Skip to main content

Scrum Club Goes 'To the Strongest!'

 


For the September gathering of the Second Saturday Scrum Club, seven of the nine official members managed to attend either the first or the second of the day's games. At 1:00 p.m. I put the board game Battlestations on the table, a game I bought during the pandemic in anticipation of playing with the club once we all could gather in person again. The main event, however, is always our 4:30 game, and this month the club tried another set of wargaming rules new to most of us, To the Strongest! John and Steve organized the game and taught the rest of us the rules.

To the Strongest!

The Scrum Club sometimes flagellates itself for a bit of ADHD when it comes to jumping from one ruleset to the next from month to month. In the four years we've been meeting, I think we've only once played the same set of rules in two consecutive months (Chainmail in January and February of 2020). In fact, that's the only set of rules we've played more than once at an official Scrum Club gathering besides John's Star Schlock rules, which we've played at several gatherings now.

While I don't regret our omnivorous appetites--it has led to us playing a lot of really cool games that we always mean to return to--it does sometimes feel like we're neglecting the opportunity to build mastery with a ruleset or construct little campaigns that would present us with opportunities for overarching narratives. 

I also recognize that there are two other dimensions behind this tendency, one being that unlike a lot of other groups, we do only officially meet once a month, and so committing to playing the same system a half dozen times means committing to it for a half year! The other issue is that our group really likes to game master at conventions, and so we're often in a situation where one of us needs to playtest a scenario or set of rules in the forgiving environs of Scrum Hall before trotting it out at a con for strangers. Invariably when HistoriCon or Barrage approaches, we often see the Scrum Club's dance card fill up in the preceding two or three months as several of us try to finalize and playtest games we want to run at those events.

We've decided, however, to buck that trend after getting in a game of To the Strongest last weekend by immediately scheduling it for October, too. Nobody had claimed the October slot yet, and we also all really enjoyed these rules. They were very quick to pick up, and I could see with even more familiarity that future games could make good on the book cover's promise of "fast-moving."

That said, we didn't actually get through a full game on Saturday, but it did feel like things were moving along at a decent clip for most of the night, with lots of dramatic back-and-forths in the action. If anything, the game might be a bit too swingy for some, but that tendency actually made for some of the most memorable moments of the evening.

The basic mechanics of the game simplify and abstract a lot of details that can bog down other rulesets. Movement is conducted on a grid (so no rulers) and every player has a card deck that takes care of everything from unit activation to combat. It all felt very intuitive, and freed us up from getting too bogged down in adjudicating the edge cases that sometimes crop up.

The rules are designed for "ancients and medieval wargaming," and the figures Steve and John had on hand put us squarely in the medieval era. It's always fun playing with the figures those two gentlemen put on the table. I liked the rules enough that I bought my own copy of the game and immediately started researching to see if anybody had started down the path of making it playable with fantasy armies. Some industrious gamers have been doing just that, and have generously been sharing the fruits of that labor in an unofficial supplement they're calling To the Strongest: Monsters and Magic free on a dedicated website. 

In addition to John, Steve, and myself, Francesco, Rich, and Zach rounded out the players, making for a fun three-on-three game.

I frankly don't remember the particulars of the scenario, but the objective was basically to kill and route the other army. Good enough for me!

Note on photos: The below photos are not a recreation of the unfolding action in the game but rather a smattering of shots at various points to provide a flavor of the proceedings. Sadly, my wife--the Scrum Club's dedicated combat photographer and source of most of the photos on this blog--had an SD card malfunction in her digital SLR camera and lost all of the photos she took except for a smattering snapped with her iPhone. As a result, these photos are the products of many hands, including John, Josh, Zach, Rich, Ellen, and myself. (Click any photos to enlarge.)



To war!
(left-to-right): Rich, John, Zach, Joe, Steve, and Francesco.


Rich, John, and Zach in pre-game strategy.






We ride at dawn!
(left-to-right): Joe, Steve, Francesco














The dreaded ace, the lowest card in the deck, which can end your turn.







Battlestations

We started the day at 1:00 p.m. with Battlestations, a self-described hybrid role-playing and board game. In all honesty, the only overt RPG-like elements are the fact that you can play short "campaigns" of linked games in which the players' characters can accumulate experience, skill, and gear from one game to the next. There aren't any real opportunities for role playing outside of impersonating your favorite Star Trek or Star Wars characters as you send your pieces scurrying around the board.

One of the genuinely neat aspects of the game is that it takes place on two boards, one of which represents the action on the "macro" level in which your starship navigates through space contending with asteroids, planets, photon torpedoes, and other starships, while another modularly constructed board represents the "micro" level, that is, the floorplan of your actual starship (and sometimes an adversary's) via an interconnected grouping of tiles that represent your engine room, helm, sick bay, torpedo room, etc. It is on this board that your little 28mm characters run about the ship attempting to navigate it toward some objective without being destroyed in the process.

I played the putative "GM" while the heroes were played by Rich, Francesco, John, and Josh (who contributed painted versions of the miniatures from his own set of the game). I don't think I'd want to play it with fewer than this number of players, and one of the things that attracted me to the game in the first place is that it purportedly accommodates up to nine players. 

