ANYWAY.
Panzer_Engel jumped in with, "Interesting. . . . How big do you envisage the bands getting, and do you plan any HoMM - style resource gathering/management? Or troop recruitment from settlements in conquered territories?"
To which I was forced to actually start putting some of the vague ideas I had into words. "Not sure about the band size, depends on the players and how the game goes. Probably stick around 3 to 500 points. Yes on reinforcements from the cities; having local support would be required, really. Resource gathering would be along the lines as outlined in Gold & Deeds, with other post victory/ territory control bonuses"
Him: "Hmm. . . . And fortifying and/or garrisoning your settlements?"
Me: "One of my big desires is to see rewards for playing, without the whole process becoming unbalanced by Avid Wargamer Who Always Wins* playing a dozen games when everyone else can only fit in one or two, building an empire and wiping everyone out completely. At the same time, like I said, rewards; I'd like to see everybody's nation-states grow stronger and more awesome. So there'll be some checks and balances involved as far as resource rewards.
What I'm thinking right now is that you get a certain amount of points total, and you can assign those around; say 1000 points for your nation, but your maximum roaming war-band can only be 400 (ballpark numbers, bear with me). So, you can have two warbands at 400, or three at 300, and then those leftover points can be troops back at home.
Another option would be using the stats for city militia, which are low-grade troops, as a freebie - say, 100 or 200 points of militia guard the cities - and then depending on your last moves, your warband might be home when the enemy comes raiding. Or maybe you can buy garrison options from your resources.
All of these are things that can be hashed out, but we should probably start a separate thread for that.."
Which brings us here, to a brand spanking new thread. I put it in General Fantasy because, well, it's going to be a fantasy setting; although most of us are previous Warmahordes players, or at least have plenty of Privateer Press made models, so I'm willing to throw in gunpowder, treason, and plot* as needed, and maybe even warjacks if we can find decent enough rules for them.** Thus far this is entirely speculative; I haven't even pitched the idea at my players yet, I'm still trying to woo them into the loving arms of Song of Blades and Heroes. When you add in the fact that we're all pretty distractible, plus I'm a merchant mariner with a habit of leaving the country for months at a time... well, it's all fairly speculative.
Still, could be a fun mental exercise if nothing else, and maybe somebody else out there will get some good out of it.
So, here we are.*It's Guy Fawkes Day, this was required.
