As I look over my minion rules using both Grunts and the Horde... I'm struck by how useful this is not only for mass combat, but for high drama low-effort encounters a narrator can drop onto the players.
I mean that both in the sense that player characters don't need to expend a ton of resources to fight minions, but also because they're so -easy- for a narrator to drop into a fight and not bother to keep track of their HP. Because they drop in one hit, they're -very- streamlined in a "Conservation of Ninja" sort of way.
Take, for example, a party of PCs traveling by airship. They take a detour the narrator hadn't planned for. Instead of heading to the village at the bottom of the mountain that is all stated out with a series of encounters planned, they head for the peak. The narrator, in a blind panic, now has to generate what all is on the mountain from scratch. And as a delaying tactic throws the party into an encounter.
A Harpy encounter. With minion harpies.
The harpies want to destroy the airship's engines, envelope, or steering. So they swarm the ship in waves of easily dispatched minions each with 1hp. In an instant, the players have a significant threat (Falling, Flying enemies) that they can fight with ease (making them feel strong) and which require minimal effort for the narrator to actually -run- as monsters (no HP tracking) while rolling up some more random encounters, treasures, and making up a story to weave them together behind the screen.
Maybe add in one or two -actual- harpies that now feel more like mini-bosses compared to their easily-defeated grunt allies.
And the waves last until the players start getting bored of fighting harpies, or the mountain detour is prepared.