We had a good time with the game, and it was the first time trying it for everybody but Rich, who had played the first edition a few times several years ago. We started with the introductory mission, finished it fairly quickly, and started the second mission. That's when the wheels started to come off a bit, taking some of the shine off of this game for me. 

The core box required to play doesn't actually come with a full rulebook, but rather a few pages of "starter" rules and eight "teaching" scenarios. On the face of it, that's not a terrible approach to this sort of thing. Unfortunately, that "starter" booklet is rife with ambiguities, omissions, and flat out errors. I thought I had perhaps caught them all when I took the extra time to print out the three-page errata sheet I found online and cut and pasted lots of clarifications and corrections directly into my copy of the starter rulebook, but even then there were some problems with core terminology that made the second mission impossible for the players if played as written.

These problems with the starter set rules are particularly irksome for anybody who bought this $100 game in the hopes of having a smooth experience right out of the box. I even watched three preparatory videos on running it before game day to try to ensure a bump-free ride, and we were still thwarted. To get the full experience of this game (and presumably a better edited set of the rules) you need to buy a $60 hardback sold as the "Advanced Edition" of Battlestations. That's $160 right there just to play the game as intended. And if you want some small plastic ships to put on the outer space board instead of cardboard chits, that'll cost you another $20. It all feels pretty cheeky on the part of Gorilla Games, the manufacturer. I bought all three straight from the game's designer because I wanted to support his efforts, but after my first attempt at playing the game, I wish I'd shopped around and saved a few bucks.

By later trawling the Board Game Geek message forums we were able to tease out an answer to the problem we (and apparently several others) had with the rules nomenclature and how it undermined our attempt to play the Mission 2 scenario. Given that fundamental level of frustration, you'd think we might be ready to give up, but we're going to give it all another go. There is obviously a really fun game in this concept, and I'm hoping that chucking the starter rules and familiarizing myself with the "Advanced" rulebook will help us find that fun. 


(back to camera): Rich, (facing camera, l-to-r): John, Francesco, Joe


The modular spaceship, Redundant II.



The second board for tracking the ship-level action.


(left to right): Josh, Rich, John, Francesco.


The rules as written resulted in just too many damn missiles on the board in Mission 2.


Closing Thoughts and Parting Shots

We had another fun gathering, and as is our habit, tried two new games. Next month being October, I always try to get a thematic game on the table in honor of Halloween, and so in the 1:00 p.m. slot I'm going to run the board game Who Goes There? I backed the second edition Kickstarter, and the John Carpenter movie The Thing is a lifelong favorite, so I'm looking forward to getting this on the table. I'll report back on how we fare with our second game of To the Strongest! I'm hoping we have as much fun the second go 'round as we did this month with those rules. I'm already seriously contemplating buying a Deep Cuts game mat with the appropriately sized squares printed on it for my 15mm fantasy armies.

==============================================
=========================== 

Comments

  1. I do love To the Strongest! I've been running at least one TTS! (or the ECW related set, For King and Parliament) at Historicons dating back to 2016, and have three TTS! games planned for November (Ramses II and NK Egyptians vs a series of opponents, culminating in Kadesh). I have yet to meet anyone who dislioked the rules, even if they might not be their set of choice.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the note! It looks like we both ran games of "To the Strongest!" last Saturday (I popped over to your blog for a look around). I'm planning on attending Historicon in November, though I haven't signed up to run any games this time. I'll have to come check out one of the games you're running.

    Warm best,

    Joe

    ReplyDelete
  3. Excellent, Joe. All the games I run this year will be in the HMGS NextGen room; I thin it is "Maple", but don't quote me on it!

    TTS! is great, but even better for multiplayer convention games!

    ReplyDelete
  4. TtS is rapidly becoming my go to rule set for things ancient and medieval. So simple and elegant.

    One day I might actually buy a pucker set - the copies I have are from Simon's first print run with incorrect pagination and page settings. He had to have everything reprinted before he could sell them. He's a very clever, nice guy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Simple and elegant, indeed. I think we're going to get another game in this Sunday, which I'm looking forward to.

      Thanks for commenting because it led me to you blog, James, which is quite enjoyable. I was particularly admiring your recent terrain tutorials. Thanks for taking the time to post them!

      Delete
  5. You're going all wargaming now aren't you! I like To the strongest! I even went to a tournament where I played Simon the author of the rules first up,needless to say I lost that game but the day was great fun and I didn't lose all of the games! Lovely medieval types in your smattering of photos too!
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great to hear from you, as always, Iain! You'll be pleased to know that I'm actually playing To the Strongest! again this Sunday, and I'm quite looking forward to it. And a recent article in Wargames Illustrated has me intrigued by the Clash of Spears rules, though the thought of starting a new project will likely keep me from diving in any time soon; I'll likely pick the rules up, though, for a read. That's really cool that you got to play ToS! with the actual game designer...that's always fun!

      All the best to you and yours, friend!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Well-thumbed posts

Scrum Con IV: In Your Face!

