"BS 2nd Edition Soldier" Topic

One of my favorite aspects of this old system was that it didn't subscribe very specific army lists or types. Battlesystem allowed players to assemble armies and the soldiers that comprise the units from the vast listings found in the D&D books.

Beyond the troops listed in the Core 2nd edition rule book, elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, gnolls, etc, what "soldier" type monsters do/did players have in their Battlesystem armies. I have units of Wemics in mine. I always wanted to put together a few units of Fire Newts, including the Cavalry on the Dinosaur like lizards.

Scot

Once during our annual Save Santa Christmas battle I used a Quickling magic user. That was a hoot. I can't remember his exact stats but he had something like a 72" movement rate. Fun times.

I did up stats for scorpion men and still use them
link

Man Scorpion:
AD d12 AR 5 Hits 4 ML 15 MV 12" Points 50

A couple of years back, "Twiglings." They were D&D pre-paints called tree blights(?) or something. Small, cute, and the figures are now becoming hard to find.

Dwarves on ponies.

I am now painting up a small force of lizardmen riding GW "Cold Ones." I doubt BS has this troop type, but I plan to use them in a BS reptile army.

I used some plastic Triceratops dinosaurs (painted), with Goblin riders (don't remember the stats, but they were fun, as it gave the Goblins some 'heavy' cavalry). I also used the same Prince August molded Goblin Wolf Rider figures on a Pteradactyl figure I found at a local drugstore (again, don't have the cooked up stats at hand…). I took a bunch of MK skeleton figures, used them as Hill Giant Skeletons (cooked up my own stats). That is truly one of the things I love about BS: cook up your own units/figures/types of critters for your games.

I bought a pack of Zombie Dogs, from the "Zombies!" game, have yet to paint them up, and give them stats. In my game world, everybody burns the bodies of the dead, to prevent un-dead from coming back. I figured Necromancers would handily animate dogs, as nobody cares/notices dogs' disappearances; animals seem the best option for a Necromancer in need of an army, and they can breed dogs without attracting too much attention. Problem (for the Necro…) solved! Cheers!

There were stats for everything. It was the complete opposite of the HOTT approach – fitting everything into a few categories.

I agree. You could create almost anything. The downside though is that you needed to have some experience with the system to get army balance right. While I am no big fan of a points system for all rules they can be justified for BS 2nd. There is a fan created system on the Yahoo group. But it isn't universally accepted.

This is why when our group was looking for a mass fantasy battle set we actually were going to use BS 2nd. However, Armies of Arcana had extensive army lists including GW and LOTR with points. That decided it. I still enjoy reading the scenarios in the book. They remind me of of the ones in Ral Partha's Fantasy set. Very cool!

Thanks,

John

I posted one BS point system to the Yahoo group. I did it from a Filemaker database. It has a sophisticated metric as some attributes add points and some are multiplicative. I can't share the source as it has some reused code I developed for hire and I am unsure of the legal status of the code.

From memory, it did everything well except the high-level mages seemed overly costly.

Malaki,
How did you derive the point value for your Scorpian Man?

Man Scorpion:
AD d12 AR 5 Hits 4 ML 15 MV 12" Points 50

As someone said in another post that's the biggest weakness of this system. There's no method to point out a non-standard troop type not delivered in the book.

Scot

I used a modified version of someone else's point system posted on the yahoo group. Here's the basicof it

AD AR ML
4=1 9=0 <9=0
6=2 8=1 10=1
8=4 7=2 11=2
10=8 6=3 12=3
12=16 5=4 13=4
~~~ 4=5 14=5
~~~ 3=6 15=6
~~~ 2=7 16=7

Hits: 6pts each

Mounts provide +1 hit, and +dbl MV= 7 points

Then if I remember right I used the man scorpion profile in the MC. I did this a few years ago and while I still use them my memory is hazy.

Oh and I applied the new system to everything including guys that were pre stated in the book.

Ran it through the database I wrote.

Scorpion Man came out 34 if he is "Cavalry," slightly higher than a Troll. Special Abilities will increase that number if he has poison or something similar.

(This uses the formula I used for "BattleSystem Revised Pts v2.0.pdf" at the Yahoo group. Some discussion of the methodology is on the Yahoo group's deep history.)

Following has images and stats for 2 of the units I referenced, Twiglings and Lizardman cavalry. The lizard mount has yet to be painted. I bought it off a sloppy teenager.

link

Also includes a new unit I am converting this weekend…forest goblins (from WFB box set) on some pre-painted eagles from D&D set.

Here are some of the models we've used for 2nd ed, still one of our old reliable rulesets. I believe I posted some lists we did a few years back based on middle earth which I think I posted in the yahoo groups. I'll try to hunt it down for anyone interested in them. I also used to have an old windows program I downloaded from somewhere to help you make units and heroes for army lists with stats based on the book. But I think it only worked with win98. anyway, here are the soldiers we've used:
link

I bought those same, 54mm Skeletons. I have a Lich, in my RPG campaign, who has been building an army of undead for a couple of centuries, beneath a large city. The players stumbled upon his army, waiting to be called up for duty, which forced the Lich to move them, long before he was ready to launch his attack on the surface dwellers within the city…

These figures painted up decently, at negligible cost, and they fit in the army beautifully. I really love the versatility of BS's army stats system. I have been able to use many figures, of many different styles, to create armies based on my campaign world, with stats for the game being relatively easy to come up with. This is one of the best features in BS rules. Have not yet fielded these bad boys in a game, but I hope to, later this year. Cheers!