Reclaiming Romans

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Regular visitors to the site will know that I am currently using a borrowed 28mm Early Imperial Roman army on this year’s To The Strongest competition circuit. This is because my collection is 15mm but there are no 15mm competitions, and I really didn’t want to go to the time and trouble of assembling a whole 28mm army just for that.

All that has, however, now changed, as friend Si gave me (literally) a basket of battered old 28mm Romans that had been cluttering up his place for far too long. It took quite a bit of re-painting, re-arming and re-basing, but my Romans, as opposed to my borrowed Romans, will be making their debut at SELWG this weekend.

The first stage when starting a project like this is to work out what you have actually got: how many complete units you can make from what you’ve been given, and what you’ll need to bring them up to scratch. With the Romans, I needed a box full of pila, some 15mm ECW pikes that would substitute as lances for the equites contariorum, and a whole load of bases and flock.

Equites Cohortales

Equites Contariorum (note the 15mm ECW pikes used as lances)

Next is to remove everything from their existing bases. This is the messiest part of the process. I soak the bases in water for 24 hours minimum (I use the plastic cases that tufts come in: they are just deep enough so I have to use just the right amount of water) after which you will find that most figures will just pop off the bases no problem. With the Romans, someone had used some kind of plaster to build up the bases, so an old flat head screwdriver was also needed to assist in the popping!

Scrape the bases clean of all soaking flock (and plaster crumbs!) and make sure all the figures stand upright on their own. Horses often need their hooves glued back onto bases after breakages, and it can be a delicate process to ease thin weapons, poles etc back into shape. Here’s also where you fix up each individual figure with a new weapon if necessary: trying to match the weapons you don’t need to fix on other figures in the unit.

legionaries

legionaries (note the need to have two different shield types , one for each rank)

Then it’s time to re-paint all the chipped bits. I try to do no more than touch up existing paint jobs as I like to celebrate the efforts of the original painter, but sometimes you’ll need to re-undercoat a section and start again. You’ll need a wide variety of paints for this as you can’t guarantee that the OP used the same paint sets you do!

Faces and hands are key here: a highlight in a lighter flesh tone can make all the difference. I also like my Roman generals to be wearing purple as a main colour, so I did re-paint the command figures’ cloaks or tunic to reflect that.

commanders: re-purpled!

Finally it’s a re-base. A brilliant base can make figures with even the most average of paint jobs look really good, but I must confess that as these Romans aren’t core to my collection, I went with a simple grass flock scheme. That matches what I did with the borrowed army, so I needed them all to look the same as I’ll be using a combination of old and new together on the tabletop.

So there you have it: about half the figures I need to substitute for the borrowed. My thanks to Si for his most generous gift, and let’s see how the “new” figures do on Saturday!

Auxiliaries

Lanciarii

I think i probably made a mistake here. These are meant to be auxiliaries, but I’ve re-armed them with pila, which makes them legionaries. The shields are Auxiliary, the command figures are Legionary: I think I’ll have to call them a unit that could be one or the other dependent on need!

TTS AAR: Chalgrove World's: Game Four

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My final battle was a “civil war” clash against another Early Imperial Roman army commanded by Sid B.

Our armies were, however, subtly different. Mine, mainly due to a shortage of figures, was relatively small and elite whereas Sid’s was larger and had more Auxilia versus Legionaries. As it happened, four of the sixteen armies on the day were Roman (three Early Imperials and one Middle Imperials) which was apparently quite unusual as the recent trend has been for lance-armed cavalry armies to dominate the lists.

Unfortunately I don’t have a very detailed account of the game as such was the tension in this climactic game that I forgot to take any pictures, or at least forgot to take any pictures until what the end result was going to be had become clear.

I do remember that our two lines advanced towards each other, with Sid’s men slightly ahead of mine as a poor run of cards for movement had meant my left wing had hung behind.

The lines then clashed, with disastrous results for my troops. As Sid said at the time: Rob’s Romans had all the right cards, just not in the right order! Worse, my lights had again failed to hold the camps properly (that’s twice in a row after a long run of success) and I was soon down to my last few coins. To be fair to Sid, however, he played a superb game: not making any mistakes and taking full advantage of every situation.

Fortunately the Praetorians saved me from a complete whitewash: charging up a hill in the final turn of the game to wipe out the enemy I Cohort and capturing their eagle…but this was too little, too late and I lost 7-13.

As the World’s is run on a Swiss Chess style system (the players with the highest cumulative scores fight each other each round, albeit with adjustments to avoid playing the same person twice) this unfortunately bounced me down to 4th place in the tournament overall.

