TTS AAR: Assyrians and Egyptians Clash Twice

/

With lockdown restrictions easing, I was able to get in a couple of games of To The Strongest, with the width of the wargames table operating as an automatic social distancing device.

Friend Bevan and I decided to use the Egyptians and Assyrians: we’d have two games, keeping the terrain constant, swapping sides for the second game.

We opened with me commanding the Assyrians.

The Assyrian cavalry was massed on the right wing

I deployed in very much a traditional way: infantry in the centre, mounted troops on the wings. Wary of all the Egyptian light chariot units, my plan was to keep my line very much together and advance just into bowshot as one entity, aiming to concentrate fire from several units on any Egyptian lights that came into range and relying on the fact that one kill would knock one out.

The Egyptians massed all their chariots on their left wing, spreading their infantry across the battlefield from there. One thing I did immediately notice was that there were an awful lot of Egyptians on the table: a consequence of my smaller numbers of heavier, more veteran troops.

As the game began, the Egyptian chariots in front of my left wing faltered: apparently refusing to move until some bizarre religious rite had been fulfilled. This allowed me to advance forward so the flank of my line was protected by a piece of impassable ground.

The Egyptian chariots say “no”!

Eventually they did start to move forward. Well, some of them did. Bevan’s Guard Chariots turned smartly to their left and attempted the old switcheroo: heading for the other side of the battlefield. Although sometimes a successful ploy, this time it wasn’t. All that happened was that his elite troops spent the entire game shifting from right to left and never saw any action at all!

“Why not?” I hear you cry, “It can’t have taken that long to traverse the field!”. Correct, but in the meantime his other chariots had moved forward piecemeal and, as I had hoped, I was able to wipe them out with bowfire one by one. This left the Egyptian right wing hanging, with my veteran heavy chariots ready to pounce like the wolf upon the fold, to use an apt analogy. Bevan ordered a general retreat before this could happen!

The situation just before the end. Imagine the Egyptian chariots you can see at the top of the picture are no more, and my heavy chariots have swung round to flank the Egyptian line. The other Egyptian chariots are out of shot off to the right somewhere.

Game Two

For game two, I took the Egyptians. I deployed my chariots in a long line across the centre of the battlefield with my infantry in columns on either side. My plan was to advance together, shoot the enemy with my bows, and then have the infantry curl in from either side as he chased my evading light chariots.

Lure them into the centre, curl in from the sides.

What can I say except for the fact that it almost worked!

This was a terrific game that went on right to the point where both sides had only three victory coins left each. Both sides lost their camps, and both sides had many chances to finally polish the enemy off. In the end, Bevan gained the advantage, finishing me off by killing my last chariot unit with general attached.

My deployment was good, but I didn’t quite manage the infantry-curl-rounds correctly, being a little late on both sides i.e. I’d use this tactic again, but get the infantry into action a bit sooner.

Brilliant game, though!

Pharoah and the Shardana Royal Guard go into action

Robert Avery

Two Games of TTS...

/

…which almost never happened?

Why? I hear you ask. What could keep the man from his beloved wargaming?

An intruder, that’s what: an alien beast that has taken up residence in my wargaming room.

When I agreed that the family could get a dog, I made it clear that I wanted a good-sized, rough ‘n’ ready working dog. As you can see, I got exactly what I wanted. She’s a pedigree too, and one who delights in the name Irma Daydream Belle-ever, or Bella for short.

But back to wargaming…and with the space where my tables go filled with all sorts of doggy paraphernalia, I had to de-camp to the sitting room and go To The Strongest rather than my intended I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum.

With everything having to be shipped into the room as opposed to being immediately available , I decided to try my reconstructed 100YW English army: mounted knights, dismounted knights, longbows and billmen. K. would take the Sarmatians: neatly proxied by the Sassanid Persians.

For the first game, I made the classic “new army” mistake and forgot to consider how the army acted historically. As I’d rather foolishly put my cannon into the same brigade as the mounted knights, I placed them in the centre of the table, with battles consisting of a mix of dismounted knights, longbows and billmen on the flanks.

The Sarmatians took the initiative, swept forward, and basically defeated each battle as three separate encounters. Yes, I had plenty of missile-armed troops, but I just couldn’t get the concentration of fire I needed to halt the enemy heavy cavalry, who then swept in and lance-d my troops to death.

A foolish deployment!

I had learnt my lesson for game two, and set up in the traditional “Agincourt” fashion: archers in the middle, with the two battles next to each other for mutual support, with the melee troops on the flanks, and my mounted knights grouped on one side for a decisive flank attack.

This worked much better. As the Sarmatians advanced somewhat unevenly, I was able to target each unit in turn, hammering them with bow and cannon fire. By the time they had reached my line, they were already down three units, and natural attrition in melee, even on a one-for-one basis, gave me the victory, especially as the cannon had neatly taken the head off one of his generals!

