After a bit of a stop start week on the painting front, I have finished a unit of guerillas.
In game they will be played as tiny units of 6...
The plan for the army is to have a brigade of regular troops, and either one brigade of 6 militia battalions and 4 guerilla bands or to split this force up as is needed. There will then be a small force of cavalry and a single artillery piece.
I don't want to go off on a rant about conformity and the tyranny of competative play, but personally I feel there is a danger that in the current climate there will be an effort to impose llists and playstyles on players. In a sense the Spanish army I am building is a deliberate snub to this.
The question I set myself when thinking about the army is, "how can I create an army that fights like my idea of the Spanish in the early years of the penisular war?"
I notice on the Warlord forums a number of players who ask the same sort of questions, the difference is that I decided to play with the unit sizes - whereas the other players appeared to be playing with 'standard' unit sizes and using the special rules to differentiate between different nationalities.
Thus for the militia battalions I opted to use units of 12 - counting as a small unit - in battalions of two companies. The reason for this has nothing to do with historical research, but rather I like 6 figures on a base. But the effect is that 3 units have the same footprint as 1 standard unit, which gives them a nominal advantage of 6 dice to 3 in a firefight. Which may seem like a gamey choice, but the aesthetic choice of two companies makes them effectively irregulars and thus susceptable to cavalry. Which brings me to the tiny unit of guerillas to screen the battalions, by use of the evasion rules. All of these units will have the Brave rule to reflect the stubborness of the Spanish resistance.
It remains to be seen how effective this force will be on the table.
But regardless of that I feel the militia battalions and the guerillas for me give the feel of one the numerous guerilla armies that fought in Spain during the period. To further give that field I have opted to get a pack of Crusader Pilgrims form Perrys, and the guy on the donkey will be the brigade commander.