To The Smallest: Game Two: Khurasanians vs Early Muslims

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Well would you Adam and Eve it: my second game at this year’s To The Smallest tournament was a refight of my Friday evening warm-up game against friend Richard’s Early Muslims.

That game had been fought on the battlefield of Towton (all the To The Smallest tables represent historical battlefields) a most unsuitable place for both our cavalry armies, so surely this encounter would take place on the proverbial bowling green?

Er, no, even worse: Hastings!

As you’ll see from the picture below, I chose to play on the “hill” side of the table, as I’d always rather fight down a hill than up even if my initial position would be “interesting”. As a key, the hills with the round bush markers on them are steep, the others are gentle…which meant that the only way for me to deploy was cavalry-infantry-cavalry-infantry, with the infantry command second from the left taking their positions on the crags!

The Muslims had massed their cavalry on their right and,a s the game began, sent them forward in a massive wave determined to use sheer weight of numbers to bounce me backwards.

The two sides’ cavalry came together with a mighty and somewhat inconclusive crash. Looking at the pictures, it looks as if I managed to get more disorders on this first charge than Richard did, but that was mainly, I think, because those troops who were not receiving the frontal assault could pour bowfire into the flanks of the advancing Jund cavalry and their following infantry.

I’d also seen a bit of an opportunity on the right flank, where two of my light infantry archer units snuck forward to threaten (if light infantry can properly threaten) the enemy left.

Although they only achieved one kill (a unit of enemy lights) what they did manage to do was to keep four coins-worth (as opposed to their two coins-worth) of enemy infantry occupied for the rest of the game: a sound investment if I say so myself!

Back to the main action, where although I couldn’t break the Jund cavalry on the left, I was able to hold, pour bowfire into and then burst through the Muslim centre: the combination of veteran Ghilman lancers supported by solid, spear-armed Arab infantry (some with extra bows) proving very effective at keeping the enemy at bay and then counter-attacking.

I don’t usually play so defensively, but a starting position on Senlac hill lends itself to that strategy!

Richard had been steadily losing coins as his troops crashed against my defensive line, and the end came quickly: in fact, just as soon as my Ghilmen on the left got their act together and finally routed the disordered enemy cavalry in front of them for an excellent 154-21 point victory.

So two battles and two decent wins, but it was Steve’s Mongols up next…not a fight I was looking forward to!

To The Smallest: Game One: Khurasanians vs Nikephorian Byzantines

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My first game proper at this year’s To The Smallest (15mm) tournament was against friend Geoff’s formidable Nikephorian Byzantines.

I lost the scouting and Geoff took full advantage: superbly deploying so that one third of my army was out on the left fighting “thin air”, my only consolation being that I had managed to stack all my veteran cavalry on the right facing off against the mass of Byzantine horse.

I could then only watch as Geoff took full advantage of the situation, sweeping a cavalry unit past the end of my line looking to curl it back in to take my troops in the rear.

This was not good but, fortunately, the initial clashes of the main line went very much my way: two units of his horsemen, including the veteran cataphracts, being disordered whilst mine remained unscathed.

Unfortunately for Geoff, that was to set the pattern for the battle as a whole: although I couldn’t hit anything with my bows (literally nothing all game!) it seemed my troops couldn’t miss in melee, carving through Byzantines like they were made of butter!

Back to the action. My right flank was still technically in all sorts of trouble, but Geoff was unwilling to risk his disordered unit there in another round of combat, so moved it past my main line and out of harm’s way.

Unfortunately for him, this then left my lancers on the far right free to about face and engage the Byzantine outflanking force, pulling the situation back from the brink.

The next crisis to deal with was also on the right flank, where more Byzantine horse (there was a lot of it!) had got into a position to charge the flank of my other lancers - the ones who had disordered the cataphracts - and it required a bit of fancy footwork (moving the lights then retreating the lancers) to get out of that one.

My other lancers had by now finished off the Byzantine cavalry that had been trying to outflank my line - as I said, I seemingly couldn’t miss in melee - and were now heading back into the centre to help.

Meanwhile, my Arab infantry had been unsuccessfully trying to get into the action. A somewhat amusing two-step developed, where the Byzantine foot would step to their left (i.e. moving towards their cavalry) followed by my infantry stepping to their right to conform, all the while trying to get into bow range. Finally I decided that enough was enough and just turned some of them to the right and marched them towards the action.

My infantry with bows (the lights and the ones in black) eventually got into range but, as previously mentioned, there was something wrong with their arrows and they couldn’t hit a thing!

Back to the centre, where the cavalry that had dealt with the outflanking force now arrived in the rear of the Byzantine horse that had threatened the flank of my more centrally placed lancers.

