TTS World Championships 2024: Game 1: Venetians vs Sengoku Samurai

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This year’s To The Strongest World Championships was held at Blewberry in Oxfordshire. It was a superbly organised event that all who took part agreed was good fun.

My first opponent was Colin and his Sengoku Samurai: a nasty combination of Samurai types,both mounted and dismounted, with their longbows and naginata two-handed cutting weapons, and Ashigaru Teppo mixture of spearmen, bowmen and musketeers. This was not going to be easy!

Fortunately I won the deployment, and watched as Colin set up his troops crowded on to the left hand side of the battlefield.

This gave me an excellent opportunity (helped by a suitable stratagem card) to get on to his left flank, and that’s exactly what I did:

Unfortunately, however, his corner unit of veteran Samurai proved tough as old boots (or whatever the Japanese equivalent is) and, to make matters worse, my pike block took not one but two surprising hits from missile fire.

Meanwhile, the rest of my troops had got stuck in to the Japanese main line, with my left hand unit of Knights also managing to see off one unit of Samurai horse and threaten the flank of another.

With my troops now fully committed, it was time to turn from Athena to Mars and hope that my troops were up to the task:

As you can see, although the Samurai centra began to give way, the remaining Samurai horse on the left wing proved very resilient despite the cards giving me every opportunity to best them!

Fortunately most of my frontline troops were Later Knights, and quality began to tell. More and more of Colin’s units were either sent fleeing the field or forced to retreat into his camp, and eventually victory was mine.

A good start to the competition with a 13-1 victory.

TTS AAR: Timurids vs Vikings

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This was the return match from the game reported on Feb 15th: last time my Vikings beat Kavan’s Timurids, now we would swap sides and play again.

As you can see from the pictures above, I won the scouting phase and set off towards my opponent at a rapid rate of knots.

When Kavan moved his Vikings forward to meet me, he accidentally created a gap between his two wings where his longboats were beached…and I thought “ah ha! I can defeat the two halves of his army one at a time and hit him from his inner flank”.

The Left Flank

This was the side where I needed to hold his troops up for long enough for me to defeat the Viking right flank.

I assigned three Turkoman horse archer and three Timurid lancer bases for this task. Facing them were four Viking warbands supported by two light archer units.

As you will see from the pictures, below, things initially went quite well for me: flank charging and destroying a Viking warband and disordering two more.

Unfortunately, that was the high point of my success here: the Vikings recovered well and, with the help of one of their reserve warbands from their camp, managed to finish this phase of the game ahead: two warbands destroyed, three warbands and two light units remaining versus my Timurid force reduced down to two horse archer bases!

So the Vikings slightly ahead, but that was okay, as the idea was just to hold them whilst my right wing went to work.

The Right Wing

Although I initially only assigned one Timurid lancer unit here, they were supported by three bases of Turkoman horse archers, and the Vikings had got themselves pinned up against some impassable ground, meaning I could just focus on one of their bases at a time. I also quickly sent one reserve lancer unit to help finish them off.

This was potentially rich pickings for me, as the not-pinned base had an army standard (so was worth four coins) and the pinned base had King Cnut himself in charge, making the base worth six, or maybe even seven coins. Take out these two, and that was two thirds of the Viking hoard (not horde!) taken care of.

Again things started very well, with the standard-bearing warband destroyed and King Cnut lightly wounded. Go the Timruids!

Unfortunately, rather than debilitating Cnut, his wound seemed to inspire him, and the beggar just wound’t die no matter what I threw at him and his men:

In fact, the game ended with Cnut and his men retreating back towards their longships presumably in need of some refreshing beverages, with far too much of my army in hot pursuit!

The Final Phase

By now we were almost out of time. The Vikings still had just over half their warbands intact, whereas my Timurids were down to only three medals. The result was therefore only slightly in doubt and I was happy to resign the game rather than to flog the proverbial dead horse.

So that was two games of Vikings versus Timurids and two victories for the Vikings: slightly surprising considering how underrated they usually are.

Okay, so their victory in the last game was slightly lucky - King Cnut holding out against extraordinary odds despite being wounded and all that - but that’s presumably why he’s counted as a Brilliant General!

I still haven’t properly got the hang of using Timurids - that combination of missile fire to soften the enemy up then a charge home with lances to finish them off - but that just means more practice needed…

TTS AAR: Vikings vs Timurids

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Another game of To The Strongest, this time featuring my Vikings against a Timurid army played by Daughter #1’s boyfriend, Kavan - who hopefully realises that the key to his continued relationship with my offspring is to lose heavily whilst loudly congratulating me on my brilliant play!

A rather empty battlefield: more tundra than fjord!

Beached longships form the Viking camp

The Timurid right wing

As the Vikings are an infantry-only army (no room for horses on those cross-North Sea longship ferries) my big fear was being outflanked and suddenly finding Timurid cavalry in my camp and up my backside!

I therefore put a couple of strong shieldwall units on either flank, rather than concentrating them in the centre and leaving the flanks to the lights as I usually would.