A good result with two outright wins, one winning draw and one outright loss, but slightly frustrating as the ultimate prize had seemed to be within my grasp. As it was, Sid won the tournament, so really well done to him: couldn’t have happened to a nicer chap!

So in all a great day’s play. I would highly recommend entering all the To The Strongest tournaments that you can: all my four games were very convivial affairs with not an argument to be seen. Next year, 2024, the World’s are moving back to their original February date: that now being set for 24th February 2024, with a venue around the Chalgrove area (near Oxford). So put it in your calendar now and start getting your army ready: my Romans await you!

TTS AAR: Chalgrove World's: Game Three

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Those following recent posts will know that I went into game three with two outright victories under my cingulum militare.

That was great, but what was not so great is that the World Championships work on a modified Swiss Chess system, which means that after each round the two people with the top two scores fight each other, the people in third and fourth place fight each other etc. There are tweaks such as the fact that you don’t fight anyone who you’ve fought before, but the salient point here is that the better you do, the stronger opposition you face.

My third opponent was therefore one of the big beasts of the tournament scene: Peter R, fielding his Timurids. Peter has won many, many tournaments and would, in anyone’s books, be considered as the first seed if we were playing at Wimbledon. Gulp! My only consolation was the fact that I had actually beaten his Timurids before, in one of our semi-regular friendly games, although not with the Romans.

As mentioned in my previous post, this battle had an even more extraordinary start than the last one, where I went 8-0 up after only pulling about five cards…

I had set up my three camps in the bottom left hand corner of the field, guarded by the usual unit of light infantry. I had a couple of legionary units nearby for added security, but they are obviously usually needed elsewhere on the field. The lights (veteran auxilia sagittarrii) are, however, usually sufficient.

Not today.

In his first action of the game, Peter swept two units of light cavalry towards my camps, and with an extraordinary run of cards, killed the auxilia sagittarrii and took all three of my camps, meaning I was 0-10 down (losing 13 loses me the game) without having drawn more than one card - an Ace!

Disaster after one card!

Things were looking so appalling for me that Peter, with extraordinary generosity, even offered (twice) to re-start the game, but I turned down the offers: rules are rules and, if I was going to go down, I was going to go down fighting!

First things first: take back the camps…and take back the camps before losing another three coins (the equivalent of 1.5 units/generals).

As the Timurids only had two units of light cavalry there, it was actually fairly easy to do. One legionary unit marched backwards into one camp, one withdrew from the centre of the field and marched into another. That left one unit of enemy lights sandwiched between the two, and then destroyed next turn. Meanwhile, another unit of legionaries had chased the other enemy light cavalry unit off the table, and then halted to guard it’s probable re-entry point. You don’t want an enemy light cavalry unit unattended in your rear!

This was better, but had tied up three legionary units meaning that I only had two and the cavalry left to beat the vast majority of the Timurids in front of me.

Now those of you who watched England’s first match in this year’s Rugby World Cup, against Argentina, will have seen how losing a man to a red card early on it the game inspired the English team to play better than they have done for eighteen months and pull the game out of the bag, and so it was here with the Romans.

The cavalry finally proved their worth, killing an enemy general and some of the enemy horse, and the two remaining infantry cohorts proved positively unstoppable, also disposing of a couple of enemy units despite being heavily outnumbered. Suddenly the score was back to 10-3 in my favour, with several Timurid units disordered as well.

Now Peter proved what a canny player he is: with one eye on the clock, he retreated away from me as fast as he could meaning that as time was called, I had achieved what the system would call a winning draw at the aforementioned 10-3 rather than the 12-3 outright victory that should and would have followed had we continued.

An extraordinary game pulled back from the brink!

Yes, it was a pity I couldn’t get the decisive victory I wanted, but a winning draw after the start I’d had was nothing to complain about…and I would have had the victory had we continued.

On reflection (and we all know that Captain Hindsight has 20:20 vision) the Timurid success in my camps happened too soon for Peter to exploit. A turn later and the legionaries who rescued the camp would have been further from it and less able to do so, and the rest of his army would have been close enough to mine to expect to be able to kill the single unit needed to polish me off even if it cost him multiple units to do so.

Losing a general, a unit of veteran horse, and some more light horse to my first cavalry charge didn’t help either, and from then on I had his main force on the back foot on the right wing.

In the centre, he didn’t get the cards he needed to close with my infantry quickly enough to hit me when it counted and, anyway, when he did, it was veteran legionaries (presumably somewhat annoyed about having their personal possessions trampled by enemy lights!) waiting to cut them down.

A great game that neither Peter nor I will forget!

TTS AAR: Chalgrove World's: Game Two

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My second game of To The Strongest at the 2023 World Championship promised to be a lot more testing than the first. I was up against John L’s Medieval Russians: an all cavalry army.

