The Troop Lists For Next Battle Of Hex 187 And The nature Of This Wargaming Fantasy Campaign.

 The next battle should be staged next week. 

Mat's Fezian forces:

Commander Vorbis

Hero Bairam

2 units of short bows

I unit of plate armored infantry

3 units of light infantry

6 wagons with supplies

My Patran forces:

King Artemus

2 war elephants

1 Sphinx (flying female creature)

Wizard

3 elite Roman heavy infantry

3 catapults

1 Hillmen mercenaries

Hero 1

Hero 2

2 Egyptian light infantry

2 Greek heavy infantry

The Fezians are outnumbered again, although not quite as much as in the previous battle. I feel fairly confident though. What my army lack, this time, are archers and cavalry. (The King's cavalry are off doing another errand). But then Mat has not invested here, in cavalry, either. I reckon that Mat will be looking forward to playing the game after this one when the Fritz greatly outnumber my castle Beersteiner garrison in South Beerstein.

One thing with these encounter battles is that artillery often doesn't get much of a look in as it comes from reserve. If an army has already been in place it can have artillery set up first.

Elephants also arrive from reserve. My plans for elephants will come to light in the future.

One thing to see about wizards is they can be devastating to the enemy or to their own side. One has to decide to put them inside units so they can, more easily, pass spells to strengthen and protect them and also themselves from shooting. On the other hand, if anything goes wrong with spell casting it can rebound nastily on everyone close to the wizard as well as the wizard.

You will notice I am beginning to include fantastical creatures in human armies. I have a nice Reaper, sexy sphinx lady so why not make use of her? I mean in my army. She's a model, right? I mean a plastic model, a miniature. 

Mat and I both have dinosaurs that are being nurtured and trained so it remains to be seen if they later come into use in the campaign. I have three dinosaurs and Mat has one, products of our earlier egg gathering expedition to Aztecia.

By the way, you will notice some Aztecs in the Patran army. They have a strong dislike of Fezians, given the latter's subjection and conquest of North Aztecia so these Aztecs joined the Patran army.

WHOSE ARMY IS THAT?

Mat began with Bogavania but some time ago my Fezia intervened to assist Bogavania against the hated Beersteiners. Initially they were just a third party but as Bogavanian land came under Beersteiner control Bogavania rump became a client of Fezia, which also gave Bogavania land as a buffer against Beerstein's control. Mat naturally became leader of both Bogavania and Fezia, although they have usually separate armies.

As for Patra and Fritzerland they are two of a number of nations, not all human, that can do their own thing. And they have. Our random dice rolls now includes an outcome where both Fezia/Bogavania and Beerstein get invaded by two other forces. Other possible invaders were orcs, Chaos, Undead from Necrolia, Hillmen, Dark Elves, Silver Horde (Mongols) and Aztecs. 

So, then I have to extend the map, which is what I did for Patra, Aztecia and Fritzerland. We diced for how many hexes and thus income they had. Their income is not great, so they need to have early victories before they run out of credits.

I'll be adding other lands in the future.

Mat and I don't have third and fourth players so we take over the armies of these countries and it has been working fine. I take over third party enemies of Mat and he takes over third party enemies of me.

Even though Patra is not 'my army' I do like Patra as it has temples to cats. It also kind of worships a comet (Warhammer influence). I have mentioned before that Fezia worships the Moon God. Fezia LOOKS Islamic/Ottoman but also has an ancient Persian and ancient Middle Eastern influence. It also includes various tribal levies, so it is quite diverse. Boganaians and Beersteiners are pseudo Christians, but from different branches.

I have also mentioned before that major inspiration for this kind of wargaming comes from the late Frank Perry (author of The First and second Books of Wargaming, novels based on his games, The Caspross Experiment and A Time to Kill and some very old articles in Plastic Warrior magazine. Also of influence are Tony Bath's, Wargame Campaigns and Tony Hackett's Fantasy Wargaming.