Time for the weekly battle with Daughter #1’s boyfriend K, trapped with us for the duration of lockdown.

We’d left it a bit late in the day to start (family quiz evening!) so elected to play To The Strongest. I would take the Neo-Sumerians, K would play the Athenian Hoplite Greeks. This is one of our favourite combinations: both sides consisting mostly of deep spear-armed blocks of infantry.

In TTS, there are several variants of the basic Sumerian army. In chronological order, they are Dynastic Sumerian, Akkadian and Neo-Sumerian. I had chosen the Neo-Sumerians because although their spear blocks are almost all raw citizen militia , they do have the ability to field a sizeable Royal Guard of archers and axemen.

My plan, therefore, was to keep my spearmen away from the mincing-machine of his Hoplites whilst the Royal Guard knocked out as much of the rest of his army as possible. I could then surround the Hoplites and polish them off.

Here’s what actually happened in the form of a pictorial report…

And that was the battle won, with only one of my coins remaining!

Aftermath

Well that was a very close run thing!

The Royal Guard performed appallingly, and it was really only the fact that K kept getting his generals killed that allowed me to win the day. K lost three officers, take two away and he would have had four coins remaining as his Hoplites made mincemeat out of my militia. As it was, I scraped home with only one coin to spare.

Another great game!