I Played Some Actual Games!

Over the past couple of years I haven't actually played many games against real live opponents but over the past month or so I've been getting back into putting troops back onto the table and facing off against real live opponents.

Game 1

The First of these games was an ancient battle - Republican Rome v's Carthage, using the To The Strongest rules. My opponent for this game was Jenko. Rome had Spanish allies and Carthage had Gauls. It was a great game. We missed some of the finer details of the rules but TTS is an easy set of rules to pick up. Rome came out the victor this time around.

A big cavalry/light infantry bash on the Roman left flank saw early success for Hannibal's men with one unit of Gauls standing up to repeated attacks. But in the end they were over come and the advantage went to Rome. 

The major Roman push was in the centre where the legions advanced. Hannibal on his elephant was routed and it stampeded through the Carthaginian lines causing havoc and opening up the centre.

Game 2.

My next opponent was Lorne. We played a game of Sword and Spear - Vikings V's Anglo-Saxons. This gave me a chance to bring out my Anglo-Saxons for the first time in a long lime. It had also been a long time since I last played S&S and I think that last time was also against Lorne.

The vikings had a smaller but better trained army whereas my Anglo-Saxon army, lead by Æthelguy the Seeker was larger but less battle hardened. However, in the end my brave men defended their heath and home and repelled the viking invaders.

My plan was simple: Send out skirmishers, hold back and make the enemy come to me with the hope that a long advance would break up their battle line. Lucky for Æthelguy, that this tactic paid off.

In the pic below a unit of Viking Berserkers smashed their way through the thinly defended Anglo-Saxon right flank routing several units. They were stopped by a unit of poorly armed and untrained fyrd who hit them in the flank and stopped them for just long enough to ensure the Anglo-Saxon victory.

Æthelguy also had some wild Irish allies in the form of light javelinmen. One unit advanced, hurled their javelins and got wiped out by  group of mounted hauscarls. The second band of Irish faired batter by seeing off the horsemen. Unfortunately they got carried away and hurled themselves into the flank of some heavy infantry who routed the wild Paddies with ease.

Game 3

WWII this time, and again my opponent was Jenko. We played O Group using the introductory scenario in the rulebook - Attack at Christot. Jenko took command of the attacking British and I played the Germans. This is a good intro game will all the elements present to teach someone the rules as you go along.

This time around Colonel Jenkins lead his brave battalion to victory by driving the Bosche from Christot and securing the town. I forgot to take photo's for most of this game but the action starts with the appearance of a German PAK40 taking out a Cromwell (those who know the game and scenario will note that I subbed Sherman's for Cromwell's because I don't have any British Sherman's).

And this was Col. Jenkins's response.

A second Cromwell is hit but the British infantry keep up a steady advance.

An assault on the farmhouse sees the Germans hurled back in disarray from their strong point.

And that's all the photo's I took of that one. An artillery barrage and infantry fire took out the PAK40 and also damaged the Panther tank that came up behind it in support. A second armoured section that included a Firefly came into play and took out the Panther. 

All in all, it's good to be playing some games again.

Thanks to Jenko and Lorne.

P.S. And just in case you're wondering Athol Guy is the bass player from the 60's folk group The Seekers.

Macedonia v's Carthage ~ To The Strongest

One fine day in Sicily...

Two great armies stood across the plain looking at each other. The skirmishers in the front ranks advanced and the battle began.

Today I introduced my friend Pete to, To The Strongest. He had a Carthaginian army that he inherited from his son and I brought my Macedonians along to give them a good beating. To make up numbers I took my half completed Iberians to fill out the ranks of Carthago.

I played a couple of games of TtS last year so I was pretty rusty on some of the finer details. But the idea of the game was to get a basic game happening. We can iron out details and other things we got wrong in later games. Today was about getting figures on the table and getting a game going. And it was a great game!

My weak left. It was held by theurophoroi, Thacian peltasts and light cavalry.

Facing them were the Iberians who were pretty much equal in infantry but stronger in cavalry.

The early game was very much a clash of skirmishers. Javelins and arrows few as the light troops fought. Neither side gained any advantage in the initial exchanges. There were very few hits and all of them were saved. I sent my skirmishers well ahead of the phalanx, opting to keep my pikes in place and advance when the way was clear.

The first few turns were spent trying to get our light troops into range and then we set to a war of arrows and javelins. We kept record of the arrow ammunition but not the javelins. They did bugger all at first but eventually our units started falling and going 1 for 1 as our missiles hit and armour saves were failed. 

