Building my Royal Army
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| Battle of Lewes by Andy Gammon |
His illustration is clearly of Lord Edward crashing into the London Militia, leading the vast cavalry host of the Royal army.
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Alright, onto my considerations for purchasing figures for my Royal army. I've not yet finished the rebels but they are all over bar the shouting. I will be retiring within the next 12 months and expect this and my other projects to start seriously accelerating toward their end-state ... and not before time.
As is universally recorded, the Royal host was seriously larger than the rebels in both cavalry especially and in overall numbers. Some have it as high as twice as large as the rebel army. In figure terms I had previously resigned myself to having a number of figures half as large again as my rebel army.
My rebel army is really only one large unit and some command bases away from completion and will comprise a total of 324 figures of all arms (40 cavalry, 260 foot and 24 skirmishers). A Royal army will need to be at least 500 figures in terms of pure numbers.
Whilst there's no avoiding a significantly higher figure count, in terms of the rules I use, I can moderate the numbers a little to provide a proportional strength beyond simple numbers. I will be using Hail Caesar rules which provide unit strength in terms of Stamina. Instead of concentrating my collection and build on +50% figure numbers, I will concentrate on +50% stamina.
For example, If I look at the Centre Rebel ward, it was one unit of 10 heavy horse, two 30 figure units of foot and a unit of 12 archers. Each unit in turn has a stamina of 5 + 6 + 6 + 4 for a total of 21. The Right Ward also has 4 units totalling 21 Stamina and the Left Ward has 2 units with a combined 17 Stamina. The Reserve Ward has 4 units with 21 Stamina also bringing the sum of the army's Stamina to 80.
So, my Royal army needs to have units totalling at least 120 Stamina across three Wards.
I am giving my Left Ward (the King's Ward) seven units with Stamina of 5 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 4 + 4 for a total of 45. The four foot units are all large (Stamina 8) with 48 figures each for units in three ranks.
The Centre Ward has six units with Stamina 5 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 +4 totalling 41. Again, the core of this ward is the four large infantry units (Stamina 8) in three deep formation.
The Right Cavalry Ward has five units with Satmina 5 + 8 + 8 + 6 + 6 totalling 37. This brings the total army Stamina to 119. Near enough.
By my calculations this will requre the purchase of 542 figures all arms - 32 skirmishers (bow), 126 cavalry (knights, squires and serjeants) and 384 infantry. Looks like either way I slice it, I'm in for a serious outlay and a big build.
My foot units are the minimum 48 figures for a three deep formation to attain 'large' Stamina 8. Minimums for a large formation four deep is 60 figures - so I'm avoiding that. By the way, this is all based on the first edition Hail Caesar which I prefer when calculating army sizes. In the end, the figure count does matter if it's going to look right.
I may consider using some of the plastic releases to bulk out the foot units but at least half will be metal. We will see. I don't like the way ancient and medieval plastic figures look when assembled - generally. I'll buy and build one ward at a time.
By giving the Royal wards more units calculated against Stamina totals, rather than large four deep formations and concetrating on figure count alone, I will be making the wards (divisions) more difficult to command. The chances of a failed command roll (Hail Caesar) when attempting to order up to seven units will (I hope) disadvantage the Royal army to a degree. They did not deploy a reserve and had three large wards. The Rebels, on the other hand have only four units per ward and had a reserve - so a better chance to manoeuvre and command all units.
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