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

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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

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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

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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 "Real Life" Roman Baggage Train!

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I’m doing a lot of To The Strongest competitions at the moment, using an almost wholly metal 28mm Early Imperial Roman army that weighs a ton! Carrying it from the student digs at Britcon to the venue practically killed me, and the SELWG ramp wasn’t much fun either!

Now, however, I have the solution: a rather nifty folding camping trolley from Finnhomy bought from Amazon:

This neatly fits the entire army plus a box of terrain, lunchbox, waterbottle etc (in fact we had two armies plus paraphernalia in it on the journey out of the venue) making it super easy to transport from car to table, and then acting as a side table as well. I wish I’d bought it sooner!

As the description suggests, it also neatly folds up into the boot of the car and is honestly the best thing since sliced bread!

Details are here:

Finnhomy Folding Trolley on Wheels with Brake, Festival Trolley, Collapsible Beach Trolley with Removable Wheels, Camping Trolley 100KGs Capacity, Garden Trolley Wagon with Drink Holders

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

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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:

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

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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!

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

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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.

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

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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

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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: 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: