There is a particular kind of terror that settled armies reserve for enemies they cannot pin down. The Persians felt it crossing the Scythian grasslands, chasing a foe that simply dissolved before them and reappeared at their flanks and rear. The Chinese dynasties felt it along their northern frontier for a thousand years. The Russian princes felt it in the winter of 1237 when Batu Khan's tumens materialised out of the frozen steppe and began taking their cities apart, one by one, before any coalition could be assembled to stop them. And the Hungarian army of King Béla IV felt it at the Sajó River in April 1241, when what they had believed was a Mongol withdrawal turned out to be something altogether more methodical and more devastating.
What all of these encounters share is not a particular enemy but a particular system, a way of fighting that the Eurasian steppe had been developing, refining, and exporting for the better part of fifteen centuries before Genghis Khan imposed it on the largest military machine the world had yet seen. The Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century were not a catastrophe that came from nowhere. They were the endpoint of a tradition: composite bow, feigned retreat, mass mounted coordination, decimal command. Each generation of steppe peoples inherited it, sharpened it, and handed it on. The Scythians gave it to the Sarmatians. The Huns carried a version of it into Europe. The Avars, the Khazars, the Pechenegs, and the Cumans each worked variations on the same theme. Genghis Khan and his generals, above all Subutai, did not invent the steppe military system. They simply applied it with a discipline, a scale, and a strategic reach that no predecessor had matched.
This is the tradition that WoFun Games brings to the tabletop through the Mongol Invasion PD collection, illustrated by Peter Dennis. It is a collection built around a confrontation: the fullest expression of steppe warfare on one side of the table, and the most capable defenders that thirteenth-century Europe could field on the other. Mongol horse archers and heavy cavalry, Russian princes and Teutonic Knights, Bulgar horsemen and urban militia, every actor in the collision is present, rendered in Dennis's characteristic face-and-verso style, ready to take their place in one of the most consequential military encounters of the medieval world.
The System: How the Steppe Won Wars
Before the armies can be understood, the system needs to be understood, because without it, the Mongol campaigns look like a succession of miracles rather than the product of a coherent military logic refined over centuries.
The foundation is the composite bow. Unlike a simple self bow carved from a single piece of wood, the composite recurve bow layers wood, horn, and sinew in a construction that stores far more energy in a much shorter draw. Short enough to be fired from horseback in any direction, including backwards, at full gallop, it gave steppe horse archers a weapon that outranged most contemporary infantry bows while remaining manageable on the move. The horse archer was not a skirmisher who happened to ride. He was the primary arm of a military system designed entirely around his capabilities.
The tactical problem the composite bow created for opposing commanders was structural rather than merely technical. Mongol forces typically combined horse archers with heavy armoured lancers in a ratio of roughly three to two. This combination produced what might be called a double bind: an enemy formation that closed ranks to protect itself from arrow fire became a dense, slow-moving target for lancer charges, while a dispersed formation that tried to make itself a harder target for archery became easy prey for the lancers who would run it down. There was no formation that answered both threats simultaneously.
The feigned retreat completed the system. When a Mongol force appeared to break and run, it was executing a controlled manoeuvre, drawing the enemy cavalry in pursuit, separating them from their infantry, stringing them out across open ground in varying states of disorder, and then turning on them with fresh troops who had been waiting beyond the horizon. The manoeuvre required extraordinary discipline, because the retreating force had to maintain cohesion and direction while being chased. An undisciplined feigned retreat simply becomes a rout. The Mongols drilled it until it was a reliable weapon rather than a gamble.
Underpinning everything was the tümen system, the decimal organisation of the Mongol army into units of ten, one hundred, one thousand, and ten thousand, with command signalled by flags, drums, and fires across enormous frontages. Multiple tümens could operate independently for days or weeks, then converge on a single objective with a precision that made Mongol campaigns look, to their opponents, like coordinated acts of sorcery. Against principalities and kingdoms that were still working out how to get armies to a battlefield at all, this was a decisive structural advantage.
The Campaign: Russia, Poland, Hungary, 1237–1242
Understanding the system is one thing. Watching it work at the strategic and operational level is another.
Batu Khan's western campaign of 1237–42, planned and largely directed by his senior general Subutai, is the fullest single demonstration of what the Mongol military system could achieve when applied with full resources and strategic patience. The Rus principalities fell first, and they fell in sequence rather than together: Ryazan appealed to its neighbours and was refused; Vladimir fell before Novgorod could move; Kiev was taken and burned in 1240 before any southern coalition could form. Fragmented politically and unable to coordinate military responses, the Rus principalities could not turn local military capacity into collective defence. Subutai understood this and exploited it methodically, moving between cities quickly enough to deny each the time needed to organise relief.
The campaign reached its operational peak in the spring of 1241 with two simultaneous major engagements, two hundred miles apart, in the same week.