As with many of my more brilliant ideas, this worked well in theory but not in practice, as the cards conspired to prevent my deep shieldwall unit on the left making a very simple diagonal charge to drive two units of horse archers off the table.

This allowed those two units to neatly bypass the shieldwallers, leaving them nicely in a position to turn and either hit me in the rear or to ride for my camps:

“Four or more needed…”

not an ideal outcome

I was also in a bit of trouble on the right, as although I did manage to dispose of his lights there, Kavan had followed up his horsearchers with a couple of meaty heavy cavalry units, who also managed to get around onto my flank and were quickly set to drive at least one shieldwall unit from the field.

Fortunately the top unit in the picture above (the one with the Raven banner) was on fire, and although the bottom unit did indeed get driven from the field, the top unit managed to take out both of the Timurid cavalry units shown, although they did need a bit of luck to do so:

All this action on the flanks did mean that the Timurid centre was a bit weaker than it might have been, and soon another Viking shieldwall unit had broken through towards the Timurid camp, defended only by kharash (driven slaves).

The Timurid camp wasn’t the only one under attack.

Although I had managed to hold off some horse archers, Timurid heavy cavalry charged into one part of my camp, and threatened to take the other, even with two bases of Viking light archers present.

I had started with fifteen victory coins, but was now down to nine, which was about to become six.

Kavan had started with eleven victory coins, but was now down to three. This was unlucky for him, because the Viking unit that threatened his camp had now cleared the kharash off the field, and was able to crash, unopposed, into the Timurid camp.

This was enough, just, to give me the win: a surprise victory for the Norsemen over the more manoeuvrable Timurids.

Here’s the game in longshot…

First of the Venetian Foot Knights

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As regualr visitors will know, I have been building a 28mm Later Italian Condotteri Venetian army to use on the To The Strongest competition circuit this year.

It’s a nice little army: five units of mounted Later Knights with Lances provide the punch, with light cavalry and foot units in support.

One problem I might encounter, however, is facing elephants. I know it isn’t exactly historically accurate for Venetians to expect to face elephants in combat (although I understand it’s hellish difficult to get them out of the canals once they’re in!) but this is competition gaming so a certain flexibility of approach is required.

Anyway, back to the problems facing of facing elephants. In TTS, cavalry of all types do very badly against elephants as the horses, unless they are familiar with pachyderms, won’t close with the beasts, giving an elephant base a huge advantage in any combat with them.

The solution is to dismount some or all of the Knights, who are somewhat slower but equally formidable on foot: their Lances change to 2-handed cutting weapons, giving a bonus in combat, and they gain extra bonuses when saving against missile fire.

Elephants? We poop on elephants!

As I like to be able to field the right figures rather than proxies or mark a mounted unit as dismounted, and its a good excuse to buy more figures, I decided I needed a foot equivalent for each of my five Later Knights bases. Here are the first two.

These are Perry Foot Knights: easy to build and even easier to paint: black with a silvery steel drybrush then add a bit of detail as required.

Three more bases to go!

TTS AAR: Welsh Open, Game 4: Venetians vs Parthians

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The stage was now set for my final game of the tournament. With two wins and a draw behind me, I would need a substantial win to have any chance of placing towards the top of the leaderboard.

My opponent for this final clash was the formidable Sid and his equally formidable Parthians:

Things started quite well: Sid’s cataphracts on my left attempted to charge forward, drew an Ace, so over-extended themselves into disorder. Unfortunately, I was unable to capitalise on this, and the veteran heavies quickly re-ordered themselves.

Equally unfortunately, this proved the high point of the game for my Venetians!

On the left, a combination of horse archers and heavy cavalry/cataphracts disposed of my Knights, and began curling into my centre. I had my Schioppettiere handgunners to defend my camps, but that meant I couldn’t use them elsewhere.

On my right, the same combination of lights and heavies overwhelmed my troops, although I did manage to do some damage before the flank crumbled.

I was now beginning to think that the Parthians had been taking lessons from the Zulus, as the horns of the buffalo began to close on my centre…

And it wasn’t long before the final curtain as the Parthians on my left flank broke through and took one of my camps and the last of my victory medals!

Excellent play from Sid, leaving me trounced 5-12!

So what did that mean for my overall ranking? Well, two wins, a draw and a loss left me an unexpectedly high 6th place: disappointing but not a complete disaster. Here are the rankings:

Overall a highly enjoyable event, and Firestorm Games is a fantastic venue. I would highly recomend the TTS Competition Circuit to players of the game. Next up are the World Championships “To the World’s Strongest” at the end of Feb.

TTA AAR: Welsh Open, Game 3: Venetians vs Tang Chinese

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One of the problems with winning your first two games in a competition is that the Swiss Chess system usually in place means that you then have to fight someone else who’s won two games i.e. someone a bit good!

And so it was with the Welsh Open, where I found myself up against Peter and his Tang Chinese. Not it’s fair to say that Peter is a very good player. He’s knows all the rules back to front, and has a very tricky way of getting you on the back foot right from the start of the battle. This was a game that was going to be very tough!

