Byzantines vs Seljuqs in 15mm

Today our weekly old guys meeting (lunch then a game) used Simon "Big Red Bat" Miller's "To the Strongest!" rules and my 15mm forces to fight a game between Byzantine defenders and a Seljuq raiding party.  For those who are not familiar "TtS!" uses squares to adjudicate movement and weapons ranges and playing cards for activation, missile fire, melees, and rallying.  If you are interested, you can get the rules, playing mats, and all sorts of accoutrements at Simon's shop.  You can also read more about the rules at the "To the Strongest!" discussion forum.  The playing mat was obtained from Simon and features a thin square grid that doesn't detract from the very nice surface.  Well, enough blatant advertising 😁 on with the battle report.

This game was the second in a row for us.  The first one, for which there were no pictures, pitted two relatively balanced Norman forces against each other.  It was mainly a learning game.  Today the forces were:

Byzantine (Nikephorian list):  four commands with a total of four units of tagmatic cavalry, two units of thematic cavalry, two units of nomadic light cavalry with bow, four units of tagmatic infantry spearmen, one unit of psiloi javelinmen, four units of toxotoi light infantry with bow, and a camp.  This force had a total of 38 victory points with 13 victory medals.  Two players controlled the Byzantines.

Seljuq (Seljuq Turkish list):  four commands with a total of 1 unit of Seljuq noble cavalry, three units of ghulam cavalry, ten units of turkic light cavalry with bow, one unit of Dailami guard javelinmen, three units of light infantry with javelins, three units of light infantry with bows, and a camp.  This force had a total of 37 victory points and 12 victory medals.  Two players (including me) controlled the Seljuqs.

It would seem that the Seljuqs, with all their light bow-armed cavalry, would ride circles around the slower moving Byzantines while shooting them to pieces.  Unfortunately it didn't quite work out that way.  All I can say is "the cards was against us!"  All four of us couldn't seem to get into a good sequence where we activated with low cards and then shot or fought with high cards.  It was the other way around for almost the entire game.  In addition, our Seljuq light cavalry was very fragile.  It was not a good day to be a Seljuq.

Now for a few pictures, taken about midway through the game.  As you'll see, I use a rather large base with my 15mm figures, 80 mm x 40 mm with 8 to 12 infantry or 4 to 6 cavalry per base.  This basing was originally used for the old "Vis Bellica" rules which turned out not to be a particularly liked rule set among us - a lot too much adding and subtracting of combat modifiers.  As I already had a ton of figures based this way on fairly expensive Litko bases I didn't want to rebase them back to the old DBA etc. standard.  But with TtS!, this basing seems to work so I'll continue to use it.

A good look of most of the battlefield from the Seljuq right rear.  The gray colored numbered chits denote missile ammunition available to a bow or javelin equipped unit.  All 21 Seljuq and 15 of the 17 Byzantine units were bow or javelin equipped.  Directly in front of the camera you can see a Byzantine nomadic light cavalry unit in the rough ground and a leader and two heavy cavalry units to its right (your left) with a third Byzantine heavy cavalry unit to the rear facing one of my Seljuq light cavalry units.  My leader and three Seljuq light cavalry units are in front of the Byzantines.  My plan was to ride around the Byzantine flank, get behind them, and shoot them to pieces.  Didn't happen!

The Seljuq left flank with bow armed light infantry then light cavalry beyond them facing Byzantine cavalry and infantry.  The cards immediately behind the Seljuq units indicate their activations with the "3" being pretty good, allowing future activations while the "8" being not so good as one has to get a higher card to continue to activate.  The two red cards were played by the bow units as their missile fire, with both getting a hit on their respective targets.  It probably wasn't enough as I'm sure the Byzantine player was able to save from the hits,

Finally a view from the rear of the Seljuq center with my four heavy cavalry units and my leader facing a Byzantine infantry force.  The black squiggly marker by the left front cavalry unit indicates it is disordered from a missed save.  Another such missed save and the unit would be destroyed.  We only had five "2-hit" units with the rest being "1-hit" wonders - a missed save and the unit was destroyed.  The toothpick on the left rear cavalry unit indicates that it had not used its "lance" capability which allows it to draw two hits cards in melee.  It would later use it and bow fire to destroy one of the opposing Byzantine heavy infantry units seen in the distance.

