TFL Painting Challenge: First March Update

/

A nice early March update for you all: gives me the chance to do another one in a couple of weeks.

Today we’ll start with Carole, who has been painting some Bloody Miniatures ECW figures:

Next up is Sapper, who has submitted a mix of figures and scales. Here are his 28mm Vikings and 15mm Byzantines:

Talking of Vikings, here’s some more…this time from Mervyn:

Here’s Mr Burt with some more English archers. These were added late, as Steve has an uncanny knack of sending his entries in just as I press “Post” on an update!

And last but by no measn least, Mr Helliwell has been his usual busy self. Today’s entry included a load of 3D buildings from BattleHonours and the start of an immense re-basing project:

That’s all for now, more on the way. Keep those entries coming in!

To The World's Strongest Game Two: Early Imperial Romans vs Komenonon Byzantines

/

After the disaster that was game one, I was looking forward to the chance for redemption in game two. My opponent was Nigel and his Komenonon Byzantines, who I’d fought at Warfare last year, although that was using the Venetians. Let’s see how the Romans would do…

I was facing cavalry on either flank, but was not that concerned about my left: my camp was protected by Impassable ground and defended by elite Lanciarii light infantry, meaning I felt safe to concentrate my veteran cavalry on the right, aiming to overwhelm the enemy horse and, again, loop round to take the rest of his army in the rear. All my infantry needed to do was to hold the centre against the Varangian Guard and all would be good.

I therefore advanced my centre and right forward strongly whilst holding back my left.

My cavalry did indeed “do the business”, with the Equites Alares smashing through on the far right wing and looping around into the rear of the rest of the enemy horse. all was proceeding to plan!

Nigel, however, realised what was about to happen and rapidly transferred his other cavalry command over to this wing, meaning that instead of being able to run riot in his infantry’s rear, my victorious cavalry had to fight more heavy cavalry coming in from the left.

Meanwhile, the Varangian guard had been heading straight for my line, determined to get into contact as soon as possible. That was okay by me: my legionaries were the equal of any infantry, and with the success of the cavalry, all I needed to do was to hold them for a couple of turns.

Unfortunately there was, again, something wrong with my infantry today, with every legionary or auxilia unit that came into contact with the enemy becoming disordered whether they were the attackers or not.

No matter, I had plenty of infantry ready to put the boot in, but some clever use of lights plus the fact that he had one unit of cavalry free to interfere, meant that Nigel was able to take the initiative in the centre.

Would my legionaries like to charge into either (a) the rear of the Varangians or (b) the cavalry threatening the flanks of their comrades?

No, they would not, thank you very much: far too much like hard work.

Worse, when the Byzantine cavalry charged the flank of my veteran legionaries, the “elite” Roman infantry broke and ran…and, like the last game, took the unit next to them with them as well!

Suddenly, from being in a commanding position well on the way to victory, the roles were reversed and I was looking at defeat!

The Varangians charged forward again, and another two legionary units dissolved. What was going on with my milites today?

And that was it: my last two medals gone as I went down to a narrow 11-12 defeat. I had only needed one more victory medal for the game to be mine, but the legionarirs just weren’t up for it.

Congratulations to Nigel for fighting his way back into the game: I think at one stage I was eight victory medals up!

As for my Romans…well, there were still two more game to go, so two more chances for them to redeem themselves or face consequences that could well involve the traditional punishment of decimation, but through the tender application of a large club hammer!

To The World's Strongest Game One: Early Imperial Romans vs Dacians

/

Time for this years To The World’s Strongest tournament, once again in Blewbury, near Oxford. This was a superbly organised competition with thirty-two players competing: the largest tournament I’ve been in and, I think, the largest To The Strongest tournament ever.

My first game was my Early Imperial Romans against Andy’s Dacians, with their very nasty two-handed falx choppers. This was a repeat of the first game of the 2023 SELWG competition, and in fact the fourth time in the last two years that I have played Andy first game in a tournament!

Excuse the thumb!

My plan was to defeat Andy’s command on the left flank with my veteran cavalry, then loop around the take his infantry in the rear as the Roman “mincing machine” attacked them from the front. Unbeknownst to Andy, I also had an Equites Alares unit Flank Marching off table on the left: the arrival of which would hopefully come as a nasty shock!

The Dacians seemed to have the same idea as the Romans, but reversed: so as battle opened, both sides’ infanry lines hung back as the left (Romans)/rigth (Dacians) flanks advanced strongly forward.

As battle was joined there, I then sprang my flank march surprise: my Equites arriving on the flank of the Dacians’ Sarmatian allies. All was going to plan!

I didn’t have it all my own way, but as the situation on the flank resolved itself, I definitely had the upper hand and, although I wouldn’t be looping round onto the enemy’s infantry’s rear for some time, had built up an advantage in victory medals that would serve me in good stead for the main infantry combat.

Back to the centre, where my infantry were now closing with the enemy. Five units of legionaries, two veteran, plus a unit of auxilia, versus five Dacian warbands. Given the situation with the cavalry, all I needed was an exchange of units, one-for-one, to win the game, and I had an overlap with the auxilia.

Then disaster struck!

As the two lines came together, the first combat to be calculated was on the far right of my line. The auxilia were broken by the Dacian charge and fled the table. Okay: not good, but, as I said, a one-for-one would still be okay.

Unfortunately, the legionaries next to them were Disordered by the sight of the fleeing auxilia (failing to achieve at least one [5] on two cards drawn: only a 16% probability) and then broken by the Dacians hitting them.