There’s nothing the legions hate more than fighting an all cavalry army. The enemy lights stay out of range and harass you with missile fire or nip at your flanks and rear. The enemy heavies, who often have bows of their own, wait out of gladius-reach until you’re tired or overextended and then slam into you with lances. Not nice at all!

The game began with the Russians advancing rapidly towards my line. This put their cavalry on the right just within charge range of my cavalry. I duly sent in the Equites Alares and, somewhat luckily, immediately knocked one of his heavy cavalry units off the table. The subsequent morale checks led to two of his light units also fleeing the field, and opened up a huge hole in his line.

The Equites Contarium thundered through this hole and, led by the Roman cavalry commander, sacked the Russian camp. I had played about five cards and was immediately eight coins up!

The game then became a desperate attempt on my part to secure the other three coins I needed to finish him off whilst John tried everything he could to rescue the situation.

In the end I ended up losing three units and a general (I told you these cavalry armies are hard for the Romans to beat) before I could finally squish a deep unit of German Knights between advancing legionaries and the Equites Contarium coming back from the camp for an 11-8 victory.

As you can see, John’s army is beautifully painted, and it was a real pleasure to face off against it.

And if you think that five cards for eight coins was an extraordinary start to a game, wait until you read what happened in game three…!

TTS AAR: Chalgrove World's: Game One

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Yesterday it was off to Chalgrove for the 2023 To The Strongest World Championships. As always, I had my trusty Early Imperial Romans with me, and was fully ready to put the Latin mincing machine to work!

My first game was against Michael G’s Western Han Chinese. A beautiful 3D printed army with a couple of nasty looking heavy chariots, a load of crossbow-armed units and some vicious dagger-axemen as well.

As it happens, everything went my way. Michael’s heavy chariots were having an off day and left the field almost on first combat, and from then it was just a matter of my legionaries wading their way forward against a positive storm of crossbow bolts to get in amongst it with the Chinese infantry.

Here I did have a little luck: Michael and I reckoned that he had fired at least twenty crossbow volleys at my advancing men and scored only two disorders which I quickly rallied. As the Roman mincing machine swung into action, my cavalry punched through the gap where his heavy chariots had been and, after that, it was just a matter of time before the game was mine. A 12-0 victory to give me a good start to the day’s proceedings.

Although the Romans did win outright victory, it would only have taken a little more luck with the crossbows for Michael to put me into serious trouble. I’ve always wanted a Chinese army for my collection and, looking at Michael’s, even more so now!

TTS AAR: Early Imperial Romans versus Hoplite Greeks

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Clearing out my computer’s memory, I came across these pictures from a game played earlier this year: a practice session for the autumn tournament season that pitched my Early Imperial Roman’s against friend Other Rob’s Hoplite Greeks.

As it was a few weeks ago, I don’t have a blow-by-blow account of the game for you, but I do remember that the large Greek phalanxes caused a few problems for the Romans, and it was only their ability to manoeuvre and to rally that got them the win.

Here’s a gallery of the action: hopefully the pictures will tell the story!

It’s all coming back to me now!

My plan was to have the Roman cavalry overwhelm the lesser quality Greek horse on my left then curl back into the centre to take the Greeks in the flank.

That didn’t happen: as per usual the Roman horse proved incapable of beating the moth-eaten rabble in front of them, so that flank remained effectively neutralised throughout the battle.

That meant that the Legions had to do the work and won the day by ganging up on the individual phalanxes and taking them from two sides at once. Oh, and the Equites Sagittarrii light horse took the enemy camp as well, which helped!

Britcon Day Two: Game Five & Results

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My final battle at Britcon was against Peter’s Ostrogoth army: another almost-all cavalry force that was bound to lap around my flanks!

Outscouted, my set up was defensive, but I managed to place enough terrain to protect the flanks of my camp, then put the cavalry on the left hoping to hold up his elite nobles for long enough for the Legions to quash any other resistance with a Space Invaders like march forward in a straight line.

The game really turned my way very early on when a couple of extremely unlucky cards meant that Peter and the Ostrogoths lost an elite unit and their senior general in the first proper cavalry clash on the left.

After that, it was a matter of pining his troops back against things they couldn’t evade through and heading for his camp with everything I had: a workmanlike victory 17:4,

So, on to the results. I had four victories and one defeat under my belt, but one of the victories was the 7:5 Carthaginian affair so in reality three victories, one draw and one defeat.

In the end, when everything was totted up, I came third, an improvement of one place on Ewelme. The full scores were:

Congratulations to Adrian on a well deserved victory, and huge thanks to Sid for organising it all.

