My ward was mostly older people growing up, whose kids were about 5-15 years above me in age. Based on the huge numbers of eagle plaques in the bishop's office, there had once been a thriving troop. By the time I got there, we had all of four kids in the troop, and one of them was special needs. Not that we didn't have a lot of fun (including with the special needs kid, who came along on everything and got along well with everyone), but it was missing any sort of leadership development or the other sorts of activities that can only come with larger groups of boys.
My kid has been in a non-LDS troop of about 25 boys for the past 18 months, and the difference is night and day. Tons of activity, great service opportunities, big merit badge pushes, separate patrols, etc. That's really how troops should be run.