Muckenmire's Defenders

The Luftberg army has the unenviable job of defending the province from invasion, and starts out dispersed across a fair part of it. The general from our last campaign, Felix Von Hentsch, has been glowering away in the provincial capital (in my mind, he's been 'bumped' to a backwater posting as military governor, following his mixed success in the Spitzplatz campaign. Looks like events have pulled him back to centre-stage!)

The Elector himself, Ulrich Von Luftberg, will start off-map. There's no reason the Elector would go to such a dismal place without reason, so he'll turn up a few moves into the game with the bulk of the army - rushing reinforcements to the province and hopefully turning the tide.

Also present will be the ever-irrepressible General Ludwig and the Graf Von Bitzhelm, each commanding a force of their own and (naturally) sized appropriately to reflect their social status.

On a practical level, I wanted a dispersal of forces at the start, but wasn't quite sure how to do it. I ended up totalling the entire army's points value under the old 'Might & Reason' ruleset, and then broke it up as a percentage. I went with:

40% Main (reserve) army of reinforcements under Luftberg

25% Provincial (garrison) army under Von Hentsch, at the provincial capital of Brederdam

15% Secondary provincial army under Bitzhelm, at Hertbosch

10% Flank-guarding detachment under Ludwig, at Vriezenveen

5% Garrison

5% Garrison

I ended up assigning troops into what turned out to be pretty reasonable proportions, with some infantry and cavalry present in most, along with artillery in the big armies. While Ludwig gets a big force such as five infantry, three cavalry and one artillery units, people like Ludwig get a simple pairing of an infantry and cavalry regiment. The smallest units of all, the garrisons, turned out to be a left-over infantry regiment (stuck in the city of Oosterheide) and a hussar regiment (which was turned loose into the countryside as a raiding-group.)

The campaign is poised to be moved on shortly, and the next big encounter seems set to be Von Krumper's attempt to cross a river in the face of Von Hentsch. He's done it once before, but can he manage a contested river crossing against an alert defender, under 'Black Powder' rules? I'm off to ponder the special rules required for such a tricky operation!