I would recommend giving the Britcon tournament a go at least once: it’s great fun even if it is quite a test of endurance: it certainly knocked me out for the next few days!

I’d also recommend a trip to 4550 Miles to Delhi the Indian restaurant we (and, coincidentally the Lardies) all ended up in on the Saturday night: great food and atmosphere.

Britcon Day Two: Game Four

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This was probably my hardest game of the tournament: matched up against Howard’s beautifully painted Later Carthaginians.

This was an epic clash that lasted some 3½ hours and was the only game of mine that was stopped by the umpire rather than coming to its natural conclusion.

Rather than use the set terrain, we had used the rules in the book, allowing me to protect my wings with a couple of pieces of impassable rocks. That meant that I could tie up his three units of heavy cavalry with the Praetorians and Auxilia whilst the rest of my army went for the rest of his.

My plan was for one unit of Legionaries to take out his elephants centre-left, whilst my cavalry took out the rest of his cavalry centre-right and then got round behind and into his camp. Meanwhile, I would hold back his elite pseudo-Legionaries with the rest of my true Legionaries on the right.

As always, no plan survived first contact with the enemy: my Legionaries refused point blank to go after his elephants and my cavalry got blocked in the middle…Howard had some annoying light infantry positioned on steep hills that caused me a lot of grief.

One of the key moments of the game: the equites alares get back to block the carthaginian heavy cavalry

The battle started to sway Howard’s way but, for once, the Roman cavalry were superb. The Equites Alares effectively held the centre on their own, rushing backwards and forwards to force his advancing units to protect their flanks.

At the end of the game it was tied 5:5, but my cavalry, on their last turn, managed to flank charge one of Howard’s units knocking it from the board and thus giving me a 7:5 victory.

Britcon Day One: Game Three

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My third game at the Britcon 2023 To The Strongest tournament was against Simon and his Hapsburg Burgundians again. Regular readers will know that I fought a warm-up battle against Simon on the Friday night, losing badly!

This was a grinding game that could have gone either way. The enemy pike pressed forward relentlessly with the Legions conducting an epic fighting withdrawal as the Roman cavalry worked their way onto the HB’s flanks.

Unfortunately, my “roll up” mounted flank attack went in with only enough time for me to break one of Simon’s pike blocks before the legionaries finally gave way: a 5:17 loss.

What was frustrating was that my plan was sound and I came so close to rolling him up entirely…it just didn’t quite happen. If one more pilum had gone in, if my cavalry had got one more hit…if, if, if!

Still, at least I did better than in the first battle!

Britcon Day One: Game Two

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My second game at this year’s Britcon To The Strongest tournament was against Si’s Sassanid Persians. I was someone nervous about this one: Si is a very good player and the Sassanids are a nasty army for the Romans to fight. All that cavalry laps around the Legions’ flanks!

This game, however, went my way…but mainly because Si had the worst possible luck throughout the match: he failed every save he should have made and missed every hit that should have gone in!

As a result, my cavalry held up the Sassanid heavies on my left flank for long enough for my Legionaries to get to grips in the centre and, as my auxilia sagittarii defended my camp against his lights, ground forward pushing his other horsemen back until they had nowhere to evade to. I then took his camp and the game with a 15-0 victory.

So a great result for the Romans, but mainly because Fortuna was firmly on my side.

Britcon: Day One: Game One

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My first game of the tournament proper was against Andy’s Dacians. Co-incidentally, Andy was also the first person I played against at the European’s in Ewelme, so it was good to see him on the other side of the table again.

As per usual with the Romans, I got into trouble on both flanks, but somehow held on for long enough for the Legionaries to win the battle in the centre.

On my left flank, the cavalry achieved nothing except to hang on against multiple flank attacks: not good for veteran cavalry but a considerable improvement compared to their usual dire performances.

On the right, one unit of Legionaries held on against a series of vicious flank and rear attacks for three consecutive turns: laurel wreaths all round.

In the end the battle was decided by my equites sagittarii (horse archer Auxiliaries) who managed to charge some rather nasty cataphract types in the flank and took them out.

Result: a 13:6 victory, worth 17 points once the extra for winning all my opponent’s coins was added in.

Britcon: Day Minus One

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One of the five To The Strongest competitions that I am playing in this year is currently taking place at Britcon: the massive wargames competition event held in Nottingham each year.

As I’m quite a long way from Nottingham, I travelled up on the Friday i.e. yesterday. Horrible journey where a combination of a very busy M40 and a clogged M1 meant that the trip took me an hour longer than I expected, but I found the car park no problem and, almost even better, a cracking place to re-charge my car - I’m 40 miles short of being able to do the round trip in one charge: a bit too much to risk!

Check in to the accommodation was easy too, so kudos to BHGS for their superb organisation. Okay so the room is not what one is used to (it’s been a long time since I was a student!) but very pleasant once you get used to it. The shower is very good, so things could have been much worse!

Carrying a metal 28mm army from flat to venue proved challenging: my arms and fingers had just about reached their limit by the time the main hall sprang into view, but a quick cup of coffee soon revived me and I was able to have a wander and get my bearings.

The rest of TTS lot arrived soon after, and we decided to have a warm up game to get into the swing of things. My opponent was Simon Miller, author of the rules and all-round good egg, with his Burgundian Hapsburg army of mostly raw pikemen.

My Early Imperial Romans advanced in echelon, and got into the perfect position to flank charge his slowly advancing line…but then I suffered the most extraordinary bad luck for the rest of the game and got thrashed 0-13!

Now you may say “oh, the old "‘bad luck’ excuse, eh?” but even Mr Miller kept apologising not just for my card draws but also for his extraordinary good luck. Put it this way, during the game I had nine flank charges that resulted in no effect whatsoever: not even a single disorder!

All I could hope for was that this was not an omen for the competition itself, and that I had used up all my bad cards!

Here are some pics of the game:

TTS AAR: Romans versus Indians

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More practice for Britcon as friend Rob comes over for a couple of games of To The Strongest. The first game was my Early Imperial Romans (well, the Marian Romans proxying for them) versus Rob’s Classical Indians.

not a lot of romans…

but an awful lot of indians

My plan was simple: my veteran cavalry would sweep forward on my left wing and quickly dispose of his raw horse; meanwhile the Legion would advance forward into combat using their superior strength and flexibility to chew through his javelinmen and elephants; once the lines were fully committed, my cavalry would return and hit the enemy from the flank and rear or sack the enemy’s camp.

Unfortunately, my cavalry were having an off day and just couldn’t break the Indian horse: they spent the entire battle tied up way out on the left. That meant that the job of winning (as usual, some would say) was all down to the legionaries.

Fortunately they proved more than up for the task and, apart from the odd minor set back mainly down to the Auxilia, once the lines had closed and the Roman “mincing machine” had started up, there wasn’t a lot that could stop them.

The coup de grace came from one legionary unit breaking through the Indian line and sacking their camp, taking the last Indian victory medals in the process.

Here are some pics of the game:

Horse Archers in 28mm

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Regular visitors will know that I’m about to take part in the To The Strongest competition at Britcon this year, fielding a Roman army not in my usual 15mm scale but in 28mm, using an army borrowed from a friend.

The army is great: plenty of legionaries and auxilia etc, but a bit of playtesting revealed the need for some equites sagittarii auxiliary horse archers, of which I had none.

A quick trawl through eBay suggested that I’d need to pay vast some of money for painted models, and would be jolly lucky to be able to buy only the three that I needed. The solution was at hand, however: I could buy a single sprue of Victorix Arab horse archers for the princely sum of £9: a bargain even if I would have to build and paint the figures myself.

Building the figures was quite fun, although I did find it tricky to get the two sides of horse to fit together snugly: you’ll see the tan horse in the middle has quite a VNL (visible neck line!). The arms were also tricky: superglue wouldn’t set quickly enough so I used a mixture of PVA and superglue which did the trick nicely. Any puffing just looks like the seams of their coats are coming apart!

Painting them was easy: using Contrast paints on 28’s after 15’s is like slapping paint on a shed, and even the tack (my usual bugbear) wasn’t too bad to do. I hashed up the man in the middle’s jacket: my purple dots are not good at all…but don’t look too bad from a distance. I was, however, very happy with the faces.

So thumbs up for Victrix and multipart plastic cavalry. I won’t be switching from my beloved 15’s, but have no problems in giving these a Recommended rating!

Romans Take To The Field (x3)

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I needed to get some practice in for the To The Strongest tournament I’ve entered at Britcon this year, so friend Peter kindly invited me round for a gaming session where I would fight the Romans against whatever he fancied playing.

Given that my Early Imperial Romans are mostly infantry, it was no surprise to see a huge mass of cavalry waiting for me on the other side of Peter’s table. The first two games we played would be Mongols versus Romans, the last would be Normans versus Romans.

Game One: Mongols versus Early Imperial Romans

Being a mostly infantry army, I was comprehensively outscouted and ended up with my troops exactly where I didn’t want them. At least a fifth of my army was out-of-play until they moved in from the flank, and what cavalry I did have were faced by enough swarms of light horse archers to also keep them occupied for the whole game.