Their rout led to the next unit of legionaries also being Disordered and, you guessed it, then being broken by the charging Dacians.

Almost unbelievably, this rout then led to the next unit of legionaries going Disordered and then being destroyed, taking an officer with them.

That’s one auxilia and three legionary units being destroyed in one charge, with only the veteran legionaries on the left of the line standing their ground!

Just to emphasise, that was four units and an officer gone in one turn: a loss of ten victory medals and the game!

It was only the cavalry unit I had destroyed on the left that gave me any points at all, with the score going 2-11 to Andy…my only consolation being that I now had plenty of time to watch the other round one games!

A fantastic win for the Dacians!

So an unprecedented disaster of epic proportions in my first game but , ho hum, on to the next!

To The World's Warm-Up Game Two

/

With a careless loss in the first game, I wanted a chance for revenge, so Peter and I swapped sides, with me now taking the Norse Irish and Peter using my Early Imperial Romans.

As you can see, Peter skulked the Romans into one corner of the table, aiming to concentrate his force against only a proportion of my troops, aiming to beat them soundly before turning to crush the rest.

So I could see what Peter was trying to do: the question was, could I do anything about it!

Battle was joined almost immediately, and you can see that the left wing of my army is currently fighting air! His plan seems to be succeeding!

And given the Roman veteran cavalry were facing my weak right wing, my succeed very quickly indeed!

But I had more success in the centre, with Peter rather pleasingly falling foul of a common bête noire of mine: my cards and veteran legionaries proving fragile as eggs!

Meanwhile, my troops were still rushing over from the left: if I could get them into battle, then there was a good chance of a rare victory.

In they came from the left, and prepared to roll up the Roman line. An easy target was the already-disordered legionaries on the central hill. I had two units that could hit them from the sides, so I was confident they would go, hopefully leading to a cascade of disorders infecting the rest of the Latins!

Unfortunately, the first unit to attack (the bottom one in the picture above) failed to do anything, but I had the other, stronger unit still to go.

Peter, however, then pulled an interpretation of the rules that I had not come across before. I won’t bore you with the details (you can read the 50+ posts on the TTS Facebook group for that!) but suffice to say that Peter’s view was that unit A couldn’t charge the rear of unit B because enemy unit C was too close to let them do that as units D were blocking their path on their other side.

I was there very much to play a game not have an argument, and Peter was the host, so I reluctantly agreed with his way of doing things, therefore failing to break that pesky unit B.

What is the correct interpretation, I hear you ask? Well that’s still not 100% decided. The FB Group was split about 60:40 in my favour, with Simon Miller, the writer of the rules saying that I was 100% right and that unit A could charge unit B, but the To The World’s tournament was played Peter’s way, and I think everyone is waiting for the topic to be finally ruled on in a future Even Stronger rules update.

Anyhow, so back to the game. My units didn’t charge into the rear of the legionaries on the hill, which gave the Romans time to reorganise, react to the threat, and get their line back under control.

With his centre now stabilised, Peter was also then able to use his cavalry to finish off my weak right flank and, despite a last ditch attempt to take the Roman camp, my Norse-Irish surrendered their final victory medal and the game.

So a frustrating “so near and yet so far” loss for the Norse-Irish. Would I have won the game if the crucial rear charge had gone in? I think so…but as Peter was kind enough to remind me: “it’s only a game”!

To The World's Warm-Up Game One

/

Always good to do a little preparation for a tournament, so the weekend before it was off to Peter’s house for a couple of warm=up games.

The first game was my Early Imperial Romans versus the Norse-Irish: loads of ‘em, and seemingly all carrying javelins!

The Early Imperial Roman army is tactically very flexible (in that the legionaries can make non-terrain difficult moves with no penalty) but strategically a bit of a one trick pony: get stuck in being the order of the day. I duly moved my line forward, pila and gladii at the ready!

Note my one bit of non-conformist thinking: my cavalry were not deployed on the left wing, but one command in from the left. Let’s see if that works…

My right flank advanced up to the rough ground across the centre of the battlefield, and awaited the barbarian onslaught. Those are my veteran legionaries on the right: they should do the business!

At this point I realised I had made a mistake. If you look at the picture above, you’ll see an empty square next to the right hand legionary unit: a square that just cries out for enemy troops to use it for getting past my line and threaten my flanks and rear.

I had intended to shift my entire line forward and diagonal during the advance to the centre, covering the gap, but had forgotten to do so. I blame Peter’s cunning placement of a mirror at the end of the battlefield. On reflection (see what I did there) I’m not sure why that should make a difference, but I’m sure that it was Peter’s fault not incompetence on my part.

To make matters worse, it was also now obvious that the Norse-Irish had spotted the gap as well, and were heading for it at a rapid rate of knots. Lucky my cavalry weren’t right the way over on the other wing: I could leave a couple of units to deal with the enemy horse, and use my equites to plug the gap.

Unfortunately you’ll also see in the picture above that one of my legionary units has turned to its right to follow the cavalry, and left its flank exposed to the enemy.

I’m not sure why I did this, and can’t remember if it was unlucky cards that left them there, but Peter and the Norse-Irish took full advantage…

They were also taking full advantage of my mistake at the other end of the line:

The Romans are, however, a resilient lot, and whilst I was not able to rescue the situation on the right entirely, I was able to make it a bit better!

Unfortunately (I seem to be using that word a lot) the hole in the centre of my line was not quite so easy to fix. The Norse-Irish poured through it, attacked my flanks, and soon the last of my victory medals was on its way to the other side of the table.

