Post
by quindia » Thu Jun 30, 2016 1:09 pm
Ha! You have me beat - You should be giving me advice!
First of all if you refight historical battles, then you already accept that armies are rarely even and you are ahead of many who mainly think in terms of points. I often simply throw units on the table until it looks like I'm running out of space! However, it seems like every club or FLGS has a couple of 'those guys' so I will offer a couple of things.
First, I encourage you to include a narrative for the game and a scenario, even if it is a 'pick up'. It need not be elaborate - 'the king has ordered me or clear the high road of enemies, but your lot wants to hold the manor of Lord Starchpants until his mistress has packed all her clothes for the retreat'. Right away, you have goals beyond lining up and mashing each other. BLB requires you to make a plan of battle BEFORE the game and your brigades are supposed to act in accordance. Plans being what they are, you may find a brigade mincing about on a flank empty of enemies and left out of action for half of the game while you try reorder your line. You rarely get to issue orders to all of your units as may find yourself using resources to manage the troops in harms way, further delaying the shifting of wayward units. Balance has quickly gone out of the window and you may even find that the small army is more agile and able to concentrate forces to defeat an enemy piecemeal.
Now, that won't satisfy folks who like their points. The most basic form of balance I might impose would be number of Drilled units (battalions and squadrons)... Let's use 12 for this example. But all Drilled troops are boring! Lets call them points rather than units and...
1 point = 2 Raw units
1 point = 1 Drilled unit
2 points = 1 Elite unit
Artillery should be field as a proportion of your army - say one field gun per 6-10 units (BLB recommends a max of 2 guns for up to 15 units) and one battalion gun per brigade of foot.
Each side has one C-in-C and enough subordinates for each brigade.
That gets you started. I find it's rarely worth worrying about the minutia of the number of units with or without pikes, etc. as far as balance goes.
If one side was going to be in static defense, I might give the attackers an advantage of 25-30%. A rear guard might face numbers of 50% more with the understanding they only need to hold for x number of turns. I'm also a big fan of escalating engagements, with reinforcements arriving on random turns and balanced forces rarely seem to matter in such games.
Anyway, that's off the top of my head. As I said, I generally just pile units on the table. I think having a simple scenario is the main thing. A goal for victory that doesn't involve solely thrashing th enemy allows for some disparity in overall forces. Hope that helps!