Outflanked on my left, my left flank collapsed, and I spent the entire game reacting to the threat from that side. The upshot was a massive 13-0 defeat for the Romans (including the death of the CinC) that boded ill for the rest of the day!

Game Two: Mongols versus Early Imperial Romans

Much to all’s amazement: I won the scouting and, as a result, began the game in a much better position than last time.

Despite this, my left flank collapsed again and I soon found myself 0-4 down in terms of medals. This time, however my better deployment meant that I could recover from this set-back, and in one glorious charge, a unit Roman Equites Alares dashed six victory coins of Mongols from the table, tearing a great big hole in the enemy centre.

Although I was by now running out of victory medals, knocking out another unit of Mongol Lancers and taking the enemy camp finished the job, although I did lose my CinC and part of my camp again. An 11-11 scoreline, but victory for the Romans.

Game Three: Normans versus Early Imperial Romans

Amazingly, I won the scouting again and, if I say so myself, deployed perfectly against the Norman threat.

I advanced forward confidently, only to have my cavalry charge forward with an advantage and get comprehensively stuffed. The worst that should have happened was an even-stevens tussle, but my horsemen just evaporated!

I might have been able to hold on and counter-ruck against an infantry army, but against a mobile mounted army I stood no chance. The rest of my Romans put up a brave fight, so it was no whitewash, but in the end a 6-13 defeat.

Conclusions

So what did I learn? Well, I shall be changing my list slightly just to give me a bit more flexibility, but the main lesson learnt was “don’t fight cavalry armies” which is not very helpful at all!

March to Hell 3D Prints

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A post on the Lead Adventure Forum reminded me that although I’d read about the March to Hell 3D printed miniatures from 3D Breed, I hadn’t actually seen any in the flesh and, as I needed an extra command figure for my Marian Romans, I thought I’d take a look and see what all the fuss was about.

You can get them in the UK from the Geek Villain website, which is well presented and easy to navigate. There are a lot of 15mm 3D prints available: the main WW2 forces, medieval Spanish and Moors, and then the usual suspects ancients-wise: Republican and Early Imperial Romans, Germans, Celts, Persians, Greeks, Macedonians and Carthaginians.

I decided to stay focussed (for once) and headed for the Roman section in search of enough figures for a command stand, and almost immediately came across a special model representing Scipio Africanus: both mounted and dismounted. Looked great in the pics, so I ordered them, and then browsed through and, as I still have plenty of Baueda legionaries in the lead mountain, a couple of the other specials: a medicus set, with a standing and kneeling doctor; and a legionary accompanied by a couple of wardogs!

Scipio and the wardogs were £3, the medicus set was £2.50.

A few days later, a box arrived from the Post Office. The box was about 10cm square and seemed to weigh almost nothing. Opening up, there was a vast amount of bubblewrap folded around the loose miniatures.

Okay, I can live with that - saves on the packaging, the environment and all that (and I’m sure the dustmen/neighbours etc think I’m a drug dealer with all the little plastic ziplock bags I throw away) - but how would that work for a larger order, or did they just loose pack them for this order because it was small and easy to work out which model was which?

The models themselves were beautifully crisp: little works of art. Every last bit of detail was present, with no mould lines, build lines or flash. Lovely.

One thing, though, as represented in the pictures above, they had no bases. They were literally just the same as the images. I’m not sure why I expected them to have bases, after all there are no bases in the pictures, but this did come as a bit of a surprise.

This also wasn’t a problem for the specials: rather than my usual lolly stick mounting for painting, I could glue them straight onto the bases I would be using as mini vignettes…but that did raise the question of what I would do if I was going to buy whole units to be mounted multiple figures per base. I would definitely have to think about that one.

Also, although the lack of bases wasn’t a problem for the infantry (they stood up on their own) it was a bit more a problem for the horse that one of the Scipios sits on. Yes, I did get three horses in my order (not sure why, as only one horse had Roman tack: one even had heads hanging from the breast strap) but none of them had all four feet on the ground. In the end, I mixed a little superglue and PVA together and glued the whole of two hooves to the base…but the horse still sways freely if you knock it. We will have to see how that stands up to battlefield usage.

So how do they paint up?

The quick answer is “beautifully”. I painted them with a black undercoat then with base-wash-highlight, and am very pleased with the results:

Apologies for my crude painting and even cruder photography. Ignore the signifier with the Scipios: he’s from another manufacturer.

So, you can see what they look like, but how do they compare with other figures size-wise.

Here’s a couple of group shots with a base of Baueda Marian Roman legionaries:

No problem with sizing: they match very well indeed.

In conclusion, I liked these and am very pleased with what I’ve got.