The deployment phase was interesting. Rather than being spread out along the baseline, Peter went for a very one-sided deployment, which I then followed. I told you: very tricky…

The grey patches are woods, by the way

As I advanced forward, Peter didn’t come forward to meet me, but started to shift his troops to the right…

This was obviously part of some cunning plan that I needed to counter…so I moved my men to the right as well…whereupon Peter switched back to advancing on the left…so I shuffled my men back that way to match.

This was a period of move and counter-move with neither side prepared to commit.

One interesting point was that I had drawn the “Lost!” card as my strategem for the game: meaning that one of my units had begun the game lost off the table. I could choose when to bring it on, but it would appear at a random location somewhere on the table’s edge.

That meant that I had to wait until Peter had moved his troops forward a bit, as otherwise I would have just been swamped with flank charges rather than the rear charge that I would be hoping to perform. This was important, as I had taken a bit of a risk and it was a unit of Later Knights that I had declared lost i.e. one of my main fighting bases rather than something like a unit of lights or the like. As it happens, the Knights appeared on the right flank of Peter’s line: you can just see them top right in the photograph, above.

Finally Peter seemed to have had enough of all this shilly-shallying around and sent his heavy cavalry forward. On my left, I lost a unit of Later Knight, but managed to tie up the troops that had broken through with my light cavalry.

In the centre, however, things had gone much more my way, and I had pushed forward and knocked one of his decent cavalry units off the table. Honours were even so far.

Unfortunately my ex-lost Knights hadn’t managed to do much,and had retreated back to their hill to rally and re-arm with lances.

You’ll also see the pikemen, disordered, just by my pack of cards. What I really wanted to do now was to re-order them and move forward again. Here are the cards I drew: activation cards behind the unit, rally cards to their right…

The Pikemen are keen to do anything except rally!

Unfortunately at this point we ran out of time: all that tactical manoeuvring at the beginning of the game had soaked up all the fighting time required later on!

Tallying up the points, the game was an absolute draw: five victory medals versus five victory medals.

What would have happened if we had carried on? Who can say? At the point we ended the battle I was perhaps in a very slightly advantageous position, but that means nothing when facing a player of Peter’s calibre. A draw it was and, as someone said at the time, a result that really opened up the overall tournament ranking overall.

One game to go!

TTS AAR: Welsh Open, Game 2: Venetians vs Later (Eastern) Romans

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My second game at this year’s Welsh Open To The Strongest tournament was against William and his Later (Eastern) Romans.

William’s army was truly massive: 16 victory medals worth versus the mere 12 that I was fielding. The only downside was that many of his troops were raw but, being Auxilia, they still had an averagely decent save.

The terrain was quite heavy (the flat grey patches in the pictures are actually woods) and infantry get a lot of advantage defending against mounted, so I decided to dismount two of my Later Knights units to give me a bit of flexibility in attack.

The action began on my left, with the Roman cavalry advancing quickly towards my lines. As luck would have it, that’s where I’d put one of my dismounted knights…which just goes to show what can happen when you try to be too clever!

No matter: the Roman horse pushed a couple of my light cavalry units back but left themselves in a position where I could charge them from the flank with the foot knights. Should be no problem: I had an officer with the knights, so all I needed for success was anything except a couple of Aces in a row…

Meanwhile the two lines had come together in the centre and on the right as two separate clashes.

On the right, my mounted Knights charged home and had initial success, disordering two of the enemy Auxilia units and leaving them ripe for destruction. unfortunately, his men then turned on their personal forcefields: William spectacularly saving against every attack I could throw at them. I distinctly remember four flank charges going in against disordered Auxilia with no result!

Equally anoyingly, my dismounted knights could see a way through to his three undefended camps, and were the boys to take the nine victory medals that they represented, but just couldn’t get the cards/freedom to do so.

The Aces were also still coming thick and fast!

If you look at the photo above, you’ll see two of them on the table: one (on the far side) stopping my light cavalry from taking his camps (the nine points eluding me again); the other preventing a unit of Later Knights from rallying for the third or fourth time in a row.

By now I had actually killed his cavalry, meaning that the dismounted knights that had disposed of them could head back into the centre to help out the pike- and spearmen, who were under some pressure from advancing Romans. You’ll also see, in the photo below, that on the right I have withdrawn to regroup, although I did kill two to three of his units before doing so.

Things finally turned my way. The unit in front of the pikemen (about to be hit in the flank by dismounted knights) charged forward already disordered. Unfortunately for them, the cards fell my way, and they managed only to impale themselves on the pikes facing them, taking them and their general off the table.

Almost unbelievably, this turned out to be the straw that broke the Roman camel’s back: the four victory medals gained being enough for me to win the game 16-5, despite the fact that it had seemed to me as if I was on the back foot throughout.

Or it might have been that the Knights then crashed into the Bowmen behind the unfortunate infantry, and it was those two victory medals that won me the day. To be honest, I can’t remember which it was!

