TTS AAR: Two the Strongest Game One: Teutonic Knights & Lithuanians vs Principate Romans & Armenians

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The ‘Two the Strongest’ Doubles tournament for To The Strongest had it’s second outing a couple of weekends ago.

As Peter had returned from his self-imposed sabbatical from competition playing, I made sure to enlist him as my partner for the event. After the thrashing he gave me (and others) at this year’s Warfare event, it was very much a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them”!

After much discussion, Peter decided that we would take the powerful but perhaps risky combination of heavily armoured Teutonic Knights (my bit) and dancing horse-archer Lithuanians (Peter’s command).

The plan (hatched over Peter’s various and mandatory training sessions) was for the Lithuanians to keep one half of the opposition occupied with two thirds of their force, whilst I borrowed the other third, combining it with my own troops to smash my way through the other half of the enemy before turning to hit the remaining foe in the flank. I don’t remember much about what was said, but there were chalkboards and diagrams, plans of action, timetables, many military acronyms, homework, and much army-appropriate talk of schwerepunkt and kesselschlact and the like!

We even brought along this very portable helmet: ideal for the post-match conversations with forest fans (who lost 3-0 BTW)

The event itself would take place at Kingdom Games in north London, only a few minutes away from Arsenal’s Emirates stadium…very convenient, as it meant we (veteran Later Knights) could share the streets with the 60,298 fans (raw Mobs, and, yes, I looked up the attendance figures: there’s a lot of work goes into these AARs!) leaving the ground as we struggled back to where my car was parked (75% premium on cost as it was match day but, like the Murphys, I’m not bitter) pushing the immense amount of display boards and scenery that Peter had brought along to accompany the soldiers we would use. They fitted into two easily portable Really Useful containers rather than the six foot high tower of boxes that were actually on the trolley we pushed over the uneven pavements to the venue.

Anyhoo, moving swiftly on, our first game was against other-Rob and Will’s combination of Principate Romans and Armenians. We won the scouting so lined up with my Teutonics versus the Armenians, whist Peter attempted to delay the Romans.

The Armenians deployed right up against their Roman allies in a very narrow fashion, so my first move saw half my knights heading rapidly towards the Armenian left flank. If I could get around the side, then rolling up his line should be easy.

This very much proved to be the case, and before long I was in a great position to threaten the Armenian flank whilst also keeping the deadly Armenian lancers (yellow lances) at bay.

Around this point Peter began pointing out that there was quite a bit of Armenian light cavalry out on my flank, and that I should be careful they didn’t slip through to threaten my camps, but my Teutonic Knights were not concerned: we’d left some peasants in place to guard the camps and the foot sergeants were somewhere around as well. What mattered was smashing the enemy from the field, not making sure the cooking pots were safe!

And smash them from the field they did…

…and pretty soon the Armenians had been disposed of and I could head over to the other side of the battlefield to see what was going on there.

To be fair, Peter did seem to have done very well against the Romans: turning all the legionaries and their cavalry into stuck-full-of-arrows hedgehogs. They just needed a bit of Teutonic Knight goodness to finish them off!

So a good start to the day with a 39-0 victory.

Now it’s always good to fact check my reports, so here’s the view from the left hand side of the table…

Peter’s Report

At last year’s excellent Two the Strongest tournament Rob and I learnt that to maximise points to win the tournament you had to obliterate BOTH enemy armies in every battle. And in the limited time available the best way to achieve that was to focus our combined resources on blitzing one army first and then quickly switch both of our armies onto the remaining one with a big flank attack sweeping in from where our first enemy had been smashed.

So before this tournament we agreed a strategy that I would donate the best 25% of my army to Rob, to give overwhelming superiority to his side of the battle. And I would then act as a speed bump to the army I was facing to stop it supporting Rob’s opponent. I would further reduce my punch by holding a tactical reserve ready to respond to any cunning plan that the enemy came up with.

