Clay Soldiers: Remoulded [Fabric]

If you were playing Minecraft around 2012 you probably remember Clay Soldiers. You would craft a stack of tiny dolls, drop a few on the ground, throw some sticks between them, and a battle would happen around you. The mod stopped being updated years ago. This is that idea rebuilt from scratch for Minecraft 26.2, 26.3, 1.21.10, 1.21.1 and 1.20.1 on Fabric.

– What they do

Put a soldier down and it goes looking for a fight with any other team. There are twenty different colors/teams. Fifteen come from dyeing a plain clay soldier, four more from a melon slice, a pumpkin, a lump of coal or redstone, and plain undyed clay is a side of its own.

The gear is the cool part. Soldiers pick up what you drop near them, or take an item straight from your hand when you use it on one of them, and behave differently afterwards. Some of it you can guess: a stick makes them hit harder, leather halves the damage they take until it wears through, a bowl works as a shield. Others are a bit less obvious:

* A gold nugget crowns a soldier as king. Idle teammates near him join his guard: they fight within 5 blocks of him and follow him wherever he goes, throwing as they walk if they carry something to throw. The king himself keeps out of the fighting. He steps back from enemies and leaves them to his guard, and only fights one that runs him down. Put a lead on a king and he stays at your side, his guard with him. One king per team per area, the same limit the original mod enforced. Near a keep of his team, the king goes up and stands on its roof.
* Clay turns a soldier into a field medic that stands teammates back up when they fall near it. Four reinforcements, then the clay is spent.
* An ender pearl makes a traitor. It turns on its own side, and other pearl carriers leave it be.
* Wheat seeds are poison to a traitor, so scattering seeds is how you deal with pearls in your own ranks.
* A brick doll, crafted from a soldier doll and a brick, can’t be placed by hand. A soldier holding a ghast tear will walk over to one and raise it in your colors, twice per tear.
* Nether wart sends one berserk and it attacks everything it can see, its own side included.
* A fermented spider eye does the opposite. It starts no fights, and anything that strikes it loses interest and wanders off, which can defuse a brawl on its own.
* A mob head, or a player’s head with its face, is worn just for show. A king keeps its crown on top.
* An iron nugget makes a guard. It wears a kettle helmet and iron, takes a quarter less damage, and stays in its keep’s courtyard to fight any enemy that gets in.
* A ladder makes a ladderman. It carries the ladder to an enemy keep within 24 blocks, sets it against the wall and climbs first, and its team follows it up.
* Leaves of any kind are camouflage. Enemies notice the soldier only within 4 blocks, until it strikes or is struck and the leaves fall off.
* Rabbit hide is a quiver. A soldier carrying something to throw can carry three more, of any kinds, and takes the next one in hand when the first runs out.

There are fifty-five of these, and most of them stack. A soldier can be sugared, flinted, armored and diamonded all at once.

– Alliances

Right-click a soldier with another team’s dye (the clay, melon, pumpkin, coal and redstone teams use their block) and it ties that team’s band on its wrist, up to four. A banded soldier never strikes that team first and never storms its keeps, but it still fights back, and its own teammates come to its defense. Its thrown weapons pass through the soldiers of the teams it is allied with. A Splash Potion of Alliance, crafted from a splash water bottle and a team’s dye or block, bands every soldier it splashes. Plain splash water clears the bands.

– The Freeze Remote

Crafted from a clock, two packed ice and two clay balls. Use it to freeze every clay soldier, mount, thrown weapon and keep in the world, and use it again to free them. Nothing frozen moves or can be hurt, and a keep’s countdown carries on where it stopped. Soldiers you place while they are frozen start frozen too, so you can set up a whole battle and then start it, and you can still band them and hand them gear. The remote switches the game rule claysoldiers:soldiers_frozen, which commands and command blocks can switch too, and on a server the game rule claysoldiers:freeze_remote_ops_only keeps the remote to operators.

– Mounts

Soldiers find a riderless mount within a dozen blocks and climb on by themselves, unless they are already in a scrap. Four kinds to craft, all of them animals that already live in Minecraft, and every recipe makes two:

– Horses, in ten materials. A clay ball and the material. These are not just recolors. A gravel horse is slow and tough, a cake horse is the quickest, and a grass horse is nearly as quick and dies to a stiff breeze.
– Bunnies, in all sixteen dye colors. A clay ball and a dye, or eight clay balls around a dye for sixteen bunnies. Quick and easily killed.
– Turtles, in nine materials. Two clay balls and the material. Slow, and very hard to shift.
– Clay spiders, in stone, cobblestone, coal and redstone. A clay ball, a piece of string and the material. These climb walls (but not a keep’s wall), and they carry their rider up with them.

Drop paper next to a horse and it grows paper wings. It stops taking fall damage and drifts down instead of dropping, which is the pegasus from the original without putting a winged horse in your world.

Two mounts have no recipe at all and turn up by luck alone, at roughly one placement in eight thousand. You will know them when you see them.

– The Keep

A small stone castle that raises an army for one team. Craft it from clay balls, a diamond, soul sand and stone bricks, and place it on a clear, level space 3 blocks by 3. It builds a spruce palisade around itself, with a lookout tower at each corner, a gatehouse facing you and a small door in the back wall.

