We’re taking a detour from discussing troop types this week, to cover List Building. After several posts on the B&C Facebook Page, in the Discord, and even in some messages – it has become clear that there are a few hang-ups in List Building that could do with a bit of clarifying.
So, follow along while I put together a 250 point list for Blood & Crowns. I make no guarantees that this is a good list. It’s also not the “only” way to approach building a list. Rather, it is a step-by-step explanation of the rules related to list building.
Lingua Franca – Helpful Terms
Before we jump in with both feet, let’s break down some simple terms used in Blood & Crowns that will appear frequently while list building
- Points (pts) – everything in Blood & Crowns is “purchased” with Points. Think of these as a big chest of gold that you use to recruit your forces. Games are played to an agreed upon points value, usually 200-300 per player. Once this limit is set, it is expected that players will not exceed it. For example, if players agree to a 250pt game, then forces can be 249pts, but not 251pts.
- Model – one guy in the force. A single Man-at-Arms on his 20mm base is a Model. This is the smallest “element” in a game of Crowns.
- Unit – No Blood & Crowns model ever acts alone; the Unit is the smallest maneuver element in Blood & Crowns. A unit is formed of several models, with a minimum and maximum number of models dictated by each unit’s stat-block. All models in a unit are of the same type (ie. a unit of English Archers) and with only a few exceptions, all models in the unit will be upgraded and equipped in the same way.
- Company – In a standard, 2-player game of Blood & Crowns, a player’s Units collectively form their Company. The Company is led by a special unit, the ‘Commander & Retinue.’ This is your “army list,” the force that you bring to a battle against your opponent.
- Faction / Nationality – The Faction represents where your Company’s historical allegiance lies. In other ‘Blood &‘ games, this is your “nationality.”
Factions come with their own Special Rules, and these apply to all of the Forces drafted from that faction.
Currently, there are 5 Factions in Blood & Crowns: England, France, Scotland, Spain, and the ‘Unaligned’. - Force List – Each Faction has a number of Force Lists to choose from. These narrow down the historical theatre that your force will operate in. The Force List will dictate the troop types that your Company can include.
The Force List might also apply special rules to your Company.
Step 1. Choosing a Faction
Once you’ve decided how many points your game will be played at, it is time to choose a Faction and get to building. Our example Company in this article will be drafted from the Scottish Faction.
Every faction comes with Special Rules which apply to all Force Lists in that faction. For the Scottish, this is the Schiltron special rule. This rule makes their Pikemen units more efficient, and also a bit tougher when charged by enemy cavalry.
With the exception of the Unaligned, your Faction will also provide an optional Title or Order for your Commander. For the Scottish, this is “Guardian of Scotland“. We will discuss this more when we choose our Leader & Retinue.
Step 2. Choosing a Force List
Having chosen a Faction, we get to choose a Force List. For the Scottish, the options are Scottish Army (Wars of Indpendence), Scottish Raiders, or the one we will be choosing, Scottish Army (French Expedition)
Your Force List determines the Leaders and Units that you can choose. We will ignore the Leaders for now, and talk about them more in the next section. What is more important to most players, is what Units are allowed, and where they are placed in the Organization Chart.
I’m choosing to talk about the Organization Chart now, because it is the most likely to steer you choice of Force List. Units are positioned into 1-of-3 sections on the chart, which correspond to ratios for the units.
- Main Battle – These are your common units. You may field any number of Main Battle units in your Company.
- Vanguard – These units are uncommon. You may include a single Vanguard unit for every 2 Main units in the Company.
Example: using the Force Chart above, if I field a unit of Galloglass and another of Pikemen, then I can include 1 unit of Men-at-Arms Afoot. - Reserve – The most rare units available to you. You are allowed a single Reserve unit for every 3 Main units in your Company.
Example: using the Force Chart above, if I added another unit of Galloglass, I would have 3 Main Battle and could then include a unit of Veteran Men-at-Arms.
Q. If I have 3 Main Battle units, can I include both a Vanguard unit and a Reserve unit, or just one-or-the-other?
A. You can include both. Each “slot” is independent, and not mutually exclusive.
In addition to the units allowed, the Organization Chart might also dictate additional Special Rules. These are gained in addition to any special rules gained from your Faction. In the case of our Scottish Army list, this is the Hereditary Enemy special rule – all of our units gain Hatred (English).
