Saturday 5 December 2020

Friday Night Game - Wars of the Roses with To the Strongest

Friday night at Julian's and Chris, John, Rick and I joined him for an evening of medieval mayhem, courtesy of the To the Strongest grid based rule set. This report may have the most images I have ever posted as I had 24 of my own and these have been supplemented by about another 15 from John!

You will be able to spot John's, they are generally close ups and much clearer as he obviously has a much better camera on his phone that I do!

Chris and John had a slightly smaller force - 10 army point coins - defending a village, whilst Julian Rick and I had the 12 coin attacking force. It was an enjoyable tussle that we seemed to be cruising to victory in, until a late spurt from Chris pulled it back to a closer run thing than we had anticipated - I think we had 6 coins left when our opponents lost their final 2, although we carried on for one extra turn and lost another 2 coin unit!


General view of the table Chris and John on left, Rick, me then Julian on the right (in that order heading away from the camera)

Johns troops occupying the village

Looking from Chris's flank with Rick ahead and me to the left

From Johns flank looking at Julian ahead and me to the right!

Bowmen ready to let loose an arrow storm!

John moves forward

My cavalry in the centre

Chris's "big gun" - as it could only fire straight ahead, I just avoided standing in front of it!

One of Johns close ups - my heavy foot knights

Johns archers preparing to meet the foe

Crossbowmen skulking behind pavises line the village fences - the red figure indicates they have taken a hit and are shaken

A couple of close ups of Julian's very nice buildings

Johns troops entering the village....

...and deployed to face my advance

Rick advances towards Chris

The juncture between my command and Ricks

John's men milling around in the village

The crossbowmen ready for action

Chris's professional men at arms versus...

.... Ricks peasants ... this might not end well!

But the peasants were supported by some quality troops and cavalry

I split my two mounted units off from the centre and sent the round the right wing to support Julian's assault on John. 

As usual, Chris decided the best form of defence was attack, and advanced against Rick

Ricks regular troops prepare to meet Chris's advance

Meanwhile, on the other flank, John was severely outnumbered - his crossbowmen prepare for our attack

My long flank march reached its destination and,,,,

.... the cavalry charged - nice action shot by John!

On the other flank, a titanic struggle was in full swing as Chris and Rick battled across the hedgerows

And Chris advanced his infantry against Ricks cavalry (we realised shortly afterwards that he cant do this so reversed the action)

Close up of Ricks cavalry

The last surviving unit of peasants erupted from the woods to take Chris in the flank - but failed to gain any hits!

The situation between Rick and Chris nearing the end of the game

Chris's archers observe the scene of battle

On Johns flank, Julian and I had combined to knock out several of his units

Whilst my heavy knights finally advanced in the centre to take on Chris's archers - and LOST!

The last two images are from our right flank as Julian and I mopped up what few forces remained of Johns command

Thoroughly enjoyable way to spend four hours after work on a Friday evening and the game was actually closer than it appears from my "neutral" reporting. John had some awful luck with cards (as did Chris at times - two aces in a row for activation on two occasions!) and Rick could not turn a saving card for love nor money! Julian had one unit shaken in the second turn and spent virtually the entire game trying to rally it - a task in which he never succeeded! I charged a gun with elite knights armed with lances, and took about three turns to beat the crew in hand to hand combat, so we all had a share of poor card turning, but the number of 1's and 2's that John turned was astounding.

All the troops and buildings were supplied by Julian and very nice they looked too. A mixture of ranges but a lot of them are Old Glory, showing how nice many of the figures produced by this very affordable company are!

(By the way, for anyone wondering about the left alignment of the images....I have had virtually no issues with Blogger 2 recently, however, for some reason, all the images appeared in reverse order, even though I wasted twenty minutes renaming them all 1, 2,3 etc - they loaded 34, 33, 32 and so on - so I had to cut and paste each one in turn into the correct order - and during that process, they aligned to the left for some reason)

26 comments:

  1. Great looking game, Keith! WotR sure seems to be a hot period right now. What are your impressions of TtS! for this period? Armies and table look good. Do you know who makes these figures or is it a mish-mash many manufacturers?

    On photo realignment, if you cannot get the photo to realign using justification, try turning captioning on. For whatever reason, turning captioning on for an individual photo centers it. Then I turn caption off if I want no caption.

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  2. Thanks Jonathon - I think the figures are mostly OG but also some Grenadier (available via Mirlton) in there too. Our friend Mark has a lovely collection of Perry plastic WotR too, but he was unable to join us for this game.
    Like all grid based rules, TtR is really a board game with figures and terrain, so within those limitations, it produces a enjoyable encounter for two to four players. Whether it is on any way accurate in recreating late medieval warfare, I would be hesitant to judge, but we usually enjoy our games!
    Re Blogger, I had been having no issues for the last few bolgs, then it decided to put my images in reverse order - they were all number sequentially 20201204_1, 2, 3 etc - and when uploaded from my laptop to Blogger, were in the right order, then came out back to front when I uploaded them to the actual blog - God knows why! Its a minor issue compared with how irritating Blogger was when it first changed a couple of months ago though!

