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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The game then developed into three different battles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aftermath

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

Here’s a complete gallery of the game:

Robert Avery