Takar Chalun's Mercenary Army

Takar Chalun* is a mercenary warlord, currently employed by the Cities of Bandar Tuk, serving with High General Leuha Taton's Army of the Eastern Approaches. His warband is small but effective; the War God Judha Puduganur had smiled on him many times, and he became wealthy and influential in the court of Rehemana. 

Recently I wrote a set of rules called Gudugan Pudugan (available from the Rules page of this blog), which is, I hope, a rather useful fast-play Ancients era rule set. In some aspects it is rather vague and/or flexible, but nothing that can't be addressed. 

After abandoning the original Inter Arma 1.0 rules, I made One Page Meeple Warfare and Campaigns in the Ancient World for some easier going experience. The former was too bloody and the latter grid-based, thus larger games got boring very fast. 

Gudugan Pudugan attempts to address both of these issues: command and friction are way more interesting, combat is decisive, somewhat more unpredictable and comes with less individual figure/unit removal, so it should not drag on endlessly.

I've had these meeples for earlier games, but did not use them much, and it was a chore to move them one by one. So I got some sticky glue and ordered pill-shaped 30x60mm bases from MKZ Games in Spain, and made units for Gudugan Pudugan this way - these are the first test pieces to see whether the concept works.

Here's how the troop types are represented. The Grave Beasts are giant red crocodiles (I might just arrange them the same way I did the chariot); the shooty infantry has bows (smaller sticks), the Low Infantry has nothing and is of a less imposing colour; High Infantry has spears, and the General is indicated by a differently coloured meeple (using a larger one is also an option). Cavalry is made from larger meeples turned around ninety degress (the differentiation between shooty and melee cavalry will be done by the number of meeples on the base and their colour). The chariot, I think, is a tad too big, but I don't intend to use many of them.

The cool aspect of using sticky glue (almost-Blutac) is that I can represent casualties by tilting over the figures on their base and gluing them back on, and can rearrange entire armies using the same supply of bases as well.

For larger armies with more subcommanders, I'm going to add small banners to the units to differentiate between meeples of the same type/colour.

*The name means One Who Makes Coils.