It had been a thrilling battle: the epitomy of a small number of elites versus a huge number of less than veteran troops. William’s troops’ ability to save against my attacks was truly legendary, and I seriously thought I was going to be swamped at any moment.

Two games in and two wins: good going so far…

TTS AAR: Welsh Open, Game 1: Venetians vs Ayyubid

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This weekend just gone I started off the 2024 To The Strongest competition season with the Welsh Open in Cardiff.

This was held at Firestorm Games: an excellent venue with a cafe, toilets, plenty of light, plenty of parking and plenty of shopping opportunities! Highly recommended to all wargamers if you happen to be in the area.

Last year on the ‘circuit’ I exclusively used my only 28mm army: the Early Imperial Romans. I fancied a change this year, so over Christmas invested in a Later Italian Condotteri army, specifically designed (and sort-of painted up) as Venetians. The Welsh Open would its first airing and I was looking forward to see what it could do, even if I was feeling a little “jaded” after going out into Cardiff for a curry the night before!

My first opponent was Mark and his Ayyubid Egyptians.

The battle started well, with my Venetians outscouting and moving forward to dominate the cengtre of the field. On the right flank, a unit of my Later Knights dashed some Ayyubid heavy cavalry from the table only to have the Someone has Blundered strategem card played on me: not only was my glorious victory annulled, but my Knights decided that they’d heard the dinner bell and ended up facing away from their opponents just asking to be charged up the backside!

“Someone has Blundered” on the right

Melee on the left

Honours even in the centre

The advantage now swung towards the Ayyubids for a bit (my Later Knights seemed to have decided to wear cardboard rather than steel armour!) until a lucky charge knocked back the Ayyubid Al-Halqa al-Khassa veteran cavalry and killed Salah-ad-Din himself!

This caused the momentum to swing back towards the Venetians, and the game now teetered on a knife edge with both sides down to only a few coins left.

The Ayyubid’s salute their fallen leader!

At this point I should mention that Mark and I both forgot that as a ‘great leader’ Salah-ad-Din should have had another save which may have resulted in him being wounded rather than killed.

But forget we did, and a final charge from either the pike of the Condotteri Knights broke the ayyubid morale and the game was mine.

My final charge goes in…

The final result was a 12-8 victory to the Venetians, so a win by the skin of our teeth.

My Later Knights, although very effective when charging forward, proved very vulnerable to enemy action: as you’ll see in the picture above, I only had two of five left at the end of the game.

Mark made superb use of his Someone has Blundered strategem, completely reversing my initial success and firmly taking the initiative, and if it wasn’t for Salah-ad-Din’s untimely demise, things could have been very different.

So one win and on to the next game.

Not an AAR: Romans versus Indians

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As the title says, not a full battle report, but just some pictures of a “noodling game” that friend Peter and I played recently to test out the effect of the new rallying rule.

Early Imperial Romans versus Classical Indians, with the Romans facing a penalty for successfully rallying and the Indians maxing out their longbows and veteran, escorted elephants.

More Condotta

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Here’s a few more figures off the Christmas-break production line: more later Venetian Condotta types for the 2024 To The Strongest competition season. Let’s just hope I can get them all finished before Wales at the end of the month or it will be back to my trusty Romans!

First up are a couple of units of schioppettiere light infantry handgunners.

And next some lancieri delle ordinanze pikemen:

All three units are Perry plastics in 28mm, and from the same box of Mercenary Infantry. As I paid only £18.50 for the box, and still have eight infantry to add to my next unit, that seems like very good value to me indeed.

Do I find having to build the miniatures a pain? Well, yes…but no more of a pain than prepping an all metal or plastic figure for painting and, as you will hopefully see in the pics above, you do get the chance to build figures with individual character: there are some weary looking individual in that pike block!

I still need to build more infantry and all the horse before the army is ready to hit the gaming table. I got a lot done over Christmas (32 infantry, 12 cavalry) but I can see it’s going to be tough to finish everything in time for my first tournament.

TTS AAR: Timurids versus Normans

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Here’s an After Action Report left over from last year: a game against an old friend of mine, Nog, that I hadn’t seen for ages. He’s only an occasionaly wargamer, and hadn’t played To The Strongest before, so this would be a teaching/learning game rather than all out battle.

I was keen to get my two newest armies onto the table, so Nog would play the Normans and I would play the Timurids. Not historically accurate, maybe, but somewhat mimincing a Crusdaer-rtyle clash!

The Timurids ready for action

Nog’s normans

I had ther initiative, so decided to advnace forward rapidly in order to engage the enemy with bowfire before closing to polish off any left standing.

Unfortunately, my mass advance faltered with my very first card, leaving my troops awkwardly split: some forward, some not.

Amusingly, Nog then proceeded to draw an Ace for his first card, but this time for the foot command in the centre, leaving his horsemen charging forward with the infantry left behind, and a very attractive (to me, anyway) hole in the middle of his line.

