Well, I'm about to get involved in a WAB campaign with my local gaming club here in Houston.  We'll be doing an "escalation" in the Dark Ages (Europe and the Mediterranean, around the 11th century AD), and I will be running Andalusians, which are Muslim Spaniards and their Moorish allies.

We'll start off small, at around 250 pts of troops (Average foot soldier is around 8-10 pts, average cavalryman is around 17-30 pts), since none of us has our armies painted yet.  Then each month we'll double the size until we hit 2000pts, which is considered a "full" WAB army.

I don't know why Andalusians appeal to me so much.  Maybe it's the "Beacon of civilization in a barbaric world" factor, or maybe it's just the snazzy turbans.  Andalusians, at least back then, were nativized Arabs who had come a few centuries earlier during the Islamic Conquests of the 8th Century.  Although the dynasty that funded that invasion crumbled, the Andalusians maintained their cultural identity separate from both the Christian Spanish and the Arab world.  The Andalusians were not very fanatical Muslims, and were seemingly not that different from many modern American Christians in the practice of their faith.  (That is, they were pretty secular in their outlook on politics and law, and considered religion to be a personal matter.)

Unfortunately for me, they weren't fearsome warriors.  They seemed to enjoy intellectual pursuits more than war.  That put the Andalusian states at odds with many of their neighbors, of course, so they did have to do a fair amount of fighting.  That's not to say that Andalusian princes didn't do their fair amount of raiding and conquering.  This was an age of raiding barbarians and petty border disputes, after all.  Their leaders were quite willing to send them into battle if the enemy couldn't be bribed or otherwise coerced into behaving.

However, the Andalusians did breed surprisingly good horses, and could field very maneuverable and competent cavalry forces.  This, along with their willingness to hire mercenaries, is their saving grace as a wargaming army.  The foot soldiers may not be very brave or tough, but the cavalry can dance rings around the enemy.  Hopefully, the spearmen and archers can hold on long enough for the cavalry to do its thing.

The rule of wargaming is to choose an army that you can love even if they lose, and I suspect my Andalusians might be one such army.  I've heard that in the right hands, an Andalusian army can be a really tough opponent.  I hope my hands are the right ones. :-)  My biggest problems are going to have to be that I apparently think like an infantry man, and I'll need to curb my tendency to charge.  That, and I always roll for shit.

Besides, if I can't get the hang of my Andalusians, there are always my Vikings....