Two the Strongest Tournament: Game Two

/

Peter and I’s second game at the inaugural Two the Strongest Doubles tournament organised by the London Guild of Wargames was against Tom and Nathanial, each fielding a Wars of the Roses army: lots of longbows, billmen and knights!

Our plan was very much the same as in the first game of the tournament. My solid legionaries would hold the bulk of the enemy in place whilst Peter’s lighter cavalry got around the enemy flank and rolled them up. As our opponents wavered at the sight of their flank collapsing, in would go my Roman mincing machine to finish them off.

Much to our surprise, the first stages of the game saw everything going to the plan: Peter’s men got around the right flank of Tom’s troops and started knocking units off the table, then turning to head into the centre. Meanwhile, I advanced cautiously forward, wary of a storm of longbow fire.

Nathaniel also took a cautious approach so, for a time, all the action was on one side. Here’s a montage of these first evolutions:

Then I’m afarid our opponents made what must be considered a fateful mistake.

Concerned about their right flank, they turned some of their units in the centre to the right, intending to take Peter’s legionaries, now heavily engaged with the right side of the enemy line, in the flank. This, of course, left them open to a rapid advance from my troops into their now-exposed left sides, knocking a couple off the table and certainly preventing them intervening to the right as Tom had planned.

At this point Tom’s half of their army collapsed, leading to all his remaining troops being removed from the board and leaving Nathaniel to face the might of the Empire alone!

Now severely outnumbered and already in a poor tactical situation, it was only a matter of time before Nathaniel’s troops were overwhelmed. It also didn’t help that his artillery now showed an alarming propensity to draw Aces!

So in all a fairly convincing 16-0 victory for the Romans, leaving us in a good position overall as we faced the final game of the day.

Two the Strongest Tournament: Game One

/

This November just gone, those stalwart men of the London Wargaming Guild put on the first To The Strongest Doubles tournament at the 7 Dials Club in Covent Garden.

The concept was simple: teams of two players, with each player fielding 100 points of army. The armies did not have to be connected but it would obviously be better if they were.

Originally the idea had been for each team to be one experienced player and one less experienced if not novice player, but this requirement was softened in the run-up to the tournament…although personally and, as it turned out somewhat hypocritically, I think enforcing this would actually be an excellent idea for the future.

I say “somewhat hypocritically” because my partner was none other than Peter R., many times champion of many tournaments, which would presumably have made me the novice player!

Our first game was against Sid and Rob: the former also fielding Early Imperial Romans, the latter fielding Polybian Romans.

Our plan was simple: I would pin Sid’s EIR’s in place, whilst Peter lapped around the Polybian left flank. As it happens, our strategy was the same-but-opposite from that adopted by Sid and Rob: Rob would pin Peter’s troops whilst Sid wrapped around my right flank!

The two lines quickly came together, and immediately the flanking generals on each side began to do their thing.

Below left you can see my legionaries holding Sid’s in place whilst below right you can see Sid’s horse and lights attempting to turn my flank:

Fortunately I was able to turn my cavalry to face this threat and, with the Auxilia in Orbis (i.e. fighting to all sides) was able to keep Sid at bay.

Unfortunately for other Rob, Peter is a past master at outflanking, and Rob’s Polybian Romans were soon in a great deal of trouble: their cavalry driven from the field by an endless series of flank attacks from our light troop, leaving his infantry to fall in turn as our cavalry turned on them as Peter’s legions moved into contact.

With his camp falling to some Numidian light horse, Rob was soon forced to remove all his troops from the table, leaving Peter’s men free to come to my aid.

Fighting two opponents at once is never much fun and, despite valiant efforts, Sid’s men were soon reeling from the field as well, leaving us victors 18 points to 9.

TTS @ Warfare: Game Four: EIR versus Tang Chinese

/

My fourth and final game at this year’s To The Strongest competition at Warfare was my Early Imperial Romans against Peter Ryding’s Tang Chinese.

Peter is a wily opponent and an expert of using a force that is a mixture of light cavalry, heavy cavalry and solid infantry…and the one thing I didn’t want to happen was him to get his Chinese around the end of my line and outflank my Romans.

As the battle began, Peter immediately went for my flanks with his light cavalry. I didn’t think I’d have a problem on the right: I’d kept that flank strong, intending to deal with the lights then use my superior drilled mobility to curl in and attack his infantry in the centre.

Likewise, on the left, all I would have to do is to move the rear left hand unit of cavalry (with the red cloaks) out to the side and I was sorted.

