Selecting your forces : Quality over quantity ?

[barbarian]

I must confess I've always prefered to choose quantity when doing my lists(I played Goblins for years...).

I see various reasons :
-More shiny minis on the table
-When you lose a powerful unit, your entire tactic can collapse.
-Which brings up that since I'm not a good tactician, I prefer having multiple weaker units. If I loose one, I still have others to continue the fight.
-The psychological aspect : My opponent will dread my really big army, yes, fool, I don't have any more space to deploy, what will you do + the "Ah-ah" factor when a weak unit kills his powerful one with lucky dice.

Lately, I'm considering changing a little bit this way of thinking.
I'll choose some elite units too, BUT I'll try to make all my units worth the same amount of points.

How do you balance weak, average and elite units in your forces ?

[petercooman]

I always take a bit of everything, nicer to paint everything up with all that variety.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

I would prefer lots of average.
However, hordes are great, but you know they're going to get chewed up. Occasionally putting out an elite force is fun, but you have to have the nous to use it and you have to be prepared to be surrounded.

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

As I mainly play historically based scenarios I find that what I play depends on what was there.  Even with ancients I tend to end up with a mix of qualities e.g. Syracusan, Carthaginian, Republican Polybian Roman. 

Even with WW2 Soviets my 10mm are Kursk era so generally the rifle regiments are OK.  Even the Italians in 1940 in Egypt have good components - you have to manage the forces you have as best you can.

Regards

Edward

[FierceKitty]

I found when I was using DBx that it was far more cost-effective to have smaller numbers of high-quality troops. That way, you got to use everything, rather than being stuck with large numbers of immobile mediocre troops that never got to move at all. This said, however, I never tailored armies for unrealistic proportions to improve my chances of winning; just preferred to play ace armies like Japanese or Poles.
Now I'm using different rules, and the PIP shortage issue is irrelevant.

[OldenBUA]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't like to paint horde style armies, where you need to field a lot of troops of dubious worth. I'd rather use that time to paint several units of average or good quality! Seems a lot more effective to me, but that's just IMHO.

[Hertsblue]

Most armies have weaker units and I feel that it's important to include them as well. The problem is that most wargames "armies" are little more than real-life detachments and it's all too easy to field only the good bits. Added to this, some rules favour certain troop-types or ignore weaknesses in others (I'm thinking in particular of the King Tiger which was nothing like as effective as most rules would allow). This means that in these cases elite units will probably carve their way through a mass of inferior forces. Alternatively, if the elite units are not given their full worth they will be swamped by the multitude. It's no accident that competition players select their forces on the basis of their effectiveness under the rules rather than historical worth.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

I do know of at least two competitions where you build the worst possible list and then swap them with your opponent.
Some of the best flames ever!

[Steve J]

I tend to play historical games so use period orders of battle as aguide. In WWII games, I could be cheesy and go with hordes of Russian to give me a high breakpoint. This does not give an enjoyable game though. In the end a good scenario backed up by reasonable accurate forces tends to give a good game.

[PatG]

I find super elite armies to be somewhat distasteful, mostly due to WWII SS panzerwankery, Though romans - yeah you gotta have romans. I like hordes of celtic warband - thus my blog name - Point them at Caesar and let them go! However a couple of points. If you are playing low value hordes, that usually means you are playing the opponent of what ever the uber army is for the period. That means you have lots of players to choose from. Secondly, crap armies, not necessarily hordes, are often more interesting to play.   Playing a bunch of Marines with more support than most small countries is fun, but playing their half starved Japanese opponents wit  one clapped out mg, a knee mortar and a big helping of banzai spirit can give you some far more interesting tactical challenges.

[fsn]

I tend to go historical. You could say that one squadron of Shermans would be needed to take on a troop of Panthers, lots of barbarians to take on a Roman Legion, 1000000 Persian to take on 300 Spartans. This can be fun, but at the same time, at the same time, you can construct something more equitable, say in the ACW or horse and musket.

For a gamer, the unbalanced games are about the best use of your troop types. When you have two armies of the same types and numbers, the challenge is more around beating the opposing general.

[Fenton]

Or one Union Jack Jackson to take on the whole Japanese Imperial Army

[fsn]

God Grief! That's going back a long time isn't it Mr Fenton! 1974 to be exact!

[Fenton]

Nice find..I forgot about the replica medals maybe Pendraken Towers could send them out so we could recognise ranks  of forum members at shows

[fsn]

Oh! Are the cocked hats with different feather colours not working then?