Army Construction Part 4 - A Campaign Design Process Update

 

For those who have been long-term readers, you will remember that I really like Two Hour Wargames' releases over the years. As I mentioned in the recent past, the owner, Ed, sold off most of his rules to other companies, Rebel Minis being one.

There is a fantasy set of rules, with solitaire play built-in, but can also support multiple players. This is one of the reasons I like all of these offerings so much, I can play solo. 

However, the above pictured is the historical army lists for the fantasy game, Rally Round the King. I'd forgotten about these, until in the midst of my pondering the army creation rules for the campaign. It was then I remembered that the historical lists existed, which would likely save me a lot of trouble coming up with my own mechanism from scratch.

I've snipped a screenshot of one part of the forty-odd pages of lists. I should explain what some of these all means, but I will keep it brief.

The # is the units of that type in a basic game. So, 3 Infantry-UD, for example. However, there this shines for my purposes is under the "Recruiting Rolls" as these provide a random method of producing starting armies for a campaign, depending upon the theme of the army in question.

When I first read these rules, about five or six years ago, I was enamored by the campaign sustem, solo rules, but most especially with the army creation mechanism.

For my Imagi-Nations, I am going to create something similar, for each faction of each era or at least the factions that start out needing an army. With the other factions, that are revealed through play, I will be able to quickly generate an army with a matter of die rolls.

The number of recruiting rolls, to start off, will be dependent upon a faction's economic rating from the strategic layer of rules (which I have in fragments, but need to organize them in order to post about here). Each new campaign year, a faction may gain some new rolls, and I'll need to be able to generate those quickly, but thematically. And thus, this existing system almost seamlessly plugs into my strategic rules for army creation.

I'll need to finalize the themes a bit, which will be much easier now that I have remembered the historical lists for RRtK, as they span 3000B.C. to 1500A.D., essentially Hail Caesar's lists, plus a bit more.

Tomorrow, my plan is to re-post some of the older map version that I had and then lost, but which will give me a rough geography to show where the major and several minor factions will be placed on my final map version.

Along with that, I should be able to post a sample of the army lists per era, for at least one of the major factions. 

In the meantime, I highly, highly, highly, recommend you check out Rally Round the King. It is a fantastic system and setting for 2mm to 15mm miniature collections, but would admittedly bit a little tough (but possible) to do in 25-28mm (due to table size requirements).

For about $10, you can hardly find a better deal for a solitaire miniatures system that works and does it well.