Unfortunately the poor cards that had been dogging me all day reared their ugly head again, and things did not go according to plan.

On the right, I shot down one of his light horse units almost immediately, and closed with the other to drive it back.

All well and good…but then my central infantry, which I had been intending to get back to the left to engage his main force, just refused to move. Where was my superior drilled mobility? It was buried in Aces!

Oh, and if you look, Peter is making it even more difficult to close with his troops by refusing that flank and presenting me with an oblique line to attack…meaning my men would have even further to go before being able to get stuck in. Clever, very clever!

Worse, the aforementioned red cloaked cavalry on my left had also refused to move as planned, leaving that flank horribly exposed. Peter, never one to miss an opportunity, took full advantage, and soon that flank was completely buggered!

I mean, look at them just sitting there! They obviously haven’t moved since their original deployment when only the smallest movement of one square would have stopped the Tang lights in their tracks.

Now there are those of you who are reading this who are saying “oh look, there’s Rob again complaining about his luck as opposed to admitting he’s playing badly”.

Yes, point taken: you play the cards you’re dealt and all that, and Peter has made no mistakes in executing a very cunning plan…but take a look at the photo below to show what happened as I moved in on his camp: something that could potentially have gained me enough coins to turn the battle my way.

Three Aces are showing…and what’s even more amusing is that for this game that wasn’t even the worst cards that I drew!

Anyway, suffice to say that I didn’t get into the enemy camp or in amongst his infantry before the flank attacks on my left took their toll and the Romans gave way and fled the field, giving Peter a colossal and well-deserved victory.

Results

One colossal loss, one massive victory, and two losing draws gave me a seventh place in the overall competition: a bit of a disappointment to say the least!

But no matter: there was still the Doubles competition at the Seven Dials Club in Covent Garden to come.

My partner?

Peter, of course!

The reports on that tournament will follow in due course…

TTS @ Warfare: Game Three: EIR versus New Kingdom Egyptian

/

My third game at this year’s To The Strongest tournament at Warfare was my Early Imperial Romans against Nathaniel’s New Kingdom Egyptians.

Don’t be fooled by the compact look of Nat’s army: there were a lot of light chariot units clumped together, all with bows, so I could expect a hail of bowfire as I closed with the enemy.

I have an NKE army myself (in 15mm) and so was also expecting the Egyptians to rapidly expand their position and attempt to lap around my flanks, always a danger for an infantry army like the Romans. This didn’t happen, however, and Nat kept his troops closed together as he advanced towards me, doubtless determined to just shoot me down head on.

Unfortunately for Nat, this played directly into my strengths.

My Romans can usually soak up arrows or rally off any disorders that they do take on the way in, and love to melee with lesser quality infantry or, even better, light troops. Likewise, my cavalry would be happy to just keep charging his light chariots until they evaded off the table.

And that’s what happened for the rest of the game, as you’ll see from the photos below:

As you can see, enough of my infantry units won their initial clash quickly enough to help out those who hadn’t (the superior manouevrability of the Romans really helping those flank charges go in) and my cavalry did indeed chase his light chariots off the table.

So a workmanlike 13-2 victory for the Romans, with my only loss coming from a General who got in the way of one arrow too many!

TTS @ Warfare: Game Two: EIR versus Polybian Romans

/

Game two of the To The Strongest tournament at Warfare, using my Early Imperial Romans, was an interesting match against the Polybian Romans: an earlier-period Roman army that presented in a quincunx formation i.e. deployed in three lines in a chequerboard formation, with the younger hastati in front, followed by the more seasoned principes and the veteran triarii behind. This would allow Nigel’s units to rotate his lines on the spot: meaning that he could rally and bring more pila into action even when in a “zone of control”.

Romans in Quincunx

My plan was not a subtle one: it was to get stuck in with my legionaries whilst trying to lap my cavalry round his flanks. Accordingly, as the game began, I marched my troops forward smartly.

Things started well, with me managing to get a two-on-one advantage on two of his quincunx, one of which I managed to destroy. The picture below shows two legionary units perpendicular to each other as one has just moved into the square where the quincunx was:

Unfortunately this turned out to be the high point of the game for my Romans!

The two battle lines came together and a grinding melee developed with fortunes swaying backwards and forwards between the two sides. Here’s a pic taken just before the lines clashed:

At tbis point my flank forces should have finished with his and come back in to hit the sides of the enemy line, giving me victory.