The Carthaginians deployed with their Citizen Infantry and Italian allies in the center. They put the Iberians on my left and a mix of Gauls and Numidian horse facing my right. I deployed in a classical Macedonian way with my strength on my right and my weaker troops on my left.

The first real fighting happened on my weak left. The Iberians took some high ground and their cavalry soon began to out flank me. I had advanced a bit too far and now I had to try and protect my flank. First blood went to my light horse who charged the flank of some heavy Spanish cavalry (The little red dot is what we used to mark "Disorder").

Also, we used a bag of chits for orders/activations and we each had a deck of cards for our combat/saves. I found that cards were a bit to intrusive for 15mm troops so I made these up using Photoshop.

I put out a couple of Elephants. They look great and really add flavour to the game but they're are a pain in the arse. They broke a couple of light units but I was too afraid to get up close behind them in case they rampaged through my phalanx. Both ended up running amok but they did very little disruption. I'd definitely use them again, but maybe off to one side and not right in front of my best troops.

I eventually decided the time was near for some bold action and my king advanced the heavy Macedonian cavalry and charged in to a large unit of Gallic heavy cavalry (see above). For a few turns the battle kept on going with neither side gaining the upper hand. My smaller unit of cavalry was pushed back by a warband and got flanked by Numidian cavalry who entered some woods on my right (we weren't sure what to do here but we'll work that out for later games).

However, in the very first charge the Carthaginian general was killed (I think his name was Handlebar Barker). This put a dent in the Punic plans.

As the fight on my left continued my light cavalry were progressively defeated because I was stupid and used them to charge instead of using their missiles. As you can see I was getting well and truely out flanked. The only ray of light was that General Pete was concentrating on out flanking me and neglecting the mass of Iberian foot who just sat an watched for several turns.

Eventually the skirmishing ended and the pikes got stuck in. There was plenty of push and shove for a couple of turns but eventually my pikes began to win and broke through the center in several places. The Carthaginians were almost broken but by this time the Spanish infantry were getting stuck in and I was loosing badly on that flank.

My king charged his companions once, twice, three times into the Gaulic cavalry. They were a deep unit like my own and they were on the verge of collapse but I just couldn't break them. The Numidians in the woods had managed to Disrupt my second unit of heavy cavalry and I couldn't rally them.

The Spanish dished out more punishment on my left but I was still hanging on by the skin of my teeth. The Numidians hurled more javelins in the flank of my cavalry but they held on. A second round of Numidian darts flew from the woods and my proud heavy Macedonian cavalry broke and so did my army.

A great cheer went up! (Literally - We had a few onlookers by the end of the game and the final couple of turns were on a knifes edge.) Just like at Waterloo 2000 years later: La Garde recule! Sauve qui peut! And the rest of the army faltered and broke.

This game was an absolute blast. We certainly got a lot of things wrong and missed many of the finer points. A reread of the rules will reveal plenty of mistakes but we got the basics down pretty quickly and we had a fantastic game that came down to the wire. The armies were big, there was plenty of colour, we both won and lost and buggered things up and it was great.

Flipping over the cards for the combat is great. It gives the game a real gritty feel. Not like rolling dice at all. Flipping a high card and slappin' it down felt great (especially towards the end). 

I'm really looking forward to a re-match. Thanks very much to Pete and Robin who cheers us both on to victory (unfortunately I didn't get there. Bugger!) 

Did You Say You Want More Iberians?

I got a few more of my Ancient Iberians done during the week. These figures are taking me a bit longer than normal because of the shields. Choosing to do them by hand is really slowing me down and making the job of painting them a bit of a chore. I don't usually put a lot of detail in 15mm, I just do enough to make them look good en mass. I wish I had opted to go for decals but... In for a penny, in for a pound. I'm painting them and that's that!

I wasn't sure about the shields on these guys. I wasn't too keen on the cavalry using the scutum (large shield) as it seemed a bit off and I thought they'd be better with the lighter (caetra) shields. Unfortunately, there is very little information available online so I went back to my, somewhat vague, Osprey book.  Reading through that tome of wisdom once again, I read a passage where it stated that the caetra was the most popular shield for all cavalry. So, in my newly enlightened state, I decided to go 50/50 on the shields.

Once again, I decided to base them on 80x40mm bases. I'm not sure if this is a good move or not. I do like the look of them and I also like that they are less fiddly when handling them. But I don't know... Maybe I'm just stuck in the DBA/M mind set. I want them to be versatile for any set of rules and the DB[insert relative initial] style still seems the most prevalent way of basing ancients.

