I greatly enjoyed reading Andrew Freeman's articles on wargaming the Battle of Shrewsbury (LW 110) and feel most sorry for Andrew in his not being able to use the right troops. Have no fear, I offer a cheap and simple solution. In the wargames press there has been a spate of articles singing the praises of plastic 20mm figures. Here are some further thoughts on the subject. Feeling the urge to try out a medieval battle - having no figures, and little cash (one drawback to soloing is having to supply both armies for a battle), I decided to get some plastics (Revell 100YW) and base them for DBA rules. 20mm Figures are based as per 25mm ones. Why? Well you can't fit four 20mm blades onto a 15mm base. This seemed a shame, as the base sizes and move distances in 15mm allow the gamer to fight battles on a table half the size required by the 25mm gamer. Wouldn't it be niceif one could combine the cheapness of 20mm plastics with the space advantage of 15mm. Surely a compromise could be found? .... it was. One of the many virtues of DBA and DBM is the fact that elements and not individual figures are removed following combat. This means that as long as you are consistent in your approach, then elements can base as many or as few figures on them as the gamer desire. With the above in mind, I drew up a list of DBA elements together with a suggested figures per base for 20mm figs on 15mm bases. Warband (Scots): 3 figures (two at the front one at the rear). Pike (Schiltron): 3 figures Blade(men at arms) : 1 figure. Aux (peasants & feudal levies) : 2 figures Spear: 2 figures Bows : 2 figures, Psiloi (hand gunners or single bowmen) : 1 figure Horse : 1 figure The figures you use should be clearly identifiable as to their troop type : this is particularly important with horse elements as light horse and cavalry now have the same number of figures per base. I tend to mount all my cavalry on black or dark brown horses and my lights on greys and bays. Anyone riding a caparisoned or armoured horse is a knight. Horses present another problem: base depth, most 20mm horses are too long to fit onto standard 15mm bases. Don't worry, just as long as all your mounted units are based to the same depth. The important thing is to be consistent with your compromises! Using Andrew's army list for Shrewsbury (30 elements in total) and the above system one must paint only 56 figures! The figures look surprising well on their small bases, although the twelve element armies tend to appear to be fighting large skirmishes as opposed to major battles. But this is no real problem in the medieval period. So, with all the money you've saved buy more elements and get a cheap DBM army! Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #111 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com