Imaginary Units (Imaginary Countries - 2)

Along with imaginary countries, there's the pleasures of creating imaginary units with fictional identities. At least at first. After a few trips to the gaming table you find that your little collection of pewter (never lead) or plastic begin to acquire reputations and traditions. Worse (or better) they live up to them.

Take a unit of mine. They are Marlburian English (not British until 1708). They have blue cuffs, blue waistcoat, blue stockings, and gold/yellow lace/buttons. I used a Dixon 15mm figure for them (as I did all my English foot). In a playtest of my rules Sun King they proved to be a staunch and particularly deadly unit. The player controlling them has a penchant for names, and christened them Lord Lovaduck's.

They continued this sterling performance when I changed to Pat Condray's rules, and showed it again when I switched all of my Marlburians over to Volley & Bayonet (go to http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mcnelly/vnb.htm for everything you want to know about these wonderful rules). So through three different rules, and 14 years, this unit has been an outstanding one. And I never gave it higher morale or any other perks (though when I took them away from Sun King I removed their pikes).

There's another, even better example, though. I painted up a 6-casting regiment of lobsters for the English Civil War. I used them as the ultimate reserve: i.e. their job was to turn a defeat into a draw, or a victory into a triumph. Under Bill Protz's rules The Wargamer's Guide to the English Civil War they tended to grow stronger as the battle progressed and they won successive clash after successive clash, each time raising their morale. The ultimate moment was when they were charged by Scottish Lancers during a grudge match, and left roadkill behind them. They were so effective they were dubbed the Portable Black Hole by the people I gamed against.

After several years with Bill's rules I wrote my own pike and shot rules, King's War. I don't use the same morale system that Bill uses, so I was curious how they would do. In their first combat they were outnumbered by 50%. They forced the enemy unit to retreat, capturing their colors, and then pursuing them (difficult for cuirassier to do in King's War). They caught the unit with the pursuit, forcing a second melee, and routed them. And then in the next battle, against cuirassier this time, did the same thing.

Sometimes units get undeserved names. My friend Jeff had a Napoleonic cavalry unit that he painted with red Moroccan boots. They got dubbed the Pink Booties. A regiment of his hussars was dubbed The Colorful Highwaymen. Another friend painted some Prussian 1813 grenadiers in 6mm. Their white plume has led them to being called the Ice Cream Boys (their baptism of fire was one of total immersion when they got massacred by an Austrian grand battery).

Sometimes the unit has a good name, and an unfortunate reputation. A friend painted the 11th US Infantry from 1813 in the gray coats they wore at Lundy's Lane (and from which the West Point cadets drew their own gray coats). In the historical battle the British commander, watching the 11th approach, thought they were militia as US militia wore gray (and regulars wore blue). But when they wheeled into line and opened a punishing fire into his ranks, he said "Those are regulars, by God!" Mike painted them up, and they were an absolute disaster. They repeatedly broke in battle. Finally, in disgust, he sold them to another player, where they became a crack unit. Go figure.

One of mine was the Cuirassier d'Or with their gold-plated cuirasses. The memories of their craven performances on battlefield after battlefield is still painful. After a while I stopped using them.

Probably the best unit that has passed into gaming lore locally is the King David's Hussars (painted up as the British 15th Hussars). This 4-figure unit once had to face four regiments of opposing hussars that were committed against it one at a time. Each time King David's lost one casting, but they broke all four regiments. Another time they charged the 1st Battalion of the Grenadiers of the French Old Guard. They left an exit wound 4 castings wide in the grenadiers, rode through them, meleed (and lost) to a brigade of opposing dragoons, losing half their numbers, and while retreating caught the grenadiers from behind, removing 2 more castings from them. The owner doesn't want to increase their numbers as it "might dilute their quality". Woof!

Creating an imaginary country (see previous post) allows you to create new units. In my Grand Duchy for my pike and shot boys I have the New Red Regiment, which is always deployed to the right of the Old Red Regiment (the old/new refers to how long I've had them). The Old Reds are obviously more left than the New Reds. I have the Mistress's Regiment (done in pink) with a picture of a bed on their colors (the neat thing is that as the current mistress falls out of favor she might, if she was good enough, get a different regiment while the new mistress assumes the title/duties of Colonel-in-Chief of the Mistress's Regiment.

Names can be found wherever you look. My English Marlburians, for example, have d'Escoigne-d'Escoigne (from the Scarlet Pimpernel), the Hundred Acre Woods Foresters (from Winnie the Pooh), Lord Rakehell's (the generic dashing and mysterious nobleman from countless romances), Lestrade's Regiment (from Sherlock Holmes), McAlpin's Fusiliers (from the Irish folk song about the navvies who labored in England), and so on. The countless parade of red coats is broken only by H.M.O.R.L.E.B. 5th Fusiliers (Her Majesty's Own Royal, Loyal and Excessively Brave 5th Fusiliers) from the Hoka series of stories. My Spanish (Walloon) regiments include Dulcinea de Tolosa (from Don Quixote).

German is a good source for names, if only because of the way the names are pronounced. One gamer has a Swiss unit in German Colonial Service, Klicken-Klocken Regiment. This is tame compared to another German Colonial regiment (in his feared Zepplin Infantry) - von und zu Trinksblut und Eissenessen (from the Charles Grant book on wargaming).

The point is that names can be found nearly anywhere. These are your units, and you should have fun with them. This is supposed to be recreation, after all.