What actually happened was that my flank forces got bogged down and couldn’t get the local victories I needed to break themselves free to intervene elsewhere. As an example, here’s a unit of enemy horse sandwiched between two of my units: it should have died very quickly, but just kept surviving everything I could throw at it!

All this grinding melee was using up the clock and, before I knew it, time was called.

We totted up the points and I had lost the game by the narrowest of margins: 6 points to 7!

Really interesting to face the Polybian Roman quincunx, well played by my opponent, but a frustrating result.

Two games in to the tournament and two losing draws racked up: not good!

TTS @ Warfare: Game One: EIR versus Eastern Franks

/

One of the main reasons for me going to the Warfare show this year was that I was competing in the To The Strongest tournament there. Four games in one day, 135 points, my Early Imperial Romans ready for action.

I was expecting my first game to be against Andy’s Dacians-with-Sarmatian-allies, as I nearly always face Andy’s Dacians in round one of a tournament as they and the Romans are usually the closest together historically, but Andy wasn’t there so I would instead face Tim’s Eastern Franks. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire…just what my Romans hate: an all cavalry army.

The photo above shows the position just after the start of the battle: you can see Tim is looking to sneak around my flanks. I’m not too worried, at this stage, about my right flank (my legionaries can oblique right) but I do need to pull my cavalry back on the left to protect against the enemy horse on the other side of the wood advancing forward and getting behind my line.

This should have been a fairly easy move to make, but unfortunately Fortuna obviously had it in for me that day and both my cavalry brigade and the left hand legionary brigade froze in place, presumably bamboozled by the fact that there were no Dacians to be seen!

Although not a good situation, all was not lost: all I needed to do was to turn my cavalry to face the outflankers and get the legionaries into action.

Aaargh!

Another turn where my troops would do nothing…unlike Tim’s Franks!

I was now down a cavalry unit, but managed to stabilise the far left by sheer good luck as my other unit of Equites Cohortales survived being hit in the flank, turned, and drove off their attackers. They then advanced forward themselves to threaten Tim’s camp.

The left-centre, however, was a mess. Tim had brilliantly taken advantage of my stagnation by concentrating his heavy horse: knocking out two of my legionary units there and effectively bursting through my line.

With me threatening his camp, and him threatening to surround and wipe out the rest of my cavalry, it looked as if we’d end up about honours even overall, so the game would be decided on the right.

Here things had not gone badly, just not well. I’d lost the Auxilia to another nicely executed outflanking manoeuvre, but killed one of Tim’s generals in return.

All this to-ing and fro-ing had, however, drained the clock and we were now out of time. Totting up the points, a winning draw to Tim 8-5.

Here’s the position at the end of the battle:

So a tight first game with a disappointing result. Excellent play from Tim: using his superior mobility on the flanks and then taking full advantage of the opportunity in the left centre.

Three games still to go: so plenty of time to rescue the situation!

My New Secret Weapon for Competitions

/

Those of you who were in the To The Strongest competition at Warfare this year will have heard me loudly decrying the number of Aces I was pulling: not for melee or shooting but for activation.

Time and time again my master strategies were defeated as my troops just refused to move at all as a result of an Ace (or usually Aces!) appearing as the first card drawn in a command’s turn.

I thought about changing my packs of cards (especially the red pack: you b*st*rds are due on the bonfire soon, I tell you!) but have realised that such a petty attempt to change my luck probably won’t work: I mean, probability is probability and play a lot of games and the monkey’s typing up Shakespeare are bound to appear sooner or later. I needed a more radical approach…

Yes, I have joined the shuffling machine club!

First encountered at the World Championships earlier this year, I have been enviously observing my fellow players who own them effortlessly producing perfectly shuffled decks without the need to do more than load up the wings and press the button. Now I, too, can avoid any of the bad luck that characterised my Warfare performance…and all for only about £10. Bargain!

This will also neatly prevent a certain friend of mine from banana-ring my decks of cards with his (admittedly nicely executed) riffle shuffles. He will doubtless be interested to hear that, according to Wikipedia: The Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model provides a mathematical model of the random outcomes of riffling that has been shown experimentally to be a good fit to human shuffling and that forms the basis for a recommendation that card decks be riffled seven times in order to randomize them thoroughly. Later, mathematicians Lloyd M. Trefethen and Lloyd N. Trefethen authored a paper using a tweaked version of the Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model showing that the minimum number of riffles for total randomization could also be six, if the method of defining randomness is changed.

I’m not sure when my new shuffling machine will have it’s debut, but be warned that I am already clearing shelf space for all the trophies that I an now going to win as, according to me at any rate, all that has been holding me back is my appalling luck and nothing to do with the fact that I am facing very skilled opponents who have actually taken the trouble to learn the rules!

