Forces

Before you can play a scenario you will need to decide what forces are involved — in other words what vehicles, troops, war engines and flyers are in each army. The historical relights can be played by any forces, though the original sides which fought are noted at the end of the scenario. However, with the Battles scenarios it's up to the players to decide what forces will be used by picking their own armies to a certain points total.

When you are picking an army to a points total you obviously need to decide how many points you will be using. This is best done when you first arrange the game and are deciding on a time and place for the battle to take place, rather than actually at the start of the battle itself. For example, you might say something like "Let's play a 2,000 point Epic battle at my house next Sunday". Remember that you don't necessarily have to decide what scenario you're going to play at the same time as deciding on the forces, it's a lot of fun to try and pick an all-round battle force which can fight (or at least try to fight) in any scenario.

The choice as to exactly how many points you use will be limited by the number of miniatures you have to play the game (can you actually field a 6,000 point force?) and how long the game will last (do you really have the 8 or more hours required to complete a 6,000 point game?). You should also take into account the type of forces you will be using. Games that consist mainly of war engines tend to play faster than games that involve a lot of vehicles and infantry, for example.

On the whole, 1,500–2,000 points will provide an interesting game for two players that can be completed easily in an evening. A battle of 3,000 to 5,000 points will make for a longer game and it's a good idea to have two players a side to handle all the forces (and bicker over tactics). Anything over 5,000 points should be saved for marathon sessions when you've got a group of players and at least a full day to play the game.

In general the best rule of thumb for what size of army to choose is the size of playing area. A traditional full-size wargames table is 6 to 8 feet (approximately 180cm to 240cm) wide by 4 to 6 feet broad (120cm to 180cm). This should not be taken as an absolute limit — 12' by 6' makes a good playing area but is difficult to squeeze into most houses.

A good guideline to use is a maximum limit of 10 to 20 points per centimetre of table width (eg, 2,400 to 4,800 on an 8' wide table). The amount of overcrowding that will happen depends primarily on what forces are involved, Orks always need far more room to fight than the lmperium for example. You'll quickly get an idea of what forces suit your playing area, just bear in mind that it's hard to be tactical when everything's shoulder to shoulder — it looks great of course so you may not care about that anyway.