FK&P AAR: Laundry Day

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My play-through of the Siege of Norchester campaign for For King & Parliament is really hotting up. After the encounter at Happy Valley, where Rob’s Royalists were thoroughly trounced by my Parliamentarians, it was time for Scenario 9: Laundry Day.

As background, despite their defeat in the Valley, the Royalist relief force has managed to get through the Parliamentarian cordon and sneak (if you can sneak a multi-battalia army!) through to the rear of the Roundhead lines where, as luck would have it, it’s laundry day. The scenario pits a force of Cavaliers on the offensive against a line of Parliamentarian camps, the loss of each of which would cost the Roundheads valuable victory medals.

The Royalists had the initiative and, after a bit of manouevring to get over the hedge in front of their initial positions, started forward, rapidly followed by a similar advance from the Roundheads.

After an exchange of infantry fire on the central hill that left several men dead on each side, the first main clashes occured between the cavalry forces on the wings.

Honours were even on the left wing; but on the right wing the only veteran Parliamentarian squadron of Dutch horse charged, was counter-charged, and then dashed from the field by a squadron of Royalist Swedish horse. This was a very unpleasant start to the action for the Roundheads!

Meanwhile, the two infantry lines had closed in the centre, and an inconclusive firefight broke out followed by a couple of equally inconclusive melees: the Roundheads (a) notably failing to break a mob of Royalist followers, (b) failing to have any impact at all with a supposedly-devastating first charge by some Border Reivers (the Highlanders in the pictures below), and (c) being pushed back from the hill in the centre of the field.

Worse for the Rpundheads, they had now decisively lost the cavalry battle on the right wing, leaving the Royalists free to advance and capture one of their camps. This cost three vital victory medals that I could only replace if I could re-take the camp: something that was, and excuse the TTS in-joke, not on the cards!

My cavalry on the left wing weren’t, however, doing too badly, but my problem was getting them back into a position from where they could affect the rest of the field. Some of them were pursuing fleeing enemy off the table, others had only just rallied up from disorder.

But my time was almost up. With the medals I had lost so far, the Parliamentarian force was close to breaking. Okay, so the Royalists were a bit battered too, but they hadn’t lost a camp!

I attempted a counter-attack in the centre, and came close to breaking through…and managed to get my pursuing cavalry on the left turned around and heading back to the action…but just didn’t now have the staying power of the Royalists.

Rob and I swapped unit for unit losses, but the simple factof the matter was that I ran out of coins before he did.

Metaphorical taila between their equally metaphorical legs, the Roundheads snuck from the battlefield, leaving the victorious Royalists to reinforce beleaguered Norchester.

So from being several coins ahead over the campaign as a whole I was now down seven coins overall: proving that you can’t afford to lose your laundry if you want to take a city!

Three games to go, with an encounter at Ramshackle Road being next…

Painting Challenge: First October Update

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Here’s a look at our first entries for October for this year’s Painting Challenge.

First up is Mr Helliwell’s monthly entry: mostly Napoleonics this time. Take a look in his gallery (accessed via the Nav bar, above) to see everything he’s sent in, but here are the four 24-figure 15mm British battalions, using AB Figures:

Next up we have Steve Burt with a couple of entries, all WW2 figures from Atlantic. Partisans and a lone German!

Chris Kay sends in some warrior women: Viking shield maidens and surely the one on the left in the last photo is the sci-fi equivalent…

Now we havea couple of mass army shots. On the left is Sapper with vast amounts of French Napoleonics; on the right is Mervyn with the beginnings of an ECW force (which is apparently my fault!):

That’s it for this update: keep sending them in!

TTS AAR: Elephant Screen Part II

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With the Alexandrian Macedonians defeated twice by Peter’s Made-Up Ancient Indian army (designed to experiment with the relatively new Light Infantry - Elephant Screen troop type) it was time to give someone else a go: step forward my trusty Venetians.

