Mass Combat for Electric Bastionland+

This article presents a simple framework for Mass Combat in Electric Bastionland, Into The Odd and the dozen of variants out there (352 at the time of writing from this link alone). They all rely on the notion of detachments already present in the game. Here is the corresponding rule:

Detachments: Large groups of combatants fighting together are treated as a Detachment.

• When they take Critical Damage they are routed.
• When they reach STR 0 they are wiped out.
• Individual attacks against Detachments are Impaired unless they cause Blast Damage.
• Detachment attacks against individuals receive +d12 and cause Blast Damage.

I think the Electric Bastionland rules are perfectly fine as-is to run Mass Combat. A player can control one or multiple detachment; they will fight using the standard rules, make maneuvers, and interact with individual units as written above (i.e they wreck them). There is even a rule for vehicles already. So what is the point of this article? Simply a few guidelines on how to make detachments.

A roman Contubernium can be modeled as a detachment.

Pooling units: a group of any 10 units works as a Detachment. Its stats are computed as follow:

• Average HP, Armor and STR of the individual units, rounded down.
• DEX as the lowest DEX score of the individual units.
• CHA as the highest CHA score of the individual units.
• Average damage die of the individual units, rounded down.

Some notes on all this:

• Almost all stats are simply averaged. DEX is the individual lowest, the maneuverability of a group is limited by its weakest element. CHA is the individual highest, the mental fortitude of a group is the one of its “leader”.

• Averaging damage is achieved by averaging the dies’ highest values (remember that this game has no +1/-1). So for instance 6 units dealing 1d6 and 4 units dealing 1d12 average at 8.6, so a d8. No ranged weapons count as a d0, so for instance 7 units with a d6 bow and 4 without average at 4.2., so a d4. Average below 4 count as no damages.

• Special abilities will require some referee judgment on your part. Maybe every unit should have it for the whole detachment to benefit from it, maybe half, your call. For instance I would rule that only if all units see in the dark can the detachment do it too. Or that half units dealing blast damage makes the detachment deal them too.
• When in doubt, STR/DEX/CHA is still 10.
• You PC will recruit 9 henchmen to “become” detachments. They will treat them well and make sure their stats/equipment are as high as possible to optimize this process as much as possible!

Bootstrapping: a group of any 10 detachments count as a detachment from the point of vue of a detachment. Single units deal no damage to them and are immediately killed if attacked by one.

Basically this pooling by 10 protocol can be repeated to make larger scale battles. The rules stay the same and you are a happy referee wielding an elegant ruleset. Feel free to name detachments of detachments with a cool name, like a Maniple for 100 units, a Legion for 1000, etc. Feel free to play with the exact numbers; I chose a regular base 10 because it’s easy and I saw this number when reading BrOSR blog posts.

Fractionnal Pooling: a group of 5 to 10 units can form make a detachment, with each “missing” unit counting as one with 0 in each stat. A group of 11 to 14 units can still form a single detachment; STR/HP/Armor/Damage are averaged with the best 10 units for each score, and DEX/CHA use the lowest/highest score of the whole group.

Say you recruited 37 soldiers, what do you do? 4 detachments, with the the last one being a bit weaker, or 3 (12+12+13) maybe slightly stronger. I recommend using as many multiples of 10 as possible to keep things simple.

Conclusion

I’m surprised as how smooth everything went. Who need BECMI’s War Machine when you have Electric Bastionland? Why would you even play Warhammer?