A couple of good games (despite the change of location!) and a valuable lesson re-learnt: go historical with your tactics!

Two Games of To The Strongest

/

Another two lockdown games of To The Strongest with Daughter#1’s boyfriend, who is staying with us for the duration.

This time we ditched any pretense of involving the distaff side of the family: leaving them to watch The Queen’s Corgis on Netflix or Amazon or one of the other multiple streaming services that we seem to have adopted over the past few months, as we men got down to some serious gaming.

As this was our third session of TTS, I wanted K. to experience something a little different to the largely “deep units on both sides” games that we’d been playing so far. I therefore mocked up a Sarmatian army from my Sassanid Persians: four units of veteran heavy cavalry with lance and bow represented by cataphracts (represented by, not counting as!) and four units of standard heavy cavalry with lance and bow represented by clibinarii. There was also a unit of horse archers in there somewhere too.

K would take a Syracusan army: a core of four Hoplite units, one bodyguard; a mercenary command with a couple of units of Celts; and then a sprinkling of light infantry and raw cavalry to add flavour. It was, I explained, the first time that the Cretan Archers (see post from a couple of days ago) had been on the tabletop, so he was to expect them to perform extremely badly indeed!

“Why are all your men on that side of the battlefield?”

We deployed our troops, and K immediately noticed that I had heavily weighted my left flank, leaving many of his units with an open battlefield in front of them. He queried why I had done so, and I kindly explained that he would find out in a few minutes.

The reason, of course, was that I was going to try and smash his weak right flank to pieces and then wheel round and roll up his line like a yoga mat before his slow, left-flank units could get in on the action.

The first phase of my plan went, well, according to plan: one command of veterans and one command of standard cavalry did indeed clear K’s right flank from the table, leaving things looking like this:

Tough love!

Some of you might suggest that it was perhaps a little harsh of me to take advantage of the lad’s inexperience in this way, but I did explain exactly what I had planned and what I thought was going to happen as I did it: making sure that he would understand what was going on and be able to either counter or employ the same tactic in the future.

Back to the battle.

As a command of clibinarii duly held off his rampaging Celtic mercenaries, my cavalry duly wheeled round and, in text book fashion, slammed into his flank and, in one unit’s case, went for his camp.

Cretan Archers fulfilling their first-game destiny

Syracuse has fallen!

K began shedding victory coins right, left and centre, and the day was soon mine.

Game Two

As that game hadn’t taken very long, we swapped sides and prepared to do battle again.

I was expecting K to try and copy my refused flank tactic of last time, so determined that I would use an advance in echelon tactic to try and disrupt his plans. As it happened, K deployed his men evenly over his side of the table, so after I had made my first move, the battlefield looked like this:

On his right flank, K advanced his cavalry forward to meet the two units of Celts coming towards him over the hill. This left his horse archers to hold off the mercenary Greek cavalry coming through the pass.

This turned out to be a bit of a mistake as, admittedly with a bit of luck, my cavalry rapidly dispersed his light horse and found themselves in a fantastic position on the flank of one of his commands.

By rights, his horse should have been able to turn to face me, and then a normal face-to-face combat would have occurred, but K managed to draw not one, not two, but three Aces in succession for activation: his horse weren’t moving anywhere!

By rights, I should then have been able to crash into his flank and roll up both units rather pleasingly before going on to sack his camp: seven of his nine victory coins should have been mine. Again, however, a weird series of cards meant that his cavalry, although they wouldn’t turn to face me, were able to hold me off for the duration of all his Aces. I did eventually destroy both units, but not before events on the rest of the field decided the day.

Battle was then generally joined across the rest of both lines, with K’s lance armed cavalry attacks compensating for the depth of my foot units.

the first cut is always the deepest!

I kept expecting my horse to roll up his cavalry and win the game but, as I said above, it kept failing to happen, and gradually my foot units began to lose the day. A lost general sealed my fate, and the turn after my horse had finally rolled up those cavalry at the back, I lost one victory coin too many and the day was K’s: a grinding triumph for the Sarmations.

K was naturally chuffed to bits to get his first victory. The only thing that now puzzles me is where he’s going to sleep tonight…

AAR: Smash of the Titans!

/

So #1 Daughter’s boyfriend had been roped into cooking the Easter Roast, which left me no-one to play with except for #2 Daughter.

She felt that she could manage another battle, but only if it had “monsters and aliens and stuff” in it.

Not a problem my dearest fruit of my loins: time to make To The Strongest literally fantastic by breaking out my Legendary Greek figures.

