The Great Northern War Randomised

In the previous post I said that I'd randomised the forces I used, but didn't explain how. In this post I'll tell you how.

I created a series of 12pt forces for both the Russians and the Swedes. Half of them emphasised cavalry, and half emphasised infantry. I then divided the forces into two tables for each side, and a player rolled a dice on each table to see what they got. They are weighted so that a force will generally be a 50/50 mix of horse and foot, but all-horse and all-foot forces are possible (as you saw in the game).

So, each side makes one roll on Table One and one roll on Table Two.

Swedes - Table One

1-2 - 1 x Raw Shot, 1 x Raw Pike, 1 x Regimental Gun
3-4 - 3 x Raw Shot
5-6 - 3 x Gallopers

Swedes - Table Two

1-2 - 3 x Gallopers
3-4 - 2 x Elite Gallopers
5-6 - 2 x Raw Shot, 1 x Raw Pike

All Shot can form Close Order
All Swedish Shot and Pike have a Priest attached, giving them +1 Courage
Roll a D6 if the force contains Gallopers. On a 4+ all of the Gallopers are Aggressive.

Russians - Table One

1-2 - 4 x Raw Shot
3-4 - 2 x Raw Shot, 1 x Forlorn Hope
5-6 - 2 x Galloper, 1 x Dragoon

Russians - Table Two

1-2 - 3 x Gallopers
3-4 - 2 x Dragoons, 1 x Galloper
5-6 - 3 x Raw Shot, 1 x Raw Pike

All Shot can form Close Order
Roll a D6. On a 5+, replace a 4pt unit with a Regimental Gun. You must replace Dragoons if you have them. If there are no 4pt units, replace two 3pt units with a Regimental Gun, and give two units (your choice) Priests.

For terrain I divided the table up into 1' squares and diced for each one.

On a 1-4 it has no terrain.
On a 5 it has either a small piece of rough going that provides no cover, enclosures of some kind, or a hill.
On a 6 it has a larger area of rough going (including woods) or impassable terrain.

The terrain to be placed is fairly arbitrary. Basically what you place for a roll of '6' should be nastier than what's placed for a roll of '5'. For a denser table treat a roll of '4' as a roll of '5'.

Roll a D6. On a 1-2 there is a river. Die 50/50 to see if it either runs lengthwise or straight across the table. Then dice to see where it starts along one edge. It will go in a straight line to the opposite edge. Roll again. On a  1-4 it is passable along its length (counting as rough) but has a single ford or bridge. On a 5-6 it cannot be crossed, but has two fords or bridges. randomly determine the positions of the fords/bridges.

Note that some scenarios require certain terrain to be placed. Randomly determined terrain can be moved or removed as required (for example if you roll the river crossing scenario, you may wish to remove a randomly generated river.). The actual edges for scenario purposes (North, South, East, West) should be determined after the terrain has been set, preferably randomly unless the scenario dictates that action happens across or along the table.

Obviously adjust these rolls as you see fit. The army generators have only seen action once, but I've used versions of the terrain generator for a while, and they generally give interesting battlefields.