So a fairly horrible defeat in my first warm up game. Come back in a day or so, and we’ll look at game two…

Painting Challenge: Early February Update

/

Time for our first update in February, and a bumper crop it is too.

First up is Carole, with a selection of 28mm fantasy pieces:

Then we have Mr Burt first two entries of the year. A new project: Agincourt.

Mr Cooper has also sent in his first batch of minis for 2025: his usual mixture of fantasy figures, some of which are shown below.

Now I know you’re all thinking that Mr Helliwell hasn’t had time to paint any more figures…but he has! Another big batch of medievals, Napoleonics and more:

Sapper joins Messrs Cooper and Burt on the “first entry of the year podium”: Napoleonics and Vikings.

And finally here are some more Vikings, this time ;painted by Mervyn. Never dispose of those extra sprues: you’re bound to need them one day!

That’s all for now, but keep them coming!

PS new entrants to the Challenge still very welcome…

FK&P AAR: Transylvanians vs Ottomans - Take Two

/

Plenty of time left after game number one, so Neil and I decided to play again: same sides, same terrain.

Given the above, both sides set up in largely a similar fashion as well.

but this time the Ottoman infantry also come forward strongly (last time they held back).

But the Transylvanian light horse have been at it again, and manage to sneak around the left side of the Ottoman line and take the Ottoman camp!

In the centre, one lot of Ottoman artillery prove a tempting target for the Hungarian Seimeni, but I’m not sure how long they’ll last now they have taken the guns!

Here’s an overview of the battle at this point:

The Transylvanians commit their Household Cavalry in the centre. It’s very successful, but every time it destroys an enemy unit, it pursues them off table and is lost!

That’s a very expensive way to figth a battle!

I have the Ottomans on the ropes, but just can’t quite seem to polish them off. Neil saves a couple of match points on the right…

…and the Janisseries are starting to chew through the Transylvanian infantry!

It is now sudden death: whoever loses the next unit loses the game…unless, that it, I can get one of my three units that have pursued off table back into the action.

It’s still Neil’s turn, but he’s just about out of unist to play. On a whim he decides to try and re-take his camp, lost to the Transylvanian Lights earlier in the game, with some of his Sipahis.

With a couple of good activation cards, the Sipahis hit home…and my Lights die…which is enough to cost me my last on-table victory medal! The Transylvanians lose heart and retreat!

I’m still not sure quite how I lost that game, but I did! The Transylvanians just couldn’t quite finish off the units they Disordered, and the Ottomans proved very successful in saving match points.

A great game of For King & Parliament/Eastern Front!

TTS AAR: Godentag Game Four: Early Imperial Romans vs Later Romans (East)

/

Onto the last of my games at this year’s Godentag Weslh Open event. Game one had been a loss, but glorious victories in games two and three had brought me right back into the running. My last game was to be against Si and his Later Romans (East), victory in which would see me somewhere around the third to sixth mark in the competition as a whole.

Incidentally, that would be three Roman armies I faced in four games, and all against opponents who I knew well or quite well. So much for entering competitions for a bit of variety in opponents!

As battle began, both sides advanced forward cautiously. Si then moved his veteran cataphracts up the flank to go just behind and to the right of the hill in front of the field on the left in the picture above. He then failed an activation to charge them, meaning my lancers could get the drop on them and charge in first.

You may notice an absence of my lancers in the picture below:

Yes, that’s right: my veteran lancers with general, hero, lance and all round goodness charged forward and missed both their attacks and the hero’s re-draw. Si then attacked back, hit my lancers twice, neither of which they saved: dead, along with the general! Four coins lost!

Well that was a good start!

I then made a tactical error (I blame the shock of losing the lancers!) and sent my veteran legionaries to counteract the advance of Si’s cavalry on the other wing. All that then happened was that my best troops spent the rest of the battle running after the equites, who merely retreated or evaded combat as required, Si dancing them effortlessly around my hapless infantry.

This was not good, but I still had my centre intact could achieve a 4:3 superiority there:

Meanwhile, Si was skillfully edging his light cavalry around my flanks…this did not bode well for the future!

Disaster then almost struck on the left: one of my veteran legionary units tried to keep up with the enemy cavalry one too many times and got disordered.

The cavalry then threatened a flank attack, but all I needed was an easy activation to get out of the situation, which I promptly failed. Luckily their commander was there to save the situation and get them moving…but it had been a close run thing!

Back to the right where my equites alares had managed to disorder some enemy auxilia with their javelins. Here was a chance to drive the auxilia from the field: all I needed was anything except…

A complicated series of cavalry manoeuvres then took place, ending up honours even (I lost an equites unit, Si lost his two light cavalry units) but with my horsemen in exactly the right position to charge his cataphracts on the flank.

I needed an 8+ to hit, no general available for a re-draw (he had been killed in the first action of the game), but managed to draw a nine. In my cavalry went…

Two misses: the cards weren’t with me at all!

Whilst this was going on, the centre had seen a big melee between each side’s legionaries and auxilia. Again, honours were even, but after the four coins I’d lost in the first turn, I could ill-afford a one-for-one exchange of units.

Back to the left, where my vets had been forced into orbis to avoid being overrun:

But the final moment of the game happened when the enemy cataphracts whom I had failed to damage with my flank attack turned and charged home on my equites.

The cavalry were disordered in the first round of combat, then KO’d as the cataphracts attacked again:

So a somewhat frustrating loss 27-186 which drove me down into 9th place overall.

Si, who hadn’t put a foot wrong all game, ended up in third place overall, the top and second places being taken by Peter Ryding and Steve Butler respectively.