The Battle of Mohi, April 11, 1241, is the centrepiece. King Béla IV of Hungary had assembled one of the strongest armies available to any European monarch of the period: a force of perhaps sixty thousand men including mounted knights, infantry, Cuman horse archers who had fled the Mongol advance and sought refuge in Hungary, and the considerable military resources of the Hungarian magnates. He had also had weeks of warning that the Mongols were approaching. He chose to concentrate his army in a fortified wagon camp on the western bank of the Sajó River, with a bridge the Mongols would have to cross to reach him.
Subutai crossed the river anyway, upstream, in the dark, with a pontoon bridge his engineers had prepared for exactly this purpose. His force crossed undetected and circled south to come in on the Hungarian rear. Meanwhile a diversionary Mongol force attacked the main bridge in the small hours of the morning, drawing out the Hungarian defenders. By dawn the camp was simultaneously under attack from in front and behind.
What followed illustrated the most sophisticated element of the Mongol tactical repertoire. Rather than simply pressing the encirclement until the Hungarians were annihilated inside their camp, Subutai left a deliberate gap in the enclosing ring, a visible road of escape to the west. The Hungarians took it. What looked like a chance to survive was a killing ground: Mongol mounted archers flanked the line of retreat for miles, pursuing a broken, strung-out force that was now incapable of turning to fight. The Hungarian army, which had entered the battle as a coherent force, effectively ceased to exist by the end of the day.
Simultaneously, two hundred miles to the northwest, a separate Mongol force under Orda Khan destroyed a joint Polish and German army near Legnica on April 9th, including contingents of Teutonic Knights who had hurried south to help defend the region. This was not the main effort. It was a flank-screening operation, a task the Mongol command structure assigned as a secondary objective to troops who were not needed at Mohi. The Mongols fought two major engagements, in two countries, in the same forty-eight hours, as a matter of operational routine.
The campaign stopped in the winter of 1241–42, and Europe was not saved by European arms. Ögedei Khan died in December 1241, requiring Batu to withdraw his forces east for the kurultai, the council to elect a new Great Khan. The Mongols had not been turned back. They had been recalled.
The Collection: Every Actor in the Confrontation
The Mongol Invasion PD collection is built around this confrontation in its full complexity. Both Full Packs, 18mm and 28mm, contain the same 1,074 figurines across thirty-eight regiment types, covering every force present in the western campaign. Peter Dennis's face-and-verso printing gives each figurine historically accurate detail on both sides, from the lamellar armour and recurve bows of the Mongol cavalry to the white surcoats and black crosses of the military orders.
The Mongol Forces
The Khan's command structure sits at the heart of the Mongol side. The Khan's Household, twenty figurines, is the inner circle around which the tümen system turns, accompanied by the Khan's Guard Cavalry (twenty-seven figurines), the elite armoured lancers trained to exploit every gap the feigned retreats opened up. The Khan's Guard Horse Archers, twenty-five figurines per sprue at 28mm, fifty at 18mm, each set printed on a single 15×20cm Plexiglass sheet, are the premium missile screen: the riders disciplined enough to maintain formation cohesion in apparent retreat while continuing to loose backwards at full gallop.
Two further horse archer regiments fill out the Mongol cavalry. The Mongol Horse Archers (twenty-four figurines at 28mm, forty-eight at 18mm) are the workhorses of the feigned withdrawal, the units that had to appear to break while remaining coherent enough to execute the encirclement when the signal came. Alongside them, the Mongol Heavy Cavalry (twenty figurines at 28mm, forty at 18mm) are the armoured lance arm: the shock force that fell on disordered pursuers once the horse archers had done their work. This pairing of missile arm and shock arm is not incidental, it is the double bind made flesh, and it is why neither regiment makes tactical sense without the other on the table.
The Mongol infantry is the element that surprises those who think of the tumens as a purely mounted force. Mongol Archers (thirty-two figurines) could sustain massed dismounted fire during the siege operations that took city after city across the Rus principalities. The Mongol Spearmen (thirty-four figurines at 28mm, sixty-eight at 18mm) provided the close-assault capacity that opened gates when archery alone was insufficient. The Mongol Extras, thirty figurines at 28mm, sixty at 18mm, represent the siege specialists, grooms, engineers, and logistical support that kept a force of this scale operational across thousands of miles of steppe and frozen forest: the least glamorous and most essential component of any sustained campaign. Priests, Shamans and Mongol Commanders (sixteen figurines) complete the command, spiritual, and administrative leadership the Mongol army folded into its operational structure.
The Defender Forces
The Teutonic Knights appear in the collection in genuine operational depth. Sixteen mounted knights form the armoured core, supported by sixteen Teutonic Knights Sergeants, the mounted sergeantry who provided bulk and flanking capacity, along with forty-two Teutonic Crossbowmen and thirty-three Teutonic Spearmen giving the order its full combined-arms complement. The Templar equivalents mirror the same structure: sixteen Knights Templar, sixteen Templar Sergeants, forty-three Templar Crossbowmen, and thirty-six Templar Spearmen. Together the two orders contribute over two hundred figurines to the defender side of the table, representing the most professionally capable heavy cavalry in the theatre. Their weakness against the Mongol system was architectural: they were built for the decisive charge, not for the discipline of sitting still while horse archers circled them just beyond melee range.
