Warmaster: A Song of Ice and Fire

[wellspring]

I was wondering if there is any active project to create fan-based warmaster rules for George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire"?

It seems like the series is tailor-made for a game like Warmaster. There are innumerable large armies and big battles. Most of the major characters aren't usually wandering around swinging their swords, but instead are doing just what WM commanders do: directing troops and maneuvering their forces. Battles like the the Field of Fire, the Trident, Ashford, the Whispering Wood, the Green Fork, or any of Khal Drogo or Danaerys's conquests would be perfect for WM, possibly even Warmaster Ancients.

All the Westerosi would use the same list, I think. Characters are bought by name, rather than as generic types, and some will get special rules. You get options depending on who the general is; for example, you can only get a magic-user (Melissandre) if Stannis is your general. Aegon the Conquerer could field dragons. Robb Stark gets a higher attack bonus against cavalry due to his direwolf. Mace Tyrell has a lower leadership but gets more characters; his subordinate, Lord Tarley, actually has a higher leadership than he does! Anyone can bring Walder Frey, and they can buy cheaper Frey units if they do, but the Frey units can only be lead by a Frey, who has lower leadership to represent their unreliable nature. The Westerosi would probably use a very slightly modified version of the Norman list from the Ancients book.

Danaerys's list will have to be changed depending on how the books go, but her army in A Storm of Swords is a motley collection of the best and the worst foot and very little cavalry (a little like O&G). She herself is a good leader with lots of good officers. Her opponents we could pull right out of any of several lists in Ancients.

I don't know what figures you'd use for Dothraki. Certainly, the army list would require some significant work to make it more interesting than "lots and lots and lots of Dothraki". Maybe have more and less experienced units? Or units that specialize in archery versus those who prefer mounted charges? Or, hell, maybe just one unit and you focus on maneuvering and using your characters efficiently.

As you can tell, characters are at the heart of the rules. I want to add a special rule to allow characters to join combats without being massacred since that happens very often in the books. For example, you might say that characters escape if the unit they're with is destroyed unless an enemy character is also involved in that combat or attack. So Prince Rhaegar would give his bonus to a unit he's with, but if the unit is destroyed, he simply escapes to another nearby unit. But if a unit accompanied by Robert Baratheon had been involved in the fight, then Rhaegar would be killed instead as normally happens.

The painting opportunity alone would be awesome.

(Of course I certainly have no desire to challenge his copyrights. This would be a fan-create noncommercial hobby project)

[wellspring]

(BTW I'm posting this in this forum since no other Warmaster forum seems appropriate. Apologies in advance if this is against the rules somehow.)

[Lex]

no worries mate, this forum will do,

IIRC there was some development done on the yahoo group (which allows for a lot of crossover to here). Personaly my Bretonians include a knights, squires and foot (both archers and MaA) unit that already are done to represent the NIghtwatch

[Lex]

Guidelines (suggested)

Base the Armylists of the period as depicted in the books (to start of with)
I would suggest basing of the Bretonian list, adding
- mounted Man at arms
- hedgeknights
- turncoats

and you need to make some provision for knights fighting on foot !!

Your Army-commander suggestion is intriguing, ellaborate a bit more !

Your challenge will come with depicting the people from the North, and ultimatly the foe everyone will be facing !!

[wellspring]

Yeah I have no idea how I'll do the Others. But the hints that GRRM has been dropping are VERY promising. The Wildings and everyone from outside of westeros will be their own army lists.

I think that for the most part the Northmen use the same units as the other six kingdoms. What's different is their religion (which means that their knights aren't called knights). The rest is slight differences in force composition, but you can handle that with special rules based on characters.

Hedge knights seem to be knights whose tactics and equipment are the same as landed knights, it's just that they're broke and are basically sellswords. The poorest of them might have lesser gear and count as mounted men-at-arms. "Turncoats" don't seem to be a separate unit type at all-- could you elaborate? Dismounted Knights-- I should definitely add them!