Now that we’ve got our Faction and Organization Chart sorted out, we can get to the real meat of this article; choosing our units.
Step 3. Choosing a Leader & Retinue
This is what has caused the most confusion for new players, and what actually prompted me to write this article: how to point-out your Leader & Retinue. The first thing to understand about leaders in Blood & Crowns is this:
There is no single ‘Leader’ model!!
Instead, you must select one of the Leader & Retinue units from the stat-line below. This unit of 3-6 models, will represent the loyal band of heroes in charge of your Company.
For the example force, I’m going to choose a Noble retinue. I want a healthy unit of them, so let’s choose 5 men.
5 Nobles x 9pts each = 45 points
That gets me 5 models who are Veterans, have great stats, and come with Standard Melee Weapons (in other words, no fancy attack rules). In addition to this, the unit comes with available options:
As you can see, there are 3 different “bullet points” for upgrades. Each of these bullet points is an individual option; meaning that you can make one choice from each bullet. The first and third bullets each only have a single option, but the second bullet gives the choice for either Plate & Mail or Full Harness; you may choose one or the other, or neither.
It’s also important to note that the Points Costs for your upgrades are presented in two different ways:
- Model Upgrade – Model Upgrades are paid for per model. You pay the cost for each model in the unit.
Example: Using the options above, if you choose to put your unit on Chargers it costs +5 points per model. For our unit of 5 men, we would pay +5 points x 5 Nobles = +25 points in total.
You must upgrade all models in the unit. I cannot choose to have 3 of those 5 Nobles mounted. - Unit Upgrade – Unit upgrades are paid for at a flat rate. You only pay the cost once, for the entire unit.
Example: Using the options above, it does not matter if I have 3 Nobles or 6 of them, I only pay +6 points to equip them with Plate & Mail
So, let’s add some upgrades to our Nobles. Lets put them on horseback first, for +5pts per model. Then, we’ll add Full Harness to the unit to keep them safe. In the end, this is what the math for our unit will look like:
Noble Retinue
5 models x 9pts each: 45pts
Mounted, +5pts each: +25pts
Full Harness, +10pts: +10pts
total cost: 80pts
In addition to the standard upgrades listed with the unit, our choice of the Scottish faction means that we can also upgrade our leader to be a Guardian of Scotland.
We’re not going to include a Standard Bearer (yet) but this rule is provided for Free. Alas, one downfall to choosing the Scottish for our demonstration! For the other factions, upgrading a character to have a ‘title’ like this would cost points in the form of a Unit Upgrade (meaning you pay the cost once, and apply it to the whole unit). But hey – free Inspiring is great, so let’s grab it!
Step 4. Choosing Main Battle Units
Now that we’ve got our Leader, it’s time to pick our Main Battle units. We need to include at least 2 in order to have a legal list. For our Scottish list, this means choosing either Archers, Pikemen, or the unique Scottish unit, the Galloglass.
Because our Faction special rule Schiltron gives bonuses to our Pikemen, let’s pick up at least one unit of those.
As you can see, this unit is quite plain; no options and only a single Special Rule. We can assume that these guys will be fighting enemy cavalry, which is a pretty scary unit. So let’s grab a beefy unit of them to take those charges. Maximum unit size is 12 models, but let’s go with 10. That works out to and easy
10 Pikemen x 4 points each = 40pts
On to our next unit. We have our Lord & Retinue as armored footmen, and we just added some Pikemen, so we should probably get something to fight at range. For the Scottish, the only option is a unit of simple Archers.
This is another optionless unit. This time, they’re capped at 8 models. To include a maximum-sized unit would be the same cost as our Pikemen, actually:
8 Bowmen x 6 points each = 48pts
That leaves our force at 166pts.
Step 5. Vanguard and Reserve Units
Our force only has 2 Main Battle units, which means that right now, we’re only entitled to a single Vanguard unit. If we want to include a Reserve unit, we would need to add a third Main Battle unit somewhere in the list.