My thanks to Ty who organised everything, and to all my opponents during the tournament. With 24 players, this was one of the largest I’d attended,

And, finally, for those of you who haven’t tried a TTS competition, I heartily encourage you to do so: four great games all played in a fun and generous spirit. Highly recommended.

FK&P AAR: Transylvanians vs Ottomans

/

With the help of friend Rob, I had finally managed to get my 17th Century Ottoman force ready for combat. t had been a long haul: the initial Janisseries painted by Rob, the cavalry painted by Matt Slade of Glenbrook Games, then the odds and sods needed to finally fill the force out finished by Rob and I. Their first outing would have friend Neil commanding them as they faced off against the Transylvanians commanded by Yours Truly.

I was a tad concerned about the prospects for the Transylvanians: my infantry were decidedly inferior to the Ottoman Janisseries, and unless I could get my light cavalry dancing around the field, the Turkish Sipahis were going to run right over my horse!

Accordingly, I placed my lights on the wings, sent my infantry into the small village just in front of my start position, and hoped for the best in the centre where my Household Cavalry were facing the Ottoman elite cavalry.

One advantage that I did have was that although Neil is a veteran wargamer and familar with To The StrongestI, this was his first game of For King & Parliament.

The game opened with me taking the fight to the enemy and advancing forward strongly across the whole front except where my Haiduks had occupied the village.

On the right flank, my superiority in light horse enabled me to get a unit around the side of the Ottoman main line, meaning that they could turn and assualt the Turks from front and side.

I also managed to do the same on the right hand side of the field, where my light cavalry effectively managed hold off the Ottoman light cavalry there and counter any Ottoman movement against my weak infantry.

Back to the right flank, where my lights had now effectively cleared the enemy cavalry away, and could think about heading into the center to help.

That left the centre, where my Household and Enlisted Cavalry faced up to the Ottoman Sipahis.

This looked quite serious, as the Sipahis are seriously good troops, but the success of my lights out on the right meant that Neil had to divert some of his cavalry to cover his flanks.

It was a brutal melee, with the Sipahis initially having the upper hand, but dealing with my lights on the right kept siphoning off both their attention and resources: first one squadron was sent left to shore things up, then another etc

All this meant that my Household and Enlisted cavalry were able to recover from the inital clash and then fight back hard. The Sipahis began to give way, with a trickle to the rear becoming a flood, and the battle was mine!

It had been a great game. The Transylvanians, for a change, managed to use their light horse with great success, totally blocking the left wing and allowing the centre to be won by draining Ottoman resource onto the right wing.

Even better, there was time for a re-match…but that’s another story!

TTS AAR: Godentag Game Three: Early Imperial Romans vs Hundred Years War English

/

With one win and one loss under my belt, I really needed another big win to give me any chance of placing near the top of the table.

My opponent for game three was John and his Hundred Years War English: longbows, longbows and more longbows!

I hate facing longbow armies: they shoot a lot and a long way…which means if you’re using a mostly infantry army like my Romans that you just have to bite the bullet and advnace through the hail of arrows and get stuck in.

As you can see in the picture, above, John had assumed a defensive posture, with almost a mini-fortress on his left wing and an unbroken line of archers facing the open ground in front of his line. Tricky!

My plan was to have my cavalry cover the ground on my right (i.e. opposite his mini fortress which, whilst being very strong, also tied up a lot of his best troops) and then advance forward to just out of longbow range to see if I could temp John forward. Even if I narrowed the gap to two squares rather than three, that was one turn of being shot at avoided.

This all went to plan, and John saw my legionaries standing there just out of range, resisted for a turn, and then cracked and sent his line forward one square i.e. putting his archers in range but closing the gap between us to two squares. Now was my moment to charge forward and stab his bowmen into mincemeat!

Apparently not! Failed activations in my two main legionary commands meant that the message didn’t get through…which meant that the arrows were about to fly! That’s three Aces drawn in a row by the way: which I reckon only happens 0.07% of the time or one in 1,428 draws. Ouch!

Somehow, however, the Romans got through the storm, and closed to contact with only one cohort disordered and hanging back to reform.

My cavalry, meanwhile, were still “in reserve” waiting for the opportunity to pounce.

That moment came when it turned out that these longbowmen were harder to kill than I thought they would be.

With my legionaries hitting on ‘6’ versus the longbowmen’s ‘8’, and saving better as well, I thought the fight in the centre would be a bit of a foregone conclusion once the Roman Mincing Machine had got into the action.

Regretably not, and the first round of combat led to a single disorder on each side. I therefore moved one equites alares unit up to reinforce the right hand side of my line, where necessity meant my infantry suffered a two-on-one overlap, not to charge the enemy behind their stakes, but to block their attack and throw javelins at them.

I needed something on the enemy line to give, and my opportunity came by way of my Strategem card: for some reason, known only to those involved, one unit of enemy archers suddenly about faced right in front of a cohort of legionaries. Now’s your chance Maitlandius, up Guards and at ‘em!

It was now only a matter of time in the centre but, meanwhile, a crisis had presented itslef on the far left.

The English household Knights had moved forward and engaged the cohort of legionaries that I had stationd there to bottle the dismounted tin cans up. Foolishly I thought a steady unit of veteran infantry supported by horse archers would be able to hold the Knights back but, no, the legionaries were disordered in the first charge, and then had to condust a fighting retreat backwards towards the rear of the table.