In my eagerness to get into bow range I had forgotten that there’s nothing a Norman likes more than charging home, so all those points spent on missile weapons for my Timurids were somewhat wasted as suddenly I had heavy horse all over me!

Both sides rapidly began losing units in the melee that followed. Although my lighter bowmen were outclassed and had to evade backwards, I had enough heavy cavalry of my own to hold the centre, although I did have to deploy the kharash (driven slaves) to bolsetr my line.

As the Normans pushed forward, I did manage to get some of my troops around his left flank and prepared to start rolling the Frenchmen up.

This led to an extraordinary run of cards, as shown in the photo below:

For the unitiated:

  • Draw a 6 to move into a position to charge the enemy flank

  • Try to charge, but draw a 2

  • Use the General to re-draw, pull a 9 and in they go…but combat cards are A and 2 meanign two misses

  • Need to draw a natural 10 to go in again: 10 drawn, but 2 and 5 for combat mean two more misses

  • Need to draw another natural 10 to go in a third time: 10 drawn (!) and two 8’s mean two hits and the enemy flee the field

By this time neither of us had many men left at all, and most of mine were on the point of fleeing:

We were, in fact, both down to our last coin, so it was a case of sudden death: whoever loses the next unit loses the game and, as mentioned above, my troops were in a lot worse state than his.

Fortunately, however, the luck remained with me, and a charge with some light troops returning from having evaded, hit the back of some of his, and just managed to dash them from the field. The last coin and the victory were mine!

It had been a great game, full of incident an excitement. We both agreed that I had been foolish to allow the Normans to close with my troops so early on in the game, and that Nog had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, helped by a final surge of luck on my part at the end of the encounter.

Cracking stuff, and we’re both eagerly awaiting our next battle.

First of the Condotta

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Regular visitors will know that this year for the first time in a long time (35 years plus!) I decided to go back to competitive wargaming: entering as many To The Strongest tournaments as I could.

Apart from the Europeans at Ewelme, I have exclusively used the Early Imperial Romans: mainly because it was the only 28mm Ancients army that I had, and that only because a friend left it at my mother’s house some 40 years ago!

The Romans have proved a very good army to use, but after almost thirty games with them I fancied a change…so when I won a box of Perry Medievals at the ‘Two the Strongest’ doubles tournament in November I thought that I’d use it as a basis for a new army: settling on some kind of Later Italian Condotta force (each city state is slightly different) as that list provides a wide variety of troop types.

Father Christmas was good to me this year, bringing me more boxes of Perry’s to complete what I need, and time off work has given me the chance to paint some of the units up.

First off the production line were two units of balestrieri montati or mounted crossbowmen:

I’m using a combination of Contrast and standard acrylic paints, and have chosen a black and red colour scheme. As the way you build the figures means that each figure is unique, I will therefore get an army that is ‘uniformed but not uniform’: very suitable for a force from that period.

Next up are some stradiotti: veteran light cavalry with lances and perhaps crossbows. Very useful for annoying the opposition!

And the final unit of light horse, for the moment, are some more balestrieri montati but this time armed with handguns rather than crossbows:

The above are all from one box of WR 60 Light Cavalry 1450-1500 which retails at £22 or £1.83 per figure. To quote the blurb: The box contains 12 lightly armoured horsemen which can be assembled with light lances, crossbows or as mounted archers. command options are included as are banners and historical information.

So how did I get on with Perry plastics?

Yes, I quite like them. Glueing the horses together was easy. The men were slightly more difficult in that, even using Superglue, the heads take a bit of time to set in place, and the individual arms can be tricky in that the you’re glueing two completely flat, angled surfaces together so that it’s tough to exert pressure in the right direction…but it’s generally a painless process.

For those interested, I built the horse first, then built the figure by glueing the head on first then each arm. As this is a competition army that is going to get a lot of use, I didn’t bother with a lot of extra equipment (and there’s a ton of it on the sprues) but just focussed on the main weapon that shows the function of the unit…so that the mounted crossbowmen have only their crossbows, not a quiver, winding machine, sword, dagger, buckler etc, all of which are provided if you want to use them.

Painting the figures is easy. I let the Contrast paints do the work, but used two different reds to get a bit of variety and, here’s the top tip of this post, highlighted the black on the upper body clothing with a very dark blue standard acrylic paint, leaving the black hose as is.

Now it’s on to the first of the two infantry boxes…

Two the Strongest Tournament: Game Three

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I’m still working my way through a backlog of battle reports that seems to have built up over the last couple of months.

Today features the third and final game at the Two the Strongest doubles tournament organised by the London Wargaming Guild back in November. My partner, Peter, and I had won our first two games and woulkd now face Tim and Matt playing Normans and 100YW French respectively.

The game would be fought across quite an unusual set-up representing a famous battle from history. Apologies, but I can’t remeber which one…but there were a lot of hills on the flanks!

The Romans

The French

For this battle, Peter and I reversed our roles: I would go forward against the Normans whilst Peter hung back against the 100YW French.