But thanks to our selection of Organization Chart, we’ve got a trick for that. One which we’ll discuss a bit later. But for now, let’s break a rule and add a Reserve unit to the list.
Let’s add 5 Veteran Men-at-Arms, Mounted to our list. This will give us a very hard-hitting unit, ideal for smashing into enemy Men-at-Arms or charging across the field and disrupting enemy ranged units.
I discussed this unit in the article reviewing Men-at-Arms units, so if you want to understand why I’m adding Full Harness to this unit, go take a look there. That is a 10pt Unit Upgrade, so remember that we only need to pay 10pts to apply it to the entire unit. Leaving us at
5 Veterans x 14 points each = 70pts
Full Harness, +10 points = 80pts
In the review, I hinted that the “gold standard” for a nearly unstoppable unit of Men-at-Arms would be Full Harness and the Grizzled Veteran. So let’s take a moment to talk about Characters.
As you can see, the Grizzled Veteran will replace one of our 5 Veteran Men-at-Arms. We’ll have to pay the points cost of the Grizzled Veteran, and he will have the same stats and special rules as the rest of the unit (meaning that he is also Heavy Cavalry, Mounted, and Impetuous). In addition, the unit will gain his Special Rules on top of their own, for as long as he survives. So what are those rules?
The rules Tough and Battle Hardened make it extremely difficult to apply Fatigue to our knights, even with the Full Harness replacing casualties with fatigue.
You’ll also notice that the Grizzled Veteran has a restriction of 1 per 100pts spent in the Company. Since our list is 250pts, we could technically have 2 Grizzled Veterans in the list. Other characters are strictly limited to 1 per Company, or 1 per ship in the Company, and so on.
With the Grizzled Veteran added, the unit now looks like this:
Veteran Men-at-Arms, Mounted
5 models x 14pts each: 70pts
Full Harness, +10pts: +10pts
Upgrade 1 model to Grizzled Veteran, +9pts: +9pts
total cost: 89pts
Special Characters
Remember how I said we were going to use a trick to get a Reserve unit into our list despite only having 2 Main Battle units? This is that trick: we’re going to upgrade our Standard Leader to a named character. This guy, in particular:
Adding a named leader like this, works exactly like adding the Grizzled Veteran to our unit of Veteran Men-at-Arms, with one extra requirement. All leaders will have a Retinue requirement. In the case of John Stewart, the requirement is that his retinue be of Noble quality.
Let’s adjust our Retinue a little bit, then. With his rule Avant Darnley, I don’t think that we need our men to be Mounted any more. Plus, we already have a unit of cavalry in the list.
Noble Retinue
5 models x 9pts each: 45pts
Plate & Mail, +5pts: +5pts
Poleaxes, +5pts: +5pts
Musician, +3pts: +3pts
John Stewart of Darnley: +15pts
total cost: 73pts
As you can see, I also decided to throw a Musician into the list. Like the Grizzled Veteran, this character has it’s own restrictions – it can only be attached to the Retinue, and is limited to one-per-Company. The Musician replaces one of the Retinue, but grants some handy special rules:
The Completed List
With everything that we’ve added, we now have a complete Company to throw onto the tabletop and crack some English skulls. Here’s where we ended up:
- John Stewart of Darnley’s Noble Retinue: 73pts
5 Nobles, with Plate & Mail, Poleaxes, and Musician - 10 Pikemen: 40pts
- 8 Bowmen : 48pts
- Veteran Men at Arms, Mounted: 89pts
5 VMaA, with Full Harness and Grizzled Veteran
Total Points Cost: 250/250
I actually feel that this is decent (albeit very elite) Scottish list for the “rock/paper/scissors” nature of units in Blood & Crowns. You’ve got a unit of Pikemen to bog down enemy cavalry units, and a unit of Bowmen to whittle at enemy footmen. Stewart’s Retinue is capable of 12″ moves, and the Veteran MaA are a major threat that is also very tough to crack.
As usual, if you’ve got any more questions, throw them in the comments or reach out on one of the social media pages! Both myself, and the game’s author Eric, are trying to stay active and on top of whatever queries you might have.