I would play the Sumerians, #2 Daughter would take the part of Poseidon leading a contingent of Hoplite Greeks spiced up with few “monsters…” etc.

In effect, this meant that she fielded (nearest to furthest in the picture above) a unit of Pegasus horse that could ignore terrain penalties; two units of Centaur cavalry (one horse archers, one cavalry); a unit of Minotaurs counting as axemen; and two units of monsters: the Hydra, the Erymanthian Boar, the Chimera, and the Medusa (treated as elephants).

The Sumerians remained unphased by this display of divine horrors:

The Battle Begins

The game began with one of those weird series of multiple Aces appearing on each side, with the result that although the lines crept slightly closer together, the only interesting event was the Hydra and Chimera bounding forward to attach the Sumerian left flank.

Very sensibly, the slingers ran for it…and here #2 Daughter made a mistake. Instead of crashing through the poor terrain, or lurking in its lee, the Hydra and Chimera decided to go round it. Not being very manoeuverable, however, they got stuck with their rear ends sticking out!

This would prove to be a very inviting target for the, er, pink Sumerian spearblock, and they would eventually charge the two monsters in the rear and do enough damage to send them straight off the table, therefore negating the regenerative abilities that I had assigned to both (automatically regenerate from disordered when activated).

The two battlelines then got on with the business of smashing into each other, each advancing forward as fast as they could.

As Sumerian commander, I sent in my battlecars first: determined to soften the Legendary Greeks up a bit before committing my infantry.

This was all going nicely, with the Centaur horse archers eradicated when they failed to evade, but I had forgotten about the terrain-ignoring Pegasus cavalry: which snuck around my flank and threatened to roll up my entire line!

Fortunately, great Zeus was obviously determined to make sure that his somewhat soggy brother was humiliated, and the flank charge only managed to KO one unit of battlecars before a spear block managed to get forward fast enough to force the flying horses to evade beyond the trees.

Unfortunately, the other two units of battlecars believed in a different divine panoply, and were destroyed by the Hoplite unit backed by Poseidon himself and, a bit unexpectedly, the Centaur cavalry. Things were looking a bit dicey on my right flank, but I had the infantry brigade behind ready to stabilise the situation.

The action now swung to the other side of the field, where the Minotaurs had been easily dismissed: obviously their tales of martial prowess were complete bull! I had, however, lost my Axemen, so the situation looked like this:

Zeus intervened again, and somehow I managed to dispose of the Medusa and the Boar, and get my spearmen back across the field and into the rear of what had been the Minotaur-led Hoplites.

Their loss proved too much for the Legendary Greeks to take, and the field of glory was mine.

Aftermath

A most enjoyable game which, I must confess, that I won by sheer luck of the cards. #2 Daughter, who is not yet old enough to drive, made only one tactical error, at the beginning, and otherwise came close to annihilating an entire flank which would, I think have given her victory. As it was, I was only one coin behind her in terms of defeat.

I think I might actually make a serious attempt to define some characteristics for the Legendary Greeks, if only because it’s nice to get some unusual figures on the tabletop.

Right, off to the Temple of Zeus to give thanks…

A Second Lockdown Game of To The Strongest

/

We’re still in coronavirus lockdown in the UK: banned from leaving the house except for essential trips. For most people, that means no gaming or, at best, some kind of online get together. I, however, am lucky enough to have daughter number one’s boyfriend staying with us for the duration: lucky because (1) he likes to cook and (2) he has discovered that he enjoys wargaming.

Our second game was To The Strongest again: it’s grid-based tabletop and simple-yet-subtle mechanics make it ideal for a new gamer to pick up quickly.

This time, I would take a Gallic army consisting of large amounts of hairy-arsed Celtic warriors and face off against an Athenian Greek Hoplite army consisting of large amounts of, well, hoplites.

Gauls

Greeks

The Greeks set up first: heavily weighting their right flank. At this point I realised that perhaps I should have mentioned to my novice opponent that hoplites can’t move diagonally to the left, but decided to just ignore that rule for the moment.

My Gauls were fairly evenly spaced out, but my noble cavalry were on the left i.e. facing two unit of hoplites with very sharp pointy spears! This was no good, so I decided to try a switcheroo gambit and move my cavalry right over to the other side of the field, leaving behind the warband that accompanied them.

The Switcheroo Begins

This would hopefully isolate his two units of hoplites on the far side of the table.

Meanwhile, both battle lines lurched towards each other, the Greeks behind a protective screen of light infantry.

The game then developed into three different battles.

On my left flank, the single warband faced off against the two hoplite units who had actually managed to advance forward much faster than I had expected. Although my warband did achieve one flank attack, this was largely unsuccessful, and I was soon under a lot of pressure as the Greeks got themselves sorted out and threatened to overwhelm me with the two-on-one advantage that they had.

In the centre, meanwhile, the main bodies of the two armies came together in a series of thumping clashes: deep unit versus deep unit. The Greeks took full advantage of their light infantry: using them either to soften the Celts up before contact, or to retreat behind if they suffered a disorder. The advantage would swing backwards and forwards between the two sides throughout the rest of the battle.

On my right flank, my light infantry had managed to see off his horse archers, but a warband was having real difficulty dispatching the rubbish Greek cavalry. Fortunately, my cavalry arrived after their pell-mell gallop across the back of the battlefield, and prepared to sweep all before them as they rounded the corner of some rocks and lined up on the Greek battle line’s flanks.

All that stood between them and certain victory was the lone unit of Greek peltasts that, so far, had hung back and stayed out of trouble.

Cavalry, bottom right, lined up to roll up the Greek line. Only the peltasts are in the way.

Could I get through the peltasts? Not in a month of Sundays! My grand plan blocked by a unit of men who only thought they weren’t light infantry!

Anyhow, that meant that although I had won the right flank, I was losing the left flank, and honours were just about even in the centre. A Greek hoplite unit finally broke through my line and captured my camp, one of my warbands threatened to do the same to the Athenian camp. Units were breaking on either side until we both had just two coins left: the next unit to break would decide the game.

It was the Greeks who had the initiative. I was in real trouble on my left flank, with a couple of double-disordered warbands who would go with one more hit. My opponent reached for his pack of cards: all he needed to do was to send his men in diagonally to hit me: 2+ to activate becomes 3+ for a difficult move becomes 4+ because your hoplite units are deep.

So that was the end of the Greek offensive and, on my subsequent turn, I managed to finally kill the peltasts and win the game!

Aftermath

Another great game of TTS, with the daughter’s boyfriend coming within Ames Ace of beating me.

Here’s a complete gallery of the game:

Robert Avery

A Right Result!

/

So here we all are stuck under lockdown and unable to go out. No wargaming clubs are open, no wargaming friends can come round: what on earth is one to do.

Well I have had a right result.

Daughter number one came back from university just before lockdown and brought her boyfriend with him as a house guest for a couple of months (he lives abroad normally, but can’t get home at the moment). This is not a bad thing: we have plenty of room and he, unlike me, likes cooking. Even better, the kids were so desperate for entertainment yesterday that they agreed to have a battle: daughter number one and boyfriend on one side; daughter number two and I on the other.

I chose the To The Strongest rules for Ancients as it’s probably the easiest introduction to wargaming for beginners: no measuring, no dice, simple grid-based movement and combat rules etc. D2 and I took the Neo-Sumerians, D1 and BF took the Assyrians.

Neo-Sumerian Battle Line

This was an interesting clash: lots of slow-moving, poor quality Sumerians versus small numbers of deadly, fast-moving Assyrians.

Each side chose to put their heavy chariots on the right flank, so we rapidly got to a situation where the centre was a tie and each side’s right flank was winning and left flank was losing.

The advantage then swung back and forth with both sides ending up with only two coins each i.e. one more unit lost would mean an overall loss. As it happens, one of the Sumerian heavy onager units managed to knock out an Assyrian cavalry unit and the game was ours!

And the right result?

Not the win, funnily enough, but the fact that D1’s boyfriend really enjoyed himself and declared an interest in playing more battles. Well, if we’re stuck together for another ten weeks, his wishes are going to be more than fulfilled! A convert!

Here are some more pictures of the game:

First Painting of 2020

/

If you’re a regular visitor to this page, then you’ll know that I have recently built a 15mm Sumerian army using Museum Miniatures’ superb “Z Range” of CAD-designed figures.

I was browsing their website wondering whether to go for their Z-range Classical Indians when I noticed that they had also released some Z-range Greek Hoplites. Now I need at least another three Hoplite spear blocks, each 48 figures strong. I actually have 48 figures from another manufacturer waiting to be painted, but doing two of the blocks towards the end of last year (i.e. 96 Hoplites) had quite put me off painting them. Those cuirasses take ages to do properly.

So I had a look and noticed that Museum produced a set of Hoplites with no clothes on and another with only a little kilt to cover their, er, dignity. Ideal: Z-range figures with no cuirass to paint! One odd thing: the Hoplites come in mixed packs of kneeling, thrusting and standing i.e. you can’t buy 48 of the same pose. Maybe I could have rung up and seen whether I could have had some custom homogeneous packs run up for me, but I thought I’d give the mixed unit a go.

Hmmm…not sure.

Good points: easy and quick to paint up, nicely animated, shield transfers from Little Big Man Studios are superb.

Bad points: I prefer my Hoplite blocks to have all the same pose, and somehow the kilts made me paint everything in prime colours instead of varying the crests and kilt colours more. At least my daughter likes my “rainbow Hoplites”!