My cavalry (Equites Alares and Equites Contarium) duly swung out to the right and advanced forward at speed. They soon met the enemy coming the other way and, much to my delight, almost immediately knocked one Norman unit off the table and sent another to the retreat.

My Roman cavalry have tken some stick this year for their performance on the tabletop, but I must confess that they didn’t put a foot (hoof?) wrong this game: a fitting redemption in the last tournament game of the season.

Meanwhile, my legionaries had also advanced towards the enemy line and pinned them in place as planned. I needed to get a move on, however, as I could see that Peter’s troops were under some pressure from a horde of Late Knights!

My troops began to wheel to their left, ready to roll up the enemy line but, before they could do any significant damage, my cavalry inflicted another loss on the Normans, including killing their commander in chief. This was too much for these early Frenchies to take, and they fled the field, leaving their later compatriots to fight on alone.

The game was a bit of a foregone conclusion from then on, as Peter’s troops were still resisting, leading to an eventual 15-6 victory for the Romans.

Points were totted up and it turned out the Peter and I had actually won the day!

A very good way to end the season, with my first tournament win, and huge thanks to all the Guilders for organising an excellent competition that I shall certainly enter again next year.

If you look at the picture to the right, you will see I am clutching a box of Perry Plastics as a prize (along with the rather marvellous “playing card” trophy). This box turned out to be the naissance of my new 28mm army for 2024, although which later medieval army I will actually paint up is still in doubt at time of writing, along with whether I can actually get it finished in time for the Welsh Open at the end of January!

Two the Strongest Tournament: Game Two

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Peter and I’s second game at the inaugural Two the Strongest Doubles tournament organised by the London Guild of Wargames was against Tom and Nathanial, each fielding a Wars of the Roses army: lots of longbows, billmen and knights!

Our plan was very much the same as in the first game of the tournament. My solid legionaries would hold the bulk of the enemy in place whilst Peter’s lighter cavalry got around the enemy flank and rolled them up. As our opponents wavered at the sight of their flank collapsing, in would go my Roman mincing machine to finish them off.

Much to our surprise, the first stages of the game saw everything going to the plan: Peter’s men got around the right flank of Tom’s troops and started knocking units off the table, then turning to head into the centre. Meanwhile, I advanced cautiously forward, wary of a storm of longbow fire.

Nathaniel also took a cautious approach so, for a time, all the action was on one side. Here’s a montage of these first evolutions:

Then I’m afarid our opponents made what must be considered a fateful mistake.

Concerned about their right flank, they turned some of their units in the centre to the right, intending to take Peter’s legionaries, now heavily engaged with the right side of the enemy line, in the flank. This, of course, left them open to a rapid advance from my troops into their now-exposed left sides, knocking a couple off the table and certainly preventing them intervening to the right as Tom had planned.

At this point Tom’s half of their army collapsed, leading to all his remaining troops being removed from the board and leaving Nathaniel to face the might of the Empire alone!

Now severely outnumbered and already in a poor tactical situation, it was only a matter of time before Nathaniel’s troops were overwhelmed. It also didn’t help that his artillery now showed an alarming propensity to draw Aces!

So in all a fairly convincing 16-0 victory for the Romans, leaving us in a good position overall as we faced the final game of the day.

Two the Strongest Tournament: Game One

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This November just gone, those stalwart men of the London Wargaming Guild put on the first To The Strongest Doubles tournament at the 7 Dials Club in Covent Garden.

The concept was simple: teams of two players, with each player fielding 100 points of army. The armies did not have to be connected but it would obviously be better if they were.

Originally the idea had been for each team to be one experienced player and one less experienced if not novice player, but this requirement was softened in the run-up to the tournament…although personally and, as it turned out somewhat hypocritically, I think enforcing this would actually be an excellent idea for the future.

I say “somewhat hypocritically” because my partner was none other than Peter R., many times champion of many tournaments, which would presumably have made me the novice player!

Our first game was against Sid and Rob: the former also fielding Early Imperial Romans, the latter fielding Polybian Romans.

Our plan was simple: I would pin Sid’s EIR’s in place, whilst Peter lapped around the Polybian left flank. As it happens, our strategy was the same-but-opposite from that adopted by Sid and Rob: Rob would pin Peter’s troops whilst Sid wrapped around my right flank!

The two lines quickly came together, and immediately the flanking generals on each side began to do their thing.

Below left you can see my legionaries holding Sid’s in place whilst below right you can see Sid’s horse and lights attempting to turn my flank:

Fortunately I was able to turn my cavalry to face this threat and, with the Auxilia in Orbis (i.e. fighting to all sides) was able to keep Sid at bay.

Unfortunately for other Rob, Peter is a past master at outflanking, and Rob’s Polybian Romans were soon in a great deal of trouble: their cavalry driven from the field by an endless series of flank attacks from our light troop, leaving his infantry to fall in turn as our cavalry turned on them as Peter’s legions moved into contact.

With his camp falling to some Numidian light horse, Rob was soon forced to remove all his troops from the table, leaving Peter’s men free to come to my aid.