To allow this to work we chose a knight heavy Teutonic army for Rob supported by light cavalry Lithuanian allies for me.

We also had a playbook that defined in more detail how we would operate together and individually, with critical timings as to what we each had to achieve by when.

For example, Rob couldn’t sit back with his significantly boosted army and play a typical advance with confidence. Instead he needed to aggressively pin the enemy from the front whilst rapidly outflanking the rest and smashing into its side with repeated flank and Lance bonuses. All this to pulverise that army by the end of turn 3! This was critical becasue he then needed to sweep across his half of the battlefield and smash into the flank of the enemy that I was holding up. Anything later and we wouldn’t have time to blitz both armies in the limited time.

So that was the plan.

Our first opponents were a tough Roman Principate army with very resilient ( and beautifully painted) legionaries, auxilia and veteran cavalry. Plus a Palmyran allies army with scary cataphracts, lance cavalry, hordes of light cavalry with bow and heavily defended camps which we would never be able to take.

I volunteered to dance around the Romans whilst Rob took my veteran knights to outnumber the Palmyran cataphracts and chase away the hordes, and then swing in on the flank of what was left.

Given the Romans lack of missiles my light cavalry could get right up close to the heavy infantry and pepper them with an annoying drizzle of arrows. But the Romans are super resilient with their big shields and this only caused minor damage that was quickly rallied off. But it did slow them down. The speed bump was working! Only half of my army was holding up the entire Roman force!

Meanwhile on Rob’s half of the battlefield my veteran knights, backed up with light cavalry shooting overhead, successfully took on a unit of cataphracts. Rob pinned the other cataphracts with his Polish knights whilst getting his veteran Teutonic knights around the flank ready to flank charge the rest of the Palmyrans.

The plan seemed to be working. But then two of the Palmyran light cavalry cunningly worked their way through the wood on the far edge of the battlefield weaving past a unit of spear armed brudders and light cavalry and threatening the unfortified double camp that had only one raw light infantry unit to defend it.

Oh no! That was potentially seven victory points at risk and the whole plan could go wrong!

Thank goodness for our uncommitted reserve on my side of the battlefield! It consisted of three light cavalry with a general so was as mobile as you could possibly want. So I moved each in turn and then double moved whichever unit had the lowest card. The first unit drew a 10, that wasn’t going to work! The next drew a 2, and the third one drew a 4 so I then moved the 2 again but it drew a 9 - clearly they had blown their horses too early! So I had to leave that unit behind and I then refocuussed on the unit that had drawn a 4. I drew a 5, then a 9! By now I had marched across 9 boxes but still needed another box to ZOC (zone of control) the Palmyran lights to stop them taking the camp. I still had my general redraw ability. I could do it! So I then drew an ace! No problem. I had my general redraw! Can I do it? And I drew another ace! Oh no how frustrating! Still I had covered a lot of ground so just be thankful for the previous cards I had drawn!

However because we had won the scouting (the Lithuanians alone brought ten scouting points!) we chose the first command to move, and so instead of Rob going first, which was our playbook norm to allow him to get his knights in first each round, we agreed that my reserve Command went first. My light cavalry charged into the flank of the enemy light cavalry still stuck in the wood so at a big disadvantage! They tried but failed to evade! But then I drew more aces and caused no damage! But atleast I had ZOC’d the blighters and saved any risk to the camp!

Meanwhile, my veteran knights supported by light cavalry bows behind, beat the cataphracts and eventually, despite some bad cards, Rob’s veteran knights smashed into the flank of the Palmyrans and swept the rest of the army away.

However this had taken four turns not three, which meant we were a whole turn behind schedule!

Fortunately back on my side of the battlefield a combination of sustained shooting from my dancing light cavalry and a couple of flank attacks (each delivering three cards!) had killed one unit and a general.