I'm doing Westeros as one big army list with lots of options based on characters for two reasons. First, their armies are pretty uniform-- the main differences are in force selection. Second, they mix and match and change sides very often. During the War of the Five Kings, the Stormlords switched from Renly to Stannis to Joffrey. Highgarden switched directly from Renly to Joffrey. The Freys switched from Robb to Joffrey, while the Brave Companions switched the other way (and died for it). The same shuffle happened in Robert's Rebellion. So with one big army list, this is easy. What counts are the characters and their allegiances; and so that's why so much rests on your character selections.

OK so here's what I mean by the characters thing I was describing:

Characters count as "Leaders" or "Heroes"-- with heroes having the reduced command range of a Wizard. Any Leader can be a General, and gets +1 to the Leadership for it (though some aren't smart to take as Generals). You get a certain number per points value as usual, but here you have to name your characters from the list. Selecting different characters gives you different special rules. Some of these represent the character's abilities and some are representative of the men who follow them.

I think I'll make a "wine list" that shows the good pairings of characters as listed in the books, but there's no reason you can't have your own speculative pairs-- what if Lysa Arryn had joined Robb Stark's cause and sent an Bronze Yohn Royce to his aid? What if Melissandre had abandoned Stannis and entered Jon Snow's service? What if Renly had supported Stannis's claim?

So here's some off-the-top-of-my-head ideas:

Character	Type	Attack	Leadership	Points	Special
Robb Stark	Leader	+2	8		Robb brings his direwolf Grey Wind into battle. Cavalry in combat with a unit Robb has joined receive -1 attacks per stand.
Balon Greyjoy	Leader	+1	7		The Ironmen are unruly seagoing raiders, as a rule. An army fielding Greyjoy as commander counts as having 1000 fewer points for the purposes of minimum and maximum number of cavalry units. In addition, 500 points worth of units in your army are unreliable Ironmen and have a -1 penalty to orders which include those units. Armies with Greyjoy as the general cannot take cavalry units at all, but take no penalty to command.
Mace Tyrell	Leader	+0	6		Mace Tyrell himself is a poor commander, but he attracts good men into his service. An army with Mace as its general may bring one additional Hero or Leader per 1000 points.
Tywin Lannister	Leader	+0	8		Tywin Lannister is terrifying, implacable, ruthless and cunning. He may only serve as a General. Select one of the following intrigues to affect another character: either +1 to the attacks bonus of one character on his side or -1 leadership to an enemy character. The player must write down his selection (and the character to be affected) but need not reveal it immediately. The bonus applies as soon as it's revealed.
The Kingslayer	Hero	+2	6		Jaime's reckless wrath is known throughout Westeros. You may not take Goldenhand if you take the Kingslayer.
Goldenhand	Leader	+0	7		Jaime Lannister is more thoughtful and cunning after he is maimed. You may not take the Kingslayer or Tyrion Lannister if you take Goldenhand.
Tyrion Lannister	Leader	+0	8		Units accompanied by Tyrion are unaffected by Terror (they are shamed to run from a foe that the Imp is willing to face). Tyrion also gets the Intrigues special rule of his father Tywin. However, he cannot be a general.
Loras Tyrell	Hero	+2	7		Loras is a brilliant and promising knight, though somewhat reckless. Units he joins must use initiative to charge if possible.
Stannis Baratheon	Leader	+0	8		Stannis is stubborn past the point of reason. Armies with Stannis as their general add one to their break point.
Greatjon Umber	Leader	+2	7		The Greatjon may never be a General.
Roose Bolton	Leader	+1	7		Roose Bolton is a man men fear. Enemy units within 20cm of him take a -1 penalty to command rolls.
Gregor Clegane	Hero	+3	6		Units joined by The Mountain That Rides cause Terror.
Sandor Clegane	Hero	+2	7		If a unit joined by Clegane is hit by a fire-based attack, Sandor is removed from the game.
Walder Frey	Leader	+0	7		Freys are notoriously numerous and notoriously treacherous. If the "Late" Lord Frey is in your army, select 500 points of units and characters from your army. Characters must be listed as Freys; the units are normal units but become Freys; either way, use the Frey special rule, below. If Walder Frey is your General, you must select 1000 rather than 500 points of Freys, non-Frey characters take a -1 Leadership penalty, and you may include an extra leader for every thousand points of your army's value.
Stafford Frey	Leader	+1	8		As Freys go, he's not bad. Select one cavalry unit from your army; this is now a Frey unit. Stafford may not serve as your General.
Black Walder Frey	Leader	+1	7		As Freys go, he's pretty bad. Select one unit from your army; this is now a Frey unit.
Edwyn Frey	Leader	+0	7		Yet another Frey. Select one unit from your army; this is now a Frey unit.
Walder Rivers	"Hero"	+1	6		A bastard Frey. Select one unit from your army; this is now a Frey unit.
Ser Ryman Frey	Leader	+0	6		This Frey makes Edmure Tully look like Tywin Lannister. Select two infantry units from your army; these are now Freys.
Lord Emmon Frey	Leader	+0	6		Bored yet of all the Freys? Select one unit from your army; this is now a Frey unit. Once per battle, Lord Emmon's leadership increases to 8 for the entire turn. The player may choose whether or not he will count as a Frey for that turn.
Melissandre	Hero	+0	6		Melissandre can cast spells! Roll a d6 during the magic phase, on a 6+, she has used some power of the Lord of Light to eliminate an enemy character within 30cm. Melissandre may not be equipped with a weapon.
Cersei Lannister	Leader	+0	6		Cersei only thinks she's the next Tywin Lannister. Actually, she's incompetent and dangerous as wildfire to foes as well as friends. If your army includes Cersei, pick an enemy character and a friendly character. Both get a -1 penalty to their Leadership to represent the fruits of her latest scheming. Cersei may not be equipped with a weapon.
The Blackfish	Leader	+2	8		The Blackfish's leadership does not get the +1 bonus if he is made the General.
Lyn Corbray	Hero	+2	6		Ser Lyn carries the Valyrian longsword Lady Forlorn, and so may not take another weapon.

