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.

IABSM AAR: Kiwis on the Road to Orsogna

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Another great battle report from Mark Luther from the Gigabytes Cafe.

This AAR, written in November last year, covers a feint made by a battlegroup of the 18th Armoured Regiment, 22nd Motorised Battalion and some armored cars of the Divisional Cavalry as the 2nd New Zealand Division pushed west towards Orsogna.

Click on the picture below to see all:

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.

TFL Painting Challenge: Second January Update

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I don’t usually do two updates in a month, but as it’s the begining of the year, and the begining of this year’s Challenge, lots of people are sending in entries all at once.

Do visit the individual galleries, accessed via the NavBar above, but here’s a look at what’s come in this time around:

First up is another big entry from Andrew: more medievals in 28mm. I’m loving the drunken soldiers in the second picture and will be oridering some of them myself!

John is back: and with some truly lovely WW2 vignettes. I love John’s work, and these look aboslutely great. Would that I was prepared to take the time and trouble to learn to paint as well as he!

I think my favourite is probably the German briefing: the second one in from the left. Unusual, beuatifully painted, and full of character.

Next up is Stumpy’s first entry of the year: lots of Ancient Germans based up with just the two lone British command figures from the Sudan as company.

Carole is back, and has been busy making 15mm terrain: lots of it. I always admire people who make their own terrain, as that’s something I find horrible tedious to do!

Here we have a cracking bridge (plus lots more river not shown), some woods, a marsh, and just an example of the many roads made.

Finally, as a round up, we have entries from Sapper, Mervyn, Chris and I.

Mervyn and Chris have their own line, with Sapper and I sharing one…and you should by now be able to tell whose is whose from the painting style and content!

Keep those entries coming!

TFL Painting Challenge: First Update of 2024

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And it’s a big one!

Five people have already submitted entries for this year’s Painting Challenge, and all have scored at least 200 points with their work so far.

As always, you can see all their work in the individual galleries accessible from the navbar, but below you’ll find a selection of my favourites:

In no particular order, first up we have Chris with a selection of 28mm and 35mm models, only some of which are shown below:

Next up, Andrew is back with some lovely 15mm buildings and tents; and some more 28mm medievals:

Then comes Nick with a fine selection of fantasy 28s. I particularly like the magic user in the pointy hat shown in the first picture below, and the spooky spirit hosts next to them.

Finally (I’m the fifth entrant for those alert at this time on a Sunday morning) here’s Sapper, back with a selection of Ancients and Medievals, 15mm and 28mm:

There’s still plenty of time for the rest of you to get started (11½ months to be exact) and I’m still taking new entrants when possible.

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.

Knights & Crossbowmen

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With the first tournament of the year (the Welsh Open) rapidly approaching, I have upped the speed at which I’m producing units for my new Later Italian Condotteri army.

First up are the last of the infantry that I need: a unit of Crossbowmen:

These are Perry platics taken from the Mercenary Infantry 1450-1500 box, and very nice they are too.

The Crossbowmen are pretty easy to build, and you have a nice variety in poses for both shooters and those reloading.

Next up are the first of the Later Knights, also Perry plastics:

The horses were fairly easy to put together: the only tricky bit was getting the surcoats to line up properly at both front and back.

The knights were a bit tougher: head and left arm were easy, but getting the lance-arm in the right place was a real pain as, presumably in the interests of pose flexibility, the lance and the arm come in two parts: the lance and the hand holding it, and the handless arm. Getting it all to fit together after wrestling with the horse surcoats and the rest of the rider was not fun!

They are, however, easy to paint: lots of good detail and relief. The panels on the horse surcoats come with some embellishments and studs along the seams which, as you can hopefully see, can be painted in a bronze/gold colour that really makes the figure pop. The rest of the model is mostly armour: black undercoat highlighted with steel.

All in all I love the look I’ve achieved with the Knights…almost enough to make up for the pain that was the lance arm!

FK&P AAR: Cadmore Hill

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Time for the next installment in the Siege of Norchester English Civil War campaign that friend Rob and I are playing through. The Royalists beat my Parliamentarians in both of the previous games, so I could really do with a win.

The situation is thus: the Parliamentarians are bringing up their sige artillery in order to properly invest Norchester. The Royalists have discovered this and have laid an ambush: if they can destroy the guns, then Norchester survives at least until another siege column can be raised.

Unfortunately for the Royalists, their ambush is triggered early, and that is where the action starts…

The infantry contingent of the Parliamentarian siege train executed a neat right turn to face the oncoming Royalists, but the Dutch horse at the head of the colmn got into all sorts of bother trying to sort themselves out. Finally, one unit of Borders Horse managed to get forwards and prepared to clear away the Royalist Forlorn Hopes.

Meanwhile the Royalist infantry headed forward to engage the enemy, although some confusion in the ranks meant that this advance was staggered rather than co-ordinated.

Meanwhile, at the tail of the Parliamentarian column, not much was happening. Both sides seemed reluctant to move forward, especially the Roundhead commanded shot, who quite frankly disobeyed orders to occupy the nearby farmhouse for three consecutive activations.

