Last Tuesday at the Polly we had another game of To The Strongest! This time we decided to play our 'Arthurian' armies again.. Simon Miller kindly sent over a list for the Sub Roman British and I loosely based my force on this list. I say loosely.. it started out that way but as we were having a four player bash with new converts, we decided on fielding slightly bigger forces and I added a larger command of allied Saxons to my army.
I really need to carry out some maintenance on this army.. all Gripping Beast.. painted a few years ago and rebased a few times.. quite a few spears and swords to re-attach!
Scrivs has an account of the game on his blog.. along with OOBs.. I also relied upon my phone and didn't get any great photos.. however, hopefully give an impression of the scale of the game.
Simon's rules are proving to be a hit and it's been interesting to try out different angles and feed back our thoughts (for example, on the 'small' manipular Roman units) In this game, the British were a mix or Auxiliaries and Javelinmen, and this seemed to suit their use very well.
There was rash talk of a medieval 'project' following a first viewing of new lists, more of that soon no doubt!
So, poor photos..
Although I have been busy painting figures (Romans mostly), and playing the odd game with wargames chum Scrivs lately, not really been keeping the blog up to date. Must try harder! Lately we have been enjoying trying out Simon Miller's upcoming new Ancient rules; 'To The Strongest!'
However, today I played the part of an honorary Irregular, joining Steve Jones, James Morris, Matt Moran and Dave King in a big game at the scout hut in Newark.
We pooled together a variety of troops (including Scrivs Gauls on loan) to play out a game loosely based on Thapsus, one of Caesar's battles against his Pompeian foes. My newly painted republican Romans were standing in as Marians.
We used Hail Caesar and after a fair bit of time spent organising our commands, laid out what felt like a fairly plausable battle. Although the Pompeians had the advantage of numbers, Caesars legions were of decidedly better quality. Dave and I joined James and we faced off against Julius Steve Jones Caesar and Matt.
As can happen with these big games, we did not fight through to a definite conclusion. Both of our right wings had made breakthroughs and the battle line was likely to turn had we had the time to fight on. We settled for an honourable (or horrible) draw.
Overall a great day out. Great game visually with tons of figures, in good company.
Steve took pots of pictures and I suspect his will be much better than I've managed, so hopefully they'll be up on his blog soon.
As for our elephants.. As ever, they looked great but ultimately proved to be a liability and more of a problem for us than them!