These crashed into the back of the enemy, knocking them and their general off the table for Geoff’s last four coins and victory was mine.

I felt very sorry for Geoff: his deployment and initial moves had been flawless and totally put me on the back foot, and it was only the fighting ability (luck with the cards in melee!) of the veteran Khurasanian lancers that saved the day.

My infantry did nothing except keep the Byzantine foot occupied (although there was a cheeky little sideshow of one of my light archer units going off on its own to “threaten” the flank of the enemy infantry) and I counted myself very fortunate to have achieved a 154-43 points victory.

Next up: it’s Richard and his Early Muslims again!

To The Smallest: The Warm Up Game (Khurasanians vs Early Muslim)

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Off to Cardiff for the annual To The Strongest 15mm tournament, To The Smallest.

I arrived at the venue, the excellent Firestorm Games, already exhausted: I can usually do Cardiff in about 2½ hours, but the journey this time took me a good 4½ hours. I shot through until I reached the M5 interchange and then did the next 40 miles at 15mph. No accidents, no roadworks: just sheer weight of traffic. It was apparently bad all day: although I left home at about 1.30pm, someone else had left near me at 10.30am and someone else at 3pm and it was just as awful. Remind me never to travel to Wales on the first Friday of the school holidays!

One consolation was that quite a few people had arrived before me, and I was greeted by a wonderfully warm welcome. The TTS competition crowd really are a lovely bunch, and it was great to catch up with everyone. Better still, Firestorm has an excellent café, and a restorative combination of coffee, ice cream and cake left me feeling ready to tackle a warm-up game ahead of the main event the following day.

My opponents were friend Richard’s Early Muslim army: very similar to the Khurasanians I was fielding, the only real difference being that my heavy cavalry carried lance and bow rather than just lance.

There was one table already set-up and available, so we used that even though it was a representation of the battlefield for Towton (29 March 1461: the largest and bloodiest battle of the Wars of the Roses, ending in a decisive Yorkist victory that secured the English throne for Edward IV over the Lancastrian forces of Henry VI - all the games at To The Smallest are played on representations of historical battlefields) which suited neither of us as no-one had enough light troops to risk a trip over Cock Beck on one side of the table. That meant we both had to squeeze our armies into two thirds of the usual available space, which didn’t leave a lot of room for manouevring!

Richard also made the fatal mistake of letting me choose which side of the table to fight on, which meant he spent the whole game with the sun firmly in his eyes (even when the staff put down the shutters) and, in consequence, had to dress like Felix Leiter!

Apologies for the quality of the photographs: it was a very sunny day!

As the Muslims had more cavalry than I did, I stacked all my horsemen on the right in order to get as much parity as possible, and then got hit by the This Way Effendi stratagem which sent my furthermost Ghilman veterans almost off the table!

Fortunately I was able to recover the situation quickly, getting my horsemen back into a line of battle before a bit of luck with the cards enabled me to get the first charge advantage as the two mounted forces came within range. My Ghilmen thundered down the hill on the left, sweeping one enemy cavalry unit clean off the table and leaving another disordered, all for the cost of taking just a single disorder marker themselves.

I was, however, still outnumbered 5:4 in terms of heavy horse, and the enemy Jund cavalry struck back quickly, sending one of my units flying from the field. It was now 5:3.

This action on the right would continue for the rest of the game: the only thing saving my cavalry from being overwhelmed was the narrowness of the available space and my Turkomen horse archers, who both kept the enemy light horse at bay and distracted their heavies.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, I had decided to essay an outflanking manoeuvre with some of my infantry, but this was easily countered by some Muslim skirmishers firing from the cover of the trees, and my men were forced to retreat.

That left a big infantry on infantry battle in the centre of the field, and both sides marched into bow range and let fly. Fortunately my Khurasanians got the best of the initial volley and resultant melees, aided by more Turkoman horse archers and a couple of unfortunate (for Richard!) Aces.

Both sides were now down to their last coins, and it was very much a ‘sudden death’ situation. The battle could therefore have gone either way but, as luck would have it, the cards fell for the Khurasanians with a Muslim mounted unit routed by a cavalry charge and the day was mine…just!

How close was the game? I had one coin left myself, so won 14-13 for the very narrowest of victories! A great game fought in the very best of good humour on both sides, and a great way to warm-up for the next day’s tournament proper.

IABSM AT Hurricon 2026

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John Paul Hancock recently ran his Seelow Heights scenario at Hurricon 2026 using I Ain’t Been Shot Mum. Thankfully it went better than the playtests at home: having more players and ones with different tactics, made for an exciting game.

