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.