I have been spending a huge amount of time lately in working out all of the kinks, excess verbiage, problematic wordage, and complexity of rules. The latest endeavors have been in the production of 94 army lists to go with the rules. A while back, I was asked why bother with army lists? Certainly, there are plenty already available to work from. Why not simply tailor the rules to an existing set and save all that time, research and effort?
Basically because existing lists do not reflect the level of command, size of armies and types of troops which a tactically based set of rules such as these require. I will be the first to admit that to come up with almost a hundred compatible, equally playable, yet accurate armies of the 450-1500 A.D. period seemed daunting, at the least. Turning to Ian Heath's splendid series of WRG "Armies of...." booklets, the work began.
Troop Types Defined
For the most part, defining a troop type depended on armor, weaponry, morale and style of fighting. Obviously, those heavily armored foot who fought in dense formations (i.e. Saxon huscarles) were fairly simple to define: Partially Mailed Infantry (PMI), Axe and shield armed, Veteran morale status, fighting in close order (4 figures to a stand). The points value for a stand of these hardy warriors then had to be determined.
Basically, I used a sliding points scale for both Infantry and Mounted, with a stand of Fully Armored Knights, Elite morale, with Lance and shield, mounted three to a stand costing 20 points/stand, down to a stand of Skirmish Infantry, Average morale, unshielded with bow, mounted 2 to stand costing 1 point/stand. Our huacarls stand ended up costing 7 points.
Okay, that turned out all right. How was I going to price units? Initially, I fell back upon the old WRG 7th system of 'charging' 10 points for a unit command of foot an 15 points for mounted. This seemed extraneous to me, however, and arbitrary as well. Instead, I tossed that out and charged nothing for a unit command. How do you limit the number of units in an army then? We can't have a hundred stand army with fifty units!
Style
Simple. Each army list has a unique number of generals. Since you roll for the command quality of each of your generals right before the battle begins, you could opt to take a chance that you will roll really well. Say you take four generals. Odds are, each will probably (that's the operative word) have four order markers each to give each turn (I use order markers...no muss, no fuss and no questions!). So... you probably will be safe with 16 units, right?
Well, let'a take a chance here. Let'a trust our luck and hope we can get generals who will receive FIVE order markers each turn. That's twenty units, or, playing conservatively, figure on only getting three each turn.
That's only twelve. Whatever happens, each army is self-limiting in respect to how many units it can have. End of problem.
Okay, so we have our troop types figured out. For the Medieval Irish: Early 12th to Late 15th century, as an example, there are the backbone of the army, the tough Galloglaich, PMI, Veteran status, axe and javelin-armed in close order (4/stand). They constituted a quarter to a third of Irish armies of the period. Next, we have the Bonnagts, Unarmored Infantry (UI), Average status, armed either as the Galloglaich or with shield and javelin, and mounted in loose order (3/stand). They're up to almost 1/2 of any Irish army. Accompanying these troops were large numbers of kerns, some archers, mediocre Irish horse and a few mercenary knights. This is our basic army from which to work.
Ian Heath's books do not go into a lot of detail as far as actual numbers went, so here I went to Phil Barker's WRG 6th army lists, the DBM lists, SAGA, SPEARPOINT and SLINGSHOT articles, Arty Conliffe's Advanced Armati lists and Bob Bryant's Might of Arms lists. From these I synthesized the information, collated it and checked it against my own research with the Heath books and Osprey armies for accuracy. Out of all this, I developed the 94 army lists.
Simplify
Initially, the lists were quite long and contained an inordinate amount of 'fringe elements' which rarely were seen on the battlefields. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Eliminating rare troop types, along with those one or two campaign hostings, brought the lists down to a level of adaptability which I felt were more tactically accurate than the existing lists, established with a 'grand tactical' level of play. Finally, I had to crunch numbers.
Each list had to conform points wise, with all the other lists. I calculated that each list should have a minimum required 225-240 points and a maximum of 1000-1100 points. The subsequent cuts/adds were the most difficult part of the process. It became exceedingly difficult to fit the Byzantine armies into the minimum while other armies, auch aa the Prussians, were equally as rough getting up to the maximum.
Islamic Persians
At any rate, they are now finished. As an example, here is how list 73 Islamic Persians turned out: CiC costs more than generals, his value is first, generals cost is second; points are for a stand of figures. The Persians can have a maximum of five leaders, including the CiC.
They must have at least nine stands of Partially Mailed Cavalry with Lance, Bow and Shield; four stands of Turkomana, and eight stands of Unarmored Infantry archers. After that, the rest of the troops may be freely chosen up to the allowed number of points agreed upon for the game (usually 650-750).
Definitions:
-
FMC - Fully Mailed Cavalry
PMC - Partially Mailed Cavalry
SC - Skirmish Cavalry
PMI - Partially Mailed Infantry
UI - Unarmored Infantry
SI - Skirmish Inf
LIST 73 | |||||||
| CiC/Generals | FMC | Veteran | 1-5 | Lance/Bow/Sh | 3 | 55/40 | |
| Cavalry | PMC | Veteran | 9-42 | Lance/Bow/Sh | 3 | 15 | |
| Cav Upgrade to FMC | - | - | 20 | - | - | +2 | |
| Cav Upgrade to Fanatics | - | All or None | - | - | - | +2 | |
| Turkomans | SC | Average | 4- 16 | Jav/Bow/Sh | 2 | 5 | |
| Archers | UI | Poor | 8-24 | Bow | 3 | 1 | |
| Give Stakes for Archers | - | - | 12 | - | - | +1 | |
| Crossbowmen | PMI | Average | -6 | Crossbow | 4 | 5 | |
| Handgunners | SI | Average | -6 | Handguns | 2 | 1 | |
| Handgunners Upgrade to UI | - | Any | - | - | 3 | +1 | |
| Afghans | UI | Average | - | 8 | Jav/Sh | 3 | 3 |
As you can see, this army is formidable, yet has its weaknesses as well, as did all armies of the period. The points totals are within the eatabliahed framework, allowing for latitude in choosing your force, yet establishing a basic core which you must always have.
Troops are not allowed to 'mix' within a unit, i.e., they must all be of the same type, armor class, weaponry and morale unless noted in the particular list. Very few troops are allowed to be in mixed units, usually only archers forming a rear rank of spearmen, for example, Russ. Initially, I allowed mixing morale classes, much like the old WRG lists, but upon further reflection and discussions with different playtesters, decided to severely limit this to those armies which specifically did use higher quality troops to bolster the ranks of less enthusiastic fighters.
Some army lists contain types of troops and/or ordonnance not readily available to most other armies. A prime example is the Hussite war wagons. These are easily included, counting as cover for the troops within (one stand per wagon) and as an obstacle for those attacking them. Elephants were another anomaly, causing extreme problems for horses within close proximity as well as being difficult to destroy. Through trial and error, with the emphasis on the historical outcome of each combat, the different weaponry and defensive stratagy of an army are largely included.
Sea transport and the ability to fight at sea also had to be addressed. Certain armies had ships. They obviously could sail up a waterway and land troops. If the opponent also had ships, the possibility for sea battles is there. These are fought the same as land combat, but with the variable of retreat taken away! The battles are fought to the last man, or one side surrenders...
I also toyed with the idea of including historical leaders with each list, but as this tended to be limiting to each player and as the various leadership quality levels were quite arbitrarily rated by me (with inherent prejudice!), I opted to leave these to be included in the individual historical scenarios.
The rules are in their final stages of pre-publication testing. As always, we will keep you posted.
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© Copyright 1997 by Terry Gore
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