Strength and Honour

 These are the new rules by Mark Backhouse for fighting the epic big battles of the ancient world. I played these at Partizan in a refight of Cannae. The outcome of using Hannibal's tactics was historical, and it was the first time I felt this classic battle had been faithfully reproduced on the tabletop. The downsize (pun intended) is that the game is designed to be played with micro armies (typically 2mm). My experience of playing 3mm WW2 games has not previously encouraged me in this direction. However, here, the unit blocks are placed on a large base, which is easy to identify and label.

So, I bought the rules and a batch of figures from Antonine Miniatures (Warbases). My first matching armies were the Dacians and Romans. At this scale, the Dacians will do for almost any warband army of the period. I also bought some pike blocks intending to do some of Alexander's early battles as well.

This was the first batch of painting. I glued the metal blocks onto the bases, which are standard and a little deeper for the Roman legions. The warbands looking suitably irregular and the Roman ten cohort legion supported by auxiliaries. After priming them in brown I painted the legions in red around the edges and the auxiliaries in blue. Then dry brushed the helmets with a few crests for officers. The Dacians got dabbed a range of colours. Then a fine sandy base mix, followed by a green foilage mix. 

The same approach for the second batch, which includes cavalry, two camps and skirmishers. I also bought some scenery pieces from Warbases.

On to the tabletop, meant reading the rules. Much helped by my memory of the participation game at Partizan. Everything you need is in the nicely laid out booklet, plus a downloaded QRF and command board from the Two Fat Lardies site. The game is played on a grid, typically 75mm, so I used my 150mm To the Strongest mat.

You dice for command points and allocate them to the command board. I'm embarrassed to say we largely forgot to use these, but they give various benefits, although you can only use a point once. It doesnt seem to overpower the game as sometimes happens in other rules. 

The key mechanism is activation, which includes movement, combat, charge, shooting and reform. A roll on a D6 means variable movement, which, as I discovered, makes it difficult to keep a neat battle line. This matters as isolated units can come up against supported enemies. Manoevre, which means anything other than straight ahead also has to be diced for and failure means the end of your turn. So, do it last. It also discourages unhistorical dashing about the tabletop, which is all too common in osome other rules.

Combat and shooting is straightforward, based on a unit combat factor with typical modifiers. If you lose then the combat result table can result in a pushback or worse. You are also likely to attract setback or disaster cards which are drawn from a pile and placed face down. These have numbers which added together can reach the break point for the army. We didn't reach that when we had to call it a night, but my Dacians were losing heavily. Never mind, wait till the Romans get into the mountains!

The book has army lists and scenarios as well as some basic campaign rules. Overall, we had a good game and will certainly return to these for when the big battle itch has to be scratched.