This is a commander. He's from the Iberian Nobles pack. The Standard Bearer set comes with standard bearers (shock!) but no actual standards. To get them I need to put in another order and wait for them to arrive from Scotland. I decided that a bit of greenstuff and some carefully selected swear words were the quicker option.

Because I'm basing the infantry 11 to a base I have left over figures. These come in handy. In To The Strongest you can attach Champions or Heroes (I can't remember what they're called) to some units. They give a unit a one off bonus. Off the top of my head I recall that you can use the champion to re-flip a card to give the unit a combat bonus or to get them motivated and moving. They might also do other things that I can't remember. In any games, I prefer to use single figures instead of tokens where I can. So here you go. A couple of Iberian champions.

So they're slowly coming along. I've doubled my cavalry and next I think I need to make a bit more infantry. We'll see what happens (no doubt I'll get distracted).

More Iberians ~ Alternative Basing

I've painted up a few more Iberians during the week. After doing the initial batch of scutarii I found I wasn't happy with the basing. They looked far too neat and tidy with three to a base in nice neat ranks. As tribal warriors, I felt that they needed to look a bit less regimented. 

After asking some questions on forums and deciding what rules I would be using them with, I decided to put them onto IMPETVS style bases (80 x 40mm) single bases. I did the same with the new figures I painted too.

I prefer this basing. I think it looks better and it will make moving individual units easier too. I expect to be playing To The Strongest and Sword & Spear with them and both sets of rules work well with 4xDBA base size as a standard unit. I will never play DBA/M so it's really quite pointless for me to base my units in such a manner.

I like them and I now have the nucleus of an army done. Next up, I think I'll paint some cavalry before getting back to more infantry.  

Scutarii - Another benefit is that I've only put 11 figures on the base which saves me a painting a few extra figures and makes them look a bit irregular.

Caestrati ~ (light infantry) I only used 6 figures instead of 8 which means I will probably be able to make an extra 2 units with the figures I've purchased. Another bonus is that I can paint a 6 figure unit quicker than an 8 figure unit.

And here is all that I've done so far, including a command base.

Bigger TTS ~ Rome v's Macedonia

I wanted to try another game of TTS and decided: Why not go big? So I did.

I made up two 200 point armies with a variety of troops with different tactical styles. I used the TTS OOB calculator but I can't help thinking I did something wrong because the Romans felt a bit under strength. However, it was really just another test game to see if I could get a better grasp of the rules.

I rolled a few dice to determine some random terrain and ended up with some high ground on the flanks and a couple of patches of rough ground. I ended up with a primarily flat open table. I set up both armies within three "boxes" of each table edge. The grid used for TTS makes up a number of "boxes" which are, in every way, what you'd expect with an old fashioned pre-hex, square grid board game.

As you can see below, I don't have a camp model for my Romans yet, so they got a WWII sandbag emplacement with a pair of folded cardboard tents (and a couple of Bren guns).

The Macedonians got the first turn. Initiative is determined by the force which out scouts the other. This out scouting actually comes into play prior to deployment. I just deployed both armies in a traditional deployment. The Romans had two Roman Legions in the center and a Latin legion on each flank. The Macedonians had their main strength on the right and their lesser units on the left. The Roman CiC was in the center and the Macedonian King on the right with his Companion Cavalry.

So the whole phalanx got moving and kept good formation. The cavalry moved up on the right and skirmishers pushed forward of the main host. The center skirmish line lagged behind the flanks. This was going to prove to be an issue for the entire battle.

The Roman equites moved up and spread out. They managed to drive off some Greek light horse but couldn't catch them after they successfully evaded.

This is a pic of my little chits. As mentioned in my previous post they're far less intrusive than playing cards.

In this pic below you can see that each unit in the left hand (Latin) legion has a chit (or two). This was because the sub-general was unattached in order to ensure the cavalry got moving. The two legions commanded by the CiC has only one chit. This is because he used a Group Move. This got the entire center moving with a single order. The velites were then given individual orders to move further forward.

 The situation after the first turns.

As the troops closed the light troops started skirmishing. In my previous game I deployed them as 2 bases. This time, as you can see, I used 4 bases. Because you need to record missile ammunition, I decided that I would move a base back to depict 1 ammo used. When the second shot was spent I'd detach the second base a little bit. I was considering removing 1 base per shot and I might actually do that in the future.

As the infantry slowly advanced, a cavalry battle was taking place on the right. The Macedonians, led by the king, charged the Roman equites in an indecisive melee. The Romans, in turn, counter charged and the fight was once again indecisive. However. the Roman horse charged the Greek light cavalry, caught them and drove them from the field.