I’d like, at this point, to laucnh into an exciting battle report where the initiative, luck and clever use of tactics swung first one way then the other, all culminating in a glorious Venetian victory by the narrowest of margins…but I can’t. The appalling cards that had been the downfall of the Macedonians followed me into this game with entirely predictable results:

Well that’s not entirely fair on Peter: having won the scouting, his skillful deployment meant that I was largely on the back foot from the start, with his army almost wholly threatening my right flank.

I had, however, managed to get my troops into a position to blunt if not fully counter his attack, but was then, as you can see, betrayed by the cards.

Okay, so the mounted ballesteri lights in the first picture might not have done much to the elephant they were trying to assault, but the Knights in the second picture were surely onto a chicken-dinner winner! And don’t talk to me about the Knights versus the chariots in the third picture: what you aren’t seeing is the rear charge that they had also failed to make in the previous turn!

Here’s a helicopter-view shot of early in the battle showing the way Peter had managed to get onto my right flank and effectively fight a third of my army with all of his:

But hopefully you can also see how I have managed to get my troops into a position where I have Knights ready to counter his cavalry and have manouevred to get a two:one advantage on his lead attacking unit (see close up picture, below) all brought to nothing by the cards!

So that was the end of our session: three defeats for me at the hands of the Made-Up Indians with their high numbers of Elephant Screen units.

Even though the Screeners didn’t make that much difference to the results in the end (my losses were down to Peter’s skillful play and the cards) I am still quite glad that they are made-up Indians and not one I expect to face in future!

Just off to tend to a small bonfire in the back garden, and anyone know where’s the best place to get some new sets of cards!

IABSM AAR: Action near Pestszentimre

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Here’s another great I Ain’t Been Shot Mum after action report from the keyboard and camera of Mark Luther.

Action from the Eastern Front as Hungarian assault gun batteries and grenadiers of Feldherrnhalle take on the Soviet 4th Guards Mechanised Brigade in April 1944.

This game was played at GigaBites Cafe in August 2024. Click on the picture below to see all:

TTS AAR: Elephant Screen Test

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Off to Peter’s house for a bit of training in the run up to this year’s Warfare tournament. My aim was just to have a few enjoyable games of To The Strongest, Peter’s aim was to thoroughly investigate the capabilities of the relatively new troop type Light Infantry, Elephant Screen (there’s a reason he wins a lot of tournaments!).

Peter had therefore constructed a mythical army consisting mostly of elephants, a good half of whom were included in the aforementioned light infantry screening units. We’ll call these the “Made Up Indians” or MUIs. I would fight our first battle with some Imperial Alexandrians: pike, Companions and lights.

I had lost the scouting - hardly surprising with all those light units on the other side of the table - and soon found myself watching a whole herd of pachyderms thundering towards me.

To translate the pictures into something useful, the elephants with red howdahs or cloths are ‘normal’ escorted Indian elephants, the others are the light infantry/elephant screening units.

Not wanting to get caught on my base line, I advanced forward, driving the lights backwards. This, however, left my relatively narrow frontage army vulnerable on the flanks: Peter taking full advantage by heading down towards my empty right flank with his cavalry and chariots, seeking to turn my flank and roll me up.

Note how my two units of cavalry , centre-bottom in the picture above - are faced by escorted elephants i.e. kept occupied whilst his flanking force curls around the rear. It’s easy to see this happening in hindsight and in the photos, not so easy to see it and prevent it on the tabletop!

The inevitable happened, and I found myself fully engaged from the front and hit in the right flank: things were not looking good!

The writing was now on the wall: my cavalry were forced to leave the table, and had real difficulty getting back on and, despite some success elsewhere, I was soon hamorraging victory medals and defeated!

The only good thing was that it was a fairly quick battle, leaving us time for a re-match…but that’s another story!

The Re-Match

With my defeat in the first game partly due to being outflanked, I decided on a change of tactics for Game 2: rather than set up in the centre of the field, I would huddle in one corner, ermging to cruch the MUIs once their dispositions had been revealed.

At this point it’s worth reminding regualr readers that sometimes Lady Luck is decidedly, shall we say, unkind to me. Well, today, she really went to town!

