Men of the Rudihnya

[Hannibal]

I got inspired the other day to recycle an idea I had awhile back about a faction that included war wagons, about a determined peasant uprising faction.  This of course led to think of Balkan/Central European themes (the Hussites from which I draw my inspiration were Czech), which made me think of course of vampires.  And from there I ran with the idea of Vlad Dracul the historical figure, in that he was a monster, but that he waged a pretty successful war against a vastly superior enemy and so the people tolerated his brutality.

Theme:  The Rudihnya has always been under threat of invasion.  Crazed barbarians from the north, bloodthirsty raiders from the east, greedy conquerors from the south, fanatic crusaders from the west; there is never a time when the men of the Rudihnya do not fear attack from some enemy.  Against this ceaseless tide, the people the Rudihnya have defended their homeland, aided by its treacherous peaks and harsh seasons.  The callous princes and dukes are tolerated by the freemen and peasants only because they too defend the realm, for when enemies threaten, all of are of the Rudihnya.  But when their brutality becomes too much, the lower classes are not above rebelling against their lords, and besieging their own castles.

However, in recent decades the enemies of the Rudihnya have become many, and tenacious though they are, the defenders of the land cannot stand against them all.  The nobles are too few, and in desperation the commoners have built war-wagons, wooden castles on wheels to stand against the multitude of enemies.  As they have rebelled knight and horde alike with their mobile fortifications, the commoners withhold feudal tribute, saying that if the lords do not defend them, they will not work their fields.

Faced with extermination from without and revolt from within, the dwindling nobility made a pact with a dark power.  Gleeful of their dilemma, this profane entity was open of the price they would pay.  The princes and dukes would gain inhuman strength and resilience, and the ability to recover from the most grievous wounds, but their soul would bear the infernal godling's touch.  A great yawning hunger would gnaw at them, sated only temporarily by the consuming the very souls of others.  So unceasing would this pull become, that they would crave the taste of blood, the essence of life itself, even though it would provide no succor.  Among the weakest willed, this ravenous taint would consume their very minds, transforming body and mind into what the spirit had become:  a twisted monstrosity yearning only to feed on the blood and flesh and souls of mortals.

And so with this newfound power, the men of the Rudihnya beat back the invaders.  But now the common folks fear a new enemy, their own soulless lords who hide within their decaying castles, coming out during daylight only under extreme duress.  During the nights, however, the castle gates are left open and villagers are occasionally woken by terrified screams and inhuman laughter.



Men of the Rudihnya

Perseverance:   Spend one Command Action to mark the Perserverance box on one of your units.  You may erase the box during an attack, either after your opponent rolls to hit or to wound, to change the result of one die to a 5.  This counts as playing a Command Card.

People of the Borderlands:  A Non-Wheeled Rudihnya units that suffers an MC penalty from terrain other than linear obstacles gains +1 MC.

Drain:  This unit must choose to do one (and only one) of the following if starts with or has damage boxes marked off this turn:

• If this unit destroys an engaged enemy unit in the Combat Phase or during Free Strikes, erase 1 pt of damage and this unit gains +2P this turn.
• If at the end of the Combat Phase this unit has a center-point within 5" of a center-point of a unit with a Perseverance box but without Drain, mark 2 pts of damage on the unit with a Perserverance box and erase 1 pt of damage on this unit.  This unit gains +2P this turn.

Voynik Swordsmen - Core - 193 pts
O:(5)5/5  D:2/2  Rge:-  Cge: 12  Mv: 3.5"  3G/5Y/2R
The Voynich are free peasants who own their lands.  As part of their emancipation, they serve as levied soldiers defending their home.


Voynik Spearmen - Core - 215 pts
O:(6*)5*/5*  D:2/2  Rge:-  Cge: 12  Mv: 3.5"  3G/5Y/2R
O:(-1) -0/-0 when charging. O:(+0) +1/+0 vs. cavalry or large units. O:(+0) +0/+2 when holding vs. charging cavalry or large.
Although only commoners, a lifetime of battle has honed them into able warriors.


