To the Strongest Ancient Britons v Imperial Romans

A game of To the Strongest in Norfolk very aptly saw me join in a game between Pete's Ancient Britons and Ken's Imperial Romans on the Britons side. The armies were very impressive 28mm on a large table and I took control of the Britons left flank while Pete had the centre and right.

My command of chariots, warriors and slingers:

The Romans awaited attack on a hill: 

One of Pete's elite warbands:

My warriors following up their chariots:

The Roman line looks solid and threatening on the hill:

The full lines of battle:

My tribe is facing Auxiliaries and slingers:

The Britons centre prepares to charge up the hill:

My warband is still in reserve:

The chariots pepper the Auxiliaries with missiles ineffectively:

The fight for the hill is vicious:

The Romans replace their slingers with more Auxilia as the Britons continue to hurl missiles with no effect at all:

Freedom loving Britons fight brutal Imperialist Romans!

Attacks from the Auxilia break one of my chariot units:

Both infantry lines are weakening now, on the right though one of Pete's warbands has broken through the Roman line and is sweeping along the Roman flank smashing Legionaries as it goes:

My command has, in all honesty, not contributed much beyond keeping the Auxilia occupied:

My warband falls back having failed to better the Auxilia on the hill:

The rest of the Roman army breaks leaving the British victorious:

Very enjoyable and impressive looking game put on by Pete and Ken, it was easy to pick up TtS after playing FK&P and the fewer markers and smaller cards made the table less untidy looking. 

For King & Parliament "Marlowe to Maidenhythe" Campaign Game 1: The Attack on Marlowe

Having played several games of FK&P over Vassal during lockdown and both having as yet unused 28mm ECW armies Dave and I decided to try out playing on an actual table! 

One of the add-ons FK&P is a fictional campaign (in fact more a series of games) called from Marlowe to Maidenhythe which features Sir John Boulters leading the Royalists (me) and Sir Christopher Grey commanding the Parliamentarians (Dave). The first scenario sees the Royalists attacking Marlowe which is held by a similar sized Parliamentarian force.

The rebel forces deploy in front of the town:

The King's men deploy to attack the rebels. They are stronger in horse but weaker in foot:

Planning to avoid taking on the rebel commanded shot and forlorn hope in the maze of hedgerows the Royalist foot begins to move to the more open ground on their left:

On the right the Royalist horse holds back and awaits developments:

The left wing of the Royalist horse advances boldly though to pin the rebel infantry in place:

The rebels advance their cavalry slightly but otherwise remain stationary:

The Royalist foot continue to advance and open fire on the rebel Forlorn Hope:

The Royalist horse on the left have made rapid progress forcing the nearest rebel foot battalia to turn to face them:

The Royalist foot continue to advance:

The first losses of the battle as one of the rebel forlorn hopes is routed:

The second rebel Forlorn Hope is also quickly dealt with:

On the right the rebels have rushed their horse forward and engaged the Royalist horse:

Both rebel horse have charged home:

The initial fight goes well for the 'Swedish' organised Royalists against their 'Dutch' opponents:

However, they fail to build on this success and one Royalist regiment is routed:

The Royalist foot are making good progress towards outflanking the rebel line. Much of the rebel foot seems reluctant to leave the safety of the hedgerows:

Things get worse for the Royalist right wing horse as a second unit routs:

All is not yet lost though as the final Royalist horse take the victorious rebels in the flank and disperse them:

They follow up and break the second rebel unit! They promptly pursue the fleeing rebels off table:

Rebel morale is starting to fall with one battalia taking fire from the front and flank while Royalist horse prevent the other rebel battalia intervening:

Possibly too late in the day the rebel commanded shot begin to advance forcing one Royalist battalia to retire before it breaks:

Having weakened the enemy the Royalists charge into the flank of the exposed rebel battalia and break it. Rebel morale collapses and the retire from the field:

It had been quite a while since we had played To the Strongest FK&P so we struggled a bit with the rules and probably did several things wrongly. 

I tend to find the rules a bit clunky with so many markers and the use of playing cards to drive the game, while giving some interesting nuances, tends to spoil the visual aspect with cards and markers littering the table most of the time. When you do get into combat it also appears to rely to a large extent on luck (though perhaps it just seems that way with cards rather than dice!).

As for the result I felt that advancing towards Dave's superior firepower behind hedges was not a good idea while (slowly!) carrying out a flank attack would be more successful. I think Dave waited too long to advance his uncommitted infantry and by the time he did it was a little too late. I also seemed to remember that the 'Swedish' style horse with only two hits were considerably worse than the 'Dutch' three hit horse, while initially the Swedish ones do okay (and depressed Dave greatly) they are extremely brittle and don't fare well in the long run.

Having said that it was an enjoyable game and certainly looked spectacular, Dave thought he had painted his army maybe five years ago and never used them while mine had been in production for at least three years I think so it was great to get them into action!

The next game requires some 'pike-heavy' battalia for the Royalists so I might even buy a few more figures to add to my standard pike-and-shot units.....

To The Strongest Galatian v Seleucid

Over lockdown Dave and I played a lot of 'For King and Parliament' ECW games over Vassal which we both enjoyed.

With lockdown now over (for now at least) Dave wanted to try the ancient version of the same rules, 'To the Strongest'. I went for a Galatian army largely on the basis that it had few unit types and basically wants to walk forward and hit things making it ideal for trying out new rules. Dave went for the rather more varied Seleucid army.

We put down a few terrain pieces and the Galatians ended up attacking the Seleucids:

The Galatians advance, having belatedly realised that putting a load of cavalry on the right flank opposite a wood was a poor choice! The playing cards are the unit activation system:

Galatian warriors charge into some archers on the left but fail to break them. On the right Galatian cavalry ineffectively throw javelins at Seleucid cavalry:

Seleucid cataphracts and elephants charge the Galatian left:

The cataphracts are destroyed by the Galatian infantry, the elephants prove much tougher opponents though:

More units join in the fighting and both sides take hits:

Galatian scythed chariots rout through their own cavalry disordering them:

Battle rages on, the Galatians have a slight advantage but the Seleucid pikes and elephants are tough opponents:

Most of the Seleucid left wing has been wiped out. The Seleucid phalanx has destroyed one unit of Galatian warriors and a second unit of Galatians is almost down:

One of the Seleucid pike phalanxes breaks:

Galatian scythed chariots capture the Seleucid camp breaking the Seleucid army with the Galatians not far from breaking themselves:

The game only took a couple of hours to play even though neither of us were that familiar with the rules. My initial thoughts were that it didn't work as well as the ECW version.

The ECW version had subtle but interesting differences between the various types of Pike and Shot and Cavalry units which affected how you played them and gave a good game.

The Ancients version however, on this first play, didn't seem to have much variation between the different troop types (though of course it has to cope with a vast range of units unlike an ECW rule set). It is very important to charge first (as that allows you to hit first and in this period there is no defensive fire against charging units) and it feels like luck plays a significant part in the game both in the movement (when an early ace card to activate can bring a whole command to a halt) and in combat where a few of Dave's units collapsed quickly while his elephants survived several hits with no losses at all.

On an aesthetic front the cards are quite intrusive as you have to leave them by the units for the entire turn (since you can activate the units in each command more than once and can go back to previously activated units to try to activate them again if you want) plus you have markers for ammunition, hits taken and (though we didn't use them) one shot weapons like lances and elephant charges.

Given the popularity of ADLG at the club I can't see many people playing TtS though other members did come and have a look at it and I think I much prefer the ECW version so far.