Fortunately I had my cavalry reserve and, led by the cavalry commander, they shot right across the table and intervened before the legionaries could be overwhelmed by the tender mercies of both the dismounted Knights andyet another unit of longbowmen.

Naturally my veteran lancers (equites contarium) couldn’t do things the easy way: despite having every advantage they ended up disordering themselves when charging, with their lances, against men carrying nothing more deadly than long bits of wood and daggers!

Things were getting quite serious down in that corner: that was seven victory coins I had at risk, and that’s a lot when you start with only eleven! I could now easily lose this battle before I’d finished chopping through his main line of archers!

Fortunately my faith in the legions was not misplaced, and before I could lose the game on the left, my heavy infantry finally finished off his main line.

Phew! That was close!

It had been terrific game whose scoreline (164-73 in my favour) didn’t really reflect how close I’d come to losing.

Now on to the fourth and last game of the day…

TTS AAR: Godentag Game Two: Early Imperial Romans vs Middle Imperial Romans

/

Battered after my loss to Mark’s Middle Imperial Romans (Eastern variety) I bounced straight into fighting Colin’s Middle Imperial Romans (Western variety). That’s an awful lot of Romans in only two games!

This is a picture taken just after I had made my first move. My plan was to defeat his cavalry with my superior horse, giving Colin a headache on his left flank, then temp his line forward so that I can get my light cavalry (you can just see a horse’s head by the trees, far left) around his right flank to either take his large and undefended camp or just generally harrass the rear of his veteran legionaries.

You can see that I wasn’t mucking around in this encounter: my line has advanced towards his and, in an exciting and perhaps foolhardy rush of blood to the head, my equites have charged straight into contact!

Unfortunately I had failed to consider Fortuna’s baleful influence, and the glorious charge of my lancers achieved a big fat zero as all three of my attacks (I had a hero present) missed by a zillion miles!

I was also now vulnerable to Colin’s infantry trying to swamp my cavalry column, but managed to at least counter that threat…but my plan for the right flank was definitely now in tatters!

Meanwhile, in the centre of the field, the two battle lines had drawn together, although I had initially refused my left flank in order to allow my light horsement to get past the advancing enemy legionaries.

The lights were now threatening the enemy camp, forcing Colin to take one of his infantry units out of the main line to protect against them, and in a perfect position to flank charge the unit of enemy legionaries on the far right of Colin’s line.

The light horse, however, were not keen!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, the confused situation with the cavalry had sorted itself out with a series of clashes that left my lancers withdrawing to recover, Colin’s cavalry doing the same, and one unit of Equites Alares finding themselves alone and facing the deserted enemy camp.

Unfortunately, much like the lights on the left, the cavalry just wouldn’t move into the camp: failing the necessary activation on two consecutive turns before being forced to withdraw as Colin threatened them with infantry taken, again, from his main line. How frustrating, particularly as there were nine coins on offer if I’d taken all three enemy camps: enough to finish the game!

Now, however, my luck seemed to turn. My veteran infantry forced the enemy veteran infantry back, assisted by the flank attacks of the lights who had finally decided/been bribed/threatened/all of the above to attack, and my regular infantry, much to everyone’s surprise, had also been successful.

I was on the cusp of a glorious victory, but we were almost out of time. If I didn’t finish the enemy Romans off in my next activation, I would have to settle for a winnign draw rather than an outright victory.

Fortunately things fell my way: the enemy infantry were sent reeling back, and an opportunity to hit some cavalry in their flank after they had killed one of my units proved final, with my Romans taking the day with a glorious 191-18 victory.

That had been a great way to recover from my loss in the first game. Now I had to do it all again in my third clash…

TFL Painting Challenge: Second January Update

/

And some returning entrants as well.

First up today we have Carole, who has participated in every single year of the Challenge so far, one of only seven people to do so. Her submission consists of pikemen, musketeers and a very creepy graveyard!

John Emmett also sends in his first entries of the year. It’s John’s seventh year of the Challenge, and his submission includes a mixture of WW2 Germans and various Napoleonic character pieces including Sergeant Hakeswill: boo, hiss!

The prolific Mr Helliwell sends in his second submission for the year: mostly Napoleonics this time. Andrew has only missed one year of the Challenge so far, and recorded 5,000 points in both the last two years: an impressive achievement. 6,000 this year perhaps?

Finally this update, we have Mervyn Douglas, one of the other people to have never missed a Challenge. His submission is some more figures for his American War of Independence collection.

So that’s it for this update: let’s get those brushes working as, unfortunately, the lead mountain won’t paint itself, no matter how hard we pray it might!

TTS AAR: Godentag Game One: Early Imperial Romans vs Middle Imperial Romans

/

I’m just back from another excellent Godentag (Welsh Open) To The Strongest tournament held, as ever, at Firestorm Games in Cardiff.

I cannot recomend these tournaments enough: a whole day of super-friendly wargaming at an excellent venue, lunch included!

I travelled to Wales on the Friday, stopping off at a very windy Uffington Castle and White Horse en route as I hadn’t been there for many years, and enjoying a very convivial evening of beer, wine, curry and conversation with Peter, Tim and Si starting at the City Arms and ending at The Spice Quarter, highly recommended.

I was thus refereshed and ready for my first game on Saturday morning: my opponent being Mark Freeth and his Middle Imperial Romans.

view from behind the early imperial lines

We were tied on scouting points, so when I drew a ‘9’ for the scouting itself, I was fairly confident of winning, only to see Mark promptly draw a ‘10’.

This was unfortunately a harbinger of what was to come, especially as I then realised that I had perhaps not constructed a very good army list as I think I was the only player with his troops grouped into three as opposed to four commands: it seemed that I had sacrificed manoeuvrability to max out on strength!