Fighting two opponents at once is never much fun and, despite valiant efforts, Sid’s men were soon reeling from the field as well, leaving us victors 18 points to 9.

TTS @ Warfare: Game Four: EIR versus Tang Chinese

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My fourth and final game at this year’s To The Strongest competition at Warfare was my Early Imperial Romans against Peter Ryding’s Tang Chinese.

Peter is a wily opponent and an expert of using a force that is a mixture of light cavalry, heavy cavalry and solid infantry…and the one thing I didn’t want to happen was him to get his Chinese around the end of my line and outflank my Romans.

As the battle began, Peter immediately went for my flanks with his light cavalry. I didn’t think I’d have a problem on the right: I’d kept that flank strong, intending to deal with the lights then use my superior drilled mobility to curl in and attack his infantry in the centre.

Likewise, on the left, all I would have to do is to move the rear left hand unit of cavalry (with the red cloaks) out to the side and I was sorted.

Unfortunately the poor cards that had been dogging me all day reared their ugly head again, and things did not go according to plan.

On the right, I shot down one of his light horse units almost immediately, and closed with the other to drive it back.

All well and good…but then my central infantry, which I had been intending to get back to the left to engage his main force, just refused to move. Where was my superior drilled mobility? It was buried in Aces!

Oh, and if you look, Peter is making it even more difficult to close with his troops by refusing that flank and presenting me with an oblique line to attack…meaning my men would have even further to go before being able to get stuck in. Clever, very clever!

Worse, the aforementioned red cloaked cavalry on my left had also refused to move as planned, leaving that flank horribly exposed. Peter, never one to miss an opportunity, took full advantage, and soon that flank was completely buggered!

I mean, look at them just sitting there! They obviously haven’t moved since their original deployment when only the smallest movement of one square would have stopped the Tang lights in their tracks.

Now there are those of you who are reading this who are saying “oh look, there’s Rob again complaining about his luck as opposed to admitting he’s playing badly”.

Yes, point taken: you play the cards you’re dealt and all that, and Peter has made no mistakes in executing a very cunning plan…but take a look at the photo below to show what happened as I moved in on his camp: something that could potentially have gained me enough coins to turn the battle my way.

Three Aces are showing…and what’s even more amusing is that for this game that wasn’t even the worst cards that I drew!

Anyway, suffice to say that I didn’t get into the enemy camp or in amongst his infantry before the flank attacks on my left took their toll and the Romans gave way and fled the field, giving Peter a colossal and well-deserved victory.

Results

One colossal loss, one massive victory, and two losing draws gave me a seventh place in the overall competition: a bit of a disappointment to say the least!

But no matter: there was still the Doubles competition at the Seven Dials Club in Covent Garden to come.

My partner?

Peter, of course!

The reports on that tournament will follow in due course…

TTS @ Warfare: Game Three: EIR versus New Kingdom Egyptian

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My third game at this year’s To The Strongest tournament at Warfare was my Early Imperial Romans against Nathaniel’s New Kingdom Egyptians.

Don’t be fooled by the compact look of Nat’s army: there were a lot of light chariot units clumped together, all with bows, so I could expect a hail of bowfire as I closed with the enemy.

I have an NKE army myself (in 15mm) and so was also expecting the Egyptians to rapidly expand their position and attempt to lap around my flanks, always a danger for an infantry army like the Romans. This didn’t happen, however, and Nat kept his troops closed together as he advanced towards me, doubtless determined to just shoot me down head on.

Unfortunately for Nat, this played directly into my strengths.

My Romans can usually soak up arrows or rally off any disorders that they do take on the way in, and love to melee with lesser quality infantry or, even better, light troops. Likewise, my cavalry would be happy to just keep charging his light chariots until they evaded off the table.

And that’s what happened for the rest of the game, as you’ll see from the photos below:

As you can see, enough of my infantry units won their initial clash quickly enough to help out those who hadn’t (the superior manouevrability of the Romans really helping those flank charges go in) and my cavalry did indeed chase his light chariots off the table.

So a workmanlike 13-2 victory for the Romans, with my only loss coming from a General who got in the way of one arrow too many!

TTS @ Warfare: Game Two: EIR versus Polybian Romans

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Game two of the To The Strongest tournament at Warfare, using my Early Imperial Romans, was an interesting match against the Polybian Romans: an earlier-period Roman army that presented in a quincunx formation i.e. deployed in three lines in a chequerboard formation, with the younger hastati in front, followed by the more seasoned principes and the veteran triarii behind. This would allow Nigel’s units to rotate his lines on the spot: meaning that he could rally and bring more pila into action even when in a “zone of control”.

Romans in Quincunx

My plan was not a subtle one: it was to get stuck in with my legionaries whilst trying to lap my cavalry round his flanks. Accordingly, as the game began, I marched my troops forward smartly.

Things started well, with me managing to get a two-on-one advantage on two of his quincunx, one of which I managed to destroy. The picture below shows two legionary units perpendicular to each other as one has just moved into the square where the quincunx was:

Unfortunately this turned out to be the high point of the game for my Romans!