Rather than a full report, I invite the reader to count the number of Aces drawn in the pictures below:

And that’s just a selection! In the same game, Peter managed to have a unit of cavalry enter the table and then pull an 8, 9, 10 for activation cards to send a unit of my elite cavalry routing off the table. Sometimes, it’s just not worth setting out the figures!

Painting Challenge: Mid-September Update

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Some great entries this time around, headed by our two top contributors Matt and Andrew.

First up, here’s Matt’s latest offering: some fantastic terrain pieces nearly all built for a pirate game, me Hearties!

And here’s some of Andrew’s contributions: as always, a mixed bag:

Let’s look at the other entries received so far this month. Here are entries from Steve, Mervyn, Stumpy and Carole:

Some lovely work there…and be sure to check out their main galleries, accessible through the NavBar, above.

More Hittites

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A couple more units for my 15mm Hittite army using Red Copper miniatures printed by Baueda.

First up is the first of the command bases: a unit of 3-man chariots with attached General:

Next is the first unti of line spearmen: quite a chore to paint with all their different robe and shield colours:

Very nice figures: very easy to paint and enough variety to make the units look good.

Now to paint the same again for the next batch!

Colours 2024

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Off to Newbury racecourse for the annual Colours show there. A great day out that started with an unlimited breakfast at the nearby Toby!

Parking is free and a short walk from the grandstand where the event takes place. The entrance fee for Colours is only £5, which makes it a real bargain compared to some of the other shows that I have been to recently.

Highlight of the show was seeing Simon Miller’s new War of the Spanish Succession version of To The Strongest/For King & Parliament in playtest:

These seem like a must-have once they are out, and will presumably give me an excuse to buy loads more little soldiers as I haven’t got any early 18C figures yet. Tricornes ahoy!

Bumped into loads of people I know and/or haven’t seen for some time: Colours is a very relaxed occasion, so very good for that sort of thing.

Wandering around, there were some very nice games on show. Plenty of big battles involving loads of figures (which I did photograph) and a selection of mini-games and boardgames (which I did not!).

Note that the last four pictures are of the same game.

The shopping opportunities were, as usual, very good. I picked up some much-needed basing material and could have a root around all the 28mm Ancients plastics as I attempt to choose next year’s competition army.

Colours is firmly on the list of shows to visit again next year: recommended.

TTS AAR: Britcon Game 5: Venetians vs Florentines

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My final game at Britcon this year was against another Italian Condotteri army: Nigel’s Florentines.

Although technically a different army to mine (an Early Italian Condotteri army versus my Later one, and from Florence as opposed to Venice), Nigel’s force was actually/obviously quite similar to mine, with the contemporaneous nature of the clash promising an interesting game.

As you can see in the picture below, we even deployed in a similar way!

The oppening phases of the game saw both sides plagued by a series of Aces, something I had (quite surprisingly!) managed to avoid in the tournament so far.

Nevertheless, the Venetian Knights advanced strongly on the left wing, and managed to get into a position where I could threaten to roll up the Florentine line, with the only thing standing in their way being a couple of units of enemy Lights…

…who were disposed of in short order:

My other command of Knights was also in the process of doing the same thing on the other side of the battlefield:

Back to the left flank, where my initial success was now being slightly stymied by a combination of a really annoying unit of enemy Knights that just wouldn’t die and my decks of cards who had obviously decided that I had been having far too easy up until now:

Despite this, however, the rest of my troops on that flank had started to knock Florentine units off the board, helped by the Venetian infantry who had now caught up and were eager to join in the fun.

Things were also still going well on the right flank apart, again, for one really annoying enemy unit: this time a bunch of Light Infantry with Melee Weapons: a relatively new troop type who had the temerity to charge my overall commander, with army standard, bodyguard knights etc, in the flank!

I remember this being a deeply frustrating phase of the game, where a couple of Florentine units on the wings distracted me so much that it kept me from properly enjoying the process of destroying his centre…but the writing was on the walls of Florence and soon Nigel’s last victory medal was mine for a 181-38 point victory.