Plus points are size, beauty, price and, for the models I ordered, uniqueness and quirkiness.

The big minus point, however, is the lack of bases: I’m not sure how I would mount an infantry unit for painting, and the cavalry without bases is just plain difficult to deal with.

I will be scouring the other listings for more specials like the above and, as I sit here, am severely tempted to see how I get on with a unit of legionary cavalry…

A Few More Romans

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I’m waiting for newly-ordered figures to arrive at the moment and, as I felt like painting something, thought I’d dig into the lead mountain and see what I could find.

Back when I started a Marian Roman army in 15mm, I ordered enough figures to field my equivalent of two legions: ten two-base units, with each base holding 12 figures. I painted up the first legion, no problems, but stalled a bit with the second, only finishing one unit. The problem was that I didn’t need them (six bases of legionaries is quite enough for most To The Strongest Marian Roman armies) and I was, quite frankly, a bit sick of painting them!

Fast forward to now, however, and painting up another two bases worth (i.e. 24 figures) seemed like just the thing.

These are Baueda figures, bought through Magister Militum in the UK, and paint up very nicely indeed. Rather than use Contrast Paints, I went back to a black undercoat for these: seemed more suited all the chainmail.

I had, of course, forgotten how fiddly the Little Big Man Studio shield transfers were! They are great, I hasten to add, and really make the unit a unit, and are easier (for me) than painting every shield with the winged pattern shown, but it does mean cutting out forty-four individual half-shield decals, which was a very tedious affair indeed!

So seven out of ten Roman units finished. I wonder if it will be another few years before I do the next one!

TTS AAR: Anglo-Normans Hammered!

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With Viking and Norman armies now complete, I thought I’d have a look at what else this meant I could field. The most obvious mash-up was an Anglo-Norman army i.e. an English army from after William the B’s victory at Hastings.

This seemed to me to be quite a good combination: you have the the mobile power of Norman knights, the endurance and ferocity of the Viking foot (well, Anglo-Saxons…but the fyrd is a fyrd as they say!), and some lights in support.

With that decided, it was time to pick an opponent. Looking at the list of units that have been painted but haven’t been on the tabletop yet, it was obvious that the Assyrians were up. Not an historical match up by any stretch of the imagination (well, perhaps a pre-emptive strike on what would be the site of the British museum?) but this is Ancients so we won’t worry about that too much! I would play the Anglo-Normans, Kavan would play the Assyrians.

I deployed in a conventional manner - infantry in the middle, cavalry on the wings, lights with missile weapons in front - but Kavan made the unusual choice to put all his heavy infantry on his left wing, with the heavy cavalry and heavier chariots in the centre and his lighter infantry on the left. He then proceeded to march his heavy infantry forward at a rapid pace, hanging back most of his other troops.

I must confess that this completely banjaxed me, and I spent the next phase of the battle trying to re-arrange my troops to match. Talk about surrendering the initiative to your enemy!

Kavan’s troops, of course, were not waiting for me to sort myself out: they were up and at me, taking full advantage of the confusion to sneak a unit of cavalry through the middle as I tried to face the twin threats approaching my flanks.

And this was just the start!

With cavalry now driving through the middle of my line, I couldn’t advance the infantry I’d moved to the right flank to counter his infantry, meaning that I tried to stop them with my knights. Kavan had anticipated this, however, and had hung a unit back to protect his flanks. So this effectively stalemated that side of the field, taking my best troops out of the battle.

Things were going no better on my left and in the centre, with Kavan cross-ruffing his heavy chariots between the two to both prevent me getting any sort of advantage on either and then, with a superb run of cards, even managing to rear charge a unit of heavy Norman spear that I was pulling back to try and defend my camps!

Even if my heavies did survive that initial impact, I was definitely now on the back foot, and it wasn’t long before they did give way, leaving the way clear for the Assyrian chariots to break through and finish the capture of my camps that the cavalry had begun.

That took care of the last of my victory medals, meaning that the Assyrians had won a glorious victory over my utterly-defeated Anglo-Normans.

A great game of To The Strongest, fought superbly by Kavan, who knocked me off balance with his initial deployment and never let me recover. A master class!

TTS AAR: The One With The Mid-Game Earthquake!

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As our first Normans versus Vikings game hadn’t taken that long, Kavan and I decided to swap sides and play again. This was to be a very exciting game, but for all the wrong reasons!

Deployment was pretty quick. Having seen how the Normans were able to harry the somewhat dispersed Vikings in the last game, I was determined to keep my troops together to protect the flanks of each unit whilst giving maximum opportunities for mutual support. I put the huscarls, my best troops, in the centre hoping to punch through to his camps…and made sure I left my light javelinmen to protect my camps: no repeat of the last game here!

