"Fictional Armies, Regiments, and Nations" Topic

I just read the article here on the Spanner & Yank's website:

link

where Mike talks about creating a fictional German state during the Nappy wars. I got to wondering and I want to know how many people have done this, and what the general reaction to it is.

Also I was thinking of doing it for some point between the 30 years war and the end of the nineteenth century, but probably setting my first fictional army between 1750 and 1815. Now the uniforms will obviously be based on what figures are available, and what colors I like best, but are there any colors that weren't available or wouldn't be appropriate to a certain era? I know for example that real white wasn't available in fabrics until the 19th century. I obviously think anything flourescent wouldn't be available either, but is there anything fairly mundane, that either couldn't or wouldn't be used?

I have done this in the past. When I was in the army, we did a 17th Century campaign between the Grand Duchy of Krasnovia (a little known state somewhere on the southern borders of the Holy Roman Empire)and the mad/evil Pasha Mustapha Camel, a semi-independent Ottoman warlord.

THis can be fun, as it lets you fight out a campaign with smaller armies, and tailor-make a situation that is perhaps more conducive to a miniatures campaign than the real thing would be.

I say, have fun!

An occasional unit during the 1700s and Napoleonic era was dressed in shades of yellow. A large force of those would be nice on a table. It may be in the area of facing that an army may really be colorful. The Austrian army used a number of facing colors with their white base coat. Also there is data on units with gray or brown coat colors and various facing colors.

Also the Austrians used a mid-blue pants and there is a uniform in an Austrian museum with red pants. Such colored pants would add color to any unit.

I did this, too, but could never get anybody else to come along. My fantasy was to have four or fictional armies. I thought: "Wow - I can finally paint any figures any way I want! How cool is that? I'll get each of my buddies to do an army, and we can have campaigns!"

Everybody else thought: "Huh?"

So I did one anyway, which I still have, and it's never seen action. It sure is pretty, though.

Brigadier Youngs book Charge had real regiments & accurate uniforms but these regiments were formed into armies as he chose. So he used RHA artillery because he liked the uniforms alongside Prussian Frei Korps & Austrian infantry.
This way you get most of the best of both worlds - you can use the troops in Historical armies when you want but the rest of the time you form your army from the most attractively uniformed troops of all nations (& periods). He was quite happy combining SYW troops with Napoleonic troops.

Nick

Ah, I can see them now:

Meeting at last on the field of battle, the awesome forces of Ruritania and the Grand Duchy of Fenwick.

Now that, I would play!

I have been planning on building a colonial army based on Ruritania for quite a while now. I am also partial to the fictional countries in the Tintin series, especially Syldavia and Borduria. I haven't made up my own yet.

I've actually created a few fictional worlds for wargame settings, my biggest (which uses modren tech) has about 45 fictional countries. I've only developed about 10 of those really in depth though. It's an interesting exercise, creating the orders of battle, TO&E, and doctraines of all the different nations. It also allows you to experiment with differnt concepts than are used today. For example, one of the nations in my above world still has dedicated light tanks and heavy tanks (as opposed to "light tanks" being outdated MBT's), with distinct roles and so on.

-Will

I've thought about what my uniforms should look like, but I haven't actually painted any figures. Maybe I should sometime...

I did once play in a napoleonic campaign with a warped map of Europe. We used "real" countries, but we wanted to have naval battles with Wooden Ships Iron Men so we twisted the map around so everyone could have a coast. I was building Saxony up into quite a sea power.

"where Mike talks about creating a fictional German state during the Nappy wars. I got to wondering and I want to know how many people have done this, and what the general reaction to it is."

Well Napoleon did this himself, a couple of times.

My good friend, Eric Donaldson, has a SYW army from the ficticious German state, "Meinstadt".

One of this army's quirks (virtues?) is its exceedingly precise, straight line-formations --so much so that he has surveyor figures placed at the ends of each line to ensure no one is even slightly out of line!

That this 15mm army is made up of old Mikes Models SYW just adds to its whimsical character. :-)

//Paul in Seattle

Very interesting thread.After
picking up some old plastic
ships close to 1/3000 scale I
am considering a reborn Austrian Empire or bringing
back something ancient.
Paul,I didn't know what to do
with all those Austrian decals
from Mike Grant so I've used
my extra J22s and B17s from
Navwar to do a fictional and
very neutral WW2 air group.
Does anyone have any web or
other resources to help get
something like this off the
ground?

David

I have toyed with making four fictional armies for Frank Chadwick's Game, Soldier King. The counters are Red, Green, Blue and gold(yellow). The idea was to make up armies for a grand tactical system like Horse, Foot and Guns or V&B. I'd use HFG or Grande Armee and 6mm 18th century figs now.

The group here likes to play campaigns and HFG has served us well in the past (2mm ACW and 18th Century)

I liked the idea of designing my own armies, with their own flags and uniforms etc. Also it provides an opportunity to design armies along differing operational and tactical organizations and practices.