For those interested:

ZONJIE Automatic Card Shuffler Machine 2 Deck, Electronic Casino Poker Card Shuffling, Battery Operated -One/Two Deck Card Shuffle Sorter, Cards Playing Tool Accessories


TTS AAR: Sicilio- Normans: The Return Match

/

With plenty of time remaining and the table and figures all set up, Bevan and I decided to swap sides and play again: I would take the Papal Italians (proxied by a Burgundian Ordnance army) and Bevan would play the Sicilio-Normans.

Now if I thought my luck was bad in the last game, in this game it really fell off a cliff!

On the right flank I lost a unit of Knights to some scummy Sicilian light cavalry, leaving a huge hole in my line that enemy Knights immediately exploited. I did manage to get a breakthrough of my own going, but it took longer than it should and the battle ended elsewhere before I could take full advantage.

On the left, I got into the perfect position to do some damage, but the cards weren’t with me, and my glorious flank charges fizzled out unsuccessful!

Meanwhile, the Sicilio-Norman infantry ground forward in the centre and, with what I had lost already and the fall of my camp to the enemy Knights that had broken through, I was soon out of victory medals.

A frustrating game: as Bevan said afterwards, I didn’t do anything tactically wrong…it’s just the cards didn’t fall my way. To misquote the great Les Dawson: I had all the cards I needed, just in the wrong order!

No matter, these things happen. At least I could get my revenge in quickly, as we were due a couple of games of For King & Parliament, Eastern Front Variant in 24 hours time, with my Transylvanians facing the Muscovites. But more on that later…

TTS AAR: Sicilio-Normans take to the field

/

Now that I had painted up the Italo-Norman militia, it was time to get them into action. I wanted them to face a contemporaneous army, so friend Bevan would field my Burgundian Ordnance collection masquerading as Papal Italians!

Okay, so things weren’t entirely apt, as I was actually fielding Sicilio-Normans instead of pure Italo-Normans, but as the country of Italy wasn’t actually formed until 1870, I decided that stretching things slightly too far south wouldn’t matter too much.

As you can sort of see in the picture, above, both sides had concentrated their cavalry on one flank (my right, Bevan’s left) so the stage was set for a fairly mighty clash early on in the game…and that’s exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, the each side’s infantry contingent slogged forward towards the enemy, with an unusual run of cards meaning that my troops advanced forward in echelon.

Unfortunately for me, the Pope had obviously secured some divine intervention to support his forces, as my unusual run of cards continued with me drawing appalling cards for the cavalry combat, with what should have been a fight in my favour (four heavy units vs three heavy units, two light units vs one light unit) ending up with my cavalry just about wiped out (one light unit remaining) whilst leaving two of his heavy cavalry units still very much in action.

Meanwhile, the infantry lines had, in a ragged way, closed and gone to melee. Things looked a bit better for me here, and I had started to get back into the game a bit.

Even better, going completely against convention, my newly-painted unit of Italo-Norman militia had burst through the enemy line and had got to within striking distance of the enemy camp…and as Bevan only had four Victory Medals left at this stage, if I could just hold on for another turn, there was a fair chance I could nab the camp, pick up another Medal from somewhere else on the field, and win the game.

Unfortunately, the consequences of losing the cavalry battle on my right wing then came back to haunt me with a vengeance, as the two enemy units of Knights arrived back into the action: flank charging some poor Sicilio-Norman spearmen with devastating effect.

Already Disordered, the Sicilians crumbled and fled, and the game was Bevan’s!

A cracking encounter that, despite my earlier bad luck, got down to the wire, with both sides being in a position where the next casualty would have lost them the game. Sportingly, Bevan did agree that I had had universally bad luck throughout the game, but you have to play the cards you’re dealt so no complaints!

TTS AAR: British Open Game 4: Early Imperial Romans vs Chin Chinese

/

My final game at this year’s British Open To The Strongest tournament, held at SELWG, was against Dene’s Chin Chinese.

Nasty opponents: massed crossbow fire hammering in from distance and then dagger-axemen, spearmen and heavy chariots to fight in melee!

To be absolutely honest, I don’t remember a huge amount about what actually happened during the game! I know that it began with my troops advancing steadily towards the enemy, undergoing the expected hail of crossbow bolts. On the right, I used a unit of Legionaries to hold some cavalry and lights in place. On the left, my equites alares/cohortales effectively cancelled out the rest of his cavalry. In the centre, the two lines clashed with both sides losing some units. Honours even so far.