Feel free to let me know what you think. I still need another couple of Hoplite blocks, and the Museum Miniatures ‘nearly nude’ range does make it easy to do…

An Afternoon of "To The Strongest"

/

Second weekend of the year and I’ve managed to get in an afternoon of “To The Strongest”.

Bevan and I managed two games. The first was a grinding clash between two quite similar armies: I played the Akkadians, Bevan took an Athenian Hoplite force. Each side had a core of a number of deep blocks of close-formed infantry (Spearmen for the Akkadians, slightly superior Hoplites for the Athenians); but the Akkadians had their veteran four-onager heavy chariots plus Royal Bodyguard axe- and bowmen versus a mix of low quality cavalry and lights for the Greeks.

As mentioned, the game was a truly grinding clash. The Akkadian chariots, out on their right wing, threatened to curl around the Athenian left flank, but began the game seemingly unable to move. This meant that the Greeks could come forward and join a general line-against-line engagement that slowly started to bow the Akkadian battle line backwards.

But somehow the Akkadians held on. The Royal Bodyguard axemen did stirring work, the line began to straighten slightly, and then the heavy chariots finally got going and smashed in from the right. In the end, this was a colossal victory for the Akkadians, who didn’t lose a single unit and managed to capture the Greek camp. Here are some pictures:

For the second game, I took the Ancient Britons, with Bevan playing the Sassanid Persians.

The Brits had a huge chunk of (somewhat unwieldy) warriors in the centre of the field, and large numbers of light chariots/cavalry and infantry on each wing…so many lights, in fact, that (much to Bevan’s surprise) his all-horse Sassanids were matched in terms of scouting points.

Looking at the set up, I was confident of victory: there was no way his incredibly small force was going to beat the Ancient British steamroller!

Unfortunately, Bevan and the Persians begged to differ, and what followed was the dissection of my army with surgical precision. First my lights were stripped away unit by unit as I struggled to get my warriors moving, and then enough of those warriors that did move were beaten for me to lose (given that I’d lost a lot of coins through my lights). It was a superb demonstration of how to use a horse archer and cataphract based army.

Fortunately I did manage to kill at least one of his units, so technically the afternoon as a whole was to my advantage, but the way my Brits were annihilated didn’t make it feel so!

Here are some more pictures:

Three Games of To The Strongest

/

Off to friend Bevan’s house for an afternoon of To The Strongest. Playing at 130 points a side (the standard for the World Championships) you can easily get three games into one afternoon session.

My first game was commanding a longbow-heavy English HYW army against an impressively painted Viking army.

The Vikings rushed forward as fast as they could, eager to get into hand-to-hand with my massed archers. I was equally eager to stop them doing so, so with my Knights and Billmen protecting my left flank, I sat back in the centre and sent flight after flight of arrows into the advancing hordes.

This tactic worked quite nicely, so by the time his men actually got up to my battle line, many of his units had already taken one or two hits (three would remove them from the table). That’s when John discovered that my archers were all veterans with extra two-handed cutting weapons: just right for finishing off already-pin-cushioned Viking units! A victory for me.

The next game promised to be very interesting: it was time for a bit of civil war as I used the same army as in game one but now faced another English HYW army.

Our forces were thus very similar, except for the fact that Steve, my opponent, had two longbow and one dismounted knight units in each of his foot brigades rather than the three longbow units that I had. Steve’s army make up was thus actually more historically accurate than mine, with the added difference that his longbowmen were all standard types, giving him a slightly bigger headcount.

I decided to adopt the same basic tactics as last time i.e. my archers would shoot from distance whilst the heavies protected my left flank. Steve adopted a similar deployment, so I thought it was all going to be about who had the best luck with the cards (TTS has playing card based game mechanics).

In the end, however, that’s not how it worked out. In the centre, Steve advanced his melee foot units towards my line, giving me the opportunity to target each one individually with my longbows. This generally resulted in them disappearing from the table, meaning that when the rest of our troops did clash, I only had to win a third of the combats to win the game (the heavies just faced each other, manoeuvring for some kind of positional advantage, throughout). A second victory.

I fancied a change for my final game, so volunteered to take the Vikings, this time facing Peter and his Ancient Britons. This, again, was two quite similar armies, with the only real difference between them being the British light chariots/horse.

And it was indeed the light chariots/horse that made a difference. I made a terrible mistake early on in the game by leaving my right flank floating. This allowed Peter to get a couple of units of light horse in on my flanks, disordering a couple of my Hyrd units. This allowed his warriors to hit them at a distinct advantage, my right flank crumpled, and my opponent neatly rolled me up on the right and in the centre! Another nice tactic that Peter used was to refuse his own right flank, meaning that any units I had there (one third of my army) spent the entire game chasing after contact with the any enemy units. The end result was a fairly catastrophic loss!