With all five games now done, as organiser I totted up everyone’s points from all the games and discovered, a bit to my embarrassment, that I was actually the overall winner, and with a clean sweep of five victories out of five.

So a good result at what had beena cracking tournament overall. All the games were fought with a great spirit of friendly, competitive, fair play, with no arguments marring the event at all.

My thanks to all those who took part (especially my opponents), to all the organisers at BHGS, and to Derek, who was kind enough to do all the list checking. Make sure you keep 7-9th August 2025 clear for next year’s competition.

First of the Hittites

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I mentioned in a previous post that I was so happy with the 3D printed Red Copper New Kingdom Egyptians that I had printed by Baueda to fill in the gaps of my newly-rebased NKE army that I decided to do what I’ve been wanting to do for some time and get a 15mm Hittite army for them to fight.

I duly ordered the figures, again getting Red Copper 3D sculpts printed by Baueda (under a week to print the figures, only four days in the post from Italy) and went to work, starting with a base of Hittite chariotry and a base of the Royal Guard.

The chariots are, again, fantastic sculpts. The chariot bodies come with very clearly defined panels, making it very easy to get the striped effect you can see above. These were painted all over in a dark colour, then highlighted in a lighter version of the same colour, standard acrylics.

The crew are as easy to paint as the NKE infantry were, and are, as you can hopefully see, full of character. The three charioteers actually fit into the chariot body without being too crowded: snug but not rush-hour tube, and have plenty of variants to make the base look unique.

The horses are the most fun to paint. Again, clear relief and detail to show you exactly where to put the paint. I used Contrast Snakebite Leather highlighted with Bronze for the armoured coats, and a combination of the same colours I’d used on the chariot body for the tack.

The Royal Guard came out really well too. I decided to make them uniform to suggest they were regulars, intending to dress the Spearman units, when I come to do them, in different coloured robes and without the same uniformity in shield colours.

There are plenty of poses, they are easy to paint, and ther was only a minimal amount of 3D flash on them.

Both the chariots and the Guard are highly recommended.

TTS AAR: Britcon Game 4: Venetians vs Thessalians

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My fourth game at Britcon was a re-match of the warm-up game I’d had on the Friday evening before the tournament started: my Venetians versus Adrian’s Thessalians.

The stakes this time around, however, were much higher: we were ranked one and two in the tournament so far, so whoever won this game would end up perfectly placed to take the title. It would be fair to say that I was a little nervous about this one: my Venetians had been hammered on the Friday night (as in soundly beaten not drunk as a lord!) and I couldn’t afford to let that happen again.

The Thessalians were another largely infantry army, and I’d beaten three of them already during the competition by sending my Knights around one or both flanks. Adrian, however, was far too canny to give me the opportunity to do that: his men were deployed to cover just about the entire width of the table, so no room around the sides!

His left flank, however, did look a bit weaker than his right and centre (where those nasty veteran Hoplites were waiting) so if I couldn’t go around a flank, I determined to punch through it using my larger command of Knights. First off, however, I had to deal with Adrian’s cavalry there, who were attempting to do to me what I’d done to others!

In the meantime, I kept my main line rigidly under control, just advancing far enough forward to give me a little retreating space should I need it.

Things continued to go well on my right: the Thessalian cavalry were disposed off (either routing or retreating off table) and, more importantly, two of my Knights units were now free to crash right the way through to the enemy base line.

Meanwhile battle had been joined in the centre, with the combination of Alabardiers and Picchieri proving more than a match for the Thessalian Hoplites, with the threat of a single unit of Knights enough to keep Adrian’s right wing forces at bay.

The Knights on the right finally properly broke through, with one unit heading for and taking the enemy camp (despite the best efforts of some pesky enemy light infantry) and the other crashing into the rear of the Thessalian reserve.

The game should have ended here in a Venetian victory but, unfortunately, I had made a mistake on my right flank: I had positioned my Knights and Lights there to keep the enemy light cavalry that had retreated off table from coming back onto the board, but forgot what they were there for and decided to “get my Lights back into the battle”. This let Adrian bring his light cavalry back onto the table, meaning that when his camp fell, he had one coin left rather than none.