Things continued to be neck and neck until we both both down to one victory medal: it was going to be sudden death for the next person to lose a unit. I was, however, in a better position tactically, with my troops in a slightly better state than Dene’s. If I could survive his turn, I should be able to win in mine.

Unfortunately, Fortuna deserted me: Dene drew three 10’s in five cards (well, three chits marked ‘10’ in five chits as he was using TTS chits not cards) and KO’d a Legionary unit, meaning that I lost the game 12-13! Talk about close!

So what did that mean for the tournament as a whole?

Tim and his Galatians that I had beaten in Game 3, Dene and his Chin Chinese and I and the Early Imperial Romans all had three wins and one loss…which meant that points wise Tim won the tournament on 613 points, I came second on 596 points, with Dene in third place on 520 points. I was pipped at the post again!

Whatever the result, it had been a great tournament, with four very enjoyable games against very gentlemanly opponents.

As I have said before, I highly recommend taking part in those tournaments that you can manage if only to meet other people from the TTS community.

Finally today, here are some more shots of the final game:

More Italo-Norman Spearmen

/

Here’s the second batch of Italo-Norman Spearmen for my Sicilio-Normans.

These are mostly Baueda 15mm, with a smattering of Museum Miniatures and, I think, Khurasan as well.

The trick of using different shades of blue on the tunics to represent a militia unit (uniformed but not uniform!) has worked very well here. I actually think that they look better from the back rather than the front!

TTS AAR: British Open Game 3: Early Imperial Romans versus Galatians

/

My third game at this year British Open at SELWG was against Tim and his Galatians.

Galatians are a unique army: like Gauls or Ancient Britons, but nearly all deep fanatical warrior units with loads of heroes. It was going to be tough to chew my way through them!

Neither Tim nor I were in the mood for any shilly-shallying around or tactics or anything like that: both battle lines headed for the other determined to get stuck in as soon as possible:

Annoyingly, one of Tim’s units burst through the Auxilia and made it into an undefended part of my camp.

Honours were even on my right: whilst most of my cavalry were forced to retreat, the Contariorum smashed an enemy unit off the table, and threatened to wreak havoc in the Galatian rear (ooh-er, madam!) despite the threat of scythed chariots.

On my left, I was cautious about his cavalry swinging wide around the wood and coming in from the flank. I therefore held back a unit of Legionaries against that threat: something that I was very glad I had done when suddenly a couple of chariot units appeared from off-table on that side - good use of the stratagem card that I thus neutralised by accident!

So, as ever, it was up to the main body of Legionaries to do the job…and they did. Pushing forward relentlessly, the Praetorians and other veteran units smashed three enemy units from the field, giving me a pretty narrow 13-9 victory.

So not much finesse, but a win. A warning to those intending to fight Galatians: those warrior units are tough! Three hits to kill them, they rally easily, and ignore wounds until they are dead. A battle I was glad to get through!

Militiae Spearmen for the Italo-Normans

/

One of the last things I needed for my Italo-Normans was at least one unit of Militiae: militia spearmen that would need to be distinct from the Sicilian Spearmen and Mercenary Spearmen I already have.

I used mostly Baueda figures for these: they are simpler to paint than the excellent Museum Miniatures Z range that forms the greater part of my Norman collection…something important when you have to paint 54 of them!

I used the Museum command figures and, as Magister Militum hadn’t managed to get me all the Baueda models I needed, leavened the mass with a couple of spare Museum Normans: you can see them in the centre of the front rank, and the crossbowman far left.

Unlike the Sicilians and other Norman Spearmen, I wanted these chaps to look like a militia which, to me, means some kind of uniform. At the same time, I didn’t want them exactly uniform either: these are militia not the guards!

My solution was to paint the mass of the spear in three different shades of one colour: in this case, green. Now they look like they all come from the same unit, but that different tunics have been ordered and issued at different times. I have another unit to paint: they will be various shades of blue.

I’m happy with these chaps: now to paint the blue ones!

TTS AAR: British Open Game 2: Early Imperial versus Middle Imperial Romans

/

My second game at the SELWG competition was a bit of a time-displaced civil war: my Early Imperial Romans versus Colin’s Middle Imperial Romans.

This meant that I would be facing a foe as manoeuvrable as my troops, and able to play the retreat-rally-re-engage game as well as I could. Colin was also fielding three camps, although his were behind a much bigger wall than mine!