So all in all a great afternoon’s gaming. Thanks to Bevan, John, Steve and Peter.

Sumerians Finally Hit The Tabletop!

/

A great start to my Xmas holiday with an afternoon of gaming To The Strongest, so also a chance to get the Sumerians that I have been so assiduously painting over the last few months onto the tabletop.

First off was an encounter with the Ancient Britons. Weird how I would never think of playing a non-contemporaneous battle when playing WW2, but accept it as normal for the Ancient period. Doubtless the Brits were on holiday, and when asked where they wanted to go, just replied “Errr…”

Moving swiftly onwards, I had to deploy first, so it was chariots on the left, militia in the middle, and good troops on the right. Opposite me, the Brits had adopted a very traditional deployment: chariots and light horse on the wings, infantry in the middle.

In a nutshell, the battle went as follows. The Britons opened the game by moving forward really quickly. I responded by sending my chariots forward on the left, but they spent just about the whole game dealing with his light chariots and horse, who just wouldn’t stay still long enough to be properly mullered. On the right, the same thing happened with my Royal Guard axemen. I tied his chariots up, but that was all. That left the infantry in the middle to win or lose the battle. My troops were largely militia raw troops, his were screaming barbarians: I lost!

So on to a second battle, where although the Ancient Brits were unchanged, I switched my Dynastic Sumerians into the slightly more advanced Akkadians. With no raw militia, I was slightly more confident of success but my opponent, Bevan, was very clever and tactically astute: all his light chariots and horse went on one flank, whilst his infantry advanced in echelon towards me.

Those of you who are equally tactically astute will of course know exactly what happened next. His light chariots swarmed all over my ponderous battlecarts: if I chased one, it evaded, and then the others attacked my flanks and so on! Meanwhile my infantry just couldn’t get a grip on his foot and found themselves always facing two units or a threat from a flank. I lost again, and lost badly!

Our final game saw me using the Akkadians again, but this time facing another geo-anachronistic foe: a Pyrrhic army composed mostly of Hoplites. This was more my type of opponent: no hordes of light chariots to annoy me.

I deployed with my battle carts facing his cavalry on my right, my Household Axemen and Bowmen facing his elephants on the left, and a straight up infantry face off in the middle.

My battle carts literally smashed his cavalry from the field (apart from a nasty charge from his lancers), and then proceeded to take his left hand camp, with the other only a turn away from falling as well. On the other wing, my bowmen saw off his elephants without too much difficulty, which left an infantry clash in the middle. This was more even, with the fortunes of war swinging backwards and forwards. My successes on the wings, however, meant that although we each lost the same amount of infantry units in the centre, his army lost its morale first.

So two losses and one win for the first Sumerian outing: not a bad performance. Here are some more pictures of the day’s gaming:

Ancient, Ancient British!

/

I play To The Strongest in 15mm, but on a 28mm-sized grid. I love the look of the huge armies that you have to field to fill the space.

The problem, of course, is that you have to have the aforementioned huge armies in order to play and if, like me, your collection was gathered to play (my own) Vis Bellica rules, then you find yourself short of lots of figures.

Three of my existing chariots

No problem, I hear you cry: an excellent excuse to buy more…and indeed it is. So there I was, mooching around Warfare, wondering whether to buy the final pack of Ancient British chariots that I needed to complete my 130 point army when I saw a chap selling painted Ancient British (or Gallic etc) figures, including chariots.

Now these figures were old, and painted in quite a basic style, but on inquiry were being sold for only £1 per chariot. Hmmm…four new chariots at about £5 each which I then have to paint, base etc, or just buy four of these and be done.

Well, I prefer to paint my own stuff, but then I looked down at these poor figures, all jumbled together in a box, suffering a bit from lead rot (which shows you how old they were) and thought “no, I won’t buy new, I’ll give these old veterans a new home”. After all, figures are not just for Christmas, they are for life!

So here they are: four ancient Ancient British chariots that look more like 20mm than 15mm; are basically painted (although shroffed up a bit by me); are suffering from lead rot (hence the very heavy coat of shiny car lacquer I’ve given them): but given a new home and a new lease of life. Only a shame I couldn’t have taken them all…

Second Sumerian Spear Block

/

Here’s the second of the six spear blocks that I need to field a To The Strongest Sumerian army in the style of my ancients collection.

Once again these are the almost unbelievably detailed 15mm Museum Miniatures figures painted (all except the bronze) with the new GW Contrast paints. I did the whole lot in one weekend, averaging about 45 minutes for 12 figures.

Only another four blocks to go!