Freys: Many characters are Freys, and they often bring Frey units with them. Orders by Frey characters given to non-Frey units, or by non-Frey characters to Frey units, suffer a -1 penalty. Frey units and characters may not act on the first turn of battle.

Valyrian Swords: A character may take a Valyrian sword as a weapon. This provides that character with +1 to his attacks rating.

These are just ideas. I haven't even really thought them through, let alone playtested them. Points will have to be tweaked even if they are balanced enough to include. I'd imagine that we'd print cards for each character so you'd have the special rules readily at hand.

My thinking is that stats should look like this. Leadership 7 should be your "average" battle leader. Good leaders should be leadership 8. The very best should be leadership 9. Total incompetents are leadership 6. Generals get a +1 bonus for being made general. Heroes have 1 level lower, not because they're incompetent but because they're not in the normal chain of command. Attack stats are +0 for non-warriors. +1 if they are some kind of fighter. +2 if they are a very good. +3 if they are somehow legendary.

UPDATE: Added lots of characters, changed some rules. Especially Freys, since the special rule means that if you're going to take any Freys, you'll probably end up taking lots of them. Emmon's rule of course represents his far more competent wife stepping in and taking charge.

[Lex]

Hedge knights seem to be knights whose tactics and equipment are the same as landed knights, it's just that they're broke and are basically sellswords. The poorest of them might have lesser gear and count as mounted men-at-arms. "Turncoats" don't seem to be a separate unit type at all-- could you elaborate? Dismounted Knights-- I should definitely add them!

These are just ideas. I haven't even really thought them through, let alone playtested them. Points will have to be tweaked even if they are balanced enough to include. I'd imagine that we'd print cards for each character so you'd have the special rules readily at hand.

Any type of unit can be designated as turncoatscome, these units come cheap for great fighting value but at a cost !! During the game if they are NOT joined by a friendly character (part of a brigade that has at least one unit joined by a friendly character ?) the opposing player can join on of his characters to the unit and try to bribe them to switch sides.......  (eg. on 2 succesfull consequtive orders? or some thing like that)

[Lex]

I would need to read up on this a bit, but in my minds eye the units from the south have a larger infantry component ?!
Are you considering a seperate armylist for the Nightwatch ?