Load it with soldier dolls of one team, up to four stacks: that is its garrison. Troop spawning starts switched on, and it sends them out, each soldier using up one doll, riding out on a mount doll you loaded while they last and carrying one of each kind of gear you gave it. First it fills its posts. Soldiers carrying something to throw go up to the lookouts on the corner towers, one to each, and throw down from there without ever running out. The next four keep watch on the walls and the next two guard the keep’s door. Then eight go out and wander near the keep. After that it sends out twelve at a time, the next wave when only two of those outside are left. When enemies strike the keep’s door, the soldiers left inside come out into the courtyard to defend it, keeping up to twelve there as they fall. The Recall button on its screen calls its soldiers back in as dolls and switches troop spawning off. The keep throws its ammo (gravel, snowballs, fire charges, eggs or emeralds) at enemies nearby, lobbing it over its own walls, and the flag on its pole shows whether it is sending out troops.

Place a soldier wearing a gold nugget near the keep and he becomes its king, standing on the keep’s roof.

Enemy soldiers come for it. They break through the gate or the wall, or set ladders against the wall and fight the watch, then break down the keep’s door and climb to the king. A soldier carrying gunpowder that dies beside the wall dents it too. When attackers crowd the gate, the keep’s soldiers go out by the small door in the back wall instead. Once the king, every soldier of the keep and every doll it holds are gone, a ten second count runs above it, and then the attackers take it over. Their soldiers at the keep go inside as its new garrison. Clay balls and sticks repair it, and once the fighting stops, its own soldiers rebuild the wall before the next wave goes out.

A keep is home to its team. Its soldiers wander within 8 blocks of it when they have nothing to do, and there they take half damage, so an attacker needs about twice their number to win. Soldiers you place yourself stand guard where they are until a keep of their team is nearby, and then stay near that keep.

– Getting started

Soul sand plus a block of clay gives you eight clay soldiers. A soldier or mount that falls is gone for good, doll and all, unless you turn on the dolls setting below. Dye them to pick sides: one soldier with one dye, or eight placed around a dye in a crafting table. Sneak while placing a doll to put down a squad of eight, even where soldiers already stand: each one takes the nearest free spot, so you can fill a walled area. Hold a team’s dye, and the soldiers of that team that can see you follow you at their own pace and guard you, fighting only enemies within 5 blocks of you and throwing as they go if they carry something to throw. Soldiers falling behind their king, or on your lead, catch up at your walking pace, whatever the speed setting. You can walk through them, and outrun them at a sprint. If a battle gets out of hand, craft a disruptor from clay, a stick and redstone. It clears the field and gives you back the dolls and gear of the soldiers it cleared. A setting in config/claysoldiers.json, or in Mod Menu, makes it remove them outright instead. Another setting there controls how fast soldiers and mounts move, from 10 to 200 percent, and in a world the game rule claysoldiers:soldier_pace does the same. A third setting decides what a fallen soldier leaves behind: all its lasting gear, only its armor and weapons, or nothing (the game rule claysoldiers:soldier_drops). A fourth has fallen soldiers and mounts leave their dolls too, a brick doll if fire killed the soldier (the game rule claysoldiers:drop_dolls_on_death, off by default). Gunpowder and firework stars are used up when they go off, and the game rule claysoldiers:gunpowder_hurts_keeps decides whether gunpowder dents keeps. A dispenser places dolls and fires disruptors too. Hitting a soldier with your bare hand also kills it outright. Every recipe shows in the recipe book once you hold one of its ingredients.

Hold the stat display to count every team’s soldiers and every kind of mount within 64 blocks, and to see each keep’s team and health. If you have Roughly Enough Items installed, each item’s Information page says what it does.

Everything is in the Clay Soldiers creative tab.

– From the players

This mod has been closely tested by rynn, who has sent in detailed reports, and many of their ideas are now part of it: following a team’s dye, leaf camouflage, the spread-out targeting, the speed setting, the drops setting, alliances, a king who keeps out of the fighting, the quiver, handing gear to one soldier, the Freeze Remote and squads that stack. They also tell stories with their battles. Three of their screenshots are in the gallery, and the whole album and their battle videos are here:

Screenshots and stories: https://imgur.com/a/screenshots-of-lego-stormtroopers-clay-soldiers-remoulded-minecraft-mod-wcc-album-01-uTCZ3Az
Battle 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olry6G5-WeQ
Battle 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfoDGUsMpBc
Battle 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXomdYLFL34
Battle 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XdI-QHUJww
Battle 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouIrVyBBDs4

– Works on servers

Client and server code are kept separate, so this runs on a dedicated server as well as in single player.

– Credit and license

The original Clay Soldiers Mod was created by Kodaichizero and maintained by SanAndreasP, SilverChiren and CliffracerX. It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0.

This project is an independent rebuild. It is not the official continuation and it is not endorsed by any of them. No code and no artwork from the original is included here. The mod’s own textures are drawn by code, and the keep uses Minecraft’s own stone brick, spruce and item textures, so a resource pack restyles it too.

Original mod: https://github.com/SanAndreaP/ClaySoldiersMod
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Released under that same license, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.