As soon as the Teutons turned up on the flank, and the Romans turned to face them my annoying lights turned into killers that charged into their flanks with their lances wounding them so that the Teutons simply rode down what was left to take the final victory medals and secure the double victory we had sought! All achieved without losing a single victory medal!

Thanks to Nate’s tournament design - strategy, tactics, teamwork and even reserves had all played their part!

We had had a mix of good and bad lack, as you always do, but overall the plan had worked. So next, on to our second battle - where it didn’t!

I hope these insights encourage YOU to attend this superb event next year!

TTS AAR: Warfare 24: Game Four: Venetians versus Pechenegs

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My final game at Warfare this year was a match against the Pechenegs: an army comprising many units of light cavalry, most grouped into “massed lights” units, and a unit of noble lancers.

Unsurprisingly, the Pechenegs won the scouting, and I soon found myself staring at a line of bow-armed light cavalry advancing swiftly towards the Gondoliers.

Fighting light cavalry with non-missile-armed troops is like fighting water!

Take, for example, the initial clash on my right flank. The Pechenegs advance four units: three massed lights and their single unit of lancers. My Knights advance and charge the pesky blighters, who promptly evade away unscathed.

Massed bow fire causes a disorder on one unit of knights, who are then promptly charged by the lancers and sent flying from the table. Admittedly my Knights were wearing their cardboard armour rather than the proper steel stuff, but come on…!

This pattern continued in the centre, where my pikes had to combine with the knights retreating from the right flank in order to KO a unit of lights, the schioppettiere showing no interest in getting involved even when presented with the opportunity to rear-charge the horsemen.

Only on the left was there any real success, where the Knights, with help from some mounted handgunners, did what they were supposed to do and drove back the Pechenegs without taking any casualties from bow fire.

At this point I realised I was going about things all wrong: in that rather than trying to engage with the Pechenegs wherever I found them, allowing them to dance around my troops and find gaps to exploit, what I actually needed to do was to form a long line and just push them off the table!

So that’s what I did: a bit of consolidation in the centre and on the right to form a line, and then a steady advance.

Meanwhile, over on the left, although I’d had great initial success, I needed to consolidate in the same way to prevent my victorious units from being individually overwhelmed.

This was all working very nicely, and it wouldn’t have been long before the Pechenegs were pinned up against their base line and then either destroyed or driven off the table, but unfortunately all the shilly-shallying around at the beginning of the game meant that I was out of the time needed to being my cunning plan to fruition: you don’t get a lot of time for each game in a one-day-four-games tournament, so need to really get your shift on in each encounter.

The end of this, final round was called and, totting up the points, I found that I had lost seven coins to eight!

One more turn and the advantage would have been to me but, like Napoleon at Waterloo, I was out of time!

A great game, even considering the end result. All I wanted to do was re-fight the battle and, this time, just smartly advance in line and drive the pesky Pechenegs off table!

It had been an excellent Warfare tournament, even if I ended up twelth out of sixteen. Recommended as both a show to go to and an event to play in: see you all there next year.

TTS AAR: Warfare 24: Game Three: Venetians vs Parthians

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With one utter thrashing and one complete victory under my belt, my third game at this year’s To The Strongest competition at Warfare was against Howard “I borrowed these from Sid’s” Parthians.

I decided to change my initial deployment: choosing to weight all my Knights onto one flank in order to counter the threat of the Parthian cataphracts.

This meant that as the game began, the Parthians, with nothing to stop them, quickly outflanked my infantry line and camp with light horse, but I wasn’t too worried about this and quickly moved to counter their advance.

It was a bit annoying to have the Alabardiers almost immediately disordered from rear charges, but hopefully I’d be able to rally them and move on: the important thing being that the flank was safe for the moment.

Unfortunately, Lady Luck had once again chosen to desert me, and the Alabardiers were quickly disposed of by the enemy!

Meanwhile, back on the other side of the table, my Knights and the Parthian cataphracts had advanced into contact.