How annoying!

The writing was, however, on the wall, and it was only a matter of time before I managed to get the extra coin I needed to win the game, but it was a pain in the backside and could have let Adrian back into the match.

Fortunately I managed to take the final coin needed before his Hoplites could relieve his camp: a 188-23 victory for the Venetians.

IABSM AAR: Somewhere in Normandy

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Here are some great pictures from a game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum played in 20mm by Mercian Miniatures, taken from the IABSM Facebook Group.

TFL Painting Challenge: Final August Update

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Peopl seemed to send their entries in just after I’d done the mid-August update, so thatseems to me like a good excuse to a small, but perfectly formed, final August update to the Painting Challange.

First up, we have Chris Kay, who sends us a mix of Star Wars Legion and WW2 BEF figures for us to admire:

Next we have the ever-productive Mr Helliwell, who has entered a mix of figures and some very nice home-made terrain:

Steve Burt has built a factory:

Last but by no means least, Stumpy has sent in a mix of painting and re-basing:

And so we’re into September: the last four months of the Challenge year!

TTS AAR: Britcon Game 3: Venetians vs the Sea Peoples

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With the Zanj Revolt and Spartans already defeated, it was now time to face Howard’s beautifully painted Sea Peoples: another infantry-heavy army.

Having beaten two infantry armies by curling the Knights around one flank, I thought it would be rude not to go for a third win that way, so deployed much as I had done in the first two games.

The terrain was unfortunately quite heavy on either flank, with annoying woods all over the place, but all would be good if I could temp the Sea Peoples forward a bit into the more open centre of the table, where I could either get round the back of their line or just curl in on their flanks.

The sight of my line slowly advancing forward did indeed prove too much of a temptation for the SP’s and, even better, rather than attacking all at once, they dripped their warriors forward in a quasi-echelon formation meaning that the Venetian pichieri (pikemen) and alabardieri (billmen) could gang up on the lead unit and very quickly remove it from the board.

Even the mighty Goliath couldn’t stop the combination of pikemen and billmen

Meanwhile, I had made a bit of an error on my right flank.

The two units of Knights who were supposed to be keeping the enemy busy there had got themselves jammed up against the edge of the table and the piece of randomly-placed Impassable terrain and, faced by the SP’s elite chariots, had failed to punch through.

This left them horribly exposed to a flank attack, that duly went in, and my Knights disappeard off into the distance, bitterly complaining that their contracts stated that they delivered the flank attacks not the other way around!

My only consolation was that this little action had tied up quite a lot of the Sea Peoples’ force away from the main action, meaning that I could now try and follow Mr Riding’s principle of fighting the half of the SP’s army that was left elsewhere on the table with the two thirds of mine that faced them.

Back to the left, and my outflanking manoeuvre had been gloriously successful, which meant that I had managed to totally fragment the Sea Peoples’ main battle line.

This meant that my roving Knights could gang up on isolated warbands while my infantry ground inexorably forward.

Now hemorraging coins, it wasn’t long before the final Sea Peoples’ unit fell, leaving the Venetians masters of the field, with the coup de grace fittingly delivered from the left flank.

The only downside was that the loss of the Knights on the right had cost me more coins than I wanted, so the victory was a more modest 169-62 in my favour.

With three wins out of three so far, that left me in pole position at the end of day one. That meant that the next morning I would face Adrian’s Thessalians again - yes, the ones I had lost the warm-up game to just before the tournament began - with the winner then able to be fairly confident of victory overall.

Time for a curry - with only a modest amount of alcohol - and an early night!

Red Copper Miniatures: New Kingdom Egyptians

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One of the things about re-basing an army is that you almost always end up needing some more figures…and that was the case with my 15mm New Kingdom Egyptians, now based for To The Strongest but short one commander and one unit of Billmen.

I’m also a fan of 3D printed figures: I like the fact that they don’t weigh as much as metal, are often slightly cheaper, and can give a level of animation you don’t often get with traditionally cast models.