Click on the picture below to read/see all…

TTS AAR: Akkadian Empire versus Sassanid Persians

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I wanted to give Si’s Sassanids a run at an infantry-based army, so broke out the Akkadians: two units of Royal Guard, six units of spearmen with pavises and a command of veteran battle-cars.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the Akkadians lost the scouting, so deployed in a long line in the centre of the battlefield, the only outliers being the battle-carts, who were massed on my right flank and used the Take the High Ground strategy to push further towards the Persians.

My plan was simple: hold the left flank against an expected Sassanid outflanking manouevre; advance the centre in order to temp the Persians into charging my spearmen whilst soaking up their bowfire with my pavises; slam the battle-carts forward to crush and then turn the enemy left flank.

As anticipated, the Persians swept past my left flank and then turned and curled back into the centre. All that stood between them and the rear of my main battle line was a single unit of Spearmen, who quickly formed Orbis (marked on the tabletop by the hedgehog that it ressembles) and would hold out against a storm of arrows and the occasional charge for the rest of the game.

Meanwhile, on the right flank, the battle-cars were involved in a bitter war of attrition with the Persian cavalry facing them. In the end, two of three battle-carts would survive the melee and turn in towards the Sassanid centre.

As that was happening. the Royal Guard stepped forward in the centre of the field and proceeded to demonstrate how unwise it is to rely on chocolate-box soldiers as they (a) couldn’t hit the proverbial barn door with their bows and (b) weren’t sure which way up to hold their spears. On top of that, the officer of the infantry command on their right was quickly shot down by Persian arrows and things started looking a bit grim!

Back to the right where the battle-carts had finally swung in to take the Persians in the flank, but unfortunately their lack of manouevrability meant that they just couldn’t get into contact as they needed to.

The Akkadians then had a brief moment of success when a unit of Elamite light archers charged and killed a squadron of Persian heavy cavalry by charging it from the flank, pulling two 10’s to do so.

This was then countered by the loss of the Royal Guard’s officer - shot down by Persian bowfire - and I found myself, without quite knowing how, down to my last few coins. Looking at it with hindsight, I had lost two officers (four coins), one of the battle-carts (two coins), one infantry unit (also to bowfire, two coins), and a couple of coins to either losing lights or rallying. No matter, I thought, the Persians are only slightly better off: if I can last the rest of this turn then I can use the battle-carts’ flanking position to finish them off.

Unfortunately, this was not to be!

Realising that their position was as fragile as mine, the Persians threw everything into one final attack. A Sassanid cavalry unit charged the Akkadian Royal Guard who had just lost their officer (the unit with the face down playing card behind it in the photo above) and ran right over them despite the Guard’s veteran status. This loss caused the light archers in the square behind them to flee the table and I was suddenly down three coins and the game!

So a narrow loss for the Akkadians, mainly down to the poor performance of the Royal Guard and less so to the unmanouevrability of the battle-carts. One of those games that are so close that all the “if only’s” haunt you…well, at least until the next battle!

TTS AAR: Early Muslims versus Sassanid Persians

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This was (yet) another practice game for To The Smallest, this time featuring my Early Muslims against Si’s Sassanid Persians.

As battle opened, both sides advanced towards the other: the Muslims charging forward rapidly, the Sassanids more cautiously.

On the Sassanid left there was a patch of impassable terrain bordered by a wood, right next to the Persian camp. It looked like the perfect opportunity to take a chance, so I decided it was worth risking a coin's worth of Light Cavalry to see if I could sneak them through the rough ground and cause some mischief.

As it turned out, it worked even better than I'd hoped. The light horse managed to get behind the left-hand end of the Persian line. The camp itself looked a bit too tough a nut to crack—a fortified camp on a hill defended by light bowmen—so instead I wheeled them round and sent them charging into the rear of the Persian cavalry.

That opened the door nicely. I brought up some of the Jund cavalry to pile into the melee and, before long, a couple of enemy units had routed.

The troops in the camp did then make life awkward for my cavalry, but by that stage the Sassanid battle plan was in tatters. What had started as a speculative gamble with a single light cavalry unit had ended up somewhat disrupting their left flank.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the battlefield, the two sides had advanced towards each other, with the Muslims being much more aggressive following their success on the right.

Up in the top left hand corner of the battlefield, the two cavalry forces came together with a crash, with honours even the result.

The key difference was that after the initial clash, the Muslim cavalry were in a better position to turn and charge the rest of the Persian line, and although this attack from the flank didn’t achieve a great deal in terms of casualties, it did stop the more mobile Sassanid horse running rings around my infantry in the centre.

This was a good thing, and meant that the Muslims could bring their foot forward and force the Sassanids to charge straight onto their spears rather than having to sit there and wait to either be killed by archery or overwhelmed from the flanks.