I had managed to achieve a tactical advantage for the first clash: getting not only the first-charge advantage but also achieving a two-to-one in a couple of instances, but shockingly bad cards meant that I effectively lost all five of the knights-vs-Parthian-cavalry first encounters.

Here’s the table just after the initial clashes: you can see that I only have two units of Knights left out of five and haven’t destroyed a single unit of Parthians!

The battle then took a turn for the decidedly weird. First up, I had a series of Aces that, I thought, would effectively seal the fate of my poor Venetians: effectively leaving me unable to do anything at all:

But, suddenly, the tide turned, and my last two remaining units of Knights suddenly remembered what they were here for, and started chewing through Parthians troops like there was no tomorrow:

Perhaps I could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Er, no.

Although somewhat rocked by the Venetian’s renaissance (technically I think that’s also a pun!), the villainous Parthians re-turned their attention to my right flank and managed to defeat the unit of militia guarding it (yes, the chef’s unit was knocked off the table, although I’m sure he survived) and take one of my camps: four medals lost and game over!

At least I had managed to win back some medals, turning a potential utter disaster into only a heavy 8-13 defeat.

I had been appallingly unlucky right from the initial knight/cataphract clash through to the run of Aces in the endgame (even Howard agreed!) but was very pleased to have been able to gain some measure of respect from the fight-back! Roll on game four…

Howard writes:

Great game Rob - and you really were very very unlucky - ridiculously so when it came to the knights melting in the face of the mighty Parthian Cataphracts! Speaking of which it was actually your lowly (but deadeye!) LI and LC shooters that did most of the damage - taking down a Cataphract unit, 2 LI and a LC! Typical of the Lordly Knights to gloss over that in their report of the battle to the Doge....! :-)
I can tell you that the Chef did survive the battle - he's currently on permanent sabbatical in the kitchens of the Parthian King of Kings in Ctesiphon! 

IABSM AAR: Defence of Calais scenario

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Here’s a pictorial battle report from the camera of Michael Curtis and Mercian Miniatures coveing a recent Defence of Calais scenario played out using I Ain’t Been Shot Mum.

This looked to be a truly spectacular game, and the pictures are wonderful.

Click on the photo below to see all:

TTS AAR: Warfare 24, Game Two: Venetians vs Komnenon Byzantines

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My second game at this year’s To The Strongest tournament at Warfare was against Nigel’s Komnenon Byzantines: a tough nut to crack with their combination of Kavallariori lance-armed horse and Varangian Guard veteran shieldwall infantry.

I lost the scouting again, and quickly saw the Byzantines advancing towards me at a rapid rate of knots.

I advanced my left flank out to meet him, getting an advantage as I was able to charge a unit of my Later Knights in against some of his veteran cavalry. Nigel attempted to evade but failed, which meant i would enjoy three strikes (attack, lance and bonus rear) against his hapless horsemen, with my army standard providing me with a back-up should I fail the first one.

Unbelievably, every single one of my attacks failed to hit, something my rudimentary stats skills tell me should only happen approximately 6% of the time.

This was not good, and I soon found myself victim to a general assault across my line. Particularly worrying was the big hole facing the elite Varangian Guard: the only thing between them and my camp were a couple of raw schioppettiere hand gunners, almost as afraid of the weapons they held as the mad vikings’ approach!

Fortunately - very fortunately - my other command of knights on the right flank was doing what they were supposed to do, and had forced back the Byzantine horse, both light and heavy.

This gave them the chance to manouevre onto the flank of the advancing Varangians: something that, much to my surprise, caused a crisis of confidence in the enemy centre, which promptly withdrew back away from my troops.

This was very strange, but also very welcome…the only problem being that we were now almost out of time, which seemed like a very quick game to me, but I wasn’t manning the stop-watch!

I was winning, just, but needed a big win to make up for my huge defeat in game one, but the only way I was going to win this was my either destroying a 3-coin unit such as one of the Varangian Guard, or by taking the Byzantine camp, currently unguarded.

