One army for one campaign

[gull2112]

I'm wondering what people's thoughts would be on army construction if you were to use essentially the same army for an entire campaign. Obviously, this won't work with a standard kingdoms campaign since your unit choice changes. But just say, for a what if, you used the random maps and victory conditions and played a series of games with the same army build. What sort of all-purpose army would you construct?

The guidelines would be as from the rulebook for a standard game except as modified by the Kingdoms conditions.
2000 points with standard core and elite limitations.

[Torrg]

For Umenzi at 2000 points

4 Shamans
4 Umenzi Atlatlmen
6 Umenzi Javelineers
1 Command Card

[ajax98]

My favorite 'one size fits most circumstances' has been with the Umenzi. I've found this group to be very resilient and focused on the strengths.
1 Berserkers
1 Chosen
4 Shamans
1 Umenzi Spearmen
4 Umenzi Javelineers
1 The Possessed

12            1990pts

Usually don't have to worry about somebody getting out of command range for courage.

[RushAss]

This is almost identical to the Dwarven Army I played at Total Con last year.

2 x Axemen
1 x Battleaxemen
1 x Spearmen
2 x Militia
1 x Longbeards
1 x Anotonian Horsemen
1985 points

No frills, just a solid line of dudes with a nasty, swift cavalry unit lurking around one of the flanks.  I may replace one of the Militia with a unit of Miners and add a command card instead, which would cost 1997 points.  I have a soft spot for Miners because I always thought they where such a neat and unique unit.

[Kevin]

Last year at Council of 5 Nations we had to take one army for the entire (3 round) tournament.  Here was my Umenzi army, which emerged victorious:

1 Chosen
1 Worthy
3 Javelineers
3 Spearmen
3 Shamans

1999 points.

Their opening move was to close with location targets behind the army, resulting in about 2 turns to back up and go forward again.  By the time the armies would meet every unit on the map would be blessed/hexed.

[RushAss]

Nice build Kevin!  I'd swap one of the Javalineers for a Warrior Unit and upgrade one of the Shamans to High Priests.  Or you could downgrade 2 of the Spearmen to Warriors (1 of them is a backup anyways, right?) to purchase the High Priests.   But that's just personal taste.  It's all good stuff regardless.

[gull2112]

I can't comment on the Umenzi builds because I have almost no experience with them. I like Marcus' Runegard build, as he says, nothing fancy, just solid troops. I think one of the key elements in a universal build is a wide variety of unit types. I have found that to be one of the strengths of the builds that come with the faction decks. They are very diverse and show a full range of unit variety. With a little effort and careful planning you can deflect almost any set up the opposition fields and hopefully capitalize on any weaknesses you spot.

[elgin_j]

Personally, I've been wondering about a slight variation on this theme.  Rather than a single army build for every game I've thought it would be good to have an amount of points at the start of the campaign and players would have to build each battle's army from that single pool.  As units are destroyed in battle they are removed from the pool thereby representing dwindling forces.  There are definitely issues that would have to be worked out to enable this but I'm convinced it could be done and would be great if done right...

[RushAss]

Hmmmm.... I gotta say that strikes me as a pretty neat idea.

[gull2112]

I agree, and I've actually thought about this quite a bit. Here is what I have come up with:

Let us suppose for our experiment that you use standard force composition limitations and start with a reserve pool of 3000 points for a 3 game series of 2000 point games. So that is a minimum of six cores, and as many as 3 of each kind of elites.

Unlike many game systems, we won't allow partial recovery of units that were eliminated as it gets to be a lot of paper work. The unit is either eliminated or it appears back in the force pool at full strength. Units that rout off a friendly board edge are placed back in the reserve poole those that rout off any other side are considered eliminated. The reserve core units are always considered at their starting strength (even if they are completely eliminated).

Play a series of three kingdoms scenarios and tally up points.

A player can surrender and places all his surviving units in the reserve pool and the opponent scores a major vitory.

Anything else?

[Curufea]

Interesting - you would be using the Kingdom rules then, as the buildings modify the ratio of elite to standard units.

Although, if you had enough points initially for a standard army, the Kingdom buildings would just modify the composition of the army you field for a scenario - you be able to use more of your elite reserves per battle.

[gull2112]

As always, I was striving for simplicity. I was not assuming a kingdom's campaign, but rather just that the scenarios would be generated using the kingdom's. In other words, Kingdom's would only be used to set up the terrain and special conditions. If you were going to fight a whole Kingdom's style campaign then you would want slightly different rules, like a full strategic reserve from which you would draw units that were made available by your buildings purchases.

Now that I'm thinking about it though  ;  You could use a regular building roster and whenever a unit of the type that was allowed by that building was eliminated in battle, the building would recieve a check. When it received a certain number of checks it would be eliminated and need to be rebuilt before any more of that type of unit could be built. Obviously, elite unit buildings would have fewer check marks and core would have the most or maybe even an unlimited amount, or you could say that once all a core building's boxes were checked a different building would have one of its boxes checked every time a core was lost, and you could never "replace" a core building, thus simulating a faction that was scraping the barrel just to field an army at all.

You could even say that once a building was eliminated it could never be replaced. Since most kingdoms campaigns run ten turns or fewer, a closer horizon would be more likely to effect the game.

[gull2112]

This would also add a whole new dimension to mercenaries as they would grant you access to units that you could no longer build for your regular army, thus allowing them to fill one of their assumed roles.

The Keep would also allow you to use standard units again since they would count as cores.

[ZiNOS]

Their opening move was to close with location targets behind the army, resulting in about 2 turns to back up and go forward again.  By the time the armies would meet every unit on the map would be blessed/hexed.

I am more than happy to have you as a playtester for Alexander vs Persia but dude, i will not want to play with you .

Unless there is beer involved.