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!

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!