In fact, the only units seemingly willing to engage the enemy were the Borders Pioneers right at the back, who steamed up the far left hand side of the table towards some Royalist horse who were apparently having breakfast, then second breakfast, then third breakfast etc.

Back at the proposed ambush site, and some Borders horse swept one of the Royalist Forlorn Hopes from the field, but were then served the same coin by the other. Nothing very conclusive happening here!

Back to the tail end, and much to everyone’s surprise the Borders Pioneers had passively seen off the now-fully-breakfasted Royalist horse: I say “passively” as the Pioneers had no guns, only pikes, and if the Royalist horse had left them alone, each side would have cancelled the other out, but the Cavaliers couldn’t resist the challenge, and effectively charged themselves to death on the Pioneers’ pikes!

That left them free to attempt to curl around the Roundhead left flank, potentially helping their comrades in the centre, who were by now engaged.

Now, however, the Borders Pioneers had realised that they were indeed pioneers, and elected to stop moving towards the action despite a rather inviting flank charge opportunity: presumably waiting for someone to tell them where to dig a hole or two.

The battle was, however, always going to be decided towards the front of the column, where both sides had their main forces, and where a general combat had broken out over the hedge row.

The Royalist had managed to sneak a horse unit around onto the Roundhead flank, using it very effectively to dash some Dutch Horse from the field. This gave the Cavaliers the impetus they needed to push the Parliamentarians back from the hedge, following up to take the battle into open ground. Unfortunately for the Royalists, however, the Roundhead horse then generally rallied and began to fight back.

Both sides were also now quite weary (down to just a couple of victory medals each) so it was all going to be down to who won the next few combats and, on a roll after their fight-back, it was the Parliamentarians who, with a good run of cards, got the bit between their teeth (well, their mounts did!) and sent some enemy Swedish horse fleeing from the field.

This proved the final straw for the Royalists, and the day went to the Parliamentarians.

Aftermath

It had been a very close run thing, with my Roundheads narrowly avoiding a third defeat! As it was, I managed to claw back a couple of medals towards the campaign totals, but that still leaves the Royalists ahead.

On to Stour Road for the next thrilling installment in the campaign.

IABSM AAR: Northern Shoulder Kursk

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Nothing on IABSM for ages and then two AARs arrive at once!

Here’s a photo-report from a game played by Mark Luther and friends at the Gigabytes Cafe in July last year.

The game takes place a few days into Citadel with the German offensive running into a counterattacking Soviet force in wide open terrain.

Click on the picture below to see all:

The PT-76 immortalised: Pippa

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I was browsing through Amazon Prime the other day looking for a film to watch when I came across this little gem: “Pippa”.

To quote the IMDB description: PIPPA tells the story of Captain Balram Singh Mehta of India's 45 Cavalry regiment who, along with his siblings, fought on the eastern front during the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. Named after the Russian amphibious war tank "PT-76", which floats on water like an empty 'pippa' (tin) of ghee, the film traces Mehta's coming-of-age as he steps up to prove himself in a war to liberate Bangladesh.

The main storyline is fairly standard stuff - youthful impetuous officer rebels against authority during training then comes good and saves the day when the action starts - but it is very well acted and there are a couple of decent sub-plots along the way.

Inciudentally, please don’t be put off by the Bollywood song and dance number very near the beginning of the film (I think it’s supposed to be the post-opening sequence theme music). This is the only one and, quite frankly, I can see how many famous war movies would have been improved by something similar!

For us wargamers, obviously, the real stars of the show are the PT-76 tanks. There are a lot of them to look at, and there are several excellent sequences showing them on both land and in amphibeous mode, including the preparations that need to be made to move between the two.

There’s plenty of time spent on them as well, so you can properly see them in action. The cinematography is good - there’s one scene in particular where the company is crossing a wide river that is quite beautiful: it looks more like a travelogue than a war movie - and the action sequences that take up the last third of the movie are excellent too: think Fury but with a company of tanks rather than just three.

So if you are in the mood for a decent war movie and fancy seeing how a PT-76 looks and operates, I’d recommend watching Pippa. It certainly had me reaching for the Flames of War catalogue, wallet in hand!

IABSM AAR: Storming the Citadel V

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It’s been ages since we’ve had an I Ain’t Been Shot Mum after action report, so it’s great to pick this one up from Will Depusoy on the IABSM Facebook Group.

Will and friends are working their way through the PSC Storming the Citadel campaign.This is the report from their table five game: the Soviets are falling back from village of Butovo with the Germans in hot pursuit.

Click on the picture below to see all:

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.

Final Painting Challenge Entries for 2023

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A handful of last minute entries into the 2023 Painting Challenge, including David Scott’s first and last entries of the year just sneaking in before the 12 midnight deadline!

Today’s entries are the aforementioned Mr Scott’s Confederates and fencing; a horde of Byzantine cavalry from Sapper; the Peaky Blinders et al from Carole; and some Germanic types from Chris Kay.

There were some amazing entries into this year’s Challenge: two of our most prolific painters hit heights never before achieved: Matt Slade hits the 6,000 points mark (6,033), with Andrew Helliwell going past 5,000 points (5,008).