The Seljuqs really took it in the shorts today, loosing one heavy cavalry, five light cavalry, and four light infantry units for a total of 11 of its available 12 victory medals.  We decided "he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day" and conceded defeat.  The Byzantines didn't lose but about 1/3 that amount.  To paraphrase, "something was wrong with our bloody bows and arrows" today.

But we are catching onto the mechanics of the rules and will have more of these games in the future.

Play Test of "For King and Parliament" Rules

Simon Miller (of BigRedBat's Shop) is working on a "variant" of his "To the Strongest!" ancient/medieval rules to carry them into the 17th Century.  The Jackson Gamers obtained a copy of the first edition play test rules from him and finally were able to play the scenario included with the rules - The Battle of Montgomery in 1644.

We used my 15mm vintage English Civil War armies augmented by a few additional leaders from Lord Sterling's equally vintage forces.

The rules are very similar in structure to Simon's "To the Strongest!" rules but do have  new and interesting close combat sequence.

The scenario pitted a small Royalist force (5 foot regiments, 4 horse regiments, and 1 dragoon regiment, with no artillery) against a smaller Parliamentary force (3 foot regiments and 3 horse regiments, with no artillery, but a reinforcement of two horse regiments on or after turn 2).  This scenario was taken from Bob Giglio's English Civil War Wargaming Scenarios, Volume 2.

I was the game master and my other three Thursday lunch and game buddies played the Parliament and Royalist forces.  We had a good time learning the basic rules and actually playing the game.  Each side had 9 victory medals.  The Parliamentary forces won the game 9 to 0, destroying three Royalist horse regiments and a foot regiment, while loosing none of their own.

Here are a few pictures of the game:

Simon's picture of the scenario set-up.  The battlefield is 12 blocks wide and 8 deep.

During the first turn the Royalists advanced, forcing the left wing Parliamentary horse regiment to fall back (foreground) while attacking the left wing Parliamentary horse with their two first rank horse regiments (background).

The action on the Parliamentary left/Royalist right as both sides horse collide.  The off-board Parliamentary horse represent a foraging command that can't return until starting on Turn 2 and only if a D6 roll is less than the current turn number.

Arriving on Turn 4, the off-board Parliamentary horse crash into the Royalist flank.  Now here I made a mistake and let them charge in from off-board.  That should not have happened so the Parliamentary forces may have gotten a slight advantage.  But the way FKaP (and TtS!) are played, a unit or group of units can activate as many times during a turn as they are able.  Bringing them on properly would probably only delayed them the draw of an additional card.

With one Royalist foot and two horse regiments already destroyed, the final nail was put into the Royalist coffin when the red-coated Parliamentary horse unit attacked the already disordered "Polish crimson" Royalist horse to their front, giving them a second disorder and destroying them.

We'll try to do another play test, maybe next Thursday, before Simon comes out with his second edition of the play test rules.  Stay tuned!

Additional 15mm Normanno-Italian Cavalry

Thanks to fellow TMPer "oramieno" I've been able to add 28 already painted cavalry to my Normanno-Italian army (ca. 1180 AD).  The figures are vintage Table Top Miniatures of which I already have some in my army.  They are very nicely painted so all I had to do was remove them from their old bases and put them on the 80mm x 40mm bases I use.

Each large base is a separate unit in the rules I'm now using, "To the Strongest!" by Big Red Bat.  The two smaller round stands are the leaders.  Luckily I had an extra painted figure to add so I could come out with the force pictured above.  I still have to add the terrain effects and the unit name labels.

"To the Strongest!" has a different mechanism that uses playing cards to control the activation of individual units and leaders as well as to adjudicate the combat.  The "battlefield" is a square grid with the square sizes large enough to hold two units and a leader.  You can see some examples of what I've done with my army at this previous post.

