Need ideas for 'preparing for war' campaign

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OP image reminds me of Bretonian peasants from the 90s. I finally found the picture I remembered from White Dwarf long ago. So shitty. Wow.

Fun times though. Being 10 was awesome.

>>53651071
Watch Seven Samurai.

>>53651240
Ive had people tell me this, but it doesnt give me ideas that I don't already have I'm afraid

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>>53651071
Assuming we're talking generic medieval fantasy, here are some things I can come up with:
I suggest you get familiar with weapons presented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons At least pitch, tar, wood resin and oil should be available at a village like that. Trust me, players love burning stuff to death, and this could take some heat off of the alchemist's lab.
Fortify the village with wooden walls with wooden walls, moat and a watch tower, use any fences and stone walls there already are.
Set up pit traps and various hunting traps - sticking thick and sharp wooden spikes in tall grass is a simple and cheap way to fuck any walking enemies.
Non-operational weavery and tannery to make padded and leather armor for affordable protection.
Abandoned engineer's workshop for tools, crossbows, maybe a siege weapon.
A forgotten temple, if cleansed they could receive some divine help.

You might also want to point out to your players (anyone's character knowing anything about the armies of the realms) that the peasants are best equipped with light armor (padded/leather), padded coif and a spangenhelm (if available), and a variety of spears, polearms and crossbows (if available). Spangenhelms, spears and polearms don't take much metal to make, can be made in a hurry, and all of these weapons are easy to learn to use, and are effective against infantry and cavalry.

>>53651071
Someone to train the peasants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf6rX-q7lQY

How about:
Manufacture weapons
Could have more than one option like
Manufacture swords/spears/torches

Send for a craftsman
>Allows you to create better weapons like halberds
There could be different types of this.

Raise barricades
Strengthen barricades/Raise palisade wall

Cast a cannon out of the iron you mined
>Requires craftsman

Send for a retired soldier
>The countryside has a lot of fleeing soldiers after all the wars, maybe we can nag one of them to help us train

Dig trenches
>Slows down incoming cavalry

Strengthen trenches
>Put spears and sharpened spikes into the trenches for maximum effect

Hide the gold we have
>Prepare for the worst, if we lose, we can use to funds to rebuild

>>53651071
Are they going to war or is the war coming to them? I think that's a very important piece of info.

>>53651071
>There's a local mountain man, a grizzly type that only comes into town once every few weeks or months to sell pelts and slake his thirst for an ale. People leave him alone, mostly, but it's known that the rough sorts who live out in the countryside respect him, and he could rally a whole bunch of his kind if the PCs tracked him down and impressed him enough to convince him to fight. He might not care for politics or the locals much, but gosh-darn, there ain't nothing he hates like the folks you're about to be fighting.

Stolen from Rebel, by Bernard Cornwell.

>>53651071
For something that could involve some different skills, maybe a recon mission around the enemy campsite. Maybe some subterfuge could be employed if the players want to buy themselves few more days like redirecting the army down a different route, or burning down a bridge.

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>>53651071
Put them inside armoured war wagons, with spears, helmets and shields.

Make caltrops as well, good cavarly defense and enemy slower that can be set up anywhere, anytime. Cook them in human feces. Chinese strung six caltrops together with a cord to quickly set or pick them up.

Make poison grenades. Simply fill containers with gunpowder, pellets of poison and iron shavings that will come from the objects made above. Or use caltrops instead.

Hand trebuchets are simple and may be operated by a bunch of children.

Leather cannons can work for one engagement.

You can make primitive one-shot flamethrowers. A shaft ends on a hollow wood pipe. This contains a mixture of gunpowder, pig fat, sand, slaked lime, stones. It probably won't kill, but the scare factor, wounding, blindness, burns and confusion aren't to be sneezed at.

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>>53651071
I'm running something similar now, though it's set in a city and they've been to war before. Here's some of the tasks I have had them doing:

>Gather resources from a nearby dwarf place/abandoned mine, since weapons are not in full supply
>Run a propaganda campaign to get the commoners onboard with the war effort
>assassinate/'convince' political opponents to stop resisting the war effort
>Go to nearby farms to extort grain earlier than expected/higher then usual taxes to feed troops
>Petition the church to offer money/their paladins/declare a crusade, might need to do side quests like recover a relic for them
>Do various dirty tasks for a wealthy noble with his own private mini-army, like get him drugs or steal some artwork from another rich guy
>Do some scouting/recon on the enemy poisitions
>Sabotage enemy resources (free a bunch of horses, kill a bunch of livestock, poison wells, burn things, etc)

These may not all work in your setting but there's some ideas for you anon, good luck!

>>53652241
>Sir Mike and Sir Sean

While they'll do the job, you need a Friedrich Wilhelm, Baron von Steuben.

>Kicked out of Prussian Army for being gayer than Christmas
>Comes to America a (disgraced) captain
>Passes himself off as a general through bravado and force of personality
>Charged with training General Washington's forces at Valley Forge
>Knows all of 50 words of English, 45 of which are military commands or swear words
>Ends up doing it all in Prussian German, translated to French, then into English
>Supposedly swore in as many as six languages, was only fluent in two
>Soldiers love him because he regularly rips command's collective asses over conditions and materials
>Trains the entire Continental Army from insurgency to professional fighting force
>National hero

>>53651071

dig pitfalls around the town, large enough for horses to fall in
use the excess dirt to line the roads, creating small barricades
create a lookout tower capable of holding at least three people, fill it with archers
coat all the arrowheads in locally found poison, use the alchemist lab if none is available

>>53652786
Well the war's coming to them. It's a small 'undead' army filled with elite knights who have a reputation of being absolutely terrifying. They have undead-like properties and specialize in using fire to scare their opponents. Fear-based tactics won't work on them.

Some of these suggestions are interesting enough to warrant some sort of change though