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King of Sartar and the Dragon Pass board game


BroadwayPhil

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I've been looking over King of Sartar with an eye toward creating a new scenario or two for Dragon Pass (the AH version of the board game, originally White Bear & Red Moon).  However, some questions arise when it comes to mercenaries from Prax (the Bison and Sable tribes are mentioned in particular).

1.  How many counters would be available?  I'm guessing that the typical Dragon Pass unit is rather small.  The only reference I have found so far is that the typical Sun Dome Templar file is 64 men.  Also I doubt that large numbers of Prax nomads would hire out as mercenaries and travel as far as Tarsh.  My inclination is for 1D3 counters for each of the two tribes.

2.  The mercenaries would be led by a khan, but certainly not the tribe's khan;  I am thinking he would be subsumed within the units.

3.  Would one or more herds (depending on the numbers involved) be included?  I know that herds are not needed for support in Dragon Pass, but getting there and back might be problematical.

I know there was a thread last year concerning PDFs for Wyrm's Footnotes.  I would certainly be willing to purchase such, especially for the first five issues (which I have been searching for in vain since #6 first came out).  These need to include the pieces for WB&RM and/or Nomad Gods from the earliest issues.  I am not sure if they would be useful in my Dragon Pass boardgame research, but they would be interesting.  I understand issue 4 had errata for Nomad Gods.  None of the boardgame material was included in Wyrm's Footprints.  Perhaps Chaosium will offer PDFs for sale in the fullness of time, just as issues of Jagdpanther can be purchased from Amarillo Design Bureau or Warehouse 23.

Any help would be appreciated.

Phil

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Conventionally, a Dragon Pass counter represents up to five hundred cavalry or up to one thousand foot. Magician units may have smaller bodyguard contingents, resulting in those lower combat factors.

A Sartarite clan warband usually would be about 100 warriors, most of them not professionals. Those city militias bundle parts of those warbands, in elite cavalry units and ok infantry. The Free Army has a few units that are indentifiable as local warbands, notably the Colymar tribal warband (a rather weak cavalry unit) or the Two Ridge Fort temple of Humakt bolstered by local volunteers.

But that's for the few scenarios in the Dragon Pass boardgame. You can reduce unit size as far as you like for smaller conflicts without changing the factors. The Siege of Dunstop scenario does just that. You might want to provide a more detailed hex map for those conflicts, and possibly a shorter turn than a full day if you do that.

On the Dragon Pass board, the Battle of Dwernapple would be over maybe 10x10 hexes. You could give it a better treatment on a detail map with a turn covering an hour or two.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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13 hours ago, BroadwayPhil said:

1.  How many counters would be available?  I'm guessing that the typical Dragon Pass unit is rather small.  The only reference I have found so far is that the typical Sun Dome Templar file is 64 men.  Also I doubt that large numbers of Prax nomads would hire out as mercenaries and travel as far as Tarsh.  My inclination is for 1D3 counters for each of the two tribes.

An average infantry regiment numbers approximately a thousand (on paper), cavalry around five hundred (on paper). Magical regiments consist of a core magical group of between 30 and 60 specialist magicians - priests, devotees, and cultists initiated into the regiment’s secrets - and their bodyguards, with a total around three to five hundred (on paper).

Sun Dome Templars (at least those in Prax) are organized into sixteen man ‘files’ consisting of fourteen soldiers, a File-Leader and a Half-file Leader; two files are a double-file, and two double-files are a Square. My personal suspicion is that eight Squares form a Company, and two Companies form a regiment, as that's roughly a thousand soldiers (1024).

13 hours ago, BroadwayPhil said:

2.  The mercenaries would be led by a khan, but certainly not the tribe's khan;  I am thinking he would be subsumed within the units.

Each of the Praxian 'Barbarian Horde' units in WBRM is cavalry; I believe David Scott has said in the past that each is led by a Tribal Khan, and in addition to their bodyguard, often consists of four or five Waha Khans leading one hundred and twenty warriors each. The two Amber units are a little different, the 1st being all High Llama riders, and the 2nd a mixture of tribes.

Edited by M Helsdon
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The unit strengths in the Nomad Gods and Dragon pass games are comparable.

If you can get hold of them, get the units from Nomad Gods. They have all the Major and Minor Nations. The Bison and Sable Riders are described with a number of different units.

My view is that the units in both Dragon pass and Nomad Gods are clans, so one unit represents the fighting force of one clan. Having 1d3 units isn't that much, it makes them a very small force in the game. Each of the Nations in Nomad Gods has around 20 units, if memory serves, so they are very roughly the equivalent of the Dragonewts ir Grazers in strength. I have used the Praxian Nations in Dragon Pass using Dipplomacy Points, I think I used something in between the Grazers and Dragonewts and allowed one Nation to be allied. It worked reasonably well and did not overpower the game.

Each of the Nomad nations have their own specialities:

  • Bison Riders are big and tough
  • Impala Riders are weak in combat but have missiles, lots of missiles
  • Sable Riders are fairly tough and have some missiles
  • High Llama Riders are quite tough
  • Morokanth are tough but slow

You could have the Minor Nations as units, so hire out one of the units, this is roughly the equivalent of one unit of Sun Dome Templars. If you wanted a bit of magic, then use the Magical units as well, Golden Bow would be useful, especially if you also allied the Grazers.

 

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