Voynik Hillfolk - Core - 219 pts
O:(5)5/6  D:1*/2  Rge:-  Cge: 12  Mv: 5"  3G/5Y/2R
D:+1/+0 vs ranged attacks.
These peasants fled their feudal obligations, become Voynici by settling in craggy highlands considered desolate even by the standards of the Rudihnya.


Voynich Crossbowmen - Core - 245 pts
O:(3*)5/5  D:1*/2  Rge: 14"  Cge: 12  Mv: 3.5"  3G/5Y/2R
Ranged attack is LOS.  O:(+2)+0/+0 and D:+1/+0 when engaged.
The crossbow is the national weapon of the Rudihnya, as it is rugged and requires far less skill to master than the bow.


Curteni Halberdiers - Core - 221 pts
O:(6*)5*/6*  D:1/3  Rge:-  Cge: 11  Mv: 2.5"  4G/4Y/2R
O:(-1) -0/-0 when charging. O:(+0) +1/+0 vs. cavalry or large units. O:(+0) +0/+2 when holding vs. charging cavalry or large.
The most ablebodied unfree peasants are drafted as bodyguards for the nobility, and although they receive the best training and arms, theirs is a life of constant horror.


Tepes Lords - Standard - 301 pts
O:(5)6/6  D:2/3  Rge:-  Cge: 11  Mv: 3.5"  4G/3Y/3R
Drain.
The high peaks and mountain holds are ill-suited to cavalry, and so even the dark souled nobility of the Tepes Mountains fight on foot.


Curteni Heavy Archers - Standard - 225 pts
O:(4)5*/5*  D:1*/3  Rge: 14"  Cge: 11  Mv: 2.5"  3G/3Y/2R
O:(-0)-1/-0 and D:+1/+0 when engaged.
Defenders of the ramparts and camps, these are men of broken souls..


Voynik Thralls - Standard - 133 pts
O:(5)4/5  D:2/2  Rge:-  Cge: 10  Mv: 3.5"  3G/2Y/5R
When faced with madness, one either is consumed by it or embraces it.


Werewolf Packs - Standard - 308 pts
O:(7)5/6  D:1/3  Rge:-  Cge: 13  Mv: 5"  5G/2Y/5R
Fearsome.  Always has the "Close" Standing Order and may not be given a Standing Order Modifier or be directly controlled.  Requires 2 Command Actions to rally.   To play a Command Card on Werewolf Pack you must first discard a Command Card.  No Perserverance box.
"Do not walk under the full moon.  When the wolf-demon spirit consumes your soul, the clawed monstosity you become knows only hunger."


Kraynik Lancers - Standard - 219 pts
O:(6)5/5*  D:2*/2  Rge:-  Cge: 11  Mv: 7"  2G/2Y/1R
Cavalry, Drain.  O:(+0)+0/+2 and D:+1/+0 when charging.
The petty nobility of the Rudihnya, these 'Border Dukes' rule conquered or reconquered lands at the pleasure of their patron lords.


Voivoide Knights - Elite - 411 pts
O:(6)6/5*  D:3*/3  Rge:-  Cge: 11  Mv: 6"  3G/2Y/2R
Cavalry, Drain.  O:(+0)+0/+2 and D:+1/+0 when charging.
The 'Great Princes' are the mightiest  of their kind, and their hunger for the souls of mortals the greatest as well.


Warriors in the Mist - Elite - 281 pts
O:(5)4/8  D:4/0  Rge:-  Cge:-  Mv: 3.5"  4G/4Y/4R
Terrifying.  Always has the "Close" Standing Order and may not be given a Standing Order Modifier or be directly controlled. Passes all Courage Checks. You may not play Command Cards on this unit.  No Perserverance box.
Ethereal warriors appearing in otherwordly mist, no one knows if these beings are the salvation or punishment of the Rudihnya.


Dogged Toughness: (2)  Play during an attack, before your opponent rolls to hit.  Your unit gets D:+0/+2 this attack.  Your unit gets +2Cge this turn.

Fatalism:  (2)  Play during an attack, before your opponent rolls to hit.  Your unit gets D:-0/-1 this attack.  Prevent one damage this attack and your unit passes any Rout Checks this turn.