The battle had now broken up into a whirling series of individual melees with units turning this way and that and charging anything they could see. As an example, although my attack on the right near the enemy camp had petered out (some skilful manoeuvring from Si to get out of that one!), one of my Jund horse units retiring disordered from that went almost straight into action against the flank of an enemy cavalry unit who, in turn, were threatening the flank of one of my infantry units who, in turn, were in a position to flank charge other Persian horse!

A combat of such intensity couldn’t last: someone had to give and, as luck would have it, it was the Sassanids who collapsed first, one of their cavalry units eventually failing to evade some Berber Spearmen and giving me the last two coins I needed for the win.

A hard-fought, narrow victory for the Muslims, and a great game of To The Strongest.

6DW AAR: Breakthrough at Khan Yunis Crossroads

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A chance to get some of my Arab-Israeli toys onto the table as friend John and I fight an encounter from the 1967 Six Day War.

Click on the picture below to see all:

TTS AAR: Han Chinese versus Spartan

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Another opportunity to get the Han Chinese onto the table—this time without any proxies (aside from the delightfully anachronistic Boxers standing in for the Tribal Infantry). They faced what promised to be a stern test: a formidable Hoplite Greek army led by a contingent of veteran Spartans.

We deployed opposite one another, but before the first moves were made, friend Steve revealed he'd drawn the Take the High Ground stratagem. He advanced his Spartiates command another two boxes closer to my battle line and suddenly Leonidas and chums were right on top of me, and it looked as though this was going to be a very short—and extremely brutal—battle.

Steve’s plan soon became obvious: hit me hard on my right with the Spartans whilst the rest of his line protected their flanks by advancing in echelon, with the added bonus that the echelon formation would keep his men mostly out of range of my crossbows until the Spartans had finished their initial attack.

My plan, on the other hand, had been to attack his raw troops on my right flank (the ones with a yellow meeple on them in the pictures) and then to shoot crossbows at the rest of the Greeks until they’d had enough, but that had now been superseded by the situation (no plan survives first contact with the Spartans) and I’d now need to think of some other way of stopping the Lacedaemonian space invaders!

I had an overlap on the left, so decided to try and exploit that by getting around the enemy line there, and otherwise to hold the Spartiates with the Tribal Infantry (with three hits, it might take them long enough to be killed for my curl-around to happen) and otherwise to target all his single hit units - lights and a couple of “small” units of Hoplites - on the grounds that he had a lot of them and killing enough of them woudl therefore cost him a major number of coins.

One unit of Tribal Infantry therefore charged diagonally across the unit next to them and managed to kill the small unit of Hoplites at the front of the Spartan spearhead.

My lance-armed cavalry also charged forward diagonally, along with some spearmen and some very confused fighting and manoeuvring broke out.

Initially, the Spartiates and a Hoplite unit tried to take advantage of the supposed lack of manoeuvrability of my Tribal Infantry, who promptly confounded all expectations and danced forward and diagonally to threaten an attack on the unshielded side of the Hoplites. The other Tribal Infantry unit fell back disordered at the same time as my successful cavalry followed up forward, and eventually the situation ended up as shown in the final picture in the gallery below, with my cavalry heading off God knows where and the right hand units of my main infantry line coming in on the Spartiate right flank.

How were they able to do this, I hear you ask: well, my extra numbers on my left, facing Steve’s refused flank, had proved very successful in containing the Greeks, meaning that my infantry in the centre had been free to shoot down the enemy in front of them with their crossbows. This meant that my infantry in the centre were then free to execute a smart right turn and, as we saw above, threaten the flanks of the Spartiate command.

Inceidentally, the coffee stirrers in the pictures below delineate the two separate infantry brigades.

Meanwhile, my attempts to kill the raw command on the Spartiate left had failed miserably but, if you look at the picture below, you’ll see that the enemy troops in the raw command haven’t got anyone to fight, so are effectively wasting space, and although the Tribal Infantry are under some pressure from the Spartans themselves, they and the raw command are almost all the Greeks have left whereas my army is scattered but largely intact.

The end was nigh for the Greeks, and their final coin was lost when some of my crossbowmen, again coming in from the left, opened fire and shot down the Spartans’ mercenary Cretan archers.

I must confess that I’m still not sure quite how I won the game, but I think it boils down to me keeping the elite Spartiates occupied with the Tribal infantry whilst the rest of my army dealt with the rest of the Greeks. Oh, and keeping the raw command of Hoplites occupied by threatening them with a single Chinese heavy chariot (now deceased).

Lots of lessons learnt: which was a good thing as the To The Smallest tournament itself was approaching fast.

