First trial game of To The Strongest

[vodkafan]

Recently has.been and I played a trial game of To The Strongest. Peter has only just got the rules but was keen to get his old DBA and DBM armies on the tabletop.
This will not be a full blow by blow AAR as we ran out of time and didn't play to a conclusion, but it was a nice relaxed first exploration.
 Peter had a small high quality Late Roman army with quite a lot of cavalry while I faced him across a shallow river with a numerically superior force of Sassanid Persians. I outnumbered him in cavalry, including cataphracts, plus some elephants, but these units were spread evenly through the whole army and I had a lot of very weak poor infantry in my centre.
Peter had only roughly organised the forces into 3 wings apiece and pointed them all up the night before so he gave me the chance to redeploy before the game started. However, in a rush to get playing I decided to just play them as they were. This soon proved to be a major tactical mistake!


My left wing


My centre with the effalumps


My right wing


The Roman left wing


Roman centre


Roman right wing

He graciously gave me the opening turn of the cards and I rushed forward some light cavalry but I could not get units up to support them  and my turn ended too quickly without achieving anything useful.


We both had difficulty getting units activated in our first turn all along the whole battle line.
That is the both the frustration and the beauty of the rules in my opinion. You cannot expect to do everything you want to do so you quickly realise you must prioritise to a high degree, activating the most important units first. It wreaks havoc with a plan when only maybe half your units activate! And by the next turn your battle plan must change completely!
Here you can see Peter's initial activation cards were quite high.


The next turn I managed to get some cataphracts across the river and we did finally get the battle started.


It was a chance to see how the melee mechanics worked. We think we got it right by and by.
I soon found out the hard way why I should have redeployed my troops. Instead of having the cavalry and infantry in discrete blocks I had my weak rubbishy infantry spread right across my whole frontage. As they became disordered and stopped as soon as the Romans sneezed in their direction, my cavalry units become stuck behind them. After the elephants got turned back it was going nowhere.
 

A fun time though!
 

 

[MGH]

Glad you guys enjoyed the game. Our local group loves To the Strongest rules.
Nice figs too btw.

[has.been]

I have since re-read the rules, it makes a lot more sence having 'played' it once.
Time has been taken to print of the army list for the Sassanids & organise both armies
so that they will provide a better mix. The next time James (& there will be another game,
it was fun) I will make the 'boxes' a bit bigger. The units will, for the most part, now be
4 bases each (apart from the Roman cavalry, as it would be far too difficult to obtain matching
castings), as a result we should get more moves in.
By the way, many thanks for taking the photos & time to post it all.

[rumacara]

Sounds like a great game and a good set of rules.
Keep it coming.

[bigredbat]

Nice armies!   It's a mystery to me that I don't have a Sassanid army- such a great army, and some super ranges available, too.  One day!

Have you downloaded the Even Stronger supplement?  There's a handy group move rule in there that helps the armies close to contact quickly, also some morale rules that you will alternately love and hate.  :-)  If you have any questions, please post on the forum and I or someone will be along shortly to help.

Best, Simon

[has.been]

Thanks for that.

[vodkafan]

I have since re-read the rules, it makes a lot more sence having 'played' it once.
Time has been taken to print of the army list for the Sassanids & organise both armies
so that they will provide a better mix. The next time James (& there will be another game,
it was fun) I will make the 'boxes' a bit bigger. The units will, for the most part, now be
4 bases each (apart from the Roman cavalry, as it would be far too difficult to obtain matching
castings), as a result we should get more moves in.
By the way, many thanks for taking the photos & time to post it all.

Considering the size of the surface we were playing on, I don't think the size of the boxes was a big factor.  I know for my part it was a lack of focus and tactics- I basically didn't have any!