The camp it was then, but it would need three activations for the knights on the far side of the table to reach it. Fortune, however, had decided to compensate me for the failure to hit the enemy horse and, with a triumphant clatter of hooves, the knights rode down the Byzantine camp followers taking the camp and Nigel’s last three coins for an 11-0 victory.

So a bit of a narrow escape: I think I would have been in deep trouble if those Varangians had ignored the knights on their flank and headed straight forward!

But as great game against a fun opponent, so onto game 3 with one loss and one win under the belt.

TFL Painting Challenge: Second November Update

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Loads of entries coming in for the Painting Challenge now that we are almost into its final month for 2024.

As always, do browse the individual galleries accessible from the NavBar, above, but here’s a selection from this batch of submissions.

First up is Chris Kay, with a mixture of cowpokes and Star Wars. Here are the cowpokes:

Next up is Nick Cooper, with his usual assortment of fantasy figures:

Also supplying his usual assortment of troops is Mr Helliwell. How does he find the time? Here are some Napoleonics and Medievals:

Sapper has also been busy: Normans, Romans and more Medievals:

Mervyn has gone big this time around: a couple of stone age cottages and Conan’s mate Thog!

And last, but by no means least, here’s Steve Burt with the old Italeri battlefield accessories set finally painted up. Telegraph pole, emplacement, signs, ruin, small fuel dump, all 1:72 scale

We also had an entry from Carole, but no pictures yet, so I’ll add them into the post once I get them.

Plenty of time yet, so keep those entries coming!

TTS AAR: Warfare 24, Game One: Venetians versus Timurids

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My first game at the To The Strongest tournament at this year’s Warfare show was against Peter and his Timurids. As Peter is acknowledged as the most successful TTS competition gamer in the UK, this was going to be quite a difficult start to the day!

Those of you who have played Peter before know that his favourite tactics is to have an army that outscouts the opposition, then deploys in a way that gives him the advantage by taking a portion of the enemy army out of contention. After that, he advances quickly to get around the flank of his opponent’s remaining (and now outnumbered) troops and roll up them up smartly before turning the full might of his still-intact army on the remnants of that of the enemy.

And that is exactly what he did to me, despite the fact that I knew it was coming!

On his first turn, Peter did have a bit of luck with the cards, but a clever tactic to allow a second march move meant that his troops were quickly behind my line.

As predicted, my main strike force of later knights were left facing nothing except a couple of Timurid cattle-herders bunking off work to take a picnic far from the madding crowd!!!

But they began rushing over to the centre as soon as possible. Perhaps I could pull this back from the brink…

Er, no: of course I couldn’t. Once Peter has his teeth in you, you have no hope or Bob Hope chance of surviving, and Bob Hope’s dead.

His flank attack disposed of my knights on the right and moved in to begin rolling up my line.

And after that it was only a matter of time before my camp fell and with it the battle. A devastating 0-13 loss to start the day!

Somewhat annoying, to say the least, especially as I knew what was coming but couldn’t seem to do anything about it…but there was still plenty of time to do better in the next game…for which I now had plenty of time to prepare!

Congratulations to Peter on a masterclass of destruction: surgically dismembering the poor Venetians despite their best efforts. But I have beaten Peter before, and will beat him again, with the victory tasting even sweeter when I do!

Warfare 2024

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My main reason for going to Warfare this year was for the To The Strongest Open competition held there, but there are plenty of other reasons for going as well.

It’s a great venue - Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre - easy to find and free parking all day. There are some great trade stands, a bustling Bring & Buy, and enough space for some really huge demonstration games.

Here are some pictures from the day. The first is the main competition area, the others are all of the superb demonstration games on show. Some lovely, inspiring work!

Sci-Fi AAR: Starship Troopers

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Friend Neil and I finally managed to get together for a wargame: with Neil bringing a 6mm Starship Troopers game to the party.

