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!