TTS & MEG Test Games

Now that I have a wargaming table permanently set up (meaning that I can leave games set up), I've been meaning to play some ancients games. I have a few 15mm & 6mm ancient armies - Athenian and Spartan Greeks, Successors, Polybian Romans and I've been keen to try some sets of rules.

I've been keen to try both Mortem Et Gloriam (MEG) and To The Strongest to see which suits me better. So I set up a little game and gave both of them a try. In both games I used Republican Romans against some Italians with Greek allies. The games were only small just to see if I could get some understanding of the rules. In both games I really didn't have much idea of what I was doing.

MEG

As for set up, the Italians were easy but I was unsure what I was doing with the Romans. It seemed a bit weird to me that there was no difference between the Hastati and Principes. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense that they are exactly the same stats-wise. I can't see how you can play them in a way that they actually fought. They may as well be Marian/Caesarian/Imperial Romans for all of the tactical variation they offer. Maybe I'm missing something.

I'm not sure if I was doing things right and I'll have another try with MEG. I found it very easy to get everything moving and to keep the formations together. But I was getting flustered with the need to constantly look up stuff in the pile of Quick Reference Sheets. This got to the point that, after some movement and a bit of shooting I gave up. I will come back to MEG in the next few days but I think I need to go through the rules again before I try.

To The Strongest

I got further with TTS and actually managed to finish the little scenario. As you can tell from the pic above TTS allows you to deploy Republican Romans in a fashion that depicts their actual deployment without being detrimental to how they fight. They still act as a single unit (of 4 bases) but the visual aspect is really good. For me this is a major plus. They can also perform a Maniple Swap which differentiates them from other armies and reproduces their actual tactical doctrine. This is also good.

As you can see in the pics, after taking these shots I decided to reduce the size of the velites and light infantry javelins. I did this because they didn't really cover the whole front of the little armies. Light units also disperse/are removed after suffering one hit, as do small units. So I decided to field them as small entities (two bases) so that I would have more to go around. I'm not sure about this because they don't look as good.

TTS is played on a grid system. As you can see by the pics this need not be intrusive. However, what is intrusive is the need of markers to record ammunition. I'm not keen on this. I used some little record keeping things I made for my ancient naval games. They look a lot more intrusive in the pics that they did in reality.

The game moved better and it was much easier to navigate the rules. Most of the game could be played just using the two sided, 1 page QRS and I found myself doing this after a couple of turns. Movement was really easy but I think there is a definite need for more sub-commanders. Even the Roman general's ability to move around the battlefield wasn't really enough. There were just too many units for a single commander. One bad result and the whole army stopped.

I can see that generals really have a big effect on the game. The Roman general was unattached and could move around his units to better command them. The allied general was attached to the far right unit of theurophoroi in the traditional Hellenic manner. It was unfortunate, however, for the Roman that he drew a #1 chit several times which really ruined his day.

When I say "#1 Chit" what I mean is: TTS uses a card driven mechanism. It works really well but there is a requirement to leave cards on the table and these, to me are extremely intrusive. So much so, that I aborted my first try because I found the cards all over the table to be really awful. So I made a little set of chits (1 - 10 x 8) out of cardboard and a printed sticky label. You can see one of them in the pic below. I made them green so they're very unobtrusive! So, instead of flipping an ace, the poor Roman drew several #1 chits from the bag at the start of, or very early in his turn. Poor little sucker!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Conclusion

I preferred TTS. But that's not to say that MEG is a lesser game. It's better to say TTS served me better and I got my head around the rules a lot quicker. I like the idea of freer movement offered by MEG but at the same time the grid movement of TTS didn't really feel restrictive. In fact, the grid movement really sped things up right from the start. The need to refer to the QRS for basic movement in MEG put me off. I suppose it's a matter of getting to know the basics of movement and maneuver will help in this situation.

I want to try MEG again but I think I'll try it with some simpler troops ~ Maybe some hoplites and their supports. I might give it another try this afternoon.