First 15mm Sumerian Spear Block Finished

/

I’ve already posted pics of half of the spear block, here’s the block now I’ve added the other half:

I am really happy with these. The speed that you can achieve a detailed paint job with Citadel contrast paints is extraordinary. I know I sound a bit like a fan boy, but I painted one row of these (i.e. 12 figures) from start to finish in about forty minutes: a miracle, and such a relief when you have 288 to paint in all.

I’m not 100% sold on having the command figures in the middle of the second row, but it certainly makes for a striking unit. Only another five spear blocks to go!

Incidentally, CP Models are now doing a 28mm version of the above. They are using the same 3D printing files, so the figures are identical…just bigger! They look amazing:

First of the Sumerians

/

When I first saw the new Museum Miniatures Sumerians, I knew I just had to get some. Designed by CAD, they looked absolutely amazing.

The thing with Sumerians, however, is that you need to have an awful lot of them: to play To The Strongest (my current system of choice for Ancients) you need five or six spear blocks, with each spear block containing (the way I base) 48 figures. That’s 288 infantry: a significant investment in both money, and perhaps more significantly, time.

So a test unit was called for: 48 figures were ordered i.e. one spear block’s worth.

This was to be a double test: one for the figures themselves, and the second for the new Citadel Contrast paints I keep banging on about. I couldn’t face painting 288 figures my normal way (basecoat, wash, highlight i.e. paint each figure three times) but maybe I could if I only had to paint each figure once.

Sold!

The figures are as good as promised, and the paint as well. To emphasise again, the flesh, kilts, spear shafts, cloaks and shields are painted with one coat of a Contrast paint each. Only the bronze is double-painted, but that’s using non-Contrast paints.

Right, once more into the breach: only 264 spearmen to go!

TTS Battle Day: Wars of the Roses

/

Time for another day of To The Strongest: with friend Neil bringing over his vast collection of 28mm Wars of the Roses figures for us to play with. These are all professionally painted Perry Miniatures plastics, including some hobelars specially put together for the occasion.

We managed three games in all.

The first, with me playing Yorkshire, was a nail-biting backwards-and-forwards kind of game where either side could have triumphed. As it happened, my mounted Later Knights, accompanied by Richard of York himself, suddenly managed to burst through the enemy battle line and find the way open to looting the Lancastrian camps. A hard fought victory.

The second, with me now playing the noble house of Lancaster, was again looking close. The two main lines had clashed in the centre of the field, and the luck was swaying backwards and forwards, when each sides’ one unit of Later-Knights-plus-Royal-Personage charged into each other. Luck was obviously on my side, as Richard of York (my erstwhile self but now enemy commander!) was wounded and carried from the field. This gave me the edge and gradually the opposition crumbled. A narrow victory.

Onto the third game, with Neil making sure that I would play to win and not gift him a consolation victory…which just goes to show how little you can know about someone you have known for years! Play to win? I was playing to grind him into the mud! Anyhow, this was a very cagey game: very different to the previous clashes. Neil hung back, not really moving (annoyingly keeping his troops out of the range of my single cannon, the only one on the field) and waiting for me to make the play.

I edged forward, thinking that perhaps I could get a bit of advantage on the right hand side: maybe two archer units vs one, kill them, then try and curl around the edge of his now-slightly-decreased line. Neil read my intentions, however, and moved troops forward to counter. A clash began to develop, and one not in my favour. He moved more units in and my right flank was beginning to crumble, when both of us realised that he had now moved forward into cannon range. Bang went the gun and finished off a unit of Men At Arms, giving me the initiative. Neil sent forward his Household Knights and King to plug the gap and force me back onto the defensive…and then either bang went the gun again or in went my Household Knights (I can’t remember which) and off came the head of Richard of York again!

A horrible piece of luck for Neal which once again swung the game in my favour.: making it a three-victory whitewash to me.

A great day’s gaming, however, but an interesting demonstration of how a non-normal distribution game mechanic can swing a game in seconds. Oh, and Neil wants to know if anyone wants to buy two 28mm Wars of the Roses armies, one with the command figure slightly dented! Here are some pics:

TTS AAR: The Sasanids Ride Out!

/

The final game in my recent set with Neil was my Sasanid Persians versus, again, the Pyrrhics.

This promised to be quite interesting: an army composed of extra heavy cavalry and horse archers against a mostly spear and pike-armed force.

In the event, however, it turned out to be quite a mundane battle. My horse archers quickly got around his flanks and started shooing anything that moved. In the centre, I held back until his heavy foot advanced past a line of hills running down the centre of the battlefield, leaving only one unit each side to guard their flanks.

As the two main lines came together, the single unit of heavy clibanari that I had put with each horse-archer command was just coming into play, pinning his flank units in place as the lighter cavalry shot at and charged their flanks.

