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Arthur’s 11th Battle (Battle of Bregouin).

Using the To the Strongest rules I played a learning solo game of this Battle, which I set at Ribchester in Northern England in the Romano-British period.

The forces set out for battle. Picts and Angles to the East and British to the West. The road runs from North to South with the Watch tower to the North.

The Romano-British.

The Picts with the Angles on the Southern flank and the Pictish King and his cavalry held in reserve, light cavalry to the flanks.

The Roman line advances steadily. A unit of light archers gets carried away with its enthusiasm but fails to fire.

The Elite Romano-British veterans beneath the Banner of the Virgin Mary.

Artorius beneath the bear banner with his cavalry.

The Picts also advance rapidly. The unit of archers has succeeded in drawing out one unit ahead of the line of spears (being caught and Lost doing so).

The Pictish King rides to fill the gap and the Angle cavalry fail to move at all. A theme that gets oft repeated throughout the battle!

The lines close to the North as the British cavalry advance to the South.

As the spearmen clash with the Romano-British infantry a gap opens in the British line.

The British Elite though stand firm beneath their Holy Banner.

The British cavalry drive away the Barbarian cavalry (who evade). The Angle cavalry remain motionless whilst all this goes on around them.

Subsequently the Romano-British clashed with the Angle and Pictish cavalry destroying the former and driving off the Picts who evaded.  The Picts returned once on the Southern flank but then switched to the Northern flank once they were forced to evade again.  As the Romano-British infantry and cavalry turned North and began to envelop them the Angles turned to stave off this advance but were eventually surrounded.  To the North the British  infantry advanced towards the camp but fearing encirclement by the Pictish Light cavalry retreated again until a gap appeared which they exploited to turn the flanks on the Pictish spearmen.  With both flanks now threatened and with the losses mounting up the Pictish King retired from the field one last time:  no doubt leaving the Angles to their fate with little thought other than it will give him more time to make good his escape.

I really enjoyed this learning game of To the Strongest.  The card driven system works well especially for solo games.  I had ordered Blue and Red Dragon decks which I really needed as I kept mixing them up after each turn!

The Barbarians had attached leaders whilst the Romano-British were detached and this gave the latter a greater ability to be present when required as one would expect.  This actually makes a difference as the fighting starts up in earnest and towards the end it was Arthur’s presence alone which kept the infantry in place against the Angle Warriors.  I had not initially realised that warriors were deep in case those eagle eyed amongst the reader’s notice and again fixing this towards the end made an interesting difference.  The Angles with 3 hits stood a long time but were quite hard to move.  Of course the Angle’s constant ability to fail to activate even with their leader is present (Two Aces seems to come up a lot) did not help.  Their cavalry only moved at the end when the Picts had run away just in time to get hit in the flank by the Roman-British light cavalry who had travelled through the far North of the board and across the bridges to get there.   The combat played quickly and though I did need to look up a few rules like evade, interpenetration and diagonal moves a few times I think it will be fairly straight forward to play once familiar.  Both Arthur and the Pictish King took wounds in the fighting (being Heroic) but will live to fight again another day.

Certainly this campaign is not over as Artorius will now need to drive the main force of the Picts away from Eboracum and back across Hadrian’s and then the Antonine wall before the year is over and order is restored to the North.

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