Tuesday, 12 May 2020

Mid-Summer Madness Tournament- first game!


Last night I played the first game of the To the Strongest! 1066 online tournament against Howard Litton (Limejelly3). I drew Harald Hardrada's Norwegians (ie Vikings), and Howard drew King Malcolm's Scots. The terrain was one of the more open versions.

I won't go through the game in too much details but I planned to charge and chop my way through his line with my Huscarls, and he to outflank me. We both achieved our objectives, more or less, as you can see above. King Malcolm was seriously wounded and carried from the field, and I was lucky enough to win the game by a slender one victory medal margin.

A huge hats-off to Antony, who set the online version up, and to Paul Thompson who showed us how to play online.

The tournament will run until Mid-Summer Day (24th June) and it's not too late to join in- if you'd like to turn a few virtual cards, drop me an email at simonmiller60 at gmail dot com!

Thursday, 7 May 2020

Knights of Terra Firma II


Here's my second unit of Venetian knights. These are a repaint, re-base and  and expansion of an earlier unit (below); they look all the better for it. They were too drab, before. There's a WIP shot, here.  On the painting tray, I have the figures required to add a second rank- I'll be using units of 18 knights and cousilliers on a 20cm grid. I find myself drifting towards modelling the battle of Fornovo.


In other news, I'm recruiting players for an online TtS! tournament, called Midsummer Madness, starting next week. If you'd like to join in, please drop me an email at the address above and to the left. It'll be a blast!

Tuesday, 5 May 2020

TtS! Midsummer Madness


Midsummer Madness is a pop-up on-line To the Strongest! tournament designed to while away the isolated evenings of early summer 2020. The tournament will commence on Monday 11th May and finish on Wednesday 24th June- Midsummer’s Day- with a Grand Final between the two players who had recorded the highest scores on the previous Sunday (21st June). I’ll provide various prizes.

Entering
Simply email me at the address above, giving me your “Discord” handle and I will record you as a participant.  n.b. I will need to publish names and email addresses in the form “simonmiller60 at gmail dot com” so that we can contact each other to arrange games (if this is a problem for you, let me know, there may be a work around). I'm particularly keen to attract players from Europe and further afield, who can't usually make it to the UK-based tournaments. If you've not previously played TtS!, don't worry, we can teach you. I'll be gentle on you. Promise.  ;-)

Booking a Game
Any entrant will be able to arrange an online game of To the Strongest! 1066, with any other player who has registered for the event, at a mutually convenient time, using the "arrange a game" section on Discord or by email. Players are encouraged to book the games as multiplayer and publish the server name and password so that people can drop in and observe, or have a chat.

Play
Armies and terrain should be randomly selected from the 5 available armies (“1-2 I play the Normans, 3-4 etc…”) or agreed between the players. Games timings start with the roll for scouting. After 1 hour and 50 minutes have elapsed, the phasing player finishes his turn. After this, the non-phasing player gets a final turn, if he lost the scouting, so as to even out the number of turns played. Should players both prefer, though, they are welcome to battle on to a conclusion. 

Victory
A decisive victory is won when one player takes all of the other players medals. Otherwise, the player who has taken the most medals wins a tactical victory. A draw occurs when both players have taken exactly the same number of medals. Should the game have to be abandoned for technical reasons, the player who has taken the most medals wins a tactical victory.

Scoring
This is designed to encourage players to play at least one game in each week (n.b. this is subject to change at my whim- it's possible may increase the points awarded during in the latter weeks of the competition).
  • 3 points for a decisive victory/ 2 points for a tactical victory against a player on the ladder with more points than you, or during the first week (before the ladder is published), or against someone who isn't yet on the ladder.
  • 2.5 points for a decisive victory/1.5 points for a tactical victory against a player with the same points as you.
  • 2 points for a decisive victory/ 1 point for a tactical victory against a player with fewer points than you.
  • 1 point each for a draw.
  • 1 bonus point for the first game played in a week.
  • A penalty point applied to each game played, after the second, in any given week (so that people don’t play endless games!).
  • Only the first game against a particular opponent, during the period of the tournament, will count towards the competition score. This is to encourage people to play against as many opponents as possible.
Example: Macbeth plays three games in a week. 
  • Game one is a draw- 1 point plus 1 bonus point for his first game of the week, so 2 points.
  • Game two he wins, against a player above him on the ladder, scoring 3 points.  
  • Game three he loses, scoring -1 point (since it is his third game in the week).  
  • Macbeth therefore scores a total of 4 points for the week.
Results
Results should be posted in the results section on the discord forum and emailed to me (simonmiller60 at gmail dot com). Please let me know the date, players’ names, who won and whether decisively or tactically. I’ll record scores and publish an updated ladder, either late on the Sunday night or early on the Monday morning, ready for the next week's play.

That's it- it's simpler than it sounds. :-)  I do hope you can join us- I've been playing online for three weeks, already, and it's been really great to chuck down some (virtual) cards, and enjoy the usual banter with my opponents! I hope to cross swords with you, soon!

Monday, 27 April 2020

To the Strongest! 1066, unleashed online!