The game began with Mark advancing his horse on the wings, so I sent out my veteran legionaries on the left, and my veteran equites on the right to deal with them. On the left, my General there had a narrow escape when it looked as if he had been killed in the very first clash, being saved only by the Patroculus strategum card that I had drawn before the game.

A narrow escape for the man in purple

Mark, bit between his teeth, then assaulted my main line with a couple of units of is legionaries, but the fall of the cards meant that both his units arrived right in front of mine but without being able to charge me.

This meant that I could get the drop on his troops: attacking first and with a three vs two advantage.

Unfortunately not. Fortuna had, as all too often, decided to kick me firmly in the fork and delivered the first pair of Aces of my game…meaning my men just stood there and looked at the enemy rather than dishing out a good shoe-ing!

ace…ace

Worse, his attack next turn smashed the legionaries aside, leaving the way to my camp open!

surely a flank charge will KO the enemy threatening my camp!

Meanwhile, the rest of the battlefield looked like this:

overview

In the foreground are my camps with, as described above, his legionaries in combat with what was left of my ‘standard’ legionary command. I wouldn’t even get to flank charge the unit that has burst through my line: more aces for activation!

On the right at the back, I had managed to destroy one of his cavalry units with one of mine, and get the drop and disorder another two of his units. Unfortunately, try as I might, I just couldn’t get through the two disordered units, and even became disordered myself as a result of a poorly drawn card or two.

On the right in the foreground, my other two cavalry units are locked in combat with more of his horse, but I couldn’t win this fight either, despite a two on one advantage. I had managed to see off his light cavalry, but they were merely off table rather than destroyed, and I knew they would return as soon as they were able to do so.

Just left of centre, two of my veteran legionary units are in melee with more enemy infantry. Again I had the advantage on paper, but lost the fight. I couldn’t draw a hit or a save to, er, save my life.

Finally, on the left, my other veteran legionaries were battling two enemy horse units for control of that flank, but, as you can see in the picture below, were rapidly becoming overwhelmed despite the help of my equites sagittarii horse archers who, having achieved the enemy’s flank, seemingly dropped their weapons and assaulted their foe with, as the saying goes, mango slices!

this is not looking good!

Back to the right flank, and I was still trying to kill his cavalry, along with his light horse who had made their way back onto the field.

just die will you!

All the disorders inflicted on me now came back to haunt me with a vengeance. In rapid succession, I lost two veteran legionary units, the auxilia on the hill in front of my camp (although, to be fair, they had withstood three charges whilst disordered), and the cavalry at the other end of the table.

I had one coin left, which I then promptly threw away, thinking to retreat the legionaries on the other hill in front of my camp, rally them and then return. Yes, they retreated. Yes, they rallied. No, they didn’t manage to get back on the hill despite having an officer present. This let enemy infantry slip into my camp and take my last remaining medal: a silly mistake on which to end the game!

A careless mistake on my part ends the game

This had been a very frustrating game: the cards refusing to let me hit or save anything. Even Mark, as he celebrated his 168-35 total victory, agreed that luck had not been on my side.

Not a very good start, but there were still three games to go, so all was still to play for…!

WW2 AAR: Undaunted Normandy

/

Friend Neil suggested we play a game I hadn’t encountered before: Undaunted Normandy.

Undaunted Normandy from Osprey

Published by Osprey, this is a board game where the playing surface is constructed of different tiles showing terrain that are put together in different combinations in order to represent different battlefields. Specially printed cards are then used to generate the force you will use, represented by counters on the tiles, with a significant part of the game being resource allocation. Dice are then used to determine movement and combat, with different squads (Recon, Rifle, MMG etc) having different attributes.

By adding 6mm figures and terrain, Neil had rather brilliantly converted the 2D printed tiles and counters into 3D pieces that looked more like a wargame than a board game:

From 2D to 3D: how gooD is that!

We played one of the starter scenarios involving the Germans counter-attacking an American advance. The mechanics are easy to pick up, and before long I was playing without really having to ask any questions.

As noted above, combat is determined by rolling dice, and as I have vast numbers of various-sided dice and couldn’t be bothered with passing things backwards and forwards between Neil and myself, I asked him what sort of dice were used and how many you needed. Four 8-sided dice, he replied: so off I went to my storage bucket of dice and found four eight-sided dice.

We began the game, and it was only after a few turns that I realised that it’s actually four 10-sided dice that are used in the game: it being quite hard to get a ‘10’ on an eight-sided dice when Neil said that that was what I needed to roll!

Most amusing, especially as I can now claim that that was the only reason I lost the game rather than the real reason that Neil outmanoeuvred me!

How many sides on those dice? Does the man have no shame!

I enjoyed the game: not something I would necessarily want to play all the time - my bent is for large, multi-figure, tabletop games - but I can see the appeal, and it does fit into a very small area. It’s the sort of game you could take on holiday, provided you could fit the stuff in the car!

There’s a much better review of the game here: https://www.wargamer.com/undaunted-normandy/review and I’d certainly recommend having a read and giving the game a go if you get the chance.

TTS AAR: Venetians versus Early Imperial Romans

/

Friend Neil expressed an interest in getting a Roman army for To The Strongest, but wanted to test one out first. I could oblige and so, for the first time, my Venetians faced my Romans across the tabletop.

As Neil also quite fancied having a go at a competition or two, I marked out a standard competition table size on my somewhat larger set-up, and off we went. Neil would us my Early Imperial Romans, I would use my trusty Venetian Condotta army.