With his flanks crumbling, his main line getting nowhere, and horse-archer nipping at his Hoplites’ heels, Pyrrhus decided that discretion was the better part of valour and surrendered!

A workmanlike victory for the Sasanids.

Even More To The Strongest

/

More pictures from a recent day of To The Strongest gaming.

First game was a replay of the last: me and my Ancient Britons vs Neil and the Pyrrhics.

Unfortunately, this time he protected his flanks well, and kept his battle line very closely together. I tried the same tactics as before: warbands in the middle, outflank with the chariots, but this time just couldn’t get through.

On my left flank, he advanced as quickly as possible and used his cavalry to drive my chariots back until they were forced off table. His cavalry were then free to take one of my camps and then turn back towards the rear of my line. meanwhile, the elephants and lights on his left flank were doing exactly the same thing: drive my lights back with charges that might not actually connect, but do force my lights to evade and evade until they are no longer relevant to the main action.

In the centre, my infantry were held by his Hoplites and pikemen until his cavalry appeared in my rear…and that, as they say, was that!

A loss to the Ancient Britons.

Robert Avery

More To The Strongest

/

Just to leaven the flow of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum! battle reports that have been flowing through this site, here are some pictures of another day spent playing the Ancients ruleset To The Strongest.

One of the great things about the game is how fast it plays, so an afternoon’s gaming can often involve three games of TTS…and so it was the last time that friend Neil came around to play.

The action began with Neil playing a Pyrrhic army against my Ancient Britons. Not exactly contemporary or contemporaneous, but not spectacularly unbalanced either.

I placed my warbands in the middle of the field, and my massed chariots on either flank. Neil lined up his Hoplite and pikemen on his right flank, his cavalry in the middle, and his elephants and light infantry on his left wing.

Unfortunately for Neil, his Hoplites took too long to advance forward, which allowed me to engage and pin his centre whilst I sent a mass of chariots around behind his left flank. This led to me rapidly capturing his camps, and then threaten the rear of his main line: a victory to me.

Here are some more pictures of the game:

TTS Battle Day Game 3

/

Onto the third battle of the three that took place as part of a TTS battle day with friend Bevan. Regular visitors will know that by this time I was down two-nil, so rather keen to finish the day with a victory! The sides would be Pyrrhic (played by Bevan) and Ancient British (played by me).

The Ancient Brits are a favourite of mine: in fact, they were the army I used to use when I played WRG 6th competitions in 28mm some thirty years ago…when your chariots were known as the Ancient British Panzer Division.

Under TTS, the Ancient British have an even greater proportion of their army as light chariots than under WRG 6th, so I decided to keep things very simple and employ that well known AncBrit tactic known as “the horns of the Highland Cow”!

This actually worked surprisingly well. My light troops on either flank overwhelmed his light troops through sheer weight of numbers and, most pleasingly, before his Hoplites could start trying to chew through my warbands.

As my chariots curled around onto his rear, the Pyrrhics realised that this was not going to be a Pyrrhic victory so much as a Pyrrhic disaster, and surrendered.

End of the day score: Bevan - 2, Me - 1 .

A great days gaming with what is a delightful little rule set!

TTS Battle Day Game 2

/

Game two of our To The Strongest battle day involved using Bevan’s collection of 28mm medievals: a clash between the Feudal French and the Feudal English.

The sides were fairly homogenous: each consisting of a core of Knights supported by some missile shooting peasants…longbows for the English, crossbows for the French. The English also had a couple of units of billmen.

We used the terrain rules as laid out in the book, which led to quite an unusual battlefield and both sides squatting opposite each other in one corner.

Bevan had warned me that TTS medieval was very little about tactics and more about just smashing into each other and trying to make sense of the resultant carnage, and he was proved quite right.

Initially, however, I did try something quite tactical: marching a unit of knights up the side of the forest on my left flank and attempting to curve round the end and hit some English infantry in the flank. This almost worked, but was stymied by the cards and some defensive advances by the rest of Bevan’s army which, if you want the technicalities, put my advancing knights into another unit’s Zone of Control (there’s a lot of ZOC-ing in TTS!) and therefore stopping them completing their mission.

After that failed, it was my turn to receive an English charge, one that punched through my line as the perfidious English aimed themselves at some mercenary crossbowmen rather than rising to the chivalric challenge posed by my knights. This lead to a general breakdown of everything into a smashing, crashing melee from which both sides emerged with just one or two victory coins left apiece.

It was then just a matter of who broke another unit first…with Bevan taking the honours as another unit of crossbowmen fell to an armoured steamroller.

A great, fun game that I look forwards to repeating next time we play.

Two-nil to Bevan, with one game to go.