Remeber to allow any army lead by a northern lord to have access to the Marshdwellers (I would say a no penalty for terrain, poison attachs style unit akin to skinks ?)

[wellspring]

You know, I'm not sure. I guess you'd need to have a separate list because while they're often the same people, they're organized much differently. Of course, the Night's Watch hasn't been rallied for genuine, outright war in years. Instead, they're used to rangings and skirmishes.

I don't know if the North or South should need separate army lists. You could of course make the Northern generals have an increase on the cavalry limit, but I don't think they actually had more cavalry in the books. Robb Stark had a very large force but he put most of his cavalry in his unit and gave Roose Bolton most of the infantry. Splitting his force that way, most of the time the camera was on his troops so it looked like he had a ton of cavalry. Instead, I think he just maxed out on cavalry within the existing army list.

You know, I never thought to include Howland Reed as a leader, but I should! His rule could be something like "upgrade one unit of spearmen to Crannogmen" and then have crannogmen be skirmishing skink-style poison arrow shooters as you suggest. Good idea!

I like the idea for turncoats mid-battle. Apparently that did sometimes happen (though usually between rather than during a battle). I've been trying to get that using leadership penalties to represent unreliable troops (like the Freys). For evil scheming intrigues, I've been using leadership penalties (like Tyrion, Tywin and Cersei).

But I could make a separate designation for "sellswords" where they are cheap but a general within 30cm can bribe them to switch sides (treat as a spell 6+ to cast, 5+ if the bribing side has more points on the table at the time).

My main goal is for the core army list to be very clean and simple and uniform. The way you modify and customize your units is to buy characters who apply bonuses and penalties to your units. So you don't buy Crannogmen, you buy Howland Reed who changes an existing spearman into crannogmen. It also means you can get cool combinations (Tywin, Tyrion and Cersei together can give -1 leadership penalties to 3 different opposing characters! An opponent knowing he'd be facing Lannisters needs to plan for that.) Or changes to your army list (a Highgarden army will be heavy in characters, while an Ironborn army has no cavalry). Or forces you to use interesting tactics (normally, these rules let you use your general in combat if you're careful, but if the enemy brings Melissandre along, you have to be very careful!)

I like army lists that don't mess with the core mechanics of the game too much. By putting all your special rules into your characters, you limit things a bit but also make it easy to create cool what-if scenarios. Like what if Robb and Stannis had joined forces and laid siege to Tywin Lannister in Harrenhal? Or what if Highgarden had gone over to Stannis after Renly died?

[wellspring]

Some more character ideas, mostly from Robert's Rebellion.

What I'm hoping is that players will pick their characters first, and then build their armies around their special features.

Character	Type	Attack	Leadership	Points	Special
Eddard Stark	Leader	+1	9		(none)
Rhaegar Targaryen	Leader	+1	9		As if Prince Rhaegar isn't impressive enough on his own, if you take him as your General, the maximum number of Leaders and Heroes you may take each increase by one for the army (total, not per 1000 pts).
Lord Robert Baratheon	Leader	+2	8		Lord Robert is an inspiring and impressive leader. If he is your General, select a Leader in your army list. That leader receives a +1 to his Leadership score. You cannot take Lord Robert if your army has King Robert.
King Robert Baratheon	Leader	+0	7		You cannot take King Robert if you take Lord Robert. In combat against Targaryen characters, he receives a +1 to his Attacks rating.
Lord Jon Arryn	Leader	+?	?		We don't know enough about Lord Jon to know what kind of leader he is.
Lord Jon Connington	Leader	+?	?		Another Lord Jon we don't know much about.
Ser Arthur Dayne	Hero	+3	8		The Sword of the Morning is spoken of in the same breath as Aemon the Dragonknight. He wields his legendary sword, Dawn (already included in his Attacks rating) and so cannot take a different weapon.
The Kingsguard	Hero	+2	7		The Sworn Brothers sometimes fight together as a group-- take this to represent a contingent of one or more of the lesser Kingsguard when they are not part of a character's retinue.
Edmure Tully	Leader	+0	6		Edmure is a mediocre leader at best. If defeated in battle, he is always captured. This has no game effects but should be embarrassing.
Randyll Tarly	Leader	+1	9		Tarly does not receive the usual +1 to his Leadership if he is made your General.