The Second Saturday Scrum Club rejoined the fray on April 8, organizing and hosting Scrum Con IV in Silver Spring, Maryland. Although we ran a surprisingly successful virtual convention in 2021 that took advantage of its online format to invite all sorts of participants we couldn't have otherwise (Dirk the Dice of Grognard Files  in the UK ran a game, and I interviewed wargame/RPG historian Jon Peterson via livestream ), Scrum Con IV marked our return to an in-person format. Because  Scrum Con 2020 ducked right under the pandemic lockdown on the last weekend of February that year, we were anxious to see if anybody would remember us. Turns out any fears were misplaced...because Scrum Con sold out again this year! In fact, every in-person convention we've organized has sold out, but this year's Scrum Con IV was almost 70% sold out of its 225 badges in the very first week, a pace that frankly caught us off-guard. About a week before the show, we had sold enough badges that

Take the High Road: Making Cheap and Easy Dirt Roads

I have wanted some good roads to add to my games for a while now. My first attempt was a couple of years ago when my standards were a bit lower and I wasn't sure how much I was interested in investing in this new hobby. I bought some PDFs of cobblestone roads that I sized, printed, and glued to felt. The result was okay, but the way my laser printer  produced the roads ended up being quite reflective to the point of almost being glossy looking. The combination of glue, paper, and felt also meant the roads had a wavy consistency and almost always curled at the edges. I used them once or twice but was never happy with them. My sub-par first attempt at making roads for my games using felt strips, glue, and printed designs. You can see how shiny and how wavy and curled at the edges they turned out. I never felt good about putting them on the table for our games and eventually stopped altogether. I've been meaning to take another crack at making some roads now that I have

Candid Photos From "Conan the Barbarian" (1982)

This post is barely gaming adjacent, but the Conan stories have informed much of my fantasy gaming since my first forays into the hobby. I've seen the John Milius adaptation more times than any other movie (probably over 50 times, though most of those viewings were on VHS or HBO as a teenager). The 1982 Conan  film was the first R rated movie I saw in a movie theater (age 12). The first convention game I ever played in was one in which I played the barbarian himself. The first convention game I ever ran as game master was an adaptation of Howard's "Beyond the Black River." For good or ill, I've spent a lot of time in that fantasy world. When I stumbled on an online trove of about 400 candid photos from various sets of Conan the Barbarian shot by somebody on the crew, it was oddly visceral for me. It generated a warm feeling getting to see these actors and sets from new angles, both in character and out, in situ and behind the scenes. Seeing Sandahl Bergman, Ge

Lost Art of D&D No. 2: Games Workshop's Holmes Basic (1977)

After Games Workshop attained the license to print a co-branded edition of TSR's 1977 Dungeons & Dragons basic rules book, they set about putting their own stamp on it, designing a new cover and replacing a number of the illustrations they deemed too crudely drawn for their U.K. market.  The cover art was by John Blanche at the very start of his career as a fantasy illustrator. Blanche went on to be a mainstay at Games Workshop, producing countless illustrations for them. His fannish enthusiasm for the material--as an artist as well as a lifelong gamer--has deservedly made him a favorite over the decades. I first encountered Blanche's work in the David Day compendium, A Tolkien Bestiary (1978), to which he contributed five illustrations that sit comfortably alongside the book's chief illustrator, Ian Miller. I have a special fondness for this book, having coveted it as a child during my incipient Middle Earth fixation. My parent's procured an out-of-print copy of t

Playing with Yourself: 'Rangers of Shadow Deep' vs. 'Sellswords & Spellslingers'

As the year crawls to an end, I'm looking through this blog and noticing a couple of posts I started and never finished. This is one of them. Back in July 2019, I placed the photos on the page, jotted down a few bullet-point placeholder notes, and then never actually went back and wrote anything to post.   The post was meant to be my informal review of Rangers of Shadow Deep after my first game of it with Josh O'Conner, who set it up for us to try in his basement. I think I never finished this post because I was not very impressed with the game but I knew Josh was, and we hadn't been gaming together long enough for me to be sure my candor about the game wouldn't hurt his feelings and sour a budding gaming friendship. I consider Josh more than a gaming friend these days, and so I'll go ahead and post this with some very short notes fleshing out the bullet points I had left as a reminder for myself back in 2019 (at least the one's I can still decipher the

Chainmail: Battle of Emridy Meadows

In my imagination, Chainmail has always been that shadowy precursor to Dungeons & Dragons that I was both intrigued by yet leery of. I loved the idea of a game involving mass battles in a fantasy setting akin to those depicted in the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , but I also had a sense that Chainmail , released in 1971 a mere year after I was born, was likely a clunky wargame that would be too frustrating to bother mastering. It also didn't help that my first inkling of its existence was around 1980 or so when I could never dream of amassing the miniature armies needed to play out these massive conflicts. No, back then I was pretty sure Chainmail was the province of grizzled old grognards who had started wargaming before I was even born. Even after my gaming rebirth decades later in 2016, I was fine with letting the dim past remain so, and was more than content during my first couple of years back in the hobby exploring rules of a more recent vintage and managea