Advice on Army Composition

[burkey42]

Good day kind Sirs! Okay, medieval rhetoric put away......I need some advice please.

My Skellie army is going great but I am blocked on how to orgainze my Crownies. My disarray currently looks like this:

mounted knights - 12
dismounted knights (as per set #5615) - 30
pikemen (pike with four side blades only) - 12
archers (quiver and bow with arrow) - 11
spearmen (spear and shield) - 24
Axemen (Halberd (axe) and shield) - 12
swordsmen (shortsword and shield) - 6

The axemen 'look after' my two catapults and eight ballistas . The swordsmen occupy the King's Castle.

Based on 30 dismounted, armoured, knights, where could/should I be heading? Thanks - Sean

PS I'm a quadriplegic with enough hand function to do 70% of my own building (thankful to an eight year old son and understanding wife)!

[Voran_the_Scholar]

I'm not %100 sure what you mean, but if you do anything, I would suggest mounting a few more of your knights. Horses can be expensive, but it would pay off in the end, I think.

[Heir of Black Falcon]

Without medieval rhetoric I'm out...

It really depends on the culture, their resources and such in your Legoverse. You can have groups all mounted if they have a lot of space for grazing and breeding horses. Limited if not. Heavily armoured if wealthy or an armour industry etc. Lightly if not.

My armies usually reflect their kingdom/factions assets. I have a group that lives on a series of islands and coastal areas. These lands are linked by their fleets of ships. Their main source of wealth is by trade. Most of the locations I have built for them are beside water and have docks and such to accommodate ships as well as buildings for trade. They do not have a real cavalry, besides a few scouts but a strong, well armed infantry, with swordsmen, spearmen, archers, siege equipment and warships. The break down is 30% spearmen, 30% swordsmen, 30% archers and then 10% engineers,scouts and leaders.

Or a more simple way would be by what Lego men you have available and make their culture, story match that way. Good luck with your army building.

R

[burkey42]

Thanks Tom. I suppose where I'm trying to head is if I had say 100 Crownies, what percent should be mounted knights, dismounted knights, infantry, pikemen etc. Have I over complicated it with the introduction of spearmen and axemen or could I use them as a symbol of rank e.g.:

general groups
-mounted knights
-pikemen
-infantry
-archers

leaders
-squad/section: spearman
-man at arms/group 2IC: axeman
-group leader: knight (mounted or dismounted as appropriate)

based on that structure, should there be say 25% mounted knights, 50% infantry, 15% pikemen and 35% archers?

I have a reasonably open budget but don't want to get my Crownies too far over 150.
Thanks,
-Sean

[burkey42]

Thanks R! That is great advice, off to drawing board for a 'Medieval Legoverse creation on paper.' There are Dwarves within my Legoverse and very skilled at mining/armour production. My mind is starting to build, soon the army will materialize!
- Sean

[JoshWedin]

Welcome, Burkey42! I'm glad you found Classic-Castle. I concur with much that Heir of Black Falcon said. I would also suggest that perhaps you don't get mounts for those "dismounted" knights. If they're the guy from 5615 then you can turn them into some sort of infantry fairly easily and that would fit better with your other troops. In reality, if you care about such a thing , outfitting knights was much more expensive. Infantry was way cheaper. Therefore, there was usually a lot more infantry in an army than cavalry.

Just my thoughts,
Josh

PS. I'm glad that you still have enough hand function to build. In 2005, I read a Brick Journal article about a quadriplegic lego fan. That's not you is it?

[Blueandwhite]

Just to chime in on this topic, what era is your army set in ? From what I understand, cavalry was on the decline from the 1400s to the end of the middle ages. Even in the early middle ages, your infantry would outrank your cavalry by a huge margin. Equipping a mounted soldier (noble or not) was exceedingly expensive. To buy and maintain equipment and a horse cost a small fortune. Allthough I would boost your cavalry size a bit, for 150 or so troops I wouldn't expect more than 30 mounted soldiers and knights.

[Heir of Black Falcon]

Blue and White has a good point as the progress of time would change things. Depending on how developed your countries are or whatnot they might be still using almost completely all spearmen with shields.

