28mm are generally great miniatures, plenty of details... but sorry, units in 28mm seems too small for me. I always see games in 28mm like if it was skirmishes instead big battles.

Of course, gaming in 10mm or 6mm, you get more "crowded" units but... I little bit of details is not so bad after all, don't you think?

[Derros]

i just noticed your name Iowa Grognard, i live in Iowa too!

[hazelbark]

Do 15mm on 25mm bases. It will look AWESOME