Romans versus Romans

As I had the initiative, I advanced forward rapidly: my troops were slightly better quality than his and so the sooner I got into contact the better.

I also noticed that as the enemy came forward to meet me, they moved the Auxilia that had been protecting the right flank of their camp into a position where they could support their front line, leaving a gap that I thought my light cavalry might just be able to exploit…so over to my left I sent them.

The initial clash was a little bit in Colin’s favour: although I routed one of his cavalry units, one of my legionary units fled the field, and a risky move by my Auxilia didn’t pay off as their flank charge didn’t go in.

On the plus side, however, my equites sagitarrii (horse archers) had managed to get right the way around the end of the enemy line and captured one of Colin’s three camps. You can see them somewhat precariously balanced on the battlements in the picture below!

The situation in the centre and on the left continued on - my cavalry dispersing his and preparing to turn and hit the left-rear of his line; his infantry properly bursting through my centre - but those horse archers of mine were merrily ransacking the next enemy camp:

Those of you familiar with the system and of a mathematical frame of mind will have worked out that with two of his cavalry units defeated and two camps taken, I only needed that final camp to fall in order to win the game.

The enemy did get back to re-claim one part their camp, but it was to no avail: by that time I had managed to kill two more of his infantry units, including the Auxilia lurking in the marsh shown in the picture below.

In all, a victory for me 12:6.

To The Strongest Tournaments 2024

/

Regular visitors will know that I have been playing in all the To The Strongest competitions this year, so I thought I’d mention the start of next year’s schedule and encourage anyone else who plays to enter as many events as possible.

The events are great fun: hard fought, obviously, but everything very sportsmanlike and all conducted in a very gentlemanly manner. I have played sixteen tournament games so far this year (with more on the way) and made lots of new friends in doing so.

I’ve also been inspired by the beautifully painted armies that have faced my Romans over the tabletop…and all sorts of armies too: not just the usual power-gamer suspects! Everything from Almoravids to Timurids, Medieval Russians to other Romans and many more.

Beautifully painted Carthagiians at Britcon

So what’s on offer?

January 27th sees the Welsh Open at The South Wales Gaming Centre/Firestorm Games in Cardiff. I haven’t played in this one before, and am looking forward to it. It’s due to have twenty-four players and all but three slots seem to be sold out, so quick-quick to get a place!

  • 28mm figures and 140 points as costed by published army lists, whichever QRS and Even Stronger that is current on 1st December will be used

  • 6x4 Table (12x8 Grid)

  • 4 rounds scored by the usual Welsh Open method

  • £12.50 to enter and a hot lunch included!

Western Han Chinese at the 2023 To The Worlds Strongest tournament

Then February 24th sees the world championships/To the Worlds Strongest tournament in Blewbury near Oxford. I came fourth last year and, be warned, am looking to improve my ranking in 2024! The competition is under new management this year, and I’m very excited to compete again: I had a blast in 2023!

  • Any army from the Ancient and Medieval lists, that are current at 1st January 2024, can be used up to a value of 140 points using 28mm figures. There will be no amendments to the points values in the published lists.

  • The competition will comprise of the usual 4 games, being played on a 6’x4’ table using a 12 x 8 grid of 6” squares. Scoring system will be the same as previous Worlds competitions.

  • Entry fee will be £20.00

Hopefully the above inspires you to take the plunge: I highly recommend doing so.

TTS AAR: British Open Game One: Early Imperial Romans vs Dacians

/

Last Saturday it was off to the Lee Valley Athletics Centre for the To The Strongest British Open, part of the BHGS Teams event at SELWG.

My first opponent was Andy and his Dacians. It’s fast becoming a tradition for me to face Andy first at a competition: we’ve faced off first in three of the four tournaments I’ve played in this year.

I had lost the Scouting phase, so had to deploy first. I set up my legionaries in a long line starting from the left, with the equites (cavalry) on my right.

As the game began, the Dacians rapidly shot forward and, almost immediately, the two battle lines crashed into each other

To summarise the rest of the game, I badly lost the right flank, with my equites alares and cohortales crumbling under the onslaught, but in the centre and on the left the legionaries had the bit between their teeth and steadily pushed the enemy back.

I had to reinforce the right with a unit of legionaries borrowed from the centre, but this gave me time to decisively win on the left and in the centre, with the coup de grace being the Praetorians taking the Dacian camp.

A hard fought game (the Dacians warbands are tough!) that ended in a 12-6 victory in my favour.

Here are some shots of the rest of the game:

Reclaiming Romans

/

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

/

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

/

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

/

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…!