Per cavalry on the decline it is closer to 1300, than 1400, in fact by the mid to late 15th a resurgence of cavalry importance takes place with. In the 14th with the rise of the longbow and poleweapons this shifts to give infantry a way to actively defeat enemy cavalry. Cavalry never dies out though and remains a main arm of the army into the 17th century. There after the armoured horseman basically becomes limited to a cuirass and helmet this continues to today but not really active military units in warfare from what I know. He is dead on when he says that most armies would be very infantry heavy. Even in their height of power the mounted knight needed an infantry wall for their protection. If anyone is looking for some good reading on this let me know. Think of an army as a body. Everyone has a job to do. Pike verse pike is very slow and gruelling. Usually they have to literally push the other army off the field to win. With the use of missile weapons or cavalry this is no longer the case, both having ways of defeating pike blocks.

R

[Foxglove]

Burkey42, you've got a nice little collection going there.

The way I've set out my army is:

15x Crossbowmen. All are equipped with quivers and brown crossbows. As well, they each have a pearly-gray handaxe set at their feet, so they can switch to melee when firing into the enemy runs too high a risk of friendly-fire.

12x Spearmen. All have been decked out in the Crown-patterned breastplate and supplied with a shield.

11x Axemen. All have been decked out in the Crown-patterned breastplate and supplied with a shield.

9x Knights. Six with the visor helm, three with the grille-helm. All with chrome greatswords and shields.

11x soldiers with the tabard-patterned body from 5615. I treat these men as Squires - not high-ranking enough to qualify for the breatplates.

16x soldiers from the 2007 Chess Set. I treat them as basic men-at-arms.

4x Bishops from the 2007 Chess Set. I treat them as the King's personal guard, his Oldguard, if you will.

Because I had two Kings (Well, four now. ), I cannibalised one. His cape and breatplate were fitted onto the Princess (As well as a Princess Leia's hair, the only Star Wars piece of Lego I own) to give her a better chance of surviving the conflict. Both King and Princess got a shield and gold chrome greatsword.

I also took the discarded King's torso and legs, the Wizard's head (I swapped it for a normal soldier's), a D-basket and farmer's cowl and used them to make the King a manservant.

I also used my last soldier to give the King a Flag-bearer.

While I don't know the specific ratio of each type, they look darn good when set out next to each other in formation. I just used the basic idea that all Crownies with a specific torso would be a specific type of soldier. In the official sets, sometimes that's swapped around a bit, but I wanted mine to be uniform.

In the future I might round off the numbers so that's there's twenty of each type or something similiar, but for now they're being assigned to each of the groups as I acquire new sets.

Hope that helped.

[Ardohoth]

I split my armies into 3 categories

-Infantry
-Cavalry
-Archers

Now you have to separate your units

I do this

Infantry=Spearmen, Axemen, Swordsmen
Cavalry=Heavy+Light
Archers

These are the major units of my army and in general i think its the structure most armies have

Now the best thing you can do also is to form squads

My arhers have 2 Squads
My infantry has 5 Squads
and Cavalry has 3 squads

Ieach squad has 12 people and a captain. Now you have also to form your ranks but thats your decision

[The_Hun]

Here's what my Crown army looks like (or will in the near future, when I receive all the heads & accessories I've ordered):

12x mounted knights + 1x knights' captain
1x flagbearer
48x swordsmen + 1x sergeant
24x spearsmen + 1x sergeant
12x pikesmen (pikes w/ 4 side blades) + 1x sergeant
24x crossbowmen + 1x sergeant
24x axemen + 1x sergeant

I'm also thinking of a 12+1-person company to man my planned supply wagons and siege equipment.

[burkey42]

based on that structure, should there be say 25% mounted knights, 50% infantry, 15% pikemen and 35% archers?

How bad is my maths (125%)? Thanks for everyone's responses. I am looking to use a fantasy theme through my Castle Legoverse. How else can I have skeletons, orcs and trolls?

[Voran_the_Scholar]

Wow...I'm lost now... You guys are insanely into this...I honestly don't know what I would do, seeing as my largest army is a meager 20 men.

Happy building, Burkey42! I hope everyone else answered your question.

God bless.

Tom

[Heir of Black Falcon]

I think numbers is not that big of a limit. Some of my coolest looking armies are in the 20s. I find that looking at an army that is balanced looks better but it may just be a mental thing.

R

[Ardohoth]

mark me words lad

SIZE does not matter.

My imperial guards (11 warriors) can smash easy at least 30 warriors with the equipment they have. You can make 20 figs look like devastators.

Afterall remmember in every video game every special unit worths more but can kil more than 1 opponent