Our first game of 'Strength & Honour' a new(ish) set of ancient rules from TFL. The rules are really meant to be used with 2 or 3mm armies to give you the appearance of a big battle where the look of the formations is more important than the individual figures! On a quick read-through they seemed to be somewhat similar to 'To the Strongest' in being grid based with an army defeat based on taking cards for setbacks and reverses with varying numbers on so you don't know exactly how near your or your opponents army is to breaking.
For this game we played the first scenario, the battle of Charonea in 86BC between the Roman army commanded by Dave and the Mithridatics commanded by myself.
The battlefield is basically open with the Mithridatics in the foreground and the Romans in the distance:
The Romans advance:
Mithridatic cavalry manage to attack Roman cavalry in the flank:
The Romans fall back but the Mithridatics become disordered:
The Mithridatic cavalry attempt to rally and promptly rout! Meanwhile the two infantry lines continue to advance:
Pikemen vs Legionaries! The Pikes have a slight advantage:
The combat is inconclusive though:
On the left the Mithridatics have the advantage of numbers but are finding it hard to get into contact:
Slave phalangites are routed by Legionaries:
A second unit of pikes routs:
The scythed chariots charge into the flank of a legionary unit pushing it back:
They follow up but the Romans rally:
By now another pike unit had routed and the Mithridatic situation was grim with their entire centre routed. A quick count up of the cards agreed with my feeling that the army was defeated...
An interesting game where I think both Dave and I missed out on one of the biggest areas, the use of command and generalship points to influence events, as we got lost in the detail of moving and fighting the combats. Next time I suspect those points would have a mitigating effect to some of the things that seemed a bit odd to us.
Given how enthusiastic (or even addicted!) to ADLG our club is I'm not sure if anyone else will take the rules up but it was nice to see the figures on the table again.
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