Saturday 18 January 2014

'To The Strongest' Magnesia refight part 1.

Having a little bit of time on my hands today I thought I would try out Simon Millers (Big Red Bat Cave) ancient rules of To The Strongest.
I have already made a couple of adaptions by incorporating a random events card and also  end of bound cards.
I haven't played the rules before and for the purposes of the refight my Greeks have stood in for the Romans and the table represents the Seleucid right flank to the midpoint of its centre.


The first bound saw the Seleucids order a general advance, however on their right flank the advance Guard command failed miserably when the Horse archers failed their command test and brought the whole right flank to a grinding halt.
The elephants and phalanx of the centre started their advance towards the Roman line.

In response the Romans have 3 and half legions on the board.

Their left wing was somewhat tardy in moving forward but Gracchus and Scipio with the Centre legions pushed forward.

Bound two saw a repeat of the first except the Seleucids saw a dust cloud on their right flank and an Archer unit was lost as it went to investigate (random event) in addition to which another light unit lost a round of missiles (another random event).

The Galations surged forward and charged into the Roman velites who failed to evade, they caused a disorder on the lights who in turn inflicted an unsaved hit on the Galations!
Bound three saw Gracchus charge his Hastati through the velites (don't know if I can do this) and into contact with the Galations, the inflicted a hit which wasn't saved and the Galations were no more.

Scipio's velites engaged an elephant and neither side inflicted casualties

The Seleucid right flank still struggled to get moving the Agryspiads and supporting pahlanx moving forward but only random movement by the lights on the far side of the river.

By the following bound Antiochus lost patience and brough his cataphracts through the stationary light troops and unleashed the scythed chariots.

In the centre an elephant struck the Hastati, caused one hit and in return took an unsaved hit which saw it stampede back the way it came and die.

The scythed chariots rode down and unfortunate unit of Velites who were in their way and headed on towards the main Roman Line. The elephant in the seleucid centre lost its fight against the Velites and propmptly routed through a phalanx advancing behind it.

There it remains until Monday when I hop to conclude. The Romand have lost a unit of Velites and have a couple of units disordered, the Seleucids have lost two elephants, the Galations and have a phalanx badly disordered.

Still early days.

I like the feel of the rules and the random events have been good just two bounds which saw the Seleucids draw cards but otherwise the Romans have not been subject to any such event. Well they are Roman after all.

2 comments:

Independentwargamesgroup said...

Graham,
This looks an interesting battle to fight. If you ever needsome help to get beat let me know.
Thanks Robbie.

Graham C said...

I just may take you up on that :)