This was immense fun as I took command of three platoons of Mobile Infantry and tried to complete various missions in the face of extreme Bug attack!

My tactics of hanging back at one end of the table and concentrating fire on the Bugs as they came at me piecemeal worked quite well, but it was the bombers that really made the difference.

Highly recommended as an afternoon’s entertainment, and thanks to Neil for running the game.

CDS AAR: The Battle for Hue

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Here’s a Charlie Don’t Surf AAR from May that I missed on the CDS Facebook Group: Kevin G running two Battle for Hue games at Kublecon:

Gasgans join the Hittites

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Battling Rob’s Siamese at 160 points made me realise that I needed a few more units for my Hittite army.

Not wanting to just get more of the same, I determined to get a couple of units of Khurasan Miniatures’ Gasgans to join them: the Gasgans were highlanders living in the mountains of Northwestern Anatolia at the time of the Hittite kingdom and empire who were both enemies of, and drafted into, the Hittite army.

The deciding factor was the snake priestess pictured on the right: a suitable Hero for my Hittites and available as part of the Gasgan chariot package!

Snake priestess aside, I now have a unit of Gasgan infantry and a unit of Gasgan chariots.

The infantry are nice sculpts. They are a little smaller than the Red Copper prints and the metal of the spears that some of them are carrying is quite thin, so bends very easily if accidentally bashed. They paint up very easily: only four colours of Contrast Paints (flesh, bone, wood, black) with bronze and a colour for the kilt edges to finish.

The chariots are okay sculpts: in that there was quite a lot of roughly finished areas on the chariot body sides.

As a positive, however, the main strut out from the body ends in the head of a snake, making them (if nothing else) very distinctive!

So a distinctive addition to the Hittites, making them all ready for the planned re-match with the Thais!

CDS AAR: River Assault Scenario

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Here are some fantastic pictures from Kevin G. taken from the Charlie Don’t Surf Facebook group featuring an assault from a brown river force in Vietnam:

TFL Painting Challenge: First November Update

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Plenty of entries to log as we move into November and the penultimate month of this year’s challenge.

First up we have Stumpy with some more basing completed: Huns, Cossack-types and some big monsters!

Mr Helliwell has been as prolific as usual: a mix of 15mm and 28mm figures, including some unusual figures from Athena:

Mark Luther has been busy building some 6mm terrain pieces:

Sapper is still painting 28mm Napoleonics: here are two Reinbund Infantry units.

Carole is painting Roman Auxilia:

Finally, last but by no means least, Mervyn has been painting epic Pike and Shotte figures:

That’s all for this update, but there’s still plenty of time to get your entries in before the New Year deadline. Keep ‘ em coming!

TTS AAR: Double Debut - Hittites vs Siamese

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Regular visitors to the site will know that I have been building a 15mm Hittite army using Red Copper scultpts printed by Baueda. At the same time as I have been doing that, friend Rob has been building a 15mm Siamese (Thai) army using Khurasan figures (Rob reports that these are excellent, but that the spears are a bit flimsy and easily bend out of shape).

With both armies now 90% finished, it was time to get them onto the tabletop. Two newly-painted armies each making their debut? Given popular superstition, what could possibly go wrong!

As we both wanted to get as many of our figures onto the table as possible, we would play the game large at 160 points per side. This meant that I had to proxy in some Assyrians and Sumerians to face Rob’s Thai hordes!

The Siamese army could have been designed to fight Hittites. Elephants would disrupt my main chariot strike force, with their supporting spearmen proving equally tricky to beat when defending. Fortunately I won the scouting (thank you to the ally-Syrian light chariots, only varnished that morning!) so would be able see some of Rob’s units deploy before I had to set up myself.

Historically, Hittites fought with their chariots in front, infantry behind, but (given the above) that wouldn’t work here. I therefore determined to deploy in what I would call a more traditional manner atypical to the Hittites: infantry in the centre, chariots on the wings.

