The intention behind Pocket Armies is to collect both sides of each of the several periods that interests me, limiting the collection to around 12 - 15 units per side and then selecting 8 or more units from that core collection to represent the army on a typical kitchen / dining table sized space.

This keeps projects do-able and easier to service.  The aim is to use rules that sit at ‘small battle’ level, rather than having games feeling like a skirmish. I don’t really need to represent large battles with figures as I have boardgames that do that and so I have no need or desire to get involved in painting 20+ battalions.

I love the idea of doing the type of game that Neil Thomas shows in his ‘Napoleonic Wargaming’ book in which he plays out the fictional Battle of Leibnitz, where the French for example have a representative 8 unit army of 3 Line Infantry (one being Veterans), 1 Light infantry, 1 Cuirassier heavy cavalry, 1 Light cavalry, 1 Artillery and of course the Old Guard!

That sort of thing wrapped up in a teaser style scenario takes me right back (several decades!) to my early introduction with wargaming and the kind of wargaming that I and no doubt plenty of others were doing then.  

So there we are - Pocket Armies.

Over on the left, under the ‘Pocket Armies’ tab, there is a list of the five periods that initially will get the pocket armies treatment. This is pretty much a ‘from scratch’ project, so there is a lot of work in front of me.

Most of the armies will be done in 28mm, except for WWII tactical, which uses 1/72. Of importance is that a single scale is going to be chosen for all of the terrain, making it multi functional, to help justify the space it takes up.

I have chosen 1/72 scale for buildings. This will be a 1:1 match for the WWII tactical stuff and one scale down for all of the 28mm armies, giving building presence but with a smaller footprint. The model railway HO/OO scale is a good 1/72 match and offers a huge resource for getting interesting buildings into the game.

I have pretty much divested myself of everything now that does not support this project, so there will be a clearer focus on painting and collecting.

For Napoleonics, two Pocket Armies are in the process of being built, these being Austrian and French, with the intention of some 1809 battles.

The map is based on the fictional Leibnitz battle as presented in the Neil Thomas Napoleonic wargaming book.

He proposes 8 units per side for all of his battles in this volume and so this is close enough to the Pocket Army concept for me to build everything around this. Once I build up the order of battle, i will get the figures to the table while i establish which rules I want.

I am giving myself a year to get the two armies done, which I have estimated to be 200 infantry, 32 cavalry, 4 guns with 12 crew and a couple of command bases.

These are from the Victrix Landwehr box, but with their Corsican hat, pass quite nicely for Grenzer in our period.

They took a bit longer to paint, but have some extra detail such as the yellow stripe on the pants, plus the Vallejo orange is not very opaque and required 2 coats in most places and 3 in others.

Anyway, they look quite ‘noisy’ sitting next to all of that Austrian white, used by the rest of my army.

A third of the battalion were rifle armed, but I will give the whole unit the benefit of rifles, which combined with their skirmishing and line ability, makes them a useful unit on the battlefield. 

This is my third attempt at storing my 28mm Pocket Armies, but at last I seem to have stumbled upon something that is good for most of what I have.

This is an ALLSTORE 12 Litre stackable box. I bought some at Hobbycraft (a UK craft store), I think they were £11 each (in April 2024).

They are very similar to the Really Useful Box series, but I would say the quality is a tad lower, with the locking system not seeming as firm, however, still ideal for my purposes, especially as most of my armies are of lightweight plastic.

You will note that I have lined the inner edges with white foam core, using double sided tape to adhere the panels. This is simply to keep the light out. I know a lot of gamers have their figures in glass display cabinets and they never seem to come to any harm, but I just like belt and braces in all things.

In one of the lids, not shown here, I have covered the interior side with that self adhesive plastic on a roll, which we have always called Fablon here, again, this just keeps the light off the top box.

The interior seems big enough to store one of my typical Pocket Armies per box. This one has 5 battalions of infantry, so you can see that there is easily room for another 4 or 5, plus the other units that I will need. The two piles of figures are primed hussars and primed grenadiers, both awaiting their turn for the painting sticks.

The box is deep enough to allow the infantry flags figures to fit without the lid pressing and making contact with them and most of my cavalry do not have particularly high standards.

The only army that will not fully fit into one of these is my Wars of Roses, as the foot pike and mounted lancers have pointy sticks that are too tall, so they are stored separately, but other than that, I seem good to go. 

Internal dimensions AFTER I have fitted the foam core are roughly 18.5” wide by 11.5” across and 3” deep.