Romans vs Celts in "To The Strongest"

After a long hiatus we finally managed to play a game.

Bart was so kind to set up a large battlefield using his Romans and Celts collections, and we used the To The Strongest ruleset. TTS is very fast and easy to learn, and plays well, although the 2nd half of the game became something of a slogging fest. But this was probably more due to the scenario and initial setup. We made a mental not to allow some more room for movement and manoeuvring in our next game.

Here are the pictures, taken during various stages of the game. Note that there is some visual clutter (TTS requires cards or chits to be used for determining activation), so this is something we might to work at a bit as well.

Bart and Wim discussing the finer points of the rules ...

 

Wet Paint: Celtic Command

Fresh on the painting table, some Celtic command bases:



These will all be commanders in Hail Caesar, under the able leadership of general Bartolomix. Figures are mostly Foundry, except for the black chariot, which is of course the Warlord Games Boudicca model. And yes, the other one is Foundry's Bouddicca—one can never have enough Boudicca's in a Celtic army :). Finally, the third figure from the left is the Ambiorix figure given away to visitors of the Crisis convention some years ago. Although we attend Crisis as a club and thus do not get the figure, I managed to get my hands on two of them through various devious means :)

This nets me 14 points (4 horses, 2 chariots and 8 figures), bringing my painting total up to 60 for January. Better pics to follow when their bases are completed, as usual.

More Celts

Following in the footsteps of their cousins the Larii, here are the Arboretes:



Again Warlord Games figures, which I must say are growing on me. These have a few bits from the British Celt box set on them (notably the leader and the spiky haired guy next to him).

(And yes, the peeling shield transfer on said spiky haired person has been fixed since taking this photograph :) ).

Celtic warband

Here are the Larii, a warband of Warlord Games Celts:



While I initially did not like these figures, and am still a bit doubtful about their poses (if you don't pay attention to posing, you end up with a war band of figures in one of two poses: 'I need to go to the toilet NOW' and 'I'm in the process of tripping over this bunch of grass here') I must admit that all ranked up (so to speak) they do look better than expected.

Celtic cavalry, and some of their friends shanghaied into the Roman army

Just some pics of my painting output of the last two months (all 27 points of it):

Those are Roman auxilia from [Warlord Games](http://shop.warlordgames.co.uk/plastic-imperial-roman-auxiliaries-1945-p.asp), painted using the Army Painter dip method.

And some Foundry Celtic cavalry. The rear rank are figs I painted ages ago, the front rank are newly painted figures.

Painting log: Celtic cavalry

That's 6 old Wargames Foundry Celtic cavalry done. Together with 6 more which I painted a *very* long time ago (they are from my first ever army - a 25mm DBA Celtic army. Ah, the memories) they form a 12 man cavalry unit reinforcement for my [Celtic army](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000197.html).

Pre basing pic:



The front rank are the newly painted figures, the rear rank the over a decade old ones.

I tried something different wrg glues on these figures. Normally, I glue the riders to the horses and the shields to the riders using super glue. On these, I used hot glue (which I also use to fix the horses to the bases, but I do that more often). I had expected there to be horrible blobs of solidified glue splurting all over the place, but I'm pleasantly surprised as to this: no blobs and everything sticks quickly without the need to do the press-together-for-twenty-seconds-and-then-find-out-if-it-sticks-to-the-figure-or-my-finger routine one does with super glue. Recommended!

That brings this month to 12 painting points. Next up are some more Swedes (finally), this time the Jönkopings regiment.

Celtic archers

These are Renegade figures. The painting time was again around an hour per figure. The tattoos were done with a gel pen (thanks for the tip, Koen DS).

My Celtic army

Those of you following this blog know that we're currently involved in a [WAB Escalation Campaign](http://www.nirya.be/snv/sections/WEC), where the armies grow from 500 points in size to a large size over the course of the campaign. We're currently in [Round 4](http://www.nirya.be/snv/sections/WEC/turn4.html), where the nominal point size would be 1250 (we've been working with increments of 250 points), but we're allowing a range of 1000 - 2000 points to account for different painting speeds of the various players.

I'm on the slower side of the painting speed distribution, and my Celtic army has only just reached 1000 points (minus four models, but who's counting :) ?). This entry is a photo introduction of this army.

Without further ado, here's Bartolomix' warband. You can find these pictures in [their own set on my Flickr account](http://www.flickr.com/photos/robartes/sets/72057594075245680/) as well as here below.









On to the next 1000 points. At 5 points per warrior, that's only 200 more.