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  3. It was a lot of fun, but it seems I'm a WAY better photographer than a wargamer! Maybe I should give up and give patanque a go? As for the rules, it is pretty boardgamey, but troop facing direction is important so in that way it's a wargame. Cheers.

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    1. Cheers John - thanks for the extra photos, they definitely added to the tone of this AAR!

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  4. A lovely looking game, both figures and terrain. TtS certainly gives a good game but I'm still not fully aken with it. Maybe having some troops to play with would help. Still it does stop those questions of whether a unit is in range, on the flank etc.

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    1. Thanks Steve - yes figures and terrain both great. TtS with its fixed distances using a grid system certainly simplifies movement and firing distances but flanks can be problematical ... unless you have an un broken line, you will always have a potential for an exposed flank, because whatever way your unit is facing, the opposition has the potential to be in the adjacent square at right angles to you.

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  5. Lovely looking game, great scenery and troops, I think TtS is a good game but you wouldn't want to play it all the time, a bit of variety with a tape measure game seems like a good idea! I'm going to try Never mind the billhooks, well when I can get a game!
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks Iain.... If WotR is the current era of choice, the the Never mind the Billhooks rules are certainly the set most people seem to be using at the moment. Will be interested to see what you think of them

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  6. Very nice game with lots of great photos, Keith. Lovely miniatures and terrain too. What could be better for Friday’s night?

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    1. Thank you Dmitry a Friday night game is a great way to wind down at the end of the working week for sure!

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  7. That's great-looking game with some lovely terrain and figures. Julian's building are particularly nice. I thought I'd get used to the new blogger by now, but we are several months in and I still miss the old one.

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    1. Thanks Lawrence - I believe the buildings may be 4Ground - quite pricey but come pre coloured and they look pretty good to me too! I really have not had so many issues with Blogger recently - I no longer have to type everything in Word then copy and paste it into Blogger - the exceptionally annoying "drag" caused by constant saving seems to gone and I am able to add text after each image without being driven to distraction by the delay between typing and the text appearing - its just the last two times, my bulk image uploads have appeared in reverse order - not such a problem if its just showing off the latest painting output, but for a game narrative, they do kind of have to be in the right order - unless I want to get really Arty Farty!

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  8. Wonderful stuff Keith... what a way to spend a Friday night.
    Cheers
    Stu

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    1. Thanks Stu...yes, it's a great way to end the working week and has been our standard for many years..if it wasn't for Julian hosting us every second or third Friday, I would probably only get in half a dozen games per year!

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  9. Splendid stuff Keith...
    It has been far to long since I have had the chance for a big face to face game... so I am indeed envious...
    As to blogger...Yes I think the only thing that still irritates me about it is uploading the photos ...

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Cheers Aly, yes, it must be very hard for you all in another lockdown but seeing others who can still get together to game. I saw on BBC World today that you had a party...Nottingham house owner facing £10000 fine for breaching Covid regulations...you should have just had a few mates round fir a game instead, less likely to attract police attention!

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  10. Splendid game Keith , realised I hadn’t been following but have now rectified that. Will be following with interest.....and now I have no excuse to not get that Wotr project started perhaps at Christmas ? As for blogger I think we all have our own little ways. I store all photos in Google photos, not everybody’s choice. Then edit them in GP and upload to the blog which is quick and easy, it centres them automatically and puts them in the order and minimises the size etc. Then I move to blog touch app where I do the writing and editing it is just easier to manipulate, they exchange info really easily. Then back to blogger quick preview check and then publish. Working directly in blogger just seems to give loads of glitches !

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    1. Thanks for the visit Matt - look forward to seeing your WotR progressing. The odd thing with Blogger is, I had not had any issues for quite a while - and then all of a sudden, it decided to load them in reverse order - doubtless it makes some logical sense if you are an application algorithm, but I dont know why it does it!

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  11. Fun looking game, Keith. I've never tried these rules before, but looks like it plays well.

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    1. Thanks Dean. They are pretty simple rules but of course, you do need the table cloth to be narked up in a square grid. Seems like a lot of bloggers play TtS at the moment, so maybe you will get an opportunity to play them sometime soon.

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  12. A fine looking game. Thanks for the close-ups of Julian's buildings, they are superb! Please pass on my congrats to him.
    Regards, James

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    1. Thanks for your Kind words James...and I will mention them to Julian next time we catch up!

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  13. Cracking look game Keith. The figures and terrain look superb!

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    1. Thanks Ray, everything on view here belongs to my gaming mate Julian, so I can only take credit for the pictures!

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  14. Fantastic looking game Keith! I love 'To the Strongest' and my dabblings in more modern periods have kept me away from it for too long. The whole battle and the great scenery are worth of the extra photos! Best wishes,
    Jason

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    1. Thanks for the fulsome praise Jason...TtR give a good fun game and seem to be our go to rule set at the moment.

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