IABSM AAR: The Gates of Berlin

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Here’s another quick battle report from John Paul Hancock: a second playtest of the scenario he’s running at HMGS South Hurricon 2026.

Click on the picture below to see all:

TTS AAR: Han Chinese versus Siamese (Thai)

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I was keen to get my Han Chinese back onto the table, so when Rob had time for another game after his Siamese had thrashed my Khurasanians, we decided to see how they would fare against the Han.

I was keen to keep my meagre cavalry command away from the enemy elephants, so deployed them on the other side of the stream on the left hand side of the table. This was all well and good, but the Thai’s also deployed their horsemen there, meaning that four formed units of Thai horse now faced of against my two formed and two light Han units, meaning that I was out-matched melee-strength-wise even if three of my units had bow or crossbows.

I was therefore very pleased when the Thai cavalry failed to activate in turn one, meaning that I now had a chance of getting my main battle-line into position where I could use the low hill in the centre of the field. I was less keen on having my less-manoeuvrable tribal infantry in a secondary battle-line, but that was better than having them facing ‘thin air’ on the right flank.

Unfortunately, Rob’s cavalry would then prove very nimble (the rest at the start of the game obviously did them good!) and would come forward and beat my horsemen back: my only consolation was that Rob had more points tied up on the other side of the stream even if it looked as if I might end up losing all of mine!

Meanwhile, the rest of the Thai army was coming forward fast, undeterred by the ineffective volleys of crossbow bolts heading their way.

The first proper clash occured around the central hill, with my crossbowmen there forced back off the crest in exchange for disordering three Thai javelin units.

If I could convert those disorders into kills, then that would leave a sizable hole in the enemy centre, so I ordered my heavy chariots in the centre (Assyrian proxies!) around the back of the hill and onto the Thai left flank. I was expecting their re-positioning to take some time, but a crazy run of cards had them almost where I wanted them almost immediately.

Meanwhile the main Thai elephant strike force had impacted on the left side of my main battleline, which bowed but did not break, especially when I used the Someone Has Blundered stratagem to sow confusion into advancing Nellies.

I thought I was doing pretty well at this point, but then the Thais facing my troops on the hill surged forward again, killing my general there and sending two infantry units fleeing from the field.

Meanwhile, a good run of cards enabled the Thai cavalry to overwhelm my horsemen at the stream sooner than I had anticipated…and that left me out of coins and handing Rob the victory!

Well that had been a bit of a surprise defeat, my second in a row that day! All credit to Rob for getting his cavalry moving forward fast after their initial lethargy, and for getting his mass of infantry stuck in to my line. As he pointed out afterwards, that was the Thai’s first two wins after a string of five defeats: good for him, and just the sort of reality check I needed in the run up to To The Smallest rather than in it!

TTS AAR: Khurasanians versus Siamese (Thai)

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Time to give the Khurasanians another test, this time against Rob’s Thai army with all its anti-cavalry elephants.

The Khurasanians won the scouting, and set up in a position to sweep down and around the Thai’s left flank. There were a lot of those elephants in the centre of the battlefield, but as just about every Khurasanian carries a bow, I was confident that I could shoot them all down before we got into contact.

As soon as the battle began, I therefore shot forward along the right hand side of the battlefield, hanging back on the left where I was aided by some extreme hesitation by the Thai infantry there.

My Turkomen horse-archers were soon within range, and a volley of arrows towards the lumbering Nellies, but all to no effect.

I had got around the Thai left flank with one command of cavalry, but their infantry there had turned to face my lancers to force a stalemate that I would usually have broken by hitting their other flank from the centre…but unfortunately my horse-archers were still trying to deal with the elephants there, who remained impervious to arrow-fire.

Worse, the rest of the Thai infantry had got moving and, although mostly not very good troops, quantity has its own quality and there were an awful lot of them!

By using the elephants to hold the centre, Rob had now managed to carry out his plan, which was to swing the battlefield around so we were fighting lengthways up and down the table rather than across.

His troops on his right executed a neat 90° turn and suddenly it was me fighting to protect my flanks not him…and his elephants in the centre were still shrugging off arrows like they were made of rubber!

Although my infantry were holding up the flank attack coming in from the left, there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop the Nellies advancing forward. More arrows headed their way: still no kills. Incidentally, after the battle ended, we calculated that the elephants had been shot at 24 times and just kept on advancing like big, grey, wrinkly space invaders, rather than the 3.6 kills (i.e. all of them) probability would suggest would happen.

The elephants got in amongst my heavy cavalry, and suddenly my centre began to collapse! Worse, my left flank also gave way under sheer weight of numbers, and Rob was even able to drop an elephant unit back to help defeat my flanking attack, which rapidly ran out of steam as even more arrows bounced off the Nellies.

