Our third game in this year’s Two the Strongest doubles tournament was against Tim and Matt playing HYW French and Burgundians respectively.

This was going to be a tricky one to navigate, as I faced off against Tim’s French with their veteran Later Knights, who were saving on a 4+ in melee combat: the only good thing being that there weren’t a lot of them!

On my side of the field, both armies advanced rapidly towards each other: there was to be no shilly-shallying around in this battle!

As things got into ‘interesting’ range, Tim unfortunastely drew an Ace on his first activation, which neatly gave the initiative to me.just as the initial clash was about to occur.

This meant that my Knights would draw first in the resultant combat and, with a good slice of luck on my part, two of Tim’s elite horsement were first disordered then knocked from the table!

This early success meant that I could afford to send some of my troops to help Peter against the Burgundians on the other side of the table, where he was doing his usual “I’m only a poor little speed bump…oh, golly, have I just beaten the opposition before Rob gets here?” magic against Matt.

I didn’t have it all my own way (one never does against Tim), and had a tricky time actually finishing off the Fremch.

One unit, the one at the back in the photo below, withstood several turns of frontal and flank attacks and IIRC was still fighting on as the rest of the French army gave way.

Another, the one in the middle in the picture below, advanced forward and pinned my rallying Kinghts against the table’s edge next to my camp. Luckily I had rallied before they arrived.

Despite these late flourishes, however, my troops managed to win the day which, along with Peter’s success against the Burgundians, meant that we took the game 38-7.

With three big wins under our collective belt, that also meant that we won the tournament overall, retaining our title from last year.

It had been an excellent day’s gaming against some great fun players - my thanks to Nat and the London Wargamers for organising - now all we had to do was ship all Peter’s display boards back to the car, all the while congratulating the Arsenal fans on their also richly-deserved win!