Honorable mentions must also go to Sapper, who achieved a new personal best this year with a score of 3,507; and to Mr Luther on 2,084.

Here’s a complete run down of the scores (and histories) of this year’s participants:

Be sure to check out everyone’s galleries: plenty of inspirational work to see.

The Challenge will be returning for 2024 - it’s 10 year anniversary - so be sure to clear that painting table, point those brushes, prime those models and get ready to hit a new personal best score!

2023 in Review

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So that’s another twelve months almost over, which means it must be time for a “year in review” look back at 2023.

Gaming

Action from the Crimea: one of the few non-Ancients games that I played

My target for the year was to play 52 games (i.e. an average of one battle a week) with my previous highest score being 47.

Well I smashed it this year with a grand total of 65 games!

This was definitely down to my decision in March to play in all the To the Strongest (TTS) tournaments that I could, with 47 or 72% of all games being Ancients, and 24 or 37% being competition games.

Of the other games that I played, eleven of them were Pike & Shot, leaving just a smattering of WW2, fantasy, Napoleonic and 19th Century for the rest.

Tournament Results

Back in March this year, friend Peter asked me to help at the new TTS European Championships he was organising.

This would involve helping set up, keep the scores etc or, if there were uneven numbers, stepping in to play. As it happened, due to an unfortunate drop out, there were uneven numbers for the first few games, so I got to play with a lent-to-me Burgundian Ordnance army. This gave me a new-found taste for competition gaming, with the result that my trusty Early Imperial Romans (at time of writing, the only complete 28mm army I own) fought in another five tournaments over the next nine months.

Just to demonstrate why you should never get rid of any figures, the Romans had spent the last 40 years in my Mother’s attic!

This is how I did:

So not bad for my first year of competing, and a good foundation for playing in more tournaments in 2024, beginning with the Welsh Open at the end of January, where I shall also debut my new competition army: love them to death, but I need a change from the Romans!

If you play TTS, I highly recommend trying a competition or two. They are always played in the best possible spirit, and are a great way to meet (and hopefully beat) new opponents!

Painting

Although unlike last year I didn’t achieve a new personal best in th Painting Challenge, I did manage to get a pretty healthy score overall with between 1700-1800 points dependent on what I do today!

The biggest project was the 15mm Normans using Museum Miniatures’ superb CAD designed range, with enough figures painted to field any type of Norman army, an Anglo-Norman army, an Early Crusader or, my favourite, a Sicilio-Norman army. That’s about 100 cavalry and over 300 infantry in total.

15mm Normans from Museum Miniatures

Another major project was to re-base a large amount of 28mm Romans to add more flexibility and potential points to my competition army, with the result that I could have provided all 200 points of Romans for Peter and I’s force at the Doubles.

I also finished off my 15mm Burgundian Ordnance army. This started life as a purchase of second-hand core units (knights, pikes and crossbows) with this year’s painting adding handgunners, organ guns and mounted crossbows.

Finally there were an assortment of other figures completed either to fill gaps in the collection or just because I like them. These included some great one-off figures for my 15mm Marian Romans (Scipio, warhounds, a medicus); more ECW/17thC figures; and the start of my new competition army for 2024 (top right in the gallery above: can you tell what it is yet?).

Painted Figures

I also spent quite a lot of money on painted figures this year.

First up was a complete 15mm Timurid army that are now only missing a yurt or two as a camp. This is a beautifully painted army using Khurasan figures.

Then it was enough figures to complete my 15mm 17thC Transylvanians from the Fire & Sword range.

I think I will be taking a break from buying painted figures in 2024…

Wargames Shows

I’m not quite sure why, but in 2023 I went to more wargames shows than in any previous year.

The full list comprises: Overlord (Abingdon); Salute (London) ; Campaign (Milton Keynes); Partisan (Newark); Attack! (Devises); Britcon (Nottingham); Colours (Newbury) and Warfare (Farnborough). On top of this, I attended the Operation Market Lardon Lardy Day in Evesham.

Richard Clarke in the Lard Zone at Britcon

They were all good days out, and I shall be adding some of them to my “must go” list. The stand-out show has to be Partisan, with only the long drive being an issue. Next in line were Colours and Britcon: at each a slightly separate Lard Zone was worth the price of a ticket alone. I recall the Salute 50th as a bit disappointing, but it can’t have been that bad as I still managed to spend six hours there without much effort.

I’d like to get to at least as many shows next year, but am not sure if that is possible with the fairly hefty competition schedule I’ve set myself.

Summary

So all in all, 2023 proved to be a packed and very good wargaming year.

As always, a big thank you to all my gaming chums and opponents whose good natures and dedication to the hobby have made the last twelve months so much fun.

And to all those who have read Vis Lardica throughout the year: thanks for your visits, likes and comments throughout 2023, and I look forward to seeing you all throughout 2024 as well. Incidentally, we should pass the 500,000 page view mark in February or March, and that’s with not being on Blogger either. If you do own a blog of your own and like this site, please add VL to your list of recommended/favourite links: it seems a shame for all this content not to have a wider audience!

Here’s to doing it all again next year!

Cheers

R