Tenacity:  (2)  Play during an attack, either after you roll to hit or to wound. Reroll that set of dice.  If you fail to cause any damage before damage prevention, cause 1 point.

Desperation:  (2)  Play during an attack, before you roll to hit.  Your unit gets O:(+3)+0/+1 this attack.  If it is still engaged at the start of the Post-Combat Courage Phase it takes a rout check.

Punish Their Mistake: (2)  Play during the Movement & Command Phase. Choose one unit to gain +1 MC and it may also one of the following:

• O:(+0)+1/+0 and +1 MC this turn if the unit charges this turn.
• O: (+3)+0/+0 if the unit is engaged on the Flank or Rear of an enemy unit.

Edit:  4/10/12.  Made the following changes:
-Tweaked some of the command cards for balance.
-Removed the War Wagon.
-Combined the Axemen & Hillfolk into one unit:  a fast moving axemen unit.
-Changed Curenteni Halberdiers to MC 2.5" and made them Core
-Changed Curenti Archers to MC 2.5"
-Created Tepes Lords.
-Changed Koldun Pack into Werewolf Pack.

[Hannibal]

My Design Thoughts:

I'd say the primary design principle that evolved for this faction is that it would have that stereotypical Slavic stoic tenacity.  This of course runs the risk of making it hard to differentiate this faction from Men of Hawkshold or Dwarves, who also have a very "tough and don't run" theme.  At the same time, I didn't want to make this a 'peasant faction' where most of the Core units have (5)4/5 type stats.  What I came away with was a faction that would have very standard statlines, O:(5)5/5 and D:2/2 and Cge 12.  This average statline represents the fact that while they are levy soldiers, they see a lot of combat for commoners.  So they get a fair bit of practice fighting and although their arms & armor perhaps are not the highest craftsmanship, and may even be handed down from father-to-son, its still pretty decent quality as they know they'll be using it.

To differentiate them away from gernic humans, I shifted their boxes to 3/5/2.  My thinking on this is that while they are tough, they're not Dwarves or well trained troops like Hawkshold.  These still are commoners who, in the initial shock of combat, may panic and "Frak this! We'll go hide in the hills and come back after the enemy is done ransacking."  But after that initial charge, they lower their heads and get stuck in.

I decided their durability would come from army abilities and command cards, rather than innate stats like toughness or boxes or courage.  Again, these are still commoners, and so while they may grind it out against an enemy, they'll need a little inspiration to fight for the motherland.  If you didn't notice, Perseverance is the mirror image of Ravenwood Spirit Guidance.  My first instinct was to make the ability to turn enemy die rolls into a 4, but I decided against it because if Spirit Guidance was balanced, I figure the exact mirror of it is a good place to start.

I added the People of the Borderlands rule as much for flavor as anything else.  Their home is a rugged land, so it makes sense they'd be able to deal with rough terrain.  But rather than give them higher Move, I'd just have them not be slowed down.  Given that they'd probably end up fighting guerrilla style every so often, it actually made sense and helped differentiate them from the slow-and-steady Dwarves and the drill-and-maneuverable Hawkshold.

The final design decision was to minimize the number of special rules.  Yes, I know this is a touch hypocritical as the War Wagons are a giant block of special rules, but there simply isn't a way I can think of to make these guys act like I envisioned and be worth taking without them.  Also, Drain is a special rule, but you can't (IMO) have vampires without a power like that.

But once you look beyond that, most the units are pretty straight forward.  They use rules that are already in existence, and by and large are just tweaking stats here and there to create units that have a different feel from other factions out there.  One thing I noticed in the Wuxing is that sometimes special rules become a crutch for flavor and to differentiate a unit/faction from others.  And the BGFW is so very subtle that doing that isn't always necessary, when you can get very different playstyles just by tweaking a stat here and there.

Take for example, the Lancers and the Knights.  The first thing you notice is that they have low Courage.  Now this can be boosted by the Drain ability, but it really captures the theme that the Rudihnya nobility are kind of a cowardly lot.  However, more subtle, I think, is that they are also 1" faster than usual units of that "class."  For example, the Knights move 6" and the Lancers (equivalent of Hawk Light cavalry) move 7".