Unbelievably, I was still only down six of my fourteen coins: it was the situation on the battlefield not casualties that was the problem.

The end can come very quickly in some games of To The Strongest, and it did so here. Rob took full advantage of his positional superiority and moved in quickly for the kill. Fittingly, it was the elphants that delivered the coup de grace: taking out two units of Ghilman veteran cavalry and their officer for a loss of six coins in one melee.

So a catastrophic 14-0 loss for the Khurasanians that I am firmly blaming on those pooping elephants!

How three one-hit units saving on 6+ can survive so many attempts to cut them down with bowfire I do not know. It was up to Rob to celebrate his victory by providing a fitting image to finish off this battle report…

IABSM AAR: The Seelow Heights

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John Paul Hancock and friends played a Battle of the Seelow Heights scenario that he’s playtesting for a convention.

Click on the picture below to see what happened…

TTS AAR: Khurasanians versus Marian Romans

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More practice for To The Smallest: this time my Khurasanians would take on Si’s Marian Romans

Unsurprisingly, the Khurasanians won the scouting, so I deployed in order to hold the Roman legionaries in the centre of the field whilst my much superior cavalry smashed their hodge podge of Gallic, Roman and Persian cavalry from the field on the right, and swept round to outflank them on the left.

As the battle began, my horsemen swept forward as planned, and soon the game was split into three distinct sectors: the left, the centre and the right.

On the left hand side, my cavalry shot past the Roman right flank and then turned to do battle. Unfortunately, the Marians have very manoeuvrable infantry, and rather than face the rear of the Roman line, they faced some fierce-looking legionaries determined to protect their comrades’ open side.

Si then conducted a textbook demonstration of how to counter cavalry with infantry as, for the rest of the battle, the forces on my left fought each other to a standstill, with neither side gaining the upper hand. My only consolation was that this action tied up half the Roman legionaries (the bits of his army I was afraid of) for half of my cavalry, leaving all my infantry and half my cavalry to deal with half his infantry (the veteran half, unfortunately) and his hodge-podge cavalry.

On the right flank, my cavalry swept forward confident of victory.

This, of course, proved to mean “over-confident of victory” and, for a moment, it looked as if I was going to be beaten back on this flank.

Fortunately my Ghilman lancers proved why I pay so many points for them, and although I was definitely losing this flank, the position at the end of the battle was an 'honours-even draw.

That left the centre to decide things, where five units of veteran Roman legionaries faced six units of Arab spearmen, half of them with extra bows.

Fortunately for me, the initial Roman attack was piecemeal, as some of his infantry had turned to help his cavalry out in their battle on the right flank against my horsemen. This allowed me to pepper his line with arrows, killing two enemy cohorts (one base’s worth) and increasing my advantage from 6:5 to 6:4.

This numerical advantage allowed me to get some of my infantry onto the flank of the Roman line, and from there it was just a matter of time before the legionaries gave way. I was helped by the cards a little bit, especially when the Roman eagle-bearer was killed, and victory was mine with the demise of three of the five veteran legionary units.

Somewhat wierdly, the infantry fight in the centre of the table that would eventually decide the game seemed very much as sideshow, as both Si and I spent most of our time concentrating on the action on the flanks. It took a bit of time for the veteran legionaries to get moving in the centre: something that definitely played out to my foot-archers’ advantage.

A great game of TTS.

IABSM AAR: Bashnya or Bust #5O: Near Sorok

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John Paul Hancock and friends recently played the finale of their run through of the Bashnya or Bust campaign pack.

The decision tree format has led the two sides to an encounter Near Sorok, where the Soviets ready themselves for one final push…click on the picture below to see all:

TTS AAR: Khurasanians versus Western Han Chinese

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Another practice game for To The Smallest: I would use the Khurasanians I’m using for the competition, John would use my newly painted Han Chinese army, and had even chosen a t-shirt to match their colour scheme!

As the Chinese had no cavalry on their open left, my first move was to send a command of Ghilman cavalry down that side of the table in an attempt to outflank the enemy’s main line. Despite having the right cards and manoeuvring into the perfect position, the attack itself was underwhelming, inflicting only a single disorder. Still, I had turned the Chinese flank and was well placed to build on the position.

On the opposite flank, I had managed to get my other cavalry command tangled up in the woods bordering the stream. Although they outmatched the Chinese in both numbers and quality, the rough terrain kept them tied down for the rest of the battle. The enemy units they eliminated were welcome additions to my coin tally, but the price was that my cavalry never made it back to the centre to influence the decisive fighting there.

Meanwhile, in the centre, John had sent the rest of his infantry, both regular and his tribal levies, forward to try and break my main line.

