Once again, I was looking for something else when I stumbled upon another interesting article by Tony Bath. With the other pieces I have in the pipeline, it looks like you may be stuck with a few more posts concerning the work and war gaming of Tony Bath. For those of you into Imaginations this article should be a treat. For those of a pure historical bent, well this is still a good article. So without further delay, the next post for the Tony Bath Compendium …

FACT OR FANCY?

by Tony Bath

The War Game Digest, Book V Volume III, September 1961

In my experience war gamers fall into two fairly distinct categories: those who base their games on fact — i.e. the American Civil war, the Napoleonic Period, the Franco-Prussian war etc. – and those who dream up their own kingdoms, continents etc. and people them as they see fit. Naturally not everyone falls distinctly one side or the other of this line: some of us who prefer fancy to fact do not go as far as others.

However again it has been my experience that those of you who faithfully reproduce the armies of South and North, France, Prussia, Austria and the rest tend to be a little patronizing towards those of us who produce our own countries. You point to the immense amount of research you do to ensure that your uniforms are correct down to the last button and flash, to the absolutely correct organisation of your miniature armies, and tell us how easy it is for us, who don’t have to conform to realism.

Have you ever stopped to think just how much work in fact goes into the creation of a mythical kingdom or continent? Unlike you fact-lovers who only have to refer to reference books, prints, postcards etc for all your details, every single point whether it is composition of an army, uniform colouring, number of troops — even maps of the country – have to come from our imaginations. So you see, it is in fact the creator of a mythical empire who probably works harder at his task than the pure fact general.

But to the war gamer who prefers a mythical set-up, all this work is part of the fun. Lets just take a look at how he goes about setting up his own empire.

First of all comes the creation of the area itself. Here if your own fertile imagination fails you, you can turn to a number of authors who have obligingly already created ready-made empires in their novels. In the books of Robert Howard I found the mythical Hyborian Age which formed a wonderful basis for war gaming; in “Lord of the Rings” by Tolkien I came across a second equally perfect land which I dubbed Tolkia. A story in a pulp magazine by Sprague de Camp formed the basis on which Roy Blackman based his land of Heskeronis. Edgar Rice Burroughs offers fertile field, both in several of his Tarzan stories which offer hidden lands in the depths of Africa, and better still in his stories of the kin doms of Mars and Venus. Or you can turn to the old legends of earth itself and reconstruct the lost kingdom of Atlantis or the lands of Lemuria.

Having established your country, you next need a map of it in considerable detail. Here I was lucky in that both Howard and Tolkien included in their books maps of the area covered. True Howard’s didn’t show any great detail, but it gave the shape of the different countries. Blown up into a size some 6′ x 4’, these maps gave me the bare bones of my continents. with the other lands I have briefly mentioned, it has been a case of constructing suitable maps from the details mentioned in the books.

I now had my map of Hyboria in outline divided into over twenty different—countries. In the·books I learned a few details of some of these, mentions of their cities, rulers and characteristics. The rest I had to provide myself, so I set about founding cities, creating kings and princes, dividing the kingdoms into provinces, marking in mountains, roads, rivers etc. Slowly my continent was taking shape.

I now had a reasonably detailed map, and I had created a nobility, linking it together in many cases by marriages – oh yes I had to create princesses as well as princes – and the next step was to have some means of deciding on the size of the armies involved and their characteristics. My map was divided into half-inch squares, each representing an area 5 miles square; so I decided that each square not covered by mountains would – yield a revenue of so much per year. By counting the number of such squares in each country, I arrived at a total figure; in addition to this I established mines for gold, silver etc. in various areas and assessed their revenue, gave focal cities additional revenue for trading tolls stepped up the revenue of particularly fruitful areas, seaports etc.

Next I worked out a system by which certain proportions of the revenue involved went to certain people: the lord of a demesne kept so much, the count of the province had his share the duke took so much from his duchy, and all contributed to the royal coffers. The king in turn paid certain sums to people like the High Constable, Lord warden of the Marches etc. Having then decided on the cost of the upkeep of various troop units · light and heavy cavalry, light and heavy infantry elephants etc — I could decide just how many troops each kingdom, duchy or province could support.

Type of troops involved – whether mediaeval, Greek, Roman, Persian, Saracen etc. – came next. Accordingly I divided my continent up, the western countries getting mediaevals the south Egyptians, Persians, Aztecs etc., the extreme north Vikings and Saxons, the central areas Greeks and Romans, the east Saracens, Goths and Celts. I worked out exactly how many troops I needed and set about making them.

Now came another problem, uniform colours. There must be a ready way of distinguishing the troops of say Aquilonia from those of, for example, Hyrkania — for while I might easily know the difference, other people using my troops probably wouldn’t. So I set to work to map out a system of colour grading by which no country would uniform its troops in the same colours as another. To each country I gave a two-tone uniform — Aquilonians for instance wear black and gold, Hyrkanians blue and silver -and then using this as a base worked out variations for the provinces within a country. So that while the pikemen of the province of Gunderland wear Aquilonian black and gold, their accoutrements are red and their shields bear the Gunderland crest.

All this has taken weeks and indeed months of careful planning — and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. Indeed, I’ve gone much further than this, purely for my own pleasure, by working out systems whereby my nobles can inter—marry, revolt against their rulers, assassinate one another, die from natural causes, and many other items. In Tolkia I have in addition a College of Wizards who can affect the situation by their use of the Black Arts, and beyond the normal weapons of war my rulers there can call on such fearsome beasts as pteranodons (winged reptiles), tyrannosaurus and dinosaurs to do their bidding. (Sometimes of course they do their own bidding with disastrous results to their masters!)

As I said in the beginning, there is no need to go this far if you do not wish – you can dream up your mythical country without all the trimmings that I and some others have applied.
The beauty of a mythical land is that your own tastes and fancies are the only rules — you create what you like how you like.

Don’t think that I am against those of you who prefer factual empires — everyone to their own taste, and as long as we enjoy ourselves in our own way then our hobby has justified itself. But I hope the foregoing may have convinced some of you that we myth-lovers put in as much work in our own way as you do!

Lots more where this came from. As well as news of ongoing projects and new releases. Check back soon, for more.