Reserves in a Campaign army

[Mark Davies]

The campaign rules say that you have 12 elements and those you lose go into your reserve. Does anyone vary this to allow players to have a larger reserve so that they can choose to build more of a certain element in anticipation of meeting a different enemy?

The standing army can be no bigger than 12 elements, but the reserve might have, say, another 6 elements to choose from, kind of like players on the bench in a team sport.

I guess you'd have to choose to disband elements if you wanted to change elements in a standing army that was at full strength.

[Ivan]

Its been awhile since I've done a DBA campaign, but thinking back, I believe we did allow people to replace casualties with other legal elements from their list. (Assuming the result would be a legal army per the list.)

For example, imagine the III/40(b) Vikings have lost a psiloi. During the replacement phase, the campaign rules as written would limit them to only buying back the psiloi. The way we used to play, they could instead replace it with any other legal option: Bd, Wb, Bs, or Ps.

I prefer this method because it reduces paperwork.

An entirely different method I would like to try someday is to assign element types to different cities on the board, so that as you conquer an opponent's territory, in time you can recruit his troop types.

[Mark Davies]

Thanks, that's very useful to know. I'm thinking of running a HOTT campaign where the army lists are much more flexible. However, to make the game more interesting I think there should be a limit to the size of these lists; that is to say that the APs of all the options should have a limit, but I'm unsure what to make it. Anyone got any suggestions?