The Venetians, thanks to their light troops, won the scouting, so watched as the Romans deployed with their cavalry on the right, surely ripe for wiping out with my superior Knights!

Regrettably not!

Very early on in the game, my right hand command of Knights was soundly defeated by the inferior Roman horse: an event that effectively set the scene for the battle as a whole.

No matter: I had more Knights on the left, and had sent them forward to try and get behind the Roman flank.

This sort of worked, but the extreme manoeuvrability of the Romans meant that their Praetorians could quickly move back to block that flank, leaving my elite troops to merely keep the Praetorians and the rest of the veteran Legionaries from interfering in the main clash in the centre.

And so on to the centre, where the game would be decided.

The two lines came together in quite a disjointed way. I partially refused my left, hoping to temp his Romans forward to be flank charged by my Knights, but Neil was too canny to fall for that and all that it meant was that half my spearmen sat watching as their colleagues were defeated elsewhere on the field.

On the right of the centre, my Alabardiers proved as solid as usual, defeating the Roman cavalry who charged them. The Alabardiers then retreated to a nearby hill where they would eventually be assailed on all sides by fresh Roman troops.

The battle now broke down into a series of individual clashes that the Roman got the better of, leaving things very disjointed as we entered the end phase.

Disaster then struck on the left, where Neil had finally realised that my two units of Knights were tying up his main infantry strike force, and moved forward to attack and defeat my ‘Broken Lances’.

It was now only a matter of going through the motions as the Roman battle line, the mincing machine, came forward. With half my Knights routed and the other half stymied by disorder or poor positioning, I had nothing that could standard up to the remorseless gladii and the game was Neil’s!

The Start of the Arab Conquest

/

My project for the new year is a 15mm Arab Conquest army based for To The Strongest.

I’m using the excellent Red Copper Miniatures 3D sculpts printed for me by Baueda, who I have found to be excellent quality, fairly priced, and with a single fee for postage and packing that works out to be very cost-effective provided you order in bulk).

First up are the Wariors that form the bulk of the army.

Here I wanted to be able to use the figures for both a 15mm grid (what I usually play on) and a 10mm grid (the size used for the one 15mm TTS competition), so settled on using the 7.5mm bases for For King & Parliament available from the BigRedBat shop and designed to slot together to allow different combinations of pike and shot battalia to be put together (FK&P6)

I painted the Red Copper figures in individual colour schemes, and then painted the Essex command figures (leader, standard, musician on each base) in the same single colour for each 15cm grid double unit, basing the command figures all together in the second of four rows of models on each base.

This gave the impression of random figures, but with a predominance of one colour on each base, making them easily identifiable. The right hand base of each double-unit had the trumpeter, the left hand base had a drummer.

Here are the individual units:

The flags are all from Wargames Designs, who have an extensive range of “Saracen” flags. Each design comes printed on good quality paper that you then cut out, fold into flag shapes, and then use PVA glue to fix in place. The flgas come with instructions for those who are still baffled!

I’ve used the flags to allow identification of different commands. Four of the double-base-units come with the left base having a green flag and the right base having black flag; two of the double-base-units come with both bases with a flashy red and white banner. This allows me, at double-base level, to field six units in two commands: perhaps two standard units and a veteran “flashy flag” unit per command; or, at base level, to field a black flag command, a green flag command and a flashy-flag command, each with four individual bases.

Overall, I’m very happy with these. The sculpts are gorgeous, they seem pretty hard-wearing, and I think the paint jobs and bases that I’ve managed are definitely a little above basic wargames standard.

Now on to the cavalry!

TTS AAR: Early Imperial Romans versus Anglo-Normans

/

A second run out for my Romans in the same weekend, this time against Peter playing Anglo-Normans.

The Romans won the scouting, achieving a rather nice right flank overlap in the deployment that followed.

My strategy was simple: hammer down the right hand side of the field, then curl round to take the AN’s in their left flank.

I had the plan, I had the men: what could possibly go wrong?

Things began well, with my advance in the centre moving forward strongly.

In response, Peter’s plan was to hold his left flank with a deep unit of Fyrd forming orbis on a convenient hill, whilst the rest of his men defeated the veteran legionaries in front of them. If he could then use his heavy Norman cavalry to outflank my line on the left, then so much the better.

Let’s look at my out-flanking manoeuvre first.

Although the initial advance into an outflanking position had gone well, I just couldn’t quite get into actual combat before Peter had time to stabilise his line.

The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the unit of Auxilia with the blue shields refused to charge the orbis on the hill three times in a row, despite having an officer present, meaning that the whole infantry command there was effectively moribund, meaning that I had to send in the cavalry before the enemy infantry line was properly softened up.

Despite this, the situation on the right ended up generally positive…but a far cry from the sweeping victory I needed to win the game before anything could go wrong on the left.

Meanwhile, on the left, Peter had advanced forward strongly, intending to beat me there with his knights and foot knights before I had a chance to win on the right.

Although I managed to use the terrain to anchor my veteran legionaries in place, a small but significant gap in my line allowed a unit Norman Knights, accompanied by some Lights, to sneak through and threaten my flanks.

This was a bit of a problem but, meanwhile, there was some very good news from the flank: a unit of eastern auxiliary light horse archers managed to shoot down a unit of veteran Norman knights - and it’s not often that that happens!

The Equites Sagittarii would go on to almost taking out another unit of Norman Knights with their bows, only failing because they ran out of ammo, having used every arrow in the camp as well!

