As indicated, the armies for the GDW Soldier King are made up of 30mm plastic Spencer Smiths. The reason was part nostalgia.
One of my favourite and influential books is Charles Grant's "The Wargame" which pictured his mammoth 50+ figure regiments of Spencer Smiths marching across the table. As I was planning my Imagi-nation project, uncertain how to go about things, I happened to discover a copy of Grant's book in a second-hand bookshop and decided these would be the figures I would use.
Not only would it conjure images of Grant's armies, but they were the ideal figures on which to design imaginary uniforms without worrying that I was simply painting a Prussian in a non-historical uniform!
But what size armies and what rules to use? I had an idea about the unit sizes I wanted and couldn't face painting huge 50 figure units, especially with at least four armies to paint. In another piece of synchronicity, I discovered the just released "Volley & Bayonet" rules, again by GDW. Designed to refight battles, these had regimental and brigade stands of a fixed size, with the number of figures being a matter of choice, the larger the figure scale, the fewer the figures. Some quick measurements convinced me they would match my planned unit sizes.
In the end, I opted for infantry regiments of 8 figures, cavalry brigades of 4 figures, with infantry skirmishers having 4 figures and cavalry skirmishers 2. Artillery batteries have a gun and 3 figures. Regiments are on 80mm x 40mm stands (artillery and cavalry skirmishers the same size but lengthwise), brigades are 80mm square. Infantry skirmish stands and most generals 40mm square (higher officers 50mm square). These are slightly larger than the Imperial sizes in the rules (3" x 1.5" for example) to accommodate the Spencer Smith figure bases.
I had initially wanted to use 30mm "Willie" figures for generals, but sadly at the time I started these were difficult to obtain. I stumbled across an article by Peter Dennis on making figures out of "Fimo" clay (bake in the oven), so gave it a try. Early attempts were quite crude and I struggled to find horses. The first figures used some old Rospak horses for generals and Games Workshop plastic horses for monarchs (being larger figures). I then found some tubs of toy horses in the correct scale for about £2 per tub with half a dozen useable horses per tub. The remainder would do as cart or pack horses. My later attempts using these horses are pictured.
The boardgame initially gives 12 "units" for each kingdom, 4 elite and 8 veteran, with a choice of infantry, heavy or light cavalry. The number matches the recruiting power of the basic kingdoms, with new (levy) units being added as more territory is captured or losses are replaced (to maximum recruiting values). I initially worked on an army of 12 units with 2 guns. However, this has increased to 24 units with 4 guns. 6 brigade commanders, 4 corps commanders and 2-3 Army or wing commanders + a Monarch make up the current army for each of the four kingdoms.
The Imperial Estavian army is larger at around 29 units and 5-6 guns. The other armies vary between 5 and 12 units with 1 or 2 guns.
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