"To the Strongest: Viking v Saxon" Topic

Last night I ran a Saxons v Vikings game down the club. General scenario is two Viking commands are holding a hill protecting their settlement, while the Saxons, having had enough guff from these hairy intruders, are trying to see them off. At the start of the game one Viking command is marching to the battle, so the 3 Saxon commands have a chance to do serious damage first. We played a few hours last night, going slow to teach the rules in more detail, and will finish it up next Monday. We are playing on a 12x16 grid (boxes are 6") with 15mm figures. Light units are one row of stands deep, regular units are two rows of stands deep, and deep units are three rows. We found this very helpful as it helps as a visual reminder that lights don't face difficult activations, deep units take 3 hits, etc. Plus it gets all my toys on the table! We do need more "box-friendly" terrain however, especially hills!

I also made a custom QRS that includes a kind of roster on one side, and a guide to how to do each action on the back. This really helped players get up the learning curve, and helped us remember some of the finer points of the game. I need to make a few adjustments/corrections to it.

Points were evenly matched for this game at 189 for each side. Vikings had some helpful terrain, but were down a command until Turn 4. Things right now are very much in the balance.

What's with the regimented shrubberies?

Ponder on,

JAS

The game uses squares, they mark the corners of the square. If we decide we like the rules we'll make a permanent cloth.

Great game. We use the same mounting system you do. One rank for lights, two for regular and three for deep. Currently doing Crusades. Love the rules for ease and speed of play.

Usually one game is enough to give you an idea if TtS! is for you. I have yet to have anyone really dislike it.

It's good to see a path, a path, a path, a path between the shrubberies…..sorry really sorry……

You have indicated that dark age battles have been unsatisfactory in some way or another to you. Does this ruleset ameliorate your issues?

So far, for big battles, yes. We currently really like Lion Rampant and it's family for skirmish, but we mostly prefer big battles. Here are the prior rules and the major issues that caused us to move on:

Hail Caesar: Melees were very fiddly and we thought very slow. Did not seem to work well with horse archers (and we have lots of horse archer armies in our group). The face your enemy rules we found very confusing. But we like Pike & Shotte and Black Powder, so go figure.

DBA/Big Battle DBA: Frankly, never made the littlest bit of sense to us. I can fall back through a unit if I go straight back, but if I clip a 1mm corner on the diagonal I am destroyed. Huh? Did not really scale up well.

Triumph (forthoming DBA style game): Many of the same issues as DBA, better as a 2 on 2 (most of our games are 6+ players).

Impetus: Just really never caught on….

Just a note: the destroyed by clipping problem has been fixed in modern DBX mechanics and is no longer an issue in DBA 3.0, D3H2 (fantasy DBA 3.0) and A Game of Knights and Knaves (totally updated DBX mechanics). DBA 3.0 addressed lots of Dark Age problems with prior additions thanks in large park to Joe Collins.

Triumph is based on DBX prior to the game changing DBA 3.0.

Extra Crispy is correct that the death by clipping was a serious problem (now largely solved).

Thomas J. Thomas
Fame and Glory Games

Pretty cool!

I've been considering TtS for dark age battles. I read the rules and thought them alright, but seem more designed toward BIG collections versus medium sized ones.

I'll have to give the rules a another read through, and I like the way you've marked the grid.

@Stew: Not so! All you need are 10-20 "units." You could play with a unit being one base. So you'd really just need a big DBA army. Use 50mm squares and play on!

We need big armies because we play on big tables! (Normal games are 6x8, medium are 6x12, anything over that is large).

Thanks for the extra feedback, EC.

My normal table is 5 x 6. I can go 6 x 7.5 or 6 x 10.
My element bases are 125mm, so maybe with squares around 150mm…

I'll have to read the rules again. Anyone know if there is an updated version?

-Stew

There are a number of officially suggested minor adjustments to the rules, available for free from Simon's site (store) as "Even Stronger". They won't make much sense without the actual rules, however.

I second edition is planned, but not likely in 2018 at the very least.

Version 1.1 is the latest.

A 5x6 table with 6" (150mm) squares would give you plenty of room.

The "normal" game assumes a grid of 12 x 8 boxes. Again, because we have big tables and like big games, our standard grid will be 12 x 16.

I have a very nice 6' x 4' mat with 150mm squares. This gives a good 12 x 8 box set-up that works well for smaller games. I also have a 12' x 6' mat with 200mm squares that my 54s and bigger 28mm games fit on very nicely.

Great game with very little need to rebase.

Great! I have V1.1 rules, so I'll read them again and get the errata, updates, and updated army lists.

-Stew

This guy on YouTube has made a few TTS tutorial videos that got me interested in the syatem.
YouTube link

Thanks for the reply EC.