With Rob deploying all his cavalry on his right flank, a plan began to form: send one brigade of chariots forward to crush his cavalry (my lances should give me the advantage); then use the centre infantry and right chariots to pin the rest of his line whilst the ally-Syrians looped around the Thai far-left flank using their bows to take out the elephants there without actually making contact. Genius!

As the battle began, both sides advanced forward smartly, although the Siamese were plagued by a couple of Aces in their initial group moves. Here’s a picture of the action just before we closed. Hopefully you can see that my plan is beginning to get underway!

The battle then divided into three parts: the left, the centre and the right.

On the right hand side of the field, the ally-Syrian light chariots and half my heavy chariots tried to keep his elephants and infantry occupied without actually closing to what would surely be an unfortunate combat.

This they largely achieved: the lights evading away from pachyderm charges, even sometimes being knocked temporarily off table; the heavies by dint of refusing to charge and even edging backwards as the nellies came forward. I was happy to be charged by spearmen, but wouldn’t initiate any charges into a set line of men carrying nasty, pointy sticks!

In the centre, things did not go so well. Hordes of enemy spearmen, with archers behind, came forward and routed my line infantry. By the final stages of the battle, only one unit of line infantry remained standing, and I was forced to re-deploy some of the heavy chariots as a reserve.

I was a bit surprised that the victorious Siamese infantry didn’t rush forward in an attempt to sack my two camps, defended only by some petty scummy light troops, but Rob said afterwards that he felt at that stage that the infantry needed to turn back and help out the flanks.

Whatever he chose to do, it was very unnerving to see six enemy units (half spearmen, half bow) with nothing in front of them except my regret that my infantry hadn’t stopped them!

Which meant that the battle would, as planned, need to be won on my left.

There, my chariots charged the Siamese cavalry as soon as they could, with fairly disappointing results. Rather than smash them from the field, the chariots got locked into a bitter combat in which neither side had the advantage.

This meant I had to divert the archers and Royal Guard from the centre onto this wing - part of the reason why the centre collapsed! The bowmen moved up to support the chariot runners who had engaged the enemy elephants, keeping them from interfering with the chariots vs cavalry combat. The Royal Guard also charged the elephants, promptly becoming disordered!

Fortunately my overall commander was on hand to rally them, as I was going to need them as although one unit of chariots had broken through, they had become disordered in the process, and another unit of enemy horse was moving up to engage them. My other chariots were still locked into a mutually-disordering combat with the cavalry.

I needed something special to swing things my way and, with Lady Luck supporting me for a change, the Royal Guard showed what they could do.

The enemy elephants were disposed of and then the Guard turned left and rolled up not one but both cavalry units: in the picture below you can see that their last two activation cards were a couple of 10’s. In effect, in one activation, they had dealt with the elephants and two units of Siamese horse: definitely a battle honour coming their way!

The Siamese weren’t broken yet though, and their centre was swinging round towards my left flank.

The Royal Guard neatly reversed direction and headed back into the fray. I even had a reserve chariot unit, headed by a General, that could jump in as well.

This was a good thing, particularly as my right was now coming under considerable pressure (the first picture in the gallery, below).

With his centre’s expansion contained, a unti of chariot runners were able to take an enemy camp, and a unit of chariots postion themselves to charge the rear of the main Siamese line.

This, however, proved unnecessary as, again, the Royal Guard charegd forward and smashed a unit of enemy spearmen from the table (they’d been softened up by the archers). That cost the Siamese their last two coins, and the victory was mine.

I had definitely been lucky to survive that one!

Things were looking extremely dicey before the Royal Guard went turbo and mullered three units in one turn. I was also lucky with the cards when I needed my left flank to about face and head into the centre/the enemy’s rear.

A great game, played in excellent spirit, and nice to finally get the Hittites (and the Siamese) onto the table.