More good news in that a good run of the cards allowed me to stabilise the situation on that flank. I was still outnumbered, but had formed a rough defensive circle as I waited for the game to be won on the right!

Unfortunately my luck then visciously rebounded, with a couple of Aces at critical moments effectively losing me the battle, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious. Firstly, the Legionaries in the centre of the picture above failed to make an easy turn to take two Norman units in the flank. Secondly, a unit of veteran Legionaries failed to activate when in the midst of fighting more Norman knights. To put that in perspective, the two Aces appear like that only 1% of the time!

Then I made a bad tactical error…or at least a tactical error as far as the To The Strongest rules are concerned.

Worried about the disordered Legionaries in the right-hand picture, above, I retreated them back into a square containing another unit of Legionaries, but facing the other way: the idea being that the Romans would fight bravely back-to-back. What I hadn’t realised was that the way that the Zone of Control rules work meant that if Peter was able to get a unit onto the flank of the back-to-backers, the back-to-backers would then be effectively pinned in place unable to rotate to face their aggressors.

I had never encountered this situation before, and it was a bit of a hard lesson to learn, as my Legionaries had to just sit there and be hit in the flank, unable to fight back, until one of the units died!

It’s a quirk in the rules, to be sure, but not one that breaks To The Strongest (I could argue it’s “realism” either way if I needed to!) but is something to be aware of and watch out for. As I said: a hard lesson to learn!

Meanwhile, back on the right flank, my winning situation had been reversed by the fact that my failures on the left had freed up a couple of units of Norman Knights to use their internal lines to rescue the situation: as you can see in the picture below, I went from an “about to take the two Anglo-Norman camps” situation to a “hit in the flank and rear” situation!

All was not lost, however, as high casualties on both sides meant that the game could still be mine. All I really needed was for my infantry on the right to finish off the Fyrd that were in orbis. The Fyrd had already been disordered, and I had two strong units ready to attack them. Surely the Fyrd would now die or, if that attack failed, there were some disordered Knights to kill instead.

All was looking good as I prepared to start my turn…

The bad news continued as we resolved the back-to-back situation, leading to a debate about whther I was actually just unlucky or, given that I had had some luck in the game, just unlucky at the wrong times in a game: is an Ace just an Ace, or is it an ACE!

And unfortunately I didn’t get another chance, as on Peter’s subsequent turn he managed to break one more of my units sending my troops reeling into retreat.

A roller coaster of game that both sides could easily have won. I was glad that I’d learnt about the back-to-back quirk in the rules: something to watch out for in future games.

So my losing streak continues: five games of To The Strongest in a row now. Hopefully this means that I’ll have got all the losses out of my system before the Wales tournament in a week’s time!

First Painting Challenge Update for 2025

/

And the Challenge is back…and already firing on all cylinders!

In order of appearance in the Challenge inbox we have:

Mr Douglas kicks off his year with a couple of very nice 28mm WW2 building intended for use as objectives in 02 Hundred Hours:

Pipped at the post for a first delivery, but making up for it in mass alone is Mr Helliwell, with his first (and as per usual large) entry for the year. A mix of 15mm Napoleonics, terrain and 28mm Medievals, and all very nice!

Next up is Stumpy, with a couple of very lovely looking Matilda II: just about the only decent British early war tank!

So a great batch of entries in to start off this year’s proceedings. Let’s keep sending them in!

TTS AAR: Early Imperial Romans vs Medieval Irish

/

Time for a bit of training before the first tournament of the year: a friendly game involving my Early imperial Romans taking on Peter’s Medieval Irish.

The Romans leave their box for the first time in twelve months

Outscouting me, Peter had tried his usual trick of weighting his troops on the side of the table (my left) opposite to where my command of veteran legionaries had deployed: the idea being that he would win the battle on my left without the vets having had the chance to properly take part in the game.

To counter this cunning tactic, I refused my left flank cavalry command and began moving the veteran legionaries over to the left as fast as they could march. This left my right flank open and, sure enough, Peter had light cavalry on the way there to exploit the gap.

The situation was compounded by a lucky shot from Irish light bowmen that took out my Equites Sagittarrii light horse, leaving that flank even more vulnerable!

I wasn’t too worried on my left, as even my standard legionaries are a pretty tough bunch, with the Roman cavalry all being veterans as well.

This was good, as battle there was joined very quickly, with both sides rapidly being drawn into a grinding melee.

Meanwhile, on my right, I had been forced to deploy to contain the Irish lights and the troops Peter had moved up to support them.

This, of course, meant that he had achieved exactly what he had set out to do, although not as successfully as he migth have hoped as, on the far right (picture bottom left in the gallery above) it had taken him abiut 20 points of lights to occupy 20 points of legionaries/auxiliaries.

Meanwhile, back on the left, the grinding melee had not gone my way. We both thought that this was to do with Peter having had the cards when he needed them (i.e. luck) as on paper the two sides were evenly matched with five decent fighting units apiece. Whatever the reason, I had decidedly lost the fight there and was on the point of being wiped out!

The game ended when, on the right/centre of the field, the Irish lights finally slipped through my cordon of legionaries and auxiliaries and managed to take one of my camps. A rather ignominious 4-11 defeat for the Romans!

Some valuable lessons re-learned after the Christmas break: and not just “don’t play Peter if you want to win”!

I understand that Irish armies are this year’s “thing”, and one can see why given how they performed in this game. We Romans are, however, a resilient lot, so it’s just a matter of time before even the Irish will be conjugating their Latin just like the Gauls, Germans, Spaniards etc!