With some of his troops still having to react to my flank manouevre, I was able to contain the Chinese foot soldiers…but only just, especially after their heavy chariots (Assyrian proxies!) joined in the fun.

But it was back to the flanking attack to finish John off, despite an unfortunate encounter with the Someone has Blundered stratagem, especially as some success in the centre had freed up a couple of infantry units to help.

The coup de grace came from these infantry units: the Chinese camp falling to their advance:

A workmanlike win for the Khurasanians but, more importantly, lessons learnt in preparation for To The Smallest.

IABSM AAR: Hold the Bridge

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Chris Lane and others from the Mid Somerset Wargamers recently played a great game of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum.

They used a fictitious scenario, set in Normandy, whereby a German grenadier company had to hold a bridge for as long as possible (major victory) to allow retreating troops to get across, or blow it (minor victory) to stop the Americans pushing ahead.

Click on the picture, below, to see all:

TTS AAR: First Outing for the Han Chinese

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More practice for the To The Smallest competition: this time my newly painted Han Chinese (so newly painted that I still had a couple of proxies in there: half an Arab camp, an Assyrian four-horse chariot, and some 19th Century Boxers) versus Si’s Sassanid Persians.

As the battle opened, the Sassanids advanced rapidly, particularly on my left flank. I wasn't overly concerned, as I had deployed my infantry two ranks deep in that sector, both to protect my camp and because I simply had too many foot units to fit into a single line. My greater concern was the right flank, where my relatively weak cavalry was positioned. Fortunately for me, the cards worked in my favour, and the Persian forces on that side were slow to press their attack.

Massed mounted bowfire against my left did cause me some initial problems, particularly as Persian lancers then targeted my melee-weak crossbowmen, but the hail of quarrels that I sent back evened things out.

On my right, my mounted crossbowmen were quickly dispatched, but the Sassanid horsemen still hung back a bit, hopefully giving me enough breathing room to break his army elsewhere before they brurst through and curled in towards the flank of my main line.

Up until this point, my attention had been firmly on my flanks, but then disaster struck in the centre!

A “Lost” (via a stratagem) Persian unit of horse archers burst into the rear of my Pagoda camp, costing me three coins immediately, and more Persian lancers got through my first infantry line to threaten the crossbowmen of the second line right in front of my other camp.

Fortunately my infantry on the far left had now managed to beat the Sassanids in front of them, so whilst some of my troops kept pressing forwards, I was able to bring others back to help re-take one camp and help defnd the other.

A fierce battle for the camps developed, and although I eventually managed to shoot the enemy horse archers in the left hand camp down, it was only the heroic defence put up by the crossbowmen in front of the right hand camp that allowed me to stabilise the situation.

There were more Chinese heroics on the right flank, where the horse archers kept a command of Sassanids occupied rather than letting them turn and attack my right flank.

To summarise the situation: the left flank was won, but I had nothing left there that could contribute to the rest of the battle. The right was lost, but the enemy there were tied up pursuing my slowly retreating horse archers. The camps in the centre were retaken/held, but the forces I had there were busy mopping up the last of the Sassanid central attackers. The coin count to date was in my favour, but I only had three or four coins left, so couldn’t really afford to lose more. The only place where I could properly win the game was in the centre, where my command of tribal foot and a single heavy chariot (the Assyrians!) faced more bow-armed Persian lancers.

There was nothing for it but to send the Tribesmen and Chariot forward and see what they could do!

The Sassanid lancers were just as keen to engage. They needed to kill one of my units there to win the game before the rest of my troops killed anything else of theirs elsewhere on the table: something that was quite likely in the areas off to the left and around my camps.

It was an epic clash: thousands of tribal warriors and some heavy chariots charging and being charged by Sassanid lance-armed cavalry. The advantage swayed backwards and forwards but eventually the tribal warriots prevailed (admittedly helped by some regular infantry coming in from the left!) and the last Persian coin was mine!

Victory for the Han Chinese…but there was barely anything left on the table that could celebrate. An epic battle that came right down to the wire!

TTS AAR: Khurasanians versus Sassanid Persians

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With the annual To The Smallest 15mm tournament only a couple of weeks away, it was time to get in some practice games, especially as ‘Smallest uses a 10cm grid rather than the more usual 15cm one, meaning a larger playing area, bigger armies (160 vs 130-140 points) and some specific rule changes.

Sid, the tournament organiser, had already published diagrams of the intended table set ups (each representing a different historical battlefield) so for this game we elected to fight over Beneventum in southern Italy, the last battle of the Pyrrhic War fought between the forces of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus in Greece, and the Romans, led by consul Manius Curius Dentatus (the result was a strategic Roman victory and Pyrrhus was forced to return to Tarentum, and later to Epirus).

