Art De La Guerre

[daveallen]

Is it possible to field an army after 1442 that isn't the Black Army?

I suspect not, but the way it's worded "Black Army from 1442" rather than "From 1442, Black Army" makes me wonder.

Dave
_________________
Putting the ink into incompetence

[Mark G Fry]

[KevinD]

If not replaced in the Black Army, the nobles remain in the list throughout. So you could get nobles knights if you don’t field a Black Srmy version.

[Zoltan]

Yes, you should be able to field a non-Black Army from 1442.

Rules p.87, left column, first example makes it clear that "After 205 BC" is an "option". Therefore "Black Army from 1442" should be read as an option.

It was King Matthias Corvinus (NOT his father Janos Hunyadi as incorrectly stated in the list 249 intro) who constituted the Black Army as a standing army of mercenaries, and progressively including contributions from the private armies of Hungarian barons. It is true that Matthias built on Hunyadi's earlier use of mercenaries and I guess the 1442 start date in the list reflects this transitional period.

A. T. Komjathy, A Thousand Years of the Hungarian Art of War (Ontario: Rakoczi Foundation, 1982), p.36.
The Hungarian army system precluded his using either the magnates' forces or the noble insurrectionist troops outside the frontiers. On the other hand, to fight battles within Hungary's borders would have turned the kingdom into a theatre of war. Thus Mathias needed a permanently standing army to follow him everywhere so that war might be waged mostly in foreign territories. After the initial successes against Giskra, more and more Hungarian nobles offered their services to Mathias.

Laszlo Veszpremy, "The state and military affairs in east-central Europe, 1380-c.1520s" in Tallett and Trim (Eds.) European Warfare 1350-1750 (UK: Cambridge, 2010), p.101.
To be sure Hungarian forces achieved some significant victories. In 1479 a traditional army of the nobility defeated the Ottomans in the greatest battle of the age in the fields of Kenyermezo/Sibot (Transylvania). And in 1456 the Turkish sultan was ignominiously ejected from his camp outside Belgrade by an ad hoc contingent of forces while the well-equipped western troops were still on their way.

Gyula Razso, "Military Reforms in the Fifteenth Century" in Veszpremy and Kiraly (Eds.), A Millenium of Hungarian Military History (NY: CUP, 2002), p.65.
Although the mercenary army, including, in addition to the foreigners (Czechs, Germans, Poles and Serbs), soldiers of Hungarian birth in an order of magnitude of several thousand too, may be considered to have been the backbone of the army, the war service of the private armies of the magnates, the war service of the nobility, the militia portalis, as well as of the towns and the privileged strata of peoples (especially the Szekelys), survived. True, only the mercenaries and the banderia participated in the campaigns abroad."

Gyozo Somogyi, The Army of King Matthias 1458-1526 (Budapest: Zrinyi Kiado, 2013).

[Mark G Fry]

I suppose it all depends upon what you are planning on trying to do with the list Dave (something cunning no doubt )

[daveallen]

Mark, after my last three competitions cunning is clearly beyond me. I'd settle for any plan at all, such as flooding the field with halfwit nobles and hoping they behave.

Dave
_________________
Putting the ink into incompetence

[Mark G Fry]