One of the manufacturers that I have long wanted to try are Red Copper Miniatures, who specialise in biblical period figures with ranges of Hittites, Sea Peoples, Ancient Hebrews and, of course, New Kingdom Egyptians.

The only drawback is that as I don’t yet have a 3D printer of my own, and Red Copper just provide the STL files not finished models, I needed to find someone to print the models for me. A bit of time spent on the Internet showed me several companies in the UK that would print them, many via Etsy, but they all seemed very expensive for what you get. Step forward our old friends Baueda, based in Italy, but with a flat charge of €12.50 for p&p, who will 3D print all the Red Copper biblical range no problem at all.

I put in a test order, and a couple of weeks later a nice little box arrived with enough models to complete my Egyptians.

So, what did I think?

Well let’s get what I don’t like out of the way first: the figures have no bases. Which is a pain when you’re trying to stick them on to lolly sticks to paint them. I had to revert to putting them onto individual little pieces of card (old business cards cut into six squares!) before I could undercoat them.

Second thing: because the models are resin, and mounted on little pieces of card, you have to be careful when undercoating that the force of the spray doesn’t blow the figures all over the place.

Right…next…no: that’s it. Those are the only two things I didn’t like about the Red Copper 3D Egyptians: the slight annoyance of no bases.

So what did I like?

Everything else!

These figures are superb, truly superb. Look at what I managed to produce even with my rudimentary painting skills.

These were undercoated in GW Grey Seer, then painted in white Contrast paint. The white was then highlighted with acrylic white, and then the rest of the figure painted with Contrast paints or, for the bronze, a standard acrylic metallic.

The animation and detail are excellent: and the only reason they don’t look even better is that I’ve based them (following how I’ve based the rest of the Egyptians) as two identical lines rather than a unit of mixed poses.

Pharaoh’s chariot is just as good. The only negative is the way the wheels attach to the body of the chariot: I’m not sure I did it right, but it seems you just glue the end of the axle on the main body to the end of the axle on the wheel i.e. two very small surface areas rather than some kind of pin-and-hole device.

Overall, these are an excellent addition to my New Kingdom Egyptians…and I’ve been so inspired by the Red Copper scultps that I’ve ordered a Hittite army to fight them!

Highly, highly recommended!

TTS AAR: Britcon Game 2: Venetians vs the Spartans!

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My second game at the Britcon To The Strongest tournament this year was against Andy’s Spartans - another infantry-heavy army.

This was going to be a horrible army for my Venetians to fight: veteran Hoplite Spartiates backed up by more Hoplites, backed up by even more Hoplites. How’s a Knight supposed to charge into that lot and survive?

One advantage I had was that I would almost certainly outscout the red cloaks, and this did indeed prove the case. I therefore adopted the same tactics that I had used against the Zanj in game one, and came forward infantry in the center to pin his line in place, while my Knights probed for a flank to turn.

And either or both flanks would do!

But the thing about Hoplites is that they can more really well in one direction and not at all in the other: my problem is that I couldn’t remember which was which! Was it right good,/left bad or left good/right bad?

As it turned out, it was right good/left bad, so that Spartans slewed across the field in an attempt to stop me getting around their right flank. Unfortunately for the Greeks, my horsemen were faster than them, and soon my mounted crossbowmen and some of the Knights on the left were looking at Spartan backsides!

On top of that, I was also in a position to use more of my Knights on the right flank, although some Spartan allies there had turned to face my assualt.

On the left hand side, Andy’s problem was that his men couldn’t face in two directions at once: a problem made worse when the first flank charge from my mounted crossbowmen and some Knights killed the general in charge of the Spartiates. They would have to fight the rest of the battle without Leonidas!

Spartans are tough, though, and it was going to take me a bit of time to chew through them, even with the tactical advantages that I now had.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, my Knights and Lights had worked in perfect harmony (for once!) and cleared the Spartan allies from the field.

I would lose the Lights and one unit of Knights clearing more off the board here, so it was the left flank where the battle would be decided.

There I had by now dealt with one unit of Spartiates, and now threatened the rear of two more.

