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| Numidians and Romans deployed |
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| Numidian cavalry advance on the left flank |
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| View from the Roman side |
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| Numidian cavalry on the right flank fail to move |
On Wednesday afternoon I went over to Rick's place for a game of Strength and Honour, the new set of ancient rules by Mark Backhouse, published by the Too Fat Lardies under Reisswitz Press. These cover from the Marian reforms (about 107 BC) until about 200 AD and are designed for smaller scale figures (2mm to 15mm). We played the Bagradas River 49 BC Roman Civil war scenario (pp. 98-99) with Numidians under Saburra taking on a Caesarian Roman force commanded by Curio. We used Rick's 6mm figures on 40mm square bases, he was the attacker with the Romans and and I was the defender with the Numidians.
We bumbled our way through our first game, a familiar experience but we both enjoyed it. The Numidians routed two Roman units, the skirmishers and cavalry, and looked to be well placed but a couple of bad dice rolls for the Numidian spearmen and the army was broken. Rick revealed his cards afterwards and he was broken too, the timing of the 'Homunculus Est' activation call is fairly critical! This is where the combined tally of setback and disaster cards is revealed on request to your opponent.
There's always quite a bit to absorb with any new set of rules, and it can take a while before everything is clear, so plenty to ponder for future games. Strength and Honour are quite innovative, but concise with fifty nine pages of actual rules, the remaining forty odd pages covering campaigns, scenarios and army lists. The photos are excellent, lots of lovely 2mm troops, terrain and tables. They're well supported by videos on YouTube, a Facebook group and a dedicated forum on the Too Fat Lardies website. Warbases sell the Antonine Miniatures 2mm ancient ranges developed for these rules, which are very nice and surprisingly detailed for the scale. I'm really looking forward to painting some of these packs.
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| Roman cavalry charge the Spanish and Gallic bodyguard |
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| Combat result is a grind, both sides are pushed back |
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| Romans call Homunculus Est but Numidians' break point is 13 |
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| Numidian spearmen rout |
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| Numidians break this time |
Nice looking new battle sir!
ReplyDeleteThanks Michal, they’re a fun and interesting set of rules.
DeleteInteresting sounding ruleset 6mm is a bit too small for my taste and ageing eyes!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Thanks Iain, they’re interesting for sure, the photos in the rule book are all 2mm but they look great.
DeleteGreat to see this being played - thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteThanks Nicholas, no worries, they’re a lot of fun.
DeleteCool looking game. For me the new comment form works well on both my mobile and laptop?
ReplyDeleteThanks Ray, it was a feature in Safari that prevents third party tracking but it works fine when you turn it off.
Delete