Welcome

Welcome to my wargaming blog,
I'm Dave and live in Morpeth, Northumberland in the UK.
This may or may not be a regular thing, we'll just have to see how it goes.

I am a painter/collector of figures first and a wargamer second. My thrill in this great hobby of ours is to place that final well researched & painted unit into the cabinet. The actual gaming with the figures is an important but secondary experience, we all like to win, but it isn't the be all and end all of it, being with good friends and having fun is.
Hope you will enjoy reading this blog as much as I will writing in it.
Just to remind the visitor to scroll down the various pages and click on 'older posts' to see more.
Dave.

Saturday 11 July 2015

To The Strongest, 15mm Greek

Neal and I have been playtesting Simon Millers To The Strongest rules over the last month or so (find Simon's blog The Big Red Bat Cave Here) always up to now on the grid system he recommends. These rules are fantastic, and believe me I don't give such praise easily I am very choosy in the rules that I can be bothered to spend my time learning - I am one lazy sod that way!
After my construction of my hex table Here we decided to adapt the rules to hex based play, frankly they didn't need much adaptation. Simon says in his introduction to the ruleset that he disregarded the idea of using hexes for movement as he thought the hexes would allow too much manoeuvring for units in the ancient period which he was trying to avoid but we didn't find this at all. The units faced the point of the hex as can be seen here:


The units attack to the front two hexes, flank attacks to the side, rear attacks to the hexes to the back. If a unit wishes to change facing then this is classed as a difficult move and if successful the unit is moved to face the point of the hex to the left or right. The rules cover the all of the ancient period, Simon is I believe looking to extend up to the Thirty Years War and Neal and I will be playtesting Neal's adaptations at his place next week.
I won't go into the details of how the rules work but do have a look on Simon's blog http://bigredbat.blogspot.co.uk/ for how to play. As I say I couldn't recommend them more, each game is finely balanced and as I said in another comment on the rules elsewhere, at our Border Rievers Club swearing is compulsory but there is considerably more than usual when playing with this set of rules, all in the best possible taste of course.
Enough for now but I will post pictures of the full game in due course.
Dave.

8 comments:

  1. Thanks very much for the kind words, Dave! Funnily enough (having played hundreds of games of Command and Colors) I've never tried the rules on hexes. I really should have a go.

    I've been messing around with ideas for the pike and shot and horse and musket rules; they are still at an extremely early stage but I hope to get some units on a table this week.

    Best, Simon

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  2. Neal and I are testing many of your ideas (and some of Neals) using two TYW armies, I'm sure that he will soon be doing a write up the battle on his own blog. At the time of writing we are half way through the game and it's going very well. Im sure he will post soo so keep an eye out here:
    http://3rd95th.blogspot.co.uk/

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  3. Sounds great- I'll look out for it! Today I've been trying to get some ideas for Horse and Musket down on paper.

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  4. Hi Dave (and Simon!) - great looking set-up. Great rules, too - I've just dabbled so far but To the Strongest! is the only set of rules I've found that I didn't have to "change" to make the Republican Romans "look" and play right. I've played a lot of Command and Colors in 15mm, too, and just this week wondered how hard it would be to adapt TtS! to hexes. One question - are you limiting one unit to one hex (my first thought) or are you treating a single hex like a "box" and permitting two units per? Thanks in Advance!
    Chris

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  5. I would guess that either approach would work, although basing depths in some scales might make the two unit to a hex approach challenging. However I've not tried hexes (yet!). Best, Simon

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  6. Thanks, Simon. . . might this be a good topic for the forum, so as not to hijack Dave's blog?

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  7. Yes that would be a really good idea Chuck. Could you start it off? Best, Simon

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