PK would be a good tool for doing this with the card system IF (note the size of the if) the randomness of the system were tweaked a bit. CdePK has a partial answer that I've yet to try out but I'm being cajoled into trying it. Yes Rob and Tim this is me: not someone using my handle...

A new system currently in playtest (not available publicly at this time) also holds promise as it offers various tactical doctrines each with specific game effects that may be used by spacific designer armies.

Stu

I had a couple of armies from Borsovia and Rubovia (you have to have been watching kids tv in the 50's to get the references) One was a British and the other a French Marlburian army so they could be used 'normally. I also had a Napoleonic state "Schwarzstein-Holweg" that had Brunswickers as a basis, but with grey uniforms. Grand Fenwick (previuos comment) am I right in thinking the army was only about twelve strong, and even in the 60's they still used medieval arms and armour. I suppose these days GW would find some WMD(?)

Ah, but unlike Saddam, Grand Fenwick DID have a weapon of mass destruction. Remember, they had the Q-Bomb!

I participated (am particpating?) in an on again/off again SYW campaign using 54mm figures and Volley and Bayonet rules. I rule the state of Upper Monrovia and my banner is the Velocipator Rampant. It';s a good time whan we play and I had a lot of fun putting together the countries background including religion, economy and languages.

I played WWII miniatures in many a-historical battles. Some times we would team up the Germans and the British vs. Russians and the Americans. We were going to have a campaign game using African countries using left over WWII armor and equipment, so we could build any type of army we wanted. I thought having My Congo units comprised of German Tigers fighting along with T-34's supported by a P-38 Lightings would be fun.

I have a small (and growing - slowly) Napoleonic-era army for Graustark. While the Graustark novels themselves were set in the late 19th Century, there is enough information on the uniforms and national affiliations to retroject to the early part. Basically, it's pre-1809 Austrian uniforms with black coats and red pants.

As far as colors go, remember that until the mid-19th Century, very few bright colors are available, and those are expensive. Think muted.

I've built Ruritania and Graustark Armies based on the painting guide in Soldiers Companion. I use these to play scenarios from the Grant books. They are also a nice twist in some of our Franco Prussian games.

I hae often thought of basing a grand campaign on the AH Blitzkreig map.

I'd thought of doing the whole army in some sort of tarleton-jockey cap-light infantry helmet, with the different regiments shown by different cuffs & collars. When was this sort of hat first used?

As far as colors I'd thought purplewould be nice, but would that be right or common as a dye for the mid 18th century (7 Years war)? I'd also considered pale green, but I worry it would blend in with the table, and camo doesn't seem right for use in the 1750s.

My other half has been intrigued by my "little people " eversince we got together. I have now created the state of Hessen-Beckstein and am painting up the army for the period 1760-1770. Geographically it is in Germany about whhere the real Hessen sates are. The uniforms for the Guard are grey trimmed mid blue (tribute to her tattered teddy collection...)but the line troops are going to be in lavender (!) her favourite clour. I have a worked up a historical background to justify the existence of the state as is, given its loyalty to the HRE and its French style uniforms. Eventually the whole army will number anout 14 battalions, 3 cavalry regiments and 4 artillery companies.

The new 'Soldier King' game by Avalance Press could provide a good framework for such a Non-historical Campaign for the 1700s. Another campaign system would be the 'Empire in Arms' for the Napoleonic era. Of course the OLD SPI 'Strategy One' maps and the Avalon Hill Bitzkrieg games contains Hypothetical countries and could be used for a Campaign system.

Doing ancients I have no trouble coming up with ficticious names. For a long time I borrowed historical names, but now I have got a feel for making up names. For example for ancinet city states I have, Jonra (that's me!),Athros,Caballos (that army has alot of cavalry), Elpho (lots of elephants in that army), Garnash,Gizmo (why not?), Hernia (name your city states after diseases, alot of them have greek and latin names), Lukan, Mylar (for those who want to live in a plastic land),Pachaderm (another army with elephants), Tetros, Trodite, Zylos. If by chance there was a historical city of one of those names, so what?

A thread with a unit's uniform data from each poster about a specific fantasy army unit might be nice.

I painted two Marlburlian era armies of 15mm figures in two colors. The red uniformed army is Courland, with Germannic sounding regimental names and the blue uniformed army is Sak, with French sounding regimental names.

We have fought many battles in our local group with them, it is one of the guys favorites for a close battle. Rules are homemade and liked by all our bunch (hard to say that for most rules we use).

We have also found campaigns of other eras in imaginary situations. Its easy and fun. At least no history critic can whine you didn't do such and such right in that particular war when's it's your own world!

It takes a lot of commitment to a project for a group of people to invest the time and money in a fictional armies project that will only make sense within the context of the club. Everybody's got some other "real" project he's working on.