One Hour Great Northern War Army Lists

Most of the scenarios in One Hour Wargames use armies of six units each, with a few featuring four or three unit forces. The armies are generated using a D6 roll. Each set of rules features four unit types, and the tables take this into account; for any given period you will get a majority of one core type and a selection of the three other support types.

I have based my Great Northern War rolls on the ACW tables, as the troop classifications are the same - Infantry as the core, with Cavalry, Artillery and Veteran Infantry (Zouaves in the ACW lists) as the support. However I decided to tweak the rolls to take into account national characteristics. The tweaks are:

(i) The Russians would tend to have more Veteran Infantry than the Swedes, representing the Guard regiments. Indeed I will refer to the Veteran units as Guards. The Swedish infantry would be more homogeneous in quality.

(ii) The Swedes would have the possibility of a higher proportion of Cavalry than the Russians.

(iii) The Swedes also have the possibility of Cossacks

(iv) The Swedes have less Artillery.

To this end I created the following 'rules' when rolling for armies:

The first Veteran Infantry the Swedes roll is instead replaced by a Cavalry unit. If, however, the army already has at east one Cavalry, they get a unit of Cossacks instead.

The second Artillery unit the Swedes get is replaced by Infantry.

This gives the following lists:

Russians - 6 Units

1 - 3 x Infantry, 2 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 2 x Guards
3 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry
4 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
5 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Guard
6 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry

Swedes - 6 Units

1 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry
3 - 3 x Infantry, 2 x Cavalry, 1 x Cossack
4 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
5 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
6 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry, 1 x Cossack

Russians - 4 Units

1 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Guard
3 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry
4 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery
5 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Guard
6 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry

Swedes - 4 Units

1 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
3 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry, 1 x Cossack
4 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery
5 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry
6 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry

Russians - 3 Units

1 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Guard
3 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry
4 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery
5 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Guard
6 - 2 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry

Swedes - 3 Units

1 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
3 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry, 1 x Cossack
4 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery
5 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry
6 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry

Unlike the original book lists, the Swedish lists will give duplicate armies under some rolls. In practice this doesn't seem to cause too many problems though. In addition I don't distinguish between dragoons and cavalry. At the scale and granularity of games I'm playing I don't think it really makes a difference.

I have played through probably more than a third of the scenarios in the book with these armies, and they generally give good, close games. The next step, I guess, is a campaign of linked scenarios.