Another quick parade after completing the Arcadian army for Soldier King.
Massed Guard Cavalry
Guard foot
Grenadiers
Line Infantry
Artillery
Light troops
Staff
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Pavia Project Progress
Not the most interesting of posts but one to prove to myself I am making progress after some non-productive weekends. This weekend I managed...
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As the title says really.....the absence of blog posts is linked to a general lack of activity and if honest apathy. Only managed to get bac... -
On the last day of 2023, time for some introspection. The main reason I started this blog was to monitor progress; it's useful to be abl...
Well, I sure enjoy a parade!
ReplyDeleteOne day I hope to catalogue the armies properly.
DeleteI'm limited by the camera on my tablet however. If I could only get my work phone to link up somehow, but between Apple and work security it seems unlikely.
They look great - a proper army! Are you going for one V&B regiment/brigade per Soldier King unit, more or less? That seems a good fit..
ReplyDeleteDavid,
DeleteThank you. Building the armies to match the unit scale in the game has been a source of much uncertainty. From playing the game, my memories are of having maybe one or two "armies" with possible detached LC to seize cities.
It's possible in the game to increase strength through recruitment quite quickly, with levy units soon joining the armies. As I am considering giving the 12 unowned provinces their own armies so they have more "teeth", recruitment will be slower; I took part in a Sport of Kings campaign many years ago and our consensus was that neutral states were conquered too easily leading to huge empires.
I started on the basis of the game's initial 12 "units" with a VnB stand for each. Very soon I realised this would be overtaken if cities were captured and recruitment increased.
My initial planned armies were increased - I went through various permutations and toyed with all sorts of complex recruitment systems and points. In the end, I simply decided to increase from 12 to 18 stands followed swiftly by 24 (guns extra around 2 per 12).
The armies of the Kings are currently at 28 stands including artillery. The planned Imperial army is larger at around 34, with the others between 5 and 14.
There is a link in one of my posts to the system developed by Martin Soleuil- Caldwell for VnB using SK.
He worked on a SK unit = 1 brigade (or "column" as he termed it to match C18th nomenclature).
When he used it, he found the battles were too big; while proposing the neutral states fielded armies, he didn't use it.
We diverged on the back story; he kept the neutral states separate or paired odd combinations and didn't have an Estavian empire.
He gave up on wargaming and went back to model railways soon after writing his rules.
So, you can see your simple question has lots of answers behind it! I've also toyed with the idea of just playing it out and adding units as recruitment progresses, but sadly I'm such a slow painter, I suspect this would just lead to delay and frustration.
Neil
thanks Neil, you have obviously thought long and hard about all this, much more than I have! My campaign is only in the 2nd 'year' as yet but I can see that the game's recruitment system can produce large forces quite quickly. I thought 'does the game counter mix provide a limit?' - but that is over 50 units per 'colour' - way too many to contemplate! I remember reading Tony Bath's 'Hyboria' articles and his Campaign book, where he clearly tried to have a tabletop unit for every campaign regiment, with 'facing colour' schemes to distinguish them all - pretty daunting stuff.
DeleteHaving said that, I think my approach is simply to have enough units available to represent the forces required for one battle on the tabletop, and I think the need to cover large territories in the board game should limit the concentrations of forces somewhat. I am also wondering if a 'stacking limit' might be applied, so that a single force can be no stronger than X units - I think this would be justified by regarding it as the expression of the limits on the availibility of food, fodder etc in a single map area ( the game has optional 'Magazine' rules, but I have not used them - equally there could be a limit on the numbers supplied from a magazine ). I have very limited tabletop space available, and as yet only small numbers of painted figures, so I can't game large armies on the table anyway, and to some extent that is the whole ethos of the blog - trying to have enjoyable and interesting games within those constraints. The most noticeable effect of that will be that the same units will keep on appearing in many battles at many locations, and readers may wonder just how many battalions of Botta d'Adorno have been raised(!). But in a way I like that, I think it's a little echo of Charles Grant's armies in 'The War Game' where his named VFS and Lorraine units stood in for Prussian and Austrians, for instance, and it may allow for the units to develop some 'character', e.g. if particular troops repeatedly perform well ( or badly !) on the tabletop.
Many thanks for your blog post and reply to my initial comment, which has triggered me to do some useful thinking about how I am going to proceed!
Looking forward to following the further progress of your armies and campaign...
David,
ReplyDeleteThank you. When I started my idea was quite simple; play Soldier King and when a battle occurred, fight it out using figures instead of the system in the rules.
I thought about using my incomplete historical armies (Prussian, French and some Austrian - it was to match a friend with British and some Austrians) but always hankered after Imagi-Nation armies as in Grant.
From starting on this simple premise, I added ideas from Tony Bath and his Hyboria campaign and diverged in all sorts of ways adding more detail and thinking about it as a distinct project using Spencer Smiths and other older accessories (Schreiber card buildings, Merit / Britain's trees, Bellona scenery and Fimo personalities).
It has blown hot and cold but I kept coming back to my scattered notes and scribbles and slowly plodded on at painting the armies, until what you see on the blog.
The campaign would be limited by the use of magazines as this limits the number of marches so encourages larger concentrations of pieces (as the game terms the counters).
I have wondered whether to abandon the links to the game and toyed with using income and points. While that adds complexity for little gain IMHO, as the recruitment system is an elegant mechanism as well as being simple.
My thoughts are it would be possible to use either a standard army composition, use the recruitment values as some sort of SP basis or even have a variable representational scale; the available units are fixed by what's painted with a stand being anything from a battalion to brigade depending on the size of the engagement.
So for example, a game with two infantry and one cavalry pieces could be increased to brigade or even division size or kept to 3 battalions depending on what figures are available or rules you wished to play.
Yes you are right, I have thought about this a lot - probably too much!
Neil
Excellent display of lovely painted figures, thank you for posting, I bought Soldier Kings rules and supplements last month and was lucky enough to talk to the writer on a Virtual Wargame Club meeting a few weeks ago. I do like the rules concept.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the inspiration.
Stay safe and happy gaming,
Willz Harley.
Thank you Willz.
DeleteI think we may be talking about different a "Soldier King". I'm referring to the old OOP GDW board game "Soldier King". I assume you are talking about the Twilight of the Soldier Kings rules, the new SYW version of the Twilight of the Sun King set?
I have been looking at the latter for my 10mm Boyne figures (yet to be painted) and admit the former are quite interesting.
I intend using Volley & Bayonet (first edition).
Neil
Yes you are correct Neil, opps doh!
ReplyDeleteThough I really like the concept of fighting battles by tactical skill and the use of reserves rather than pure fire power dice rolling.
Willz Harley.
Willz,
ReplyDeleteYes the reviews and battle reports I've read suggest it comes down to morale rather than casualties with these rules which matches my reading. They seem to be one of the few sets which have an advantage for a second line of troops.
Neil