Clotted Lard and To The Strongest

As a long time attendee at the OML days up in Evesham I happy to share this forthcoming event in Exeter. The Devon Wargames Club is teaming up with Too Fat Lardies to host a day of Lardie games on September 8th. Details are included above, but there will be nine or ten games put on ranging from ancients, pike and shot, Napoleonics, Colonial and World War 2. It's all about having a fun day out and moving toy soldiers around a table.

Saxons on the right, Britons on the left.

Last Saturday the DWG club meet included a game of To The Strongest, put on by yours truly. A force of nasty Saxon raider types was out to cause mischief, but had been intercepted by the heroic Britons in all their Romanised glory. I have only watched the game played before so it was a bit of a dive in the deep end, as none of the others had played it either.

I sorted out the armies from my recently expanded Dark Ages figures, although options are limited for the Saxons. They can have warriors, warriors and more warriors, plus a single unit of cavalry and two of skirmishers. So the Saxon force was three generals(one senior) with three units of warriors each. The senior general had the single unit of noble cavalry and the other two each had a single unit of javelinmen skirmishers.

The Romano-British had a few more options. They had a senior general with three units of spearmen with added bows and one each of light cavalry and skirmisher javelinmen. General two had the same force except the skirmishers had bows. General three was mounted and led the cavalry arm with three units of javelin and one of lance armed cavalry plus another unit of light cavalry.

The game went fairly well, the Saxons gained the upper hand quite early as neither Jack nor myself could hit anything.  Luckily the youthful generalship of Charlie(aka son of Jack) was doing better against Christophers Saxon warriors. Jacks center line managed to steady after some good hits and my cavalry managed to lure some of JJ's warriors out of the woods and then outflank them on both sides.

Nasty Saxon Warriors ready to pillage etc

The sole unit of Saxon cavalry

Massed ranks of British cavalry

The British center, a thin line of spearmen

British right flank, deployed with a bit more depth

The woods are full of hairy Saxons

And so are the hills!

Nathan's warriors chase of the British skirmishers

They are just bullies really. 12 against 3!

Roman light cavalry try to get around the left flank

Saxons occupy the hill and dare Charlie to charge them.

In the end the game was won by some really unlucky armour draws by the Saxons, as the flanking cavalry routed two units and then Charlie saw off another. I like the way the rules play, it gives a fairly quick game and doesn't take long to get the system into your head. I plan to get my Republican Romans out and restart painting them, so more may be seen of this set of rules soon.

Thanks to Jack, Charlie, Christopher, Nathan and JJ for playing the game and JJ again for the pictures.