New Year, New Herds!

Over Christmas I've been working on three new herds of elephants, two of which are for the new Salute game (Battle of Ipsus)  and the third for the previous-planned Salute game (Thapsus, which I've pushed back a year). The new game, Ipsus, should enable me to get the better part of thirty howdah-less nellies on the table. There may have been as many as 575 elephants at Ipsus.

All of the Indians at the front (mostly superb Aventine resins, with some nice old Vendels, painted by Dan Toone and Shaun McTague) need to be finished and based or re-based. The six Aventine nellies at back left, and eight more not shown, need to be painted- they will be Macedonian ride-ons. The ten nellies back right (and below) are Aventine resin Africans, painted by Kevin Lucas). 

Below are some of the Indians. The riders are magnetised and can be removed; I'm not entirely sure whether that is necessary, but it is kind of cool. It might help with storage, and gives me the option of replacing Indian riders with Macedonians. They are all on my crinkly-edged batbases.

A very Happy New Year to all! I hope this finds you and yours well. A couple of chums are going through challenging times at the moment, and I'll be thinking of them at midnight. I hope we all have a rip-roaring Twenty-Twenty! 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody!  I hope all of your miniature dreams come true, in 2020. :-)

New Hussite army list published

The new Hussite list, written by chum Peter Anderson (thanks Peter!), is the first published list to include large numbers of war wagons. The Hussite Wars are fascinating and this really is an iconic list that we should have published years ago. You can find the 218th TtS! army list in the  Later Medieval booklet.

The stunning war wagon above was painted by Gregory Blake, who tells me he has a dozen of them, lucky so-'n-so.

New army lists!

Since the beginning of September, I've published 13 new army lists for To the Strongest! and edited and extended many others. There are now 217 different lists. The new lists include:

• Hephthalite (White Hun), Indo Skythian, Later Muslim and Later Hindu Indian lists, all in the "Across the Indus!" booklet
• An Old and Middle Kingdom Egyptian list in "Cradle of Civilizations"
• Kyrenean Greek and Mercenary Greek lists in "Frogs about a Pond"
• Western Frankish and Magyar lists in "Early Medieval"
• A Khwarazmian list in "High Medieval"
• Later Medieval Portuguese and Low Counties lists in "Later Medieval"
• A Turkish Tribes and Kingdoms list in "Oriental"

I'm very excited about some of the new lists- particularly the ones in the new Indian booklet, which are very exotic and include some very unusual troop types.

All the lists can be downloaded, for free, from https://bigredbatshop.co.uk/collections/all/army-lists

Thapsus elephants

It's been the longest time since I posted images on minis- real life stuff has kept me too busy. But normal service will henceforth, hopefully, be resumed. Here are some WIP images of one of the projects I've been busy on. Six of these beautiful Aventine elephants (along with two other beauties for another project, not shown) were painted for me by chum Kevin Lucas- I just added some highlights on the howdahs and crew. The Aventine elephants are resin with metal detail and are beautifully light. I have rebased two very nice Agema elephants from my Numidian army, to join them.

The un-textured areas of base will take the screening light infantry, which aren't yet painted. These eight will form the screen for my Pompeian army for the Salute Thapsus game. I'll take proper pictures, when they are finished in January. I think I now have 31 elephants on bases, altogether, with another 15-20 painted but not yet based, mostly intended for a projected Classical Indian army.

TtS! Tournament in Paris

French chums are organising a To the Strongest! Tournament in Paris next summer, and say that we rosbifs would be most welcome to come along and join them. Unusually, it's in 15mm scale (the preferred scale in Mainland Europe) but they can lend armies - from what I've seen, they aren't short on miniatures!  Six games will be played over two days on a 6x4 15cm grid.  The price tag of the tournament is 25€ for the 2 days and includes the lunches.

I intend to go, travelling out Friday PM and back Sunday PM by Eurostar, and staying in a local hotel TBA, and hopefully scoffing a couple of nice French meals in the evenings. If you think you might like to come (no need for a firm commitment at this stage), then please email me at the address on the left. I'll collate the UK responses and get back to Pierre Aymeric who is organising it. 

Cheers, Simon

... and Godendag, too

In the run-up to the Chalgrove TtS! Worlds there is what I like to think of as the "Welsh Open", at the Godendag event in Firestorm Games in Cardiff on Saturday 8th Feb 2020. This is a super opportunity to refresh yourself with the rules and road-test your Chalgrove army.

I'm just booking my rail ticket and will be staying in Cardiff the night before, if anyone is about for a beer/curry. After all, what TtS! event would be complete, without the mild hangover and dodgy tummy experience? ;-)

https://www.thebattlefields.co.uk/events-at-the-battlefields/godendag-202-to-the-strongest-28mm-singles

There are just 8 remaining places, at time of posting. Hope to see you there!

Chalgrove is coming!

The date of the sixth annual To the Strongest! World Championships is 22nd February 2020 - please put it in your diary - and it will, again, be held in Chalgrove Village Hall, Oxfordshire (OX44 7TE). 

For those who haven't yet been to the TtS! Worlds, it is the largest 28mm ancient/medieval big-battle tournament in the world, with 40 or more players expected to participate in the one-day event. We hope to make 2020 the biggest Chalgrove, yet.

The rules used will be the v1.1a To the Strongest!, along with the Even Stronger V8 supplement. Battles will be fought on 6' x 4' tables on a 12 x 8 box 6" grid. Armies will be 28mm and 130 points; any of the 215+ official TtS! army lists are permitted. If you don't have a suitable army, mail me, we may be able to lend you one. 

Four rounds of battles will be fought in the familiar round-robin format. The first round will feature pre-set terrain and the second, third and fourth rounds will use pre-set terrain if both players are happy, otherwise terrain will be placed as in the rulebook. 

The final tournament ranking will be determined by the total of how many medals you take in a battle, how many you have left and with a bonus applied if you won, outright. It's a good-natured competition, not taken too seriously by most of the competitors.

There will be a £11 entry fee, payable in advance or on the day. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate and biscuits will be provided, and lunch can be ordered in. There will be prizes for the winner, runner ups, good sportsmanship, best army+camp+terrain and other prizes at the whim of the organisers - not to omit the traditional dead elephant award for the player with the lowest score.

To secure a place, please email Steve at  steve.dover@3dsystems.com if you haven't already done so! 

We are now officially open to receive army lists! Please mail your list to tim.thompson9 at btinternet.com. The closing date for list submissions is 10th February, but we are very keen to avoid a late rush.

Any questions please mail me at simonmiller60 at gmail.com

We very much hope to see you there!