The path to Conquest

Following my earlier thoughts about Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings, I have been planning an Old Dominion force for Conquest. The developers of the game, Para Bellum, have made, what I think, is a clever decision to create a skirmish game, First Blood, that provides you with models that can easily be used in the full ‘rank and flank’ game. Local friend Zach has the Old Dominion/W’adrhŭn First Blood starter. Sadly neither of us are interested in using the W’adrhŭn but it does a nice starting force of Old Dominion units.

The Starter contains, for the Old Dominion:

• 12 Legionnaires
• 12 Kheres
• 1 Xhiliarch

The Legionnaires can be built as Praetorian Guard and the Kheres can be built as Moroi which mean that you can build a First Blood force with four different regiments. And also give yourself access to a wider range of unit abilities in a First Blood game. Since the unit boxes and full Starter Sets contain units with the same number of models you can build the First Blood models into Praetorian Guard and Legionnaires, for example, and still be able to use any future models you buy without worrying about having excess models.

The 5th Anniversary Starter Set for Conquest has:

• 6 Bone Golems
• 24 Legionnaires
• 12 Kheres
• 1 Archimandrite

So if you combine them both you can build a Conquest force (assuming three stands per unit) of:

• 1 Bone Golem
• 1 Kheres
• 1 Moroi
• 2 Legionnaires
• 1 Praetorian Guard
• 1 Archimandrite
• 1 Xhiliarch

This will build a 1415 point army. Due to the restrictions on building a Conquest army the Bone Golems will need to be in a unit of 6. They are a Restricted choice for the Archimandrite and there aren’t enough Mainstay choices unless you want to build two units of Kheres or not take the Praetorian Guard. Mind you, having six Bone Golems in a unit isn’t a bad thing.

The Xhiliarch only leads three units and since I want to have a unit of Karyatids in the force I will need to add a Hierodeacon. That will require me to move a unit of Legionnaires from the Xhiliarch to the Hierodeacon as the Karyatids are Restricted. But one unit of Karyatids and the Hierodeacon push the list to 1705 points and that is without any unit or character add-ons. Adding a few officers or magic items could push it close to 2000.

So that is currently the plan. Aside from a unit of Karyatids and the Hierodeacon, and perhaps an officer or two, that entire army can be built from the two starter sets. And that is my current plan. The first step will be to get the First Blood set and then start building them. Once that is done we can start playing some First Blood games while we build the rest of the units to advance into full Conquest games.