Figure Substitution - The Reckoning

 Aside from all the tabletop action relating to the 1600 Something campaign, I have been pondering and, occasionally, doing other things wargame-related. The pondering is really further consideration of how far I am prepared to go to substitute figures for the ones I actually need to fulfil an army list requirements for an army.

Now, I am not an army list aficionado, although as my loyal reader will be aware, I do find them fairly useful on occasion. I have perpetrated a few army lists in my time, I admit, but I tend to treat them more as a guide than as a requirement. And, occasionally, I do suspect that they can simply be in error. This is inevitable, I think. History is like that, and the chroniclers of ancient wars were not writing for the Twenty-First Century wargamer.

Still, there are a few categories here which I can find in the substitution ranks. The first is where the figures simply do not exist. In this case, I think, anything which vaguely looks the part will do. In my case, as documented, Siberian tribes were played by Aztecs. I do not have a problem with this, and, if the situation arises again, I imagine the Aztecs will be deployed.

The second category is perhaps the more interesting, and I am facing it now in the campaign. I have on hand a Mongol civil war. Now, in my collection, I have a box carefully labelled ‘Central Asia’, and I know it contains Tibetans and Mongols. A quick base count revealed eight bases of light cavalry, ten bases of cavalry, two bases of militia, one base of skirmishing slings, and one base of Nepalese archers.

A delve back into my archives or the original 1618-Something army lists did show that, in fact, I do not seem to have had independent Mongol tribes. I am not sure exactly why not, but there you go. However, I did have a Tibetan army in the list, which consists of 8 cavalry, 4 militia, 2 archers and 2 skirmishers. Checking back with the DBR lists, this seems not unreasonable for a Tibetan 100 AP army.

Considering that the foot has been rebased to halve the number of bases, I can now see that the bulk of the cavalry, at least, are Tibetan, and a check of the Irregular 2 & 6 mm catalogue suggests that this is the case, except that some Mongol cavalry have been used for a bit of variety. After a bit of rejigging to actually conform a bit more closely to the DBR list and to my 12 base per army requirements, I came up with a list which reads: Tibetan: 8 Cv, 2 Mi, 1 Bw, 1 Sk or Bw.

Forgive the shorthand, but this indicates I have an army of 8 cavalry, 2 militia, an archer, and another archer or a skirmisher base. This fits with what is in the box, at least. How accurate it might be, I am really not sure, but it seems to be reasonable. Attempting to find out anything much about Tibet in the Seventeenth Century is a bit tricky, even with the Internet.

So, on to the Mongols. Looking back, I found a blog post here from several years ago, which was a one-off Tibetan against Mongols bash. The Tibetans were as per my original army list, while the Mongols had, of course, the light horse and some cavalry. From looking at the pictures and re-reading the text, I found that the cavalry on this occasion was Ming Chinese.

I had to confess to the Estimable Mrs P. that I had cheated with the Mongols the last time they were out. She looked with compassion on her temporarily deranged husband and pointed out that it was a hobby, and therefore did not matter that much. Fair enough. But my detective work still leaves me with a dilemma. Do I ‘need’ more Mongols?

The scare quotes are, of course, because a wargamer’s need is not the same as most of the population's need for food, housing and so on. With the ancients, I eventually decided on being able to put two armies on the table for each nation. This led to some fairly large armies, as we are talking 20 bases a side forces here, but it did work. I could then have Sarmatian civil wars and so on.

I am slowly starting to implement the same policy for the Early Moderns. For example, I am currently very slowly painting up another 6 bases of Japanese, so I can, in fact, deploy 24. I have also built up the Ming a bit, as well as the Koreans. The Western armies are already at and beyond the threshold, although some of the Eastern European forces, such as the Poles, might need a bit of reinforcement.

In the campaign, I have already had a Jurchen civil war action, with substitute forces, and now I am faced with a Mongol one. I can probably scrape together the forces; the basic army is 6 light cavalry and 6 cavalry, but I might be feeling a bit guilty about it. Is this rational?

Still, I suppose as a final flourish, you might be aware of a ‘why we write wargame blogs’ thing going around. Very interesting and varied reasons, I think. But the foregoing indicates another reason, and one which is partially why I started to write. The blog is a record of my activities, and I can look back to find out how I solved problems in the past. The Mongols and Tibetans is a case in point.

There is also, of course, the comment Donald Featherstone makes in Solo Wargaming, that a discouraged wargamer can look back at their journal (he was writing in a pre-Internet ages, of course) and recall the wargames of the past with a smile. I do not do this all the time, of course, but as I might have demonstrated above, it can be occasionally, and unexpectedly, useful.