Updated a few units. BTW, Eddard's leadership is so high because a) he has a fearsome reputation and b) many of his opponents have commented on how fast his army moved.

[Lex]

Some more character ideas, mostly from Robert's Rebellion.

What I'm hoping is that players will pick their characters first, and then build their armies around their special features.

The Kingsguard

Hero

+2

7

The Sworn Brothers sometimes fight together as a group-- take this to represent a contingent of one or more of the lesser Kingsguard when they are not part of a character's retinue.

Kingsguard "retinue". ANY character fighting on the side of the" rightfull" king can be assigned a Kignsguard protector, doing this voids the option to field the kingsguard as a unit. Having a Kingsguard with a character ads a fighting bonus (+1 ?)  and allows the character to escape capture, allowing it to join the nearest friendly unit, regardless of the distance it would need to move.

If you have the kingsguard fighting as a unit I would suggest:

take heavy infantry or cavalry stats, as applicable for representing the Kingsguard fighting mounted or on foot, make att and defend stats one (1) better then normal unit, representing the fact they would have the best gear available and are supposed to be the best fighters in the realms.
Represent them with a 2 stand unit (not that many around, maybe even a one stand unit, depending on the assumed ration of figures per stand). They can be commanded without penalty for being short, but will incurr the -1 when going to one stand (assuming you started with two)
In combat they never count as being flanked, and they are immune to terror.
When fielded with "their" king on the field they will always home back to the king when more then 20cm away atthe start of their turn.

[wellspring]

Some more character ideas, mostly from Robert's Rebellion.

What I'm hoping is that players will pick their characters first, and then build their armies around their special features.

The Kingsguard

Hero

+2

7

The Sworn Brothers sometimes fight together as a group-- take this to represent a contingent of one or more of the lesser Kingsguard when they are not part of a character's retinue.

Kingsguard "retinue". ANY character fighting on the side of the" rightfull" king can be assigned a Kignsguard protector, doing this voids the option to field the kingsguard as a unit. Having a Kingsguard with a character ads a fighting bonus (+1 ?)  and allows the character to escape capture, allowing it to join the nearest friendly unit, regardless of the distance it would need to move.

If you have the kingsguard fighting as a unit I would suggest:

take heavy infantry or cavalry stats, as applicable for representing the Kingsguard fighting mounted or on foot, make att and defend stats one (1) better then normal unit, representing the fact they would have the best gear available and are supposed to be the best fighters in the realms.
Represent them with a 2 stand unit (not that many around, maybe even a one stand unit, depending on the assumed ration of figures per stand). They can be commanded without penalty for being short, but will incurr the -1 when going to one stand (assuming you started with two)
In combat they never count as being flanked, and they are immune to terror.
When fielded with "their" king on the field they will always home back to the king when more then 20cm away atthe start of their turn.

My thinking is that with only seven Kingsguard, you don't have enough to form a unit.

But I love the idea for the retinue as an upgrade to a character! This way they can act as protectors for their king. A few exceptional ones (The Kingslayer, Arthur Dayne, Aemon the Dragonknight) might still act as battle commanders.

I'm looking for cool rules like that for characters to change the way their armies work. Normally in Warmaster, we give an army special rules, but here those come from the characters you take.

So a Stannis/Mellisandre "Hot Harts" army behaves differently from a Tyrell army, for example. Stannis is an excellent General who is lacking for good subordinates; maybe I should add a restriction on the characters he can take with him? In an army with Melisandre, you want her as close to the front as possible so she can constantly make assassination rolls and hopefully take out a character or two. If you're fighting against her, you want to keep your general out of battle or you'll risk what happened to Renly: the general gets killed on turn one!

The Tyrells should be heavy on characters, so even though they have an unimpressive General the army keeps moving. Having lots of characters gives you the luxury of being able to throw them into combat without worrying too much.