Andy was still unwilling to commit his men to frontal charges against my Knights facing forwards, presumably worried about the fact that if he charged me, although he would get the first strike, it was likely my Knights would survive that and then strike back twice with their lances, and strike back at Spartans who had given up all the advantages that formed spearmen get when receiving a mounted charge.

That meant that I had both the tactical positional advantage and the initiative, so could attack and defeat the Hoplite unit on the hill you can just see in the picture above with a combination of in-the-rear and in-the-front attacks. This removed a Zone of Control, allowing me to then start to roll up the rest of the Spartan line.

The loss of multiple deep units was also hurting Andy’s supply of victory medals, and it only really took one more unit of Spartiates, again beleaguered on two sides, breaking to finish the game. A victory at 177 points versus 54 points for the Venetians.

F4freddie Terra Firma

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Britcon is more than just a gigantic tournament, it’s a trade show as well and, by dint of planning it that way, all the To The Strongest players had time to have a wander around the various stands in between their games.

One trader that caught my eye was one I hadn’t seen before: F4freddie Terra Firma. I have no connection with them at all, I hasten to add (I don’t even game WW2 in 28mm!), but loved what they had on show: especially all the unique items they have to “dress” a tabletop.

What first caught my eye were the washing lines you can see top right in this picture:

Then there were the Anderson (air raid) shelters, ponds and pig styes etc that you can see below:

Then all the gardens and houses and huts…you get the picture:

Really nice, quirky pieces that would really make any battlefield come alive!

F4freddie have an Etsy shop that you can find here: etsy.com/uk/shop/F4freddieTerraFirma

As I said, I have no connection to them whatsoever, but do feel free to mention Vis Lardica if you buy anything from them!

TTS AAR: Britcon Game 1: Venetians vs Zanj Revolt

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My first tournament game at Briton this year was against John’s Zanj Revolt army: hordes of fanatical warriors who would keep fighting at full capacity no matter how many times you disorder them. My troops were missing the canals 0f Venice already!

As the Zanj had no cavalry, I won the scouting, and was pleased to see the enemy drawn up in what looked like a defensive posture to me. The last thing I had wanted was to face an unbroken wall of foot units stretching right the way across the table, so the open flank on one side of the Zanj formation seemed like an opportunity to be exploited.

I duly advanced my infantry slightly forward in the centre (always give yourself a little retreat room just in case you need it) while sending the Knights cantering forward on the left flank.

The Zanj weren’t moving: obviously hoping to act as a rock on which the waves of my assault would break, so I took the time they had given me to get my troops just where I wanted them.

John’s refused right flank, however, didn’t give me what I really needed: a clear path, free of ZoCs, into the side of main Zanj body of troops. It was time to try and break things up a bit: time to send in my main line.

My initial advance to contact didn’t go too well: the Alabardiers and a unit of Knights being disordered, but a quick step backwards began to open things up a bit, certainly enough to deploy one unit of my outflanking force into position.

A lot of the Zanj were on the right hand side of the table, facing air…so they ganged up on the only unit of mine that they could reach: more Knights. For once, however, the Knights did what they were supposed to do, and punched through the warriors in front of them to escape the threat.

In the right hand picture above, you can also see how John’s echelon formation was keeping my outflanking force at bay…but all I needed was one chink in the Zanj armour and I was in!

That came as my re-ordered infantry pushed forward again, leaving a lane behind them for my flanking knights to cross the entire field and crash the side of the Zanj force on the ‘empty’ side of the table: as I said, they had been advancing forward so had got out of touch with the rest of their troops.

As the Zanj line fragmented, I was now able to gang up on their individual units. What this meant was that although the Zanj warriors and most of my men fought the same way, because the Zanj (as fanatics) saved very badly, I was able to inflict significantly more hits than I took, and even deep units can’t stand forever.

Zanj warriors began streaming from the field, leaving the Venetians with a 188-23 victory (we were using Peter’s Ewelme points system): a good start to the tournament proper.

A good win, but one that left me facing a tough opponent in round two: the Spartans!