And for those who try to follow this blog, I haven't given up on my 15mm ACW armies using the "On to Richmond" rules.  I'm very slowly working on my next Union brigade.  But things around the barracks have been a bit slow lately as I wrapped up my projects and retired from my job as an archivist with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History at the end of June.  I'm still trying to get into my "retired" groove.  Once I do, however, I anticipate a better return on my painting.

Later,  Jim

It Is Good to Be Back

After an almost three month absence, I'm finally back to make a few posts.  Things around Col Campbell's Barracks have been at a low wintery slump since preparations were completed for my participation in the Colonial Barracks convention back in early November.  Since then I haven't done much in the way of hobby activities.  But here's where I'm headed.

To the Strongest

 My wargaming buddy, Lord Sterling, ordered this set of rules from BigRedBat.  Back in December we played several games using this interesting set of ancient/medieval rules.  All of the activation, weapons fire, and combat is controlled by playing cards drawn from a shuffled deck.  The card driven activation mechanism sure makes you think about what you want to accomplish and how to sequence events to make that happen.  Here are some pictures at various times in the game between two fairly well balanced Roman/Greek/Gallic forces - basically a "civil war" scenario of Romans with Greek and Gallic allies on both sides.

Two Roman units occupying one of the "terrain" squares during the game.

The game uses squares to control movement, weapons ranges, and combat during the game.  Most infantry can move one or two squares straight forward or diagonally.

Here's a bigger look at part of the Roman line of battle.  We used Lord Sterling's vintage 15mm Roman/Greek/Gallic armies.  All of the units were grouped onto movement sabots.

Gallic chariots attack some slingers and light archers, doing quick work of them, if I remember correctly.  The numbered squares denote the combat strength of each unit.

Fight over a farmstead between the defending light archers and an attacking Gallic warband.

One flank of the opposing armies, with Gallic warbands mixing it up with Roman troops.

After the games were over, I was sure that I had found a way to use my ca 1100 AD 15mm medieval figures that I had remounted from DBx standards to Vis Belllica standards - 80mm x 40mm bases with varying numbers of figures on each base.  Since they were mounted on Litko bases, I didn't want to go through the machinations of unbasing them to go back to DBx standards.

So now to figure out which size squares to use.  The rules suggest using a size that can accommodate two regular size uits per square with room left for a mounted commander.  Since I have 80mm x 40mm bases that meant the smallest square size would be 4" x 4" (ca 100mm square).  So I drew out two squares and tested some bases on them:

Each 4" square (red outline) holds two regular units, here two cavalry on left versus two infantry on right.

With the mounted commanders thrown in, things get kind of tight.

I really didn't like the tightness of the 4" squares, especially when it makes it difficult to fit mounted commanders into the squares without them partially sitting on top of the unit bases.

OK, let's use 5" squares:

With the 5" squares (black outline), the units don't look so crowded.

And the 5" squares even give more room for the mounted commanders.

So it looks like I'll be using 5" squares.  And when I want to use my ca 1200-1300 25mm medieval figures, 5" squares will just about work for them:

Two 25mm cavalry units on the left face off against two 25mm infantry units on right.  All figures are individually based and then mounted on magnetic movement stands with either 3 cavalry or 6 infantry figures per stand.

I've also read that Simon of Big Red Bat is contemplating expanding the rules into the Renaissance, Thirty Years War, and English Civil War periods.  Using 5" squares will also accommodate my vintage MiniFig 15mm ECW armies:

On left are two different size cavalry units, with a mounted commander, facing off against one large infantry unit, with a mounted commander.

Here the two cavalry units have been equalized (5 stands each) and are opposing the same infantry unit in a different formation plus a galloper gun and a mounted commander.

Reducing the cavalry units to four stands each really doesn't change the geometry much.

Now all I have to do is mark up some old battlefield cloths to distinguish the corners of the 5" squares and my 15mm Normanno-Italian, Papal Italian, and Byzantine armies can contest once again for southern Italy.