After six weeks of hard painting, helped by Lockdown 2 and the Christmas holidays, the Classical Indians are ready to hit the tabletop, and what better occasion to test them out than what is almost certain to be the final battle of the year.

My usual wargaming opponents were again unavailable due to the lockdown (it’s about two degrees Centigrade, so a little cold to game outside) so I fell back on the ever-reliable Daughter #2. We decided to play a straight up, 130 points a side game of To The Strongest: I obviously wanted to play with my newly finished Indians, so she decided to fall back on her favourite Caesarian Romans, once again adopting the persona of the Beardless Proconsul.

Indians drawn up and ready for battle

Three brigades. One of two units of Heavy Chariots and a unit of raw cavalry; two a mixture of Elephants and Longbowmen; plus one had the Maiden Guard attached.

The Heavy Chariots were on the right flank

The elephants and longbowmen were in the centre and on the left

The Roman mincing machine ready for action

The trouble with facing the Romans is that they are very manoeuvrable and hard to break: they just keep coming back!

The left of the Roman line

The Roman force consisted of four brigades, each of two legionary units and a support unit of some sort.

The centre and right of the Roman line

Ready for action

My plan had been to hold the centre and left whilst sweeping the chariots around the right. Unfortunately the enemy’s deployment meant I would have to go through four cohorts of legionaries to do so!

My chariots duly moved forward, manouevring around the difficult terrain

The Roman left also moved forward

The red Meeples indicate a veteran unit.

The Roman right moved forward strongly

It appeared that the Romans intended to do the mirror image of what I had planned: their veteran Gallic cavalry would punch through or go around my left wing with the aim of sacking my camp!

Finally past the difficult terrain

My centre advances

The Maiden Guard screened by some Longbowmen

The Gauls heading for my left flank

I should have had elephants there to protect the flank from this very tactic.

The Roman line shakes itself out

Looks like the first real clash will be on the right flank

My Heavy Chariots go in!

Rather disappointingly, all I managed to do was disorder one Roman unit.

Massed longbow fire as the Gauls approach

This was actually quite successful. Although I only managed to disorder the lead Gallic horse unit, just next door I managed to disorder a legionary unit and kill the Legate commanding them. First real blood to the Indians.

Overview

Big problems on the left!

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to stop the Gauls. One unit punched straight through the longbowmen in front of them, the other was locked in combat with another longbow unit despite being disordered and having a lightly wounded commander.

The fighting continued on my right flank, neither side gaining any ground.

A difficult question...

Do I pull the elephants back to protect my camp from the Gauls that have broken through, or do I add them into the fighting to the front and try and win the battle elsewhere before my camp falls?

The answer is...

I elected to fight it out. This seemed to be the right choice as, on my right flank, my heavy chariots had destroyed a unit of legionaries.

Or perhaps not!

The Gauls moved swiftly to take my camp: three victory coins down the toilet!

However...

Surely my two chariot units could dispose of this last non-veteran unit of legionaries. A flank attack on an already disordered unit? Surely a foregone conclusion!

Well, no, actually, it wasn’t! That unit of legionaries, admittedly commanded by the Proconsul herself, held out for two rounds of combat against two heavy chariot units, one attacking from the flank!

Which meant that...

The rest of the Romans had time to muller the rest of my army!

Here you see the elephants finally getting in to action. Believe it or not, they are about to lose their commander and then themselves to bowfire from the equites sagittarii. That cost me four coins and the game!

No need to rub it in!

The elephants rampage backwards!

It's their fault!

So a loss for their first outing, but actually not as bad a loss as I had thought. My massed longbow fire did cause the Romans real problems in the initial stages of the battle, and had that unit of legionaries on my right not held out against overwhelming odds, then I think the day would have been mine.

Lots of lessons learnt: the most important one being to put a unit of elephants on the wing where the chariots aren’t: an elephants versus Gauls match up might well have gone my way as the Gallic horses don’t like pachyderms and suffer big penalties in combat.

Anyway, another cracking game of TTS, and a fitting end to a great year’s gaming.