FK&P AAR: Ramshackle Road

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Time for the next installment in the Siege of Norchester English Civil War campaign that I am playing through with friend Rob.

The Royalists are currently well alead after a disastrous Laundry Day battle last time. Today, however, I was sure that I could make up that ground as we headed down Ramshackle Road for scenario ten of the twelve.

View from the Royalist side of the table

The game begins with the Royalist raiding party that had been so successful last time, trapped against a river, with large numbers of Parliamentarians coming at them hard.

I knew ( as I had written the scenario!) that it was only a matter of time before the Royalists received reinforcements from Norchester itself, so had determined to overwhelm the small force they started with as soon as I could. My men therefore marched forward smartly, especially the Dutch-style horse on my right who had a clear path to loop around the enemy flank.

The arrival of the Royalist reinforcements would be determined by me pulling as certain number of Aces from the pack during my turn. Those who have played either TTS or FK&P against me will know that I currently seem to be unable to pull anything else, so it was no surprise when hoardes of Cavaliers suddenly appeared on my left, right on top of me, before I’d had a chance to get very far down the table!

wHAT? aLREADY?

There was nothing for it but to turn my left hand units to face the threat, and to try and win the game on the right.

turning my left to face the royalist horse

Cannily, however, Rob advanced his right forwards as well, trapping my cavalry into the corner of the hedgerows, attacked from front and flank. At the same time, some of his cavalry slid sideways in an attempt to get around behind my line

Back on the right flank, my infantry marched forward and engaged, seeking to pin the Royalists in place while my cavalry attacked their flank. Unfortunately, it took ages for the cavalry to get into position, giving Rob time to not only break one of my infantry battalia, but also to bring in reinforcements from his right.

My cavalry did, however, eventually manage to charge, looking to roll up the Royalist right flank…but although the Forlorn Hope was easily swept from the field, the pursuit that resulted temporarily blocked the rest of my horse charging home. Worse, when they did manage to eventually get in, the Royalist infantry proved to be tough hombres and shrugged off not one but two flank charges undamaged!

Things were going equally badly on my left: the Royalist cavalry seeking to get behind my line had done just that, riding over the two Roundhead infantry battalia sent to stop them.

Although in the centre, one squadron of Dutch horse was gradually wearing down (and would eventually rout) one battalia of Royalist infantry, the rest of my troops were now in danger of being overwhelmed!

The Parliamentarians had by now lost too many units to have much of a chance of winning and, before long, the loss of a battalia of Borders Sappers proved to be the final straw and the entire army broke and fled! Another huge defeat.

Here’s a pic (on the right) of the final moment with (on the left) pic of my cavalry from a bit before, surely about to charge down some Royalist infantry and go on to single-handedly win the game: this last just to console me and remind me of what might have been!

So another big loss for the Roundheads, which leaves me with quite a mountain to climb in the last two scenarios of the campaign!

Last of the Red Copper Hittites

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As the Hittites were due to make their debut on the battlefield this weekend just gone, last week was spent frantically painting the last of them.

First up was a final chariot base:

I’ve tried to make all the heavy, three-man chariots a different colour and, actually, the grey one on the right came out quite well.

Next up are the slingers: two units of light infantry. These are amazing sculpts: both realistic and dynamic in equal measure. I just love the poses: look at the chap squatting on his haunches looking for possible targets, and all the different varieties of figures actually discharging their slings. Fantastic.

I’ve also sneaked a single ally-Syrian archer onto the left-hand picture, above. A bit of variety and a lesson in always making sure you order enough figures!

Keeping to a Syrian theme, here are three ally-Syrian light chariots. These are once again fantastic sculpts that are really full of life and movement. I decided to paint them in a way that contrasted with the brightly coloured Hittite chariots, so these use all the same colour bay/brown horses and a combination of dark browns and yellows for the chariot bodies.

So that’s the Red Copper Hittites done, although I am going to add some Gashkan (Anatolian mountain men) allies with figures bought from Khurasan.