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In Theater of War (at least for the ancients period), each side has six strength points to divide across its battlegroups, with a maximum of four points in a given group. In addition, each side can have three "dummy" battlegroups that represent scouts, raiders, or other small forces that can't stage a full-scale battle.

At the beginning, the orcs have their forces in two battlegroups, while the empire has theirs spread across eight. At this point, we determine the capabilities of each of the battlegroups.

Each of the orc battlegroups rolls up an Average commander. Then the quality of each of the units, for both battlegroups, is rolled up.

Yes, each group has (or, rather, could have) all the units. Which actually show up for a given battle depends on the strength points allocated to the battle group, the cards in the player's hand when the battle is joined, and luck.

Here's the final roster for the orcs. The big mess of numbers are relatively easy to understand -- the first number is their missile attack strength, the second is their melee attack strength, and the third is the unit's morale. A dash means that factor doesn't apply (can't shoot). The numbers are actually the size of dice to roll for that unit; the plusses and minuses are modifiers to the roll. As an example, the archers should not get involved in melee -- they roll a four-sided die and subtract one in melee! (Actually, it's worse than that. The archers can only take the field in skirmish formation, which is an additional -2 to melee!)

The Empire gets more of a mixed bag for its group commanders -- groups B and E get Poor commanders, and group F gets a Skilled commander. The other groups all get Average commanders.

Here is the initial Imperial roster. They tend to have higher morale than the orcs and be pretty hard-hitting.

At the beginning of the campaign (the first week of March), the map looks like this:

Imperial group A (2 SP) is in the fortress; B, C, and D (1, 0, and 1 SP, respectively) are in the major towns and city; E and F (0 and 1 SP) are over the mountains, scouting. Group G (1 SP) is off in the hills to the south (looking for bandits?).

Both of the orc groups (3 SP each) have just entered the map.

Next up: the first initiative of turn 1!

Next up is the Orc army. I’ve calculated their Force Value, and it’s also a 7: so the two sides will have the same number of units. The figure inventory I have is:

o 9 stands of orcs with spears
o 4 stands of trolls
o 4 stand orcs with swords
o 6 stand orcs with bows

There are also some wolf-riders, but the Archon lists for Vikings don’t allow cavalry, so I’m excluding them.

What the Archon list does allow is one or two units of huscarls (“elite, dense shock infantry”), one or two units of archers, and the remainder being bondi — infantry militia armed with swords and spears.

This actually words pretty well — the trolls will fill the role of the huscarls, there will be one unit of archers, and then fifteen units of bondi. That means I need twelve paper units for the orcs, but still, not too bad.

The miniatures have a 2:1 ratio of spears to swords, so I’ll hold that through the paper ones, for a final count of five units with swords and ten with spears. Furthermore, it says 40-50% of the bondi should rate as regulars instead of militia, so the five sword units and 1 of the spears will be regulars.

Next, the CiC quality. The orcs also get a +1 to their roll, roll a 17, giving them a skilled leader. This is bad news for the Empire — the orcs have a clever commander.

Finally, the orc’s “national will”. They have a 62 — a bit less than the Empire, but will it be enough to make up for the orc’s superior leadership?

The biggest problem I have right now is the figures I have are mounted for Fantasy Rules! That's not a big problem, because Piquet can use any basing system (so long as it's consistent), but the problem is my forces are relatively small because of the basing. For the Imperials (Normans), I have:

12 stands of cavalry
5 stands infantry (spears)
2 stands archers
3 stands crossbows

This is pretty good for a FR! army, but Piquet wants four stands for each unit. That would leave me with 3 units of cavalry, 1 unit of infantry, and 2 incomplete units of archers. That's an extremely anemic force, not even worth the trouble!

The solution to this will be paper miniatures, based on those from Arion Games. I plan on rescaling and re-arranging their figures to create entire stands; I'll give details on that later.

Archon says Normans get 40-60% knights, 40-60% infantry, 10-20% archers. I'm going with 7 infantry units, 6 cavalry units, and 3 archer units. That's actually quite a few paper troops, but that's OK (to me). The nice thing about ToW is that the units don't need to be put together until they're actually needed.