The Polish Knights, sixteen figurines at 28mm, thirty-two at 18mm, are the force that rode to meet Orda Khan at Legnica alongside the military orders. Baltic Tribes Spearmen (thirty-four figurines), Lithuanian Cavalry (twenty-five figurines), and the Prussian Warband (thirty-three figurines) round out the Central European contingent: the diverse coalition of local forces that found itself outmatched not by superior numbers but by superior operational coordination. The Commanders and Prussian Noble Cavalry (fifteen figurines) provide command stands across the northern and Baltic scenarios.
The Bulgar contingent earns a particular footnote. Bulgar Heavy Cavalry (eighteen figurines), Bulgar Light Cavalry (twenty-seven figurines), and Bulgar Infantry (thirty-four figurines), seventy-nine figurines in total, represent a force that had actually repulsed a Mongol reconnaissance in force in 1223, inflicting enough damage to slow the western advance. They are not simply victims in this history. For a tabletop player, the Volga Bulgars offer one of the most historically interesting scenario setups in the collection: a defender force with genuine steppe warfare experience, facing an attacker who had learned from the last encounter and returned with a plan.
The Polovtsi Cavalry, twenty-four figurines at 28mm, forty-eight at 18mm, are perhaps the most complex unit in the collection. The Cumans were themselves a steppe people, skilled horse archers who had occupied the Black Sea grasslands for generations before the Mongol advance drove them westward. They carried direct knowledge of Mongol tactics into the armies of those who sheltered them, including the Hungarians. Their twenty-four mounted figurines on a single 15×20cm sprue represent a force that understood the feigned retreat, the composite bow, and the encirclement, and was still outclassed by the system Subutai had brought west.
The Russian forces tell the campaign's eastern story through their regiment structure. Russian Commanders (twelve figurines) and Noble Cavalry (twenty figurines) represent the mounted aristocratic arm that was defeated in detail before it could unite. Mordovian Cavalry (twenty-one figurines) and Mordovian Infantry (thirty-three figurines) reflect the non-Rus tributary peoples who fought and fell alongside the princes. Mercenary Heavy Cavalry (twenty-seven figurines), Noble Cavalry (twenty figurines), Knights and Sergeants on Foot (thirty-four figurines), and Dismounted Knights (twenty-nine figurines) extend the range of forces across multiple eastern and Baltic theatre engagements.
The urban forces complete the picture of what the Mongol advance looked like from inside a city wall. Armed Citizens (forty-eight figurines) and Forest Folk (thirty-six figurines) are the people who took up arms when the tumens arrived, farmers, craftsmen, and woodsmen pressed into defence by necessity. Militia Bowmen (forty-seven figurines), Militia Crossbowmen (forty-seven figurines), and Militia Spearmen (forty-eight figurines) together account for one hundred and forty-two figurines across three regiments: the largest single bloc in the collection by far, and a measure of how much of the campaign's human cost was borne by people who never expected to become soldiers.
Full Packs
The complete collection is available in both scales. The 18mm Full Pack contains all 1,074 figurines on 19 Plexiglass sprues, with bases measuring 30×20mm, MDF, 2.5mm thick, printed in green grass texture, with infantry and cavalry bases each holding two strips of figurines in two ranks. The 28mm Full Pack contains the same 1,074 figurines across 38 sprues with 40×30mm bases: one sprue per regiment at this scale, each measuring 15×20cm. The 18mm pack is the more compact option for players who want both armies on a standard gaming table without the larger footprint the 28mm scale requires; both deliver the full thirty-eight regiment roster, all figurines pre-printed by Peter Dennis, pressing directly from sprue to base with no painting or glue required.
The Collision
The western campaign of 1237–42 stopped, but the tradition it expressed did not. The Golden Horde held the Russian steppe for two and a half centuries. Timur's campaigns in the 1380s and 1390s were operationally recognisable to anyone who had studied the Mongol model. The Crimean Tatars raided into Russia and Poland into the seventeenth century. Ottoman light cavalry, the akıncı and the sipahi, carried refinements of the same basic system into the European theatre of war. The steppe military tradition outlasted the empire that had been its fullest expression by three hundred years.
But the period represented in this collection, roughly the 1220s to the 1240s, is the moment of maximum impact: the fullest development of the system encountering the strongest resistance that thirteenth-century Europe could organise. The result was not even close. And the reason it was not even close is what makes this history worth studying, and what makes these armies worth commanding.
The Mongol Invasion PD collection is built around both sides of that asymmetry. You cannot understand the attackers without the defenders, and you cannot understand the defenders without the system that overwhelmed them. The collection gives you both, and with them, the most consequential military encounter of the medieval world, laid out on your table.