The two battle lines came together and a grinding melee developed with fortunes swaying backwards and forwards between the two sides. Here’s a pic taken just before the lines clashed:

At tbis point my flank forces should have finished with his and come back in to hit the sides of the enemy line, giving me victory.

What actually happened was that my flank forces got bogged down and couldn’t get the local victories I needed to break themselves free to intervene elsewhere. As an example, here’s a unit of enemy horse sandwiched between two of my units: it should have died very quickly, but just kept surviving everything I could throw at it!

All this grinding melee was using up the clock and, before I knew it, time was called.

We totted up the points and I had lost the game by the narrowest of margins: 6 points to 7!

Really interesting to face the Polybian Roman quincunx, well played by my opponent, but a frustrating result.

Two games in to the tournament and two losing draws racked up: not good!

TTS @ Warfare: Game One: EIR versus Eastern Franks

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One of the main reasons for me going to the Warfare show this year was that I was competing in the To The Strongest tournament there. Four games in one day, 135 points, my Early Imperial Romans ready for action.

I was expecting my first game to be against Andy’s Dacians-with-Sarmatian-allies, as I nearly always face Andy’s Dacians in round one of a tournament as they and the Romans are usually the closest together historically, but Andy wasn’t there so I would instead face Tim’s Eastern Franks. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire…just what my Romans hate: an all cavalry army.

The photo above shows the position just after the start of the battle: you can see Tim is looking to sneak around my flanks. I’m not too worried, at this stage, about my right flank (my legionaries can oblique right) but I do need to pull my cavalry back on the left to protect against the enemy horse on the other side of the wood advancing forward and getting behind my line.

This should have been a fairly easy move to make, but unfortunately Fortuna obviously had it in for me that day and both my cavalry brigade and the left hand legionary brigade froze in place, presumably bamboozled by the fact that there were no Dacians to be seen!

Although not a good situation, all was not lost: all I needed to do was to turn my cavalry to face the outflankers and get the legionaries into action.

Aaargh!

Another turn where my troops would do nothing…unlike Tim’s Franks!

I was now down a cavalry unit, but managed to stabilise the far left by sheer good luck as my other unit of Equites Cohortales survived being hit in the flank, turned, and drove off their attackers. They then advanced forward themselves to threaten Tim’s camp.

The left-centre, however, was a mess. Tim had brilliantly taken advantage of my stagnation by concentrating his heavy horse: knocking out two of my legionary units there and effectively bursting through my line.

With me threatening his camp, and him threatening to surround and wipe out the rest of my cavalry, it looked as if we’d end up about honours even overall, so the game would be decided on the right.

Here things had not gone badly, just not well. I’d lost the Auxilia to another nicely executed outflanking manoeuvre, but killed one of Tim’s generals in return.

All this to-ing and fro-ing had, however, drained the clock and we were now out of time. Totting up the points, a winning draw to Tim 8-5.

Here’s the position at the end of the battle:

So a tight first game with a disappointing result. Excellent play from Tim: using his superior mobility on the flanks and then taking full advantage of the opportunity in the left centre.

Three games still to go: so plenty of time to rescue the situation!

My New Secret Weapon for Competitions

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Those of you who were in the To The Strongest competition at Warfare this year will have heard me loudly decrying the number of Aces I was pulling: not for melee or shooting but for activation.

Time and time again my master strategies were defeated as my troops just refused to move at all as a result of an Ace (or usually Aces!) appearing as the first card drawn in a command’s turn.

I thought about changing my packs of cards (especially the red pack: you b*st*rds are due on the bonfire soon, I tell you!) but have realised that such a petty attempt to change my luck probably won’t work: I mean, probability is probability and play a lot of games and the monkey’s typing up Shakespeare are bound to appear sooner or later. I needed a more radical approach…

Yes, I have joined the shuffling machine club!

First encountered at the World Championships earlier this year, I have been enviously observing my fellow players who own them effortlessly producing perfectly shuffled decks without the need to do more than load up the wings and press the button. Now I, too, can avoid any of the bad luck that characterised my Warfare performance…and all for only about £10. Bargain!

This will also neatly prevent a certain friend of mine from banana-ring my decks of cards with his (admittedly nicely executed) riffle shuffles. He will doubtless be interested to hear that, according to Wikipedia: The Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model provides a mathematical model of the random outcomes of riffling that has been shown experimentally to be a good fit to human shuffling and that forms the basis for a recommendation that card decks be riffled seven times in order to randomize them thoroughly. Later, mathematicians Lloyd M. Trefethen and Lloyd N. Trefethen authored a paper using a tweaked version of the Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model showing that the minimum number of riffles for total randomization could also be six, if the method of defining randomness is changed.

I’m not sure when my new shuffling machine will have it’s debut, but be warned that I am already clearing shelf space for all the trophies that I an now going to win as, according to me at any rate, all that has been holding me back is my appalling luck and nothing to do with the fact that I am facing very skilled opponents who have actually taken the trouble to learn the rules!

For those interested:

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