I'm very pleased to announce that friends and I have been able to set up an online version of To the Strongest!, for your isolation gaming pleasure! It has been developed by Antony Unwin, with Paul Thompson sorting some of the technical and organisational aspects and me doing army lists. It enables up to six players to play a game of TtS!, very much as one would at home or in a room above a pub, but, instead, online. It doesn't have an AI, so you need to know the TtS! rules- if you don't already own them, you can buy a digital set, here.


Here's a shot of the table, from above. For the sake of simplicity (and for various technical reasons) we have started with five pre-set armies, all roughly themed to the year 1066 (Normans, Anglo-Saxons, Norwegian vikings, Scots and Welsh). Below, you can see the Norman army ; lots of hard-hitting milites lancers, some spearmen, archers and crossbowmen. Everything you'd expect to see on a TtS! table, is there, including the camp, cards and the army list. Each of the armies is divided into three commands (distinguished by slightly different base colours). Flags indicate the generals (William the Bastard) and army standards (Papal Banner), where appropriate. There's a camp, too. Dice record ammunition, and the yellow sticks are lances. The smaller medallions are heroes, and the large coins, victory medals.


There are also terrain pieces, stored in bags.



The blue bags contain individual pieces, and the ten brown bags contain completed terrain setups; there's a deck of 10 cards next to them, in case you want to pick a random set. You lift the terrain over the table, line it up carefully, lower it and then use the right mouse button to "lock" it in place.


Here's the table, above, set up with a set of terrain pulled, as if by magic, from one of the brown bags.The markers on the side are to record disorder, and there's a quick reference sheet.

I'll post some in-game shots over the next few days.

In order to play To the Strongest 1066!, you'll need a reasonably modern PC and to buy some software called Tabletop Simulator, which is available on Steam for £15. You can download a free PDF of instructions on the PC specifications and how to install it and get going from the BigRedBatShop. There's also a new online section, supporting it, on the To the Strongest! forum

I've played a few games, myself, and it's very easy to pick up and a whole lot of fun! We use Discord to chat, and there is all the usual banter, expletives, etc. that one associates with a game of TtS! Once we have a critical mass of players behind it, I'll organise some informal online tournaments; perhaps even some sort of league- I really want to keep my hand in!  I very much hope you enjoy it.

Monday, 20 April 2020

Venetian knights II part 2


Four or five painting sessions haven't got me very much further, with these, I seem to be getting slower and slower, and my sessions getting shorter and shorter. :-(  But the three new horses are mostly finished, most of the older minis have been retouched and the lances on the new knights are painted. A couple more sessions should do it!

Part of the reason I've been busy is that the shop has been lively- thanks for all the orders! Any and all panic-buying of rules is most welcome as I have plenty of stock. I've notice a big upturn on sales of bases- I can see that lots of you are getting down to some serious isolation re-basing!

Also, I'm working hard with a couple of groups who are developing modules that will enable both TtS! Ancients/Medieval and FK&P to be played online,  which is very exciting! Here's a screenshot from a prototype of the TtS! game I played last week.


And below, For King and Parliament.


I'll provide more information later this week!

Monday, 13 April 2020

Venetian knights II


I've started to prepare a second unit of Venetian knights. I'm cannibalising a unit I based last year- I plan to repaint 5 of the 6 models (they weren't originally painted by me, and need some TLC), and I will add four new ones, painted from scratch, to give me a larger unit of 9. Later, I will add coustilliers to both units, which will then each become 18 strong.

I'm trying something new here- I've sprayed the horse armour and knights aluminium (a trick from Mr Imrie). I've painted the unarmoured parts of the horses and will add the armour after they are finished, which should save time and be less fiddly.  Hopefully these will take around a week to do.

In other news, some Burgundian knights are on the way from France. 


And finally, the garden is looking stunning; it is currently a mass of blossom! Yesterday I couldn't hear any traffic, at all, over the noise of the bees in the crab apple tree. Such a delight in tough times.


Monday, 6 April 2020

Swords to Ploughshares III


Garden- latest! During the current emergency I've taken a brief pause from modelling to transform the back garden into a big vegetable patch.

I conscripted all the Bat-lings this weekend, for a Big Push, and it's all starting to come together. Above are the first proper plantings- some broad beans that will hopefully grow up the tripods. Last year our crop amounted to 8 beans- this year I hope to grow kilos of them 

Below is the new main planting area, which looks like a swimming pool filled with mud. We've dug a lot of compost into it and taken a lot of stones out, and planted the first French beans in the corner. Later we will landscape around it.



Above are improvised planters with early crop potatoes in them. The cardboard boxes are what the magnetic sheets arrive here in- they are very substantial, but it remains to be seen whether or not they will survive the spring showers. Nothing much lost, if they don't.

Below is the small planter- we have onions, spring onions, spinach, peas and beetroot in there.



And finally, here is the new raised bed, pretty much as before except I took out the great big bush by the steps and its roots last week, and a couple of sacks of stones, and Harry and I dug the earth over, again. This will be where we will grow most of the root vegetables- it's too shady for much else. Later, I plan to put a water butt in the corner.

So that's where we are; this evening we sat out with a round of gin and tonics and surveyed our domain, with considerable satisfaction. I've already done more gardening than I do in most full years and it's been a comfort, in difficult times. It's going to rain tomorrow, though, and I hope to get back to the modelling! Take care, all.