Next step is to determine the quality of the Imperial commander in chief. The roll on a d20 comes up 15; Normans get a +1 modifier for a 16. This is an "average" commander. A little disappointing for such a high roll!

Following this is the Force Value for the army, which will be used to determine the number of units in the orc army. This is based on the number of command cards in the army's deck and the army's quality modifier, and comes out to 7.

Finally, we determine the Imperial army's "national will". This is essentially their morale; when it's reduced to zero, they lose! The result is 77, which is pretty good. This number will drop when they lose battles, or important territories, and will increase when they win battles and take important territories.

Tomorrow: building the orc army!

Movement

A battlegroup (what Theater of War uses as the basic organizational unit) may move up to seven hexes during an activation. The cost of that movement is based on the contents of the hex:

Basic cost: 1 (flat, grassland)
+1 if the hex contains hills
+3 if the hex contains mountains
+1 if the hex contains forests

+1 if crossing a river
+2 if crossing the major river
(you may move ALONG a river with no additional cost)

-1 if following a path
-2 if following a road
(minimum cost is 1)

So, if you're moving along a road through a forested mountain, the cost per hex is 1 + 3 + 1 - 2 = 3. It would cost 3 impetus to move 7 hexes along this road. If the current card wouldn't normally cover territory with the final move cost, the battlegroup may move as far as they can with the impetus cost allowed by the card.

Mountains in gray-colored hexes are impassable.

Supplies

The imperial troops use the normal supply rules. They may draw supplies from any settlement marked on the map and may form temporary supply depots.

Orcs treat supplies a little differently: They are not required to retreat if out of supply, but do suffer the other penalties. Orcs may draw supplies from camps; camps are established the same as temporary supply depots, but last for more than a single use. If a hostile force is in the same hex as an undefended camp, the camp is destroyed and the orcs lose moral points as if a value 3 territory had been lost.

The target value for the supply test (and establishing a temporary depot or camp) is calculated the same as the movement cost, above.

Territory values

Most hexes are of no particular worth. The city (filled circle) is the imperial base of operations. The towns (filled squares) are value 3. The villages (filled triangles) are value 2. The fort is value 3.

The green towns and villages are neutral until the orcs move into their hexes. At that point, they become allied with the orcs and the orcs may lose morale if they're taken by imperial forces. If imperial forces move into any of the neutral towns BEFORE that town is allied with the orcs, ALL the neutral towns become allies with the orcs. The orcs may draw supplies from allied towns.

Initial Set-up

Imperial battlegroups may be placed anywhere on the map, but 75% of them must be on the eastern side of the mountains.

Orc battlegroups enter the northwest of the map, where the river leaves the map.

Scouting

The cost for scouting is calculated the same as movement cost, above.

I've decided to kill a few birds with one stone -- breathe some life into this blog, try out some new miniature rules, and pass some time over the cold winter nights. I'm going to do this with a solo miniatures campaign, using Piquet's Archon and Theater of War supplements.

The setting for the campaign will be nominally fantasy, but the army lists will be based on historical forces (Normans and Vikings). The Normans will be the "Imperial" forces, defending a backwater section of their lands from a horde of rampaging orcs.

Here's the map:


Each hex is a mile across. Yellow means grassland, green is forested, gray is impassable mountains. Blue lines are rivers, black lines are roads. There are three grades of roads and rivers. The sharp peaks are the areas that are primarily mountains, the rounded humps are hilly areas -- each of the small hexes has its precise terrain type; at this scale, the displayed terrain is just a "round up" of the hexes below.

(The map was made with HexMapper, which is a great tool for old-school hex maps like this. The odd shape is the program's hallmark, and actually makes sense for what the program's doing.)

The blue marks are Imperial settlements -- the square is a small city, the circles are towns, the triangles are important villages. The odd, five-square shape is a fortress is in the middle of a pass. The green marks are neutral villages (rules for them will come later).

Next up: special rules!

When the last bits of Hurrican Ike rolled through Ohio, I lost power. Everything got shut down OK, but my server wouldn't start back up. I've built a new one, but in the process completely lost my old web site. I think I've got back ups of my personal photos -- I hope I do -- but the rest of it's gone, gone gone.

Which, hey, isn't a huge loss. And a fresh start isn't a bad thing, right?

Right?