The Normans advanced towards me really quickly so, not wanting to have no room for tactical retreats and the like, I pushed forward as well. I also moved my light archers to the front determined to use every advantage I had despite the fact that missile fire had had almost no effect in the last game.

The initial clashes produced mixed results, and it looked as if we were in for a grinding clash determined not by subtle tactics but by blunt force!

Then disaster struck!

I have used the same fold-up tables for many years, and have never had a problem with them. This time, however, I must have neglected to lock the legs on one table properly, and as Kavan leant forward to position one of his units for the attack, the table underneath him collapsed!

Fortunately the rapid advance of the Normans means that almost all the figures were on my side of the battlefield i.e. on the other table, and it was only one set of legs that collapsed not both, so only a few units were affected and even those mostly by jostling rather than a long drop to the floor!

We were therefore able to put the battlefield back together fairly easily, and re-order all the jostled units with no damage done. Phew!

At this point in the game, the Normans were doing pretty well: pushing the Viking units back with a series of hard charges from their lance-armed heavy cavalry.

Now, however, the tide turned: the “earthquake” had obviously been the Allfather, or perhaps the Odinson, intervening!

My men rallied, and began knocking Norman units off the table one by one. Even my lights contributed: with an initial clash between the big boys often resulting in one disorder a side even a single, successful hit from Viking light archers meant an enemy unit cleared from the table (my “deep” units could take two disorders before breaking, the Normans only one).

My idea about mutual support proved useful, as several times warbands that had already dealt with the enemy horse in front of them were able to turn and intervene in another clash, as below:

Here, the intervening Vikings smashed the enemy they flank charged from the table, giving the unit under pressure time to rally off a disorder. Yes, they were then in a terrible position being flank charged in turn, but the Vikings are tough and can usually take one flank charge without breaking.

Fittingly, it was a light archer unit that polished off the last of the Norman victory medals:

A great game with a very narrow escape. I will make jolly sure the table legs are locked next time!

TTS AAR: Normans Take The Field!

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As mentioned in my last post, with the last of the Milites finished it was time for the Normans to finally take the field with a game of To The Strongest versus Kavan playing the Vikings.

This would be quite an interesting battle as the Normans were mostly heavy cavalry and the Vikings were all infantry. My plan was to take advantage of my extra mobility and get around his flanks, as charging formed infantry with cavalry is rarely a good idea!

As the game began, both sides advanced forward strongly, with the battle rapidly dividing into three sectors: the left, the centre and the right.

In the centre, Viking huscarls (the units with the red Meeple) had sped forward and hit a line of Norman cavalry in the Norman half of the table. With three Norman units in play against just one Viking, I was fairly confident that I could win the first clash, but I had underestimated just how ‘hard’ the huscarls were: being a deep, veteran, shieldwall unit with extra two handed cutting weapons!

My first Norman cavalry unit just evaporated and, worse, the follow up huscarls, led by their overall commander and waving their ‘land-waster’ standard, hit my own overall commander’s unit and forced him to make the decision to run away as fast as possible! Oh, the shame!

A quick overview pic, with the Viking huscarls bursting through my centre!

Meanwhile, on the left flank, my plan had actually worked out rather well.

Three units of milites had faced up to a couple of the lesser-quality Viking bondi units supported by some lights, and used their superior mobility to get around the hairy infantry and into the Viking camp. Six glorious victory medals headed my way as my horsemen remembered their heritage and sacked and plundered the enemy camp for all its worth!

My Viking Longships haven’t arrived yet, so the Viking camp has a weird looking hut in it…and lots of Norman cavalry!

In the centre, however, the Vikings were about to do to me what I had done to them, with their commander’s huscarl unit crashing after my fleeing horse and then into the Norman camp and refusing to be shifted even by William himself!

Fortunately only one half of my camp was taken, but that still meant three victory coins to Kavan!

Casualties were now mounting on both sides, so it was obvious that the battle would be decided on the right where, up to now both sides had cautiously crept towards each other.

Somehow I had managed to get into a decent tactical position where I could get two of my cavalry units onto one of the bondi units but, as I have said before, these deep units are tough and the bondi survived long enough to pull back and get some support.

Not even the toughest Viking, however, can keep taking charges from the front and flank, and so it was here as well. The bondi unit broke and with that Kavan’s final victory medals were spent and the Vikings decided to retreat.

A great game and a very narrow victory for the Normans as I only had five coins left myself.

It was an interesting battle and one where I learnt that Norman cavalry definitely do not want to take on Viking huscarls or bondi units head on, even with lances: the only way is to get around their flanks or hit them two-on-one.