I was going to use a Khurasanian army (a mix of two commands of Arabic infantry and two commands of Turkic cavalry) and would, for this first practice game, face Si’s Sassanid Persians.

I didn’t want to risk my cavalry getting entangled in the woods to my left, so controversially deployed (L to R) a command of infantry, a command of cavalry, a command of infantry, and a command of cavalry. All my plans were then promptly kicked into touch as Si played the This Way Effendi strategum on me, meaning my troops on the left were pushed back three boxes leaving a hole at that end of the line!

Initial deployment seen from behind the Persian lines

“Don’t listen to him, with his effendis and all that: the battlefield is this way!”

Fortunately I had won the scouting, so I was able to restablish my line before the Sassanids could take advantage, but the delay meant that I could only watch as the Persian horsemen thundered towards me.

Unfortunately for Si, the luck was really with me and had seriously deserted him for this game: I couldn’t fail an activation, miss with a bow, or flunk a melee hit and the Sassanids couldn’t save a thing.

My initial volley of arrows disordered three of four of his units, and when my Ghilman horsemen followed up, they cut through the enemy like a lance through butter! Things were so good that I even sent my infantry forward on the attack, not something you often see when spearmen face heavy cavalry!

The Persian right flank was forced to withdraw, my lancers burst through the Persian centre, and the Sassanid left was reduced to a couple of units of horse archers trying to hold up the Khurasanian high tide!

The climax came quickly: all the holes in the Sassanid line meant that my light Turkoman light cavalry could find the flanks of the heavier Persian horse, and it was soon all over for an emphatic 14-0 victory for the Khurasanians.

Much as I would love to chalk this up to my brilliant strategy and tactics, it was one of those games where everything went my way. On to the next one…

TTS AAR: Alexander vs Darius (again)

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Neil and I had already played Alexander’s Macedonians versus Darius’ Persians twice, with honours even, so a final, decider was warranted.

It wouldn’t be an exact replay, as we didn’t have quite as much table as usual to play with, so we removed a command from each side meaning that we’d play through with about 200 points per list rather than our previous 240.

The MaccyD’s lost the deployment so set up as traditional dictated: heavy infantry in the centre, cavalry on the wings. I was very worried about my left flank where four units of generally poor quality cavalry faced six units of decent Persian horsemen, so what I needed was for Alex to punch through quickly on the other win whilst the pikemen advanced in the centre. Annoyingly, Neil picked the This Way Effendi strategy chit and used it to push the left hand infantry command back a square: something that would have huge significance later in the game.

As battle commenced, I pushed forward across the line except for the left hand cavalry command which largely sat and waited for the Persians to come to them. You can see in the picture below how the left hand infantry command is still one square behind their colleagues on the right.

The first action was on the right flank, where Alexander and his Companions looked set to crash into the Persian cavalry led by Darius. Annoyingly, the Companions were disordered by bow fire on their final approach, so rather than dashing all before them, the combat degenerated into a grinding stalemate with neither side able to get an advantage.

I sought to break the deadlock by having one of my right-hand pike units attack some Persian cavalry on the diagonal, which sort-of worked, but combined with another pike block being disordered by missile fire and stubbornly refusing to rally, I now had my two most powerful commands distracted from the main task of punching through to the enemy camp and the six coins it represented. I can’t even blame the heat for this tactical lapse (we were gaming during one of the recent record-breaking heatwaves) as Neil’s wargaming shed was delightfully air-conditioned!

Meanwhile the Persian cavalry on the other wing had managed to get their act together (Neil did draw a lot of Aces for activation throughout the battle) and come forward.

The Macedonian non-elites facing them put up a very brave fight, but six decent versus four poor is a fairly foregone conclusion, and things were soon looking very bloody for my horsemen: the only good thing being that Neil seemed to want to finish them all off rather than heading into the centre to threaten the flanks of the infantry there.

I now rather belatedly woke up to the fact that as my flanks were both crumbling, I really needed my heavy infantry to stop messing around and get forward and get stuck in, especially as I had been well ahead on coins through clearing off a load of Persian lights but was now, with the collapse of my cavalry commands, just about back to parity.

This is where the significance of that This Way Effendi strategem comes into play. With my right hand infantry command still trying to re-orientate the axis of its attack back onto the enemy camp, I needed my left hand infantry command to quickly wipe out the Persian mobs and lesser troops in front of them: not a problem provided you are far enough up the table to get at them!

In short, Neil was now holding the troops facing my left hand infantry command back and retreating those now facing my right hand infantry command, meaning that although my pikemen would win every melee they fought, they just couldn’t fight enough of them to deal the Persians a mortal blow…and I