 This opened the flank to the Romans. It was now a matter of trying to exploit the breakthrough.

After the second turns. The skirmish battle was heating up and both sides had taken casualties. At this stage the Romans had the upper hand due to the loss of the Greek light horse.

On the right the Macedonian King once again charged the Roman cavalry but failed to breakthrough. The second unit or Companions managed to turn but couldn't exploit their out flanking position. However it did mean that the Roman cavalry would have to work harder to get into the flank or rear of the phalanx.

Below is another pic of my expedient missile accounting practice. The javelin unit on the right has expended both of it's missiles and the one on the left has only expended one. A simple but effective accounting system.

Poor command (poor chit drawing) started to affect the center of the Macedonian phalanx and the center began to lag behind.

On the Roman right their light infantry (velites and Italian javelins) managed to push back their opponents with the help of a squadron of Tarentine light cavalry. On this flank the Macedonians has two units of Thessalonian light horse who were trying to get around some high ground on this flank. Most of the cavalry action on this flank was really a matter of threat and maneuver.

Back on the Roman left the equites charged the Macedonian King again and this time the Companions threw the Romans back in disorder. That wan't part of the plan. Not at all!

The other unit of equite got into a good position to get that "exploitation" happening and then pulled a #1 chit. Damn!

The infantry drew closer and closer. The King's Companions charged the Roman horse again and this time they broke and were driven from the filed. This allowed the Macedonian cavalry to advance onto the flank of the Roman Legio Sinistris !

The King then managed to wheel his cavalry and even managed to charge again. The Romans, miraculously held on but became disordered in the process. This was not looking good at all.

 To make matters worse, the Agema Peltastai regiment now charged but the Roman's still held on.

This was followed by the rest of the Macedonian right hand command. The Roman's had the use of their pila, but they had no effect. However the legion held on under the onslaught.

Now, the Roman general had a mighty trick up his sleeve. With the destruction of the cavalry he escaped and fell back into the infantry where he ordered the famous "Maniple Swap." This is a special type of Rally Test and is affected by troops in close proximity. So, instead of needing a 2 he needed a 4 (because of the troops in his front and flank. He drew a #2!

No bother - The General was in the box and he could redraw the chit!!!
And he drew a #1.

That meant the whole legion couldn't receive any orders for this turn. This was going to be bad.

In the center, the Roman CiC did the only thing he could. He charged!
Because he charged the legionaries had the opportunity to hit first with their pila, disorder the pike phalanx and then hit again in close combat. Unfortunately the tactic didn't work. Only one pike block took a hit and that wasn't going to be enough to make a difference.

On the Roman right the other Latin Legio Dextra also failed to do anything at all (more really bad chit draws). The Agema again attacked  and the legionaries held. The Peltast pikes attacked and disordered the units to their front. A second push and they routed them. The units either sided needed to take morale test but both came out okay.

 The Agema pushed again and this time they hit hard.

The legionaries failed their armour save and so did the general with a pair of 1's coming out of the chit box. This saw the destruction of an entire legion but it was the loss of the general that put the icing on the cake and led to the whole army reaching break point.

In the end you can see that the destruction of the left and the inaction of the right has left the Roman center pretty much out flanked and surrounded. The equites got bogged down in an inconclusive melee with the second Companion Cavalry unit and ended up unable to exploit their breakthrough.

The right hand legion had more impact against the theurophoroi spearmen on the Macedonian left and the Tarentine cavalry could have got into their flank. But it would all be too little, too late.

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Conclusion:

I wanted to try a bigger battle and TTS really paid off. I really got the hang of the rules well before the battle was over. I took time out to stop once or twice to clarify the rules but all in all they flowed really well. I didn't play any favorites and played both sides the best I could. After all, both of these armies are mine and I want both of them to win.

Once or twice I made some silly mistakes but, as I played, I stated what I was going to do and, on those couple of times I stuffed it up I thought to myself: "Oh bugger. I should have done (X,Y,Z) first..." No bother - It's Fog of War (or fog of my brain cells). Mistakes are made and you just have to learn by them.

My basic little missile accounting system worked okay. No brain power needed and it kept the table free of excess tokens. Light units can only take one hit and then they are removed, so there is no worry about mistaking a displaced base for a "disorder" or anything. Also, I had thought of using d10's for combat but I like the chit drawing,  although I think dice would be a better option with a real opponent.

Anyway, I thought this game was great and I really enjoyed it. The only thing missing was a real opponent.

So, now that I've got this out of my system I now need to try MEG again.