This is taken from the theme that Central/Eastern European cavalry tended to be lighter than Western European Knights, more prone to lightning raids and ambushes.  Especially on the Voivode Knights I lowered the Pow to reflect that they probably didn't fight with that couched lance style but probably used a more overhead stab with their spears.  However, the extra Pow on the charge reflects both the savagery of their tainted souls but the increased disruption their fast charge would have on an enemy.  Between the higher Move and extra Pow, they really are a quick strike unit that you don't want to get bogged down in combat.

I decided their 'dark curse' would be reflected by an increased Toughness.  I imagine them being lighter armored than usual Lancer and Knights, more in line with a unit that moved 7" and 6".  So normally this would have the Lancers at Toughness 1 and the Knights at Toughness 2, but the inhuman durability granted by their pact gives them a +1 bump.

The other unit with which I was experimenting was the Curteni.  The Halberdiers is just a combination of Greatswordsmen and spears (with a lower Cge to reflect the fact that their souls are slowly being crushed by living among their demonically touched lords).  The Heavy Archers is the real experiment.  They're really expensive for pretty normal archers, but they serve as actually a pretty good backup unit that can step forward if need be.

The Warriors in the Mist is my attempt at ghosts.  You could write up a bunch of special rules for someone needing magic weapons to hit them and such, but I decided it was easier to just use stats.  I figure in BGFW that in each army there's probably somebody with a magical or "master crafted" weapon, its just that in most units its only a few people.  So I abstracted that as a really high def skill.  With their offensive stats, I made the decision that most of the time the Warriors were ethereal.  So most of the time their swords just pass right through someone.  However, when they hit, a person's very soul is being wounded, so even the toughest Hill Giant in the world is going to be wounded by that.  The intent is that these guys will do about a point of damage every turn, and the stats are written to reflect that.

All in all, I'm actually kind of excited about this faction.  I showed it to my friends last game night and one of them (the guy who recently thumped me with Undead), really wants to play them.  Which is pretty cool, because he's usually not super into my fan factions other than as something to chat about.

[gull2112]

I really like the flavor of this faction, but the 4/0 defense of the ghosts gives me pause. I'm not saying it is bad, I actually can see it working pretty cool, but I can also see it not working at all. When one is dealing with D6s as opposed to D20s, there are some thresholds that should not be crossed because they suddenly make things go from tough to impossible. Again, I'm not saying that is the case here, only that I would be watching it very closely in development.

[Hannibal]

Hey thanks for reading through it!  I made some small tweaks last night when I was making unit cards (the Krayishnik Lancers lost a Green box and the Borderlands rule affects all but the War Wagons now).

I really like the flavor of this faction, but the 4/0 defense of the ghosts gives me pause. I'm not saying it is bad, I actually can see it working pretty cool, but I can also see it not working at all. When one is dealing with D6s as opposed to D20s, there are some thresholds that should not be crossed because they suddenly make things go from tough to impossible. Again, I'm not saying that is the case here, only that I would be watching it very closely in development.

Hmm, interesting.  My feeling was that a Def skill 4 wasn't really crossing a line, as Celestial Guard have it.  Since the Warriors in the Mist can't have cards played on them, this will really mitigate that Def skill 4 and expose the weakness of that Off Skill 4.  And since they cost 277 pts, you'll have to put them against really strong units to get any value from them as tanks.  The saving grace is that they're fearless with 12 boxes, and that if an enemy with (6)6/6 is dumping command cards to chew through them faster, its a success for you.

But its definitely something to keep an eye on.  Even if its balanced but unfun, then that's a problem.  Thanks again for your input!

[gull2112]

You're probably right with the defense skill 4 not being a problem with out the ability to play cards, I hadn't thought about that. I would be very surprised if it turned out to be a problem.

[Hannibal]

Based on some playtesting we've made some tweaks to the Rudihnya list.

