Continuing on from my previous post about a hypothetical Iron League campaign that would have parallel D&D adventurers and large-scale warfare, I’ve collated the various accounts from those Dragon magazine articles and come up with the following troop type totals. These are the overall totals for each major participant; in the articles there is a lot of talk of forces being split, dwarves sent to reinforce other armies, etc. I’ve gone ahead and combined all of the troops mentioned for each side, so all the forces of the dwur-king of the Iron Hills are listed under his banner, whether they were sent to reinforce Idee in CY 578…
The forces of the Great Kingdom:
| South Province | Medegia | TOTAL | |
| Heavy cavalry | 3,000 | 1,500 | 4,500 |
| Medium cavalry |
3,000 | – | 3,000 |
| Light cavalry | 5,000 | 2,300 | 7,300 |
| Light cavalry (mercenary) |
– | 500 | 500 |
| Regular infantry |
3,000 | 1,900 | 4,900 |
| Regular infantry (mercenaries) |
6,000 | 3,300 | 9,300 |
| Levies | 15,000 | 3,700 | 18,700 |
| Humanoids | 5,000 | 6,200 | 11,200 |
| TOTAL | 40,000 | 19,400 | 59,400 |
And the forces of the Iron League:
| Sunndi | Irongate | Iron Hills | Idee | Onnwal | TOTAL | |
| Heavy cavalry | – | 200 | – | 1,000 | – | 1,200 |
| Medium cavalry | – | – | – | 2,000 | – | 2,000 |
| Light cavalry | 1,500 | – | – | – | – | 1,500 |
| Light cavalry (mercenary) | – | – | – | 1,000 | – | 1,000 |
| Regular infantry | 4,000 | – | – | 3,000 | 3,000 | 10,000 |
| Regular infantry (marines) | – | 1,000 | – | – | – | 1,000 |
| Regular infantry (mercenaries) | – | – | – | 2,000 | – | 2,000 |
| Levies | 6,000 | 2,000 | – | 2,000 | 4,000 | 14,000 |
| Hillmen | 1,000 | 2,000 | – | 3,000 | – | 6,000 |
| Woodsmen | 1,000 | – | – | – | – | 1,000 |
| Dwarves | 1,000 | – | 14,000 | – | – | 15,000 |
| Gnomes | 1,000 | – | 6,000 | – | – | 7,000 |
| Halflings | 1,000 | – | – | – | – | 1,000 |
| Elves | 4,000 | – | – | – | – | 4,000 |
| TOTAL | 20,500 | 5,200 | 20,000 | 14,000 | 7,000 | 66,700 |
Next up, turning those raw numbers into actual army lists…
Sweet! I'm rather surprised the IL haas the numbers advantage albeit a slight one.
Well, when you consider that the vast majority of the dwarves of the Iron Hills are committed to defending their territory, rather than offensive actions against Aerdy, it makes a little more sense. Plus, they've got a lot more territory to defend…
Purely coincidentally I just read these articles. One additional factor from Dragon #65, if you take Rob Kuntz's contributions as canonical, is that Almor and Nyrond have declared war against the Great Kingdom, and are mustering armies in support of the Iron League (with Urnst reinforcements on their way to Rel Mord). This would take some pressure off the Idee front, although you'd have to imagine Rauxes would pitch in and even thing out, despite those problems in the Grandwood (Dragon #63).
In the Rauxes chapter of WG8 (also by Kuntz), it turns out the Great Kingdom declared war right back, and after two years Nyrond and Almor are beaten back. But their actions prevented a siege of Irongate. I wonder if that's the outcome your campaign would produce…
Awesome stuff all around.