Converting Hostile Realms Campaign Rosters

 This continues my efforts to convert Piquet's excellent campaign rules, Theater of War, into a format usable for Piquet's fantasy rules, Hostile Realms, that I began here.

One of the best aspects of Theater of War is that it is designed to prevent the battle size inflation that can often kill a fun campaign game.  Once you have generated your campaign roster, the battles will never include more units than you have on your campaign roster.  TOW uses a calculation of sequence deck card size, troop quality modifiers, and card divisors to figure out how many units each side can have.  This doesn't work as well for Hostile Realms because the sequence decks are all the same size and there isn't a card divisor for army characterization used in the rules.

Here is my solution.  To illustrate it, I'll use the Middle Kingdoms army list.

For this example, I'll start with a list of 20 units and a total roster points of 2000 points.  You first have to fill in all of the minimum numbers required by army composition percentages.  The list you make can be any size, but I do recommend your army point total should be 100 points per unit.

According to the Middle Kingdoms army list, at least 30% of the army has to be mounted knights, Household and Feudal.  However, there has to be more Feudal knights than Household Knights.  So, you need 4 Feudal Knights and 3 Household Knights.

At least 10% of the army has to be Sergeants.  You add 2 Sergeant units.
At least 10% of the army has to be Crossbowmen.  You add 2 Crossbowmen units.
At least 5% of the army has to be Handgunners or Skirmishers.  I chose to add 1 Handgunner unit.
At least 5% of the army has to be Mountaineers.  You add 1 Mountaineer unit.
At least 10% of the army has to be Civic Militia.  You add 2 Civic Militia units.

That does it for your mandatory units, so your campaign roster looks like this:

1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Handgunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia

The total points for this group is 1146 points.  That gives us 854 points left.

Your army will always contain a Commander in Chief Champion and 1 Sub-commander Hero.  We allow the Commander in Chief to lead a command, so this allows you to have at a minimum 2 commands.  They are listed first on the roster and they always appear in a battle unless upgraded to someone else.  They cannot be unique characters unless upgraded.

Middle Kingdom has a Prince Champion for 168 points and a Count for 104 points.  That makes 1418 points.

You can use slots to upgrade these leaders if you desire.  The slot costs you the points difference between the mandatory leader and the upgraded leader.

The Middle Kingdom can field as its general "the Rex" mounted on a flying beast for 220 points and Jhone of Orc, a unique Hero, for 128 points.  The Rex upgrade costs 52 points (220-168) and Jhone costs 24 points (128-104).  That's another 76 points (1494 points).

Here is the current roster:


*Champion General
*Hero Sub-commander
1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Handgunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia
16. Rex Champion Upgrade
17. Jhone of Orc Hero Upgrade

Some of the army lists have additional mandatory requirements when certain units are selected.  These requirements are satisfied by presence in the campaign roster, even if they are not ultimately selected to be at a battle.  The choice of a Rex Champion Upgrade triggers the mandatory requirement that 2 Household Knights units and the Archers of the Guard be present if he is to be included. So, we add the Archers of the Guard for 126 points (1620 points total).  The Household Knights are already on the roster.  Done and done.

So far, that does it for the mandatory units required on the list.  Now we can do a bit of shopping.

The army list has to contain 20 units, so we have to shop appropriately.  Every 2 units of mountaineers and civic militia can be put together to form a pike block.  A single unit can only form battle order.  I like pike blocks, so I'll go shopping for some more infantry:

1 Mountaineers unit (Max 4) 60 points
2 Civic Militia units (Max 4) 66 points
1 Ribaldequin organ gun (Max 1) 36 points
Total points: 1782

*Champion General
*Hero Sub-commander
1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Handgunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia
16. Archers of the Guard
17. Mountaineers
18. Civic Militia
19. Civic Militia
20. Ribaldequin organ gun
21. Rex Champion Upgrade
22. Jhone of Orc Hero Upgrade

I'm at 20 units and I still have 218 points to spend on anything I want as long as I don't go over army maximums for the 20 unit army size.  I could buy up to 5 units of orc warriors for Jhone of Orc to command (an option when she's on the roster).  I could buy up to 2 units of foot knights (77 each) to stiffen the infantry.  Or maybe 4 units of Peasants (14 each) as a cheap way of increasing the morale chips for my army.

Instead, I opted for:

Level II Priest (126 points)  The High Priest is much too expensive (242 points!!).
Minotaur unit (65 points)  This army allows dragons and minotaurs.
Shire Archers (27 points)  The army can have a max of 2 longbow units.  The Archers of the Guard count as one of them.  The Shire Archers aren't as good, but they both get overhead longbow fire which can be pretty effective.

So, here's the final campaign roster:


*Champion General
*Hero Sub-commander
1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Handgunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia
16. Archers of the Guard
17. Mountaineers
18. Civic Militia
19. Civic Militia
20. Ribaldequin organ gun
21. Minotaurs
22. Shire Archers
23. Rex Champion Upgrade
24. Jhone of Orc Hero Upgrade

25. Priest

It's a pretty strong campaign roster in terms of troops, but it is a little weak on command.  I would have loved to purchase another Count, but I blew too much money on my mounted knights and the Rex upgrade.   Also, the characters in this army are expensive.  

In most battles, it looks like the General and the Count will lead two commands, most likely 1 mounted command and 1 foot command.  If I get lucky and draw the Priest, I could always give the Good Bishop a third command to lead.

Next article...selecting the troops for battle.