First and foremost was that the war wagon just needed to go.  Its a neat idea, and actually was the whole idea behind the list, but it ultimately didn't fit.  The list evolved into a more "Vampire Kingdom" list and away from the fanatical hussites which was the germ.  Oh well, maybe someday I'll make some fanatic-peasant uprising type faction.  This ended up leaving a Core choice open, which I'd need to fill later.

Second was the amount of time we didn't use a vampire unit, which quickly became one of the central themes of the faction.  This was because the only vampire units were either cavalry units of the Koldun unit.  We felt it'd be cool to have a vampire infantry unit.  We brainstormed a unit visually based on the opening scene of Dracula:  armor and sword.

Only instead of having the guy fighting with sword or spear, we were thinking of a large two-handed sword, known as a  flambard zweihander.  We thought it'd simply be more useful for the unit to be O:(5)6/6 D:2/3 rather than if they fought with sword and shield (which would be O:(5)6/5, D:3/3).  I know it seems strange to have them be a Def 2/3 despite wielding a two-handed sword, we went with the same theory for Marauders that they were an elite unit and so would be a Def 3/3 if they had a shield, but instead are a Def 2/3.

The third tweak we made was to the Curteni.  We started with the Halberdiers, making them Off Skill 5 instead of Off Skill 6.  The Off Skill 6 originally was there to give the faction a decent infantry unit, but it never felt right.  These guys were the retinue of the vampire lords, but they weren't crack troops.  They were more defensive troops, more adept at manning the walls against a siege than busting through an enemy line.  In keeping with that, I decided to make them MC 2.5" to represent they're heavily armored, but also to cement their role:  they're going to be flank defenders more than line breakers.  The other tweak I made was to move them to Core, replacing the War Wagons.  What I liked about that is that their 2.5" MC wouldn't hurt them as bad as Hawkshold Greatswords, because if you wanted you could take a line of these guys.  Also it'd allow a player to build an army representing the retinue of a lord.

I also tweaked the Curteni Heavy Archers, lowering their MC to 2.5" to match the Halberdiers.  Which is good because these guys were really pricey for a hybrid archer-backup unit, and this would make them a little bit cheaper.

The fourth tweak was combining the Hillfolk and the Axemen.  Each unit simply felt like a half unit, with glaring weaknesses somewhere.  For example, the Hillfolk had a Def 1/2 bu only moved 3.5", which meant they were bait for any archer unit.  Meanwhile the Hillfolk moved fast but lacked any real breakthrough ability and their Range 7" attack felt like wasted points.  So I decided to simply turn them into fast moving axemen.  Which fits pretty well thematically, I mean you'd imagine hillfolk to have axes.  I turned this new Hillfolk unit into Core to replace the Axemen but didn't add in another Standard unit because the faction has 12 units already.

The fifth change was turning the Koldun Pack into a Werewolf Pack.  Originally I'd thought of the Koldun Pack as 'feral vampires,' again drawing inspiration from Dracula.  But we decided it be cool to just use Werewolves, as that is very stereotypically Balkan horror.  We brainstormed a unit of guys about the size of bears, and patterned the stats based on them.  These monsters were in a state of constant frenzy, hence the lots of attacks and always on Close, but also the requirement to ditch a CC to play a CC on them (which hopefully will prevent the abuse of having 7 dice).


I'm hoping to try out these changes this week, and maybe I'll have some pictures to go with it.

[RushAss]

Sorry to see the War Wagon go.  It was a really nifty idea, I guess it just didn't translate well to the BG system.

[Hannibal]

Actually, it translates pretty well and we got it to work from a mechanics point of view.  Just thematically it doesn't fit.  I'd originally thought of the faction as a Russian-Hussite army of peasants defending their lands, but it quickly went in a Translyvanian-horror direction.  The war wagon stuck out like a sore thumb.

Like I said, maybe I'll go with some religious fanatic faction.  I'd previously avoided that to avoid the WFB Empire and Warmachine Menoth comparison.

[gull2112]

  I'd previously avoided that to avoid the WFB Empire and Warmachine Menoth comparison.

But the Menoth are so cool! They were the inspiration for this subfaction:
http://gullsbattleground.blogspot.com/2011/01/recusants-chosen-hawkshold-subfaction.html