Same thing with the Lannisters. I wanted a sneaky, clever army for them. If you load up on them (Tywin, Tyrion, Cersei), then you could focus on lowering the opponent's leadership and outflanking or stringing them out.  Or, you can use Intrigues to pump the Kingslayer or Ser Gregor's attacks bonus instead, and play offensively with a cavalry charge. Since the Intrigues bonus/penalty can be kept secret until used, you could take Tywin, Tyrion, Cersei, AND Kingslayer/Ser Gregor and leave the opponent guessing about what kind of army you're fielding.

For the Stark army, I want a straight-up army with good stats but nothing flashy. Robb's stats help them make that first critical cavalry charge while blunting the effectiveness of the counter-charge (and the Westeros rule about characters makes this non-suicidal).

The Ironmen should be strong but a pain: lots of high-attack bonus heroes but weak leaders. It should also be light on cavalry (and if you load up enough on Ironmen, none at all).

Frey armies should be numerous, treacherous and somewhat useless. I'm still struggling with how to do it. The first rule I thought of was to have special cheap "frey" units that don't count when you calculate breakpoint but do count towards it in battle. But that didn't really fit.

Riverrun armies seem noble but disorganized, but I think that's an accident of geography and crappy generalship from Edmure Tully rather than a generic characteristic they have.

I don't have a feel for how armies from Dorne or the Vale should fight yet. Targaryen kings prior to Aegon III should be allowed to field dragons, of course, probably just like the High Elf dragon riders.

(Also I editted the above posts to change the way some of the special rules work).

[Lex]

The Ironmen should be strong but a pain: lots of high-attack bonus heroes but weak leaders. It should also be light on cavalry (and if you load up enough on Ironmen, none at all).

Ironmen "aquire" their cavalry, and while some of them are competent riders, they are more raiders then organised units. Actualy I would wagger that most serious battles they would get into, are fought near the shores and waterways.

Proposal:

- ironmen cavalry units are considered to be bushwacking units (no penalty for distance on commanding them), but are at -1 to command. (and IMO press a limit on their mounted units !)

alternative drop thecavalry option for ironmen for the following:

- add a new unit type to the selector,  raiders, similar stats to normal ironmenunits, but add bushwacking. Allow these units to come on to table insubsequent turns (commanded like the skaven  ??). These units represent returning raiders, who dismounted before entering battle or troops that disembarked from their ships behind enemy lines and turn up to join the fray.

[wellspring]

That's an interesting idea. Maybe they could be similar to dwarven rangers?

What I'm aiming for with Ironmen is that you get your cavalry "punch" from tons of characters with high attack bonuses. So Ironmen armies can pull off attacks with infantry units.

But you're right in that that leaves the mobility and pursuit aspects open. I like the "returning raiders" because you can have a unit pop up from "upstream" to flank an enemy.

[Lex]

I REALY should keep the books at hand when answering you here   

If you allow for most of the Ironmen characters to add "umph" to their units attacking, you could allow for Theon (? right ??) to actualy field one unit of basic cavalry (he is the one that organizes the raid on the North and has been trained in the more traditional Westeros ways of fighting.

That said, you need al least one Ironmen versed in siegewarfare, and I guess you need to introduce the drowned men as fanatics ?

And for the Reaver, the appearance ofhis crew on the field of battle should cause terror and/or he would have access to some wierd magical artefacts.


And comming back on the kingsguard. Although they dont have the men to create a full unit, they would represent the fighting capabilities of a 2stand unit, without the command penalties. At the least when fighting on foot, maybe just as a 1 stand unit of cavalry.

Play around with the concept of sub°standard (read understrength) units a bit in a game and you will see the ups and downs of it. Representing the Frey´s with loads and loads of 2 stand units would show the division in that house, each of Lord Frey´s get fields his own household troops, but because they are a poor house (not the Lord himself, but the sons, granssosn etc) they would have less troops (or lessertroops) shown in their inability to field full strength units. You get lots and lots of them, but commanding a Frey army would be, troublesome to say the least.