Legionary 2019, To the Strongest game

Yesterday was the local Exeter wargames show Legionary, hosted by the Exmouth Imperials who are as fine a group of folks as you can hope to meet....at least in Exmouth! 😉😁

As we usually do, Nathan(aka Stumpy) and I put on a game. Sadly we couldn't do the game we originally planned so we decided to do a 28mm ancinets game using the "To the Strongest" rule set. These rules use no tape measures and no dice, so Stumpy was at a disadvantage as his usual rubber tape measure would be of no help to him. Sorry mate, I had to get it in, hehehehe.

The game was Romans(nasty invading types) marching into Dacia and being surprised when the locals got all shirty about it and started shouting "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The forces were 180 points each, just to give some extra scope for an all day game. The Romans had 5 generals, 6 Legion, 4 Auxiliary, 5 skirmish infantry, 2 cavalry and 2 light cavalry units. They were marching along the road and had to react to the Dacians arrival on the flank.

The Dacians had 4 generals, including a Sarmatian and a Bastarnae in command of their own country men. Their troops were 8 units of warriors, including 2 Bastarnae, 2 skirmish infantry, 2 light cavalry and 4 Sarmation lancers. 

Below are some pictures of the game as it went on. Things did not go too well for the Romans!

Bastarnae units getting as close as they can to the Roman column

The massed Dacians advancing through the rough ground as
quickly as they can.

A view from behind the Dacians, with the Basternae
way ahead on the right

The massed ranks of Sarmation cavalry, but even they couldn't
keep up with the Basternae

Turn 2, the Basternae failed to move as their General
pulled an ace. Oops

They did manage to chop some Romans up a bit first though.

The Dacian mass struggles through the rough ground as the Roman
 general "Minimus" and his dog "Rex" look on

On the left flank Roman arrows spelt doom for one of the Dacian
light cavalry units

The right flank was going well though as the Sarmatians
drove the Roman light troops back

Battle was joined in the centre as Roman gladius
met Dacian falces

Where are all the Roman veterans?
Oh dear, the Sarmatians are coming!

The Roman cavalry was trying the same on the left flank though. 

The Roman light troops do their best to slow down the Sarmatians

The Roman cavalry is threatening the left flank........

Oh, no it's not. 

The last of the Roman light troops prepares for the worst.

Basternae look on as the Sarmatians claim all the glory

Veteran lancers on the flank, it's not looking good for the Romans
as General Myxamytosis looks on

The Roman last stand as Dacians, Basternae and Sarmatians
all roll up the flanks

The Romans fought back valiantly after initially getting a right good kicking. At one point they had 3 medals left and the Dacians had 18! At the end the Dacians only had 5 left as the Roman camp fell. The MVU(most valuable unit) was the Sarmatian "Red Lancers", who rolled up four Legion units including both veterans. The best Roman units were two of the Auxilia, who did all the real fighting.

All in all it was a cracking game to watch. After a couple of turns I let my son Christopher take control of the Dacians and Nathan managed the Romans with Andy as a unwilling subordinate. Thanks for playing the game lads.

The show was good again, seems to go from strength to strength each year. See you there next year.

I am still here

Sorry for the lack of posts, I have been a bit down and just couldn't be bothered. However my wife said "Beatings will continue until morale improves" so I am back, hopefully the bruises will start to fade now. 😉

Games have been played since I last posted, but not as many as I would have liked. I have been running a Chain of Command campaign for a couple of the Devon Wargames Group fellas so they can play the game as it is designed, rather than in a multi-player game as the club games tend to be. Best place to see what has been going on is over at JJ's blog as he has been photographing and documenting the games, and the learning curve, that have been played. It's been most enjoyable to watch how the tactics have evolved as the campaign has gone on. Ian, commanding the Germans, has gone from "Get everything on the table" to "Wait, wait, let them come closer" while JJ and Steve have developed from just going for general advances to picking their target, setting a plan and then using all the assets they have to push through. I hope they have enjoyed it as much as I have.

I have also played some cracking ancients games using To The Strongest. I really like these rules and would recommend them to anyone who doesn't mind not having 100% control of things when you game, if you like Too Fat Lardies rules you will probably like these too.  We have also played a couple of games of For King and Parliament from the same author.  Again, these are a lot of fun and have inspired me to go through my lead pile for the Renegade ECW figures I bought a few many years ago. We played the game using some very old 15mm armies borrowed from a friend, but they looked good and the game was very entertaining. Here are a few pictures of the game.

The forces are arrayed, Royalist to the right and Parliamentarians opposite.

Things are heating up as the lines close for battle and the flanks get all confusing

Anyway, that is it for now. I will do another update later about yesterdays Legionary show in Exeter, where Nathan and I put on a game of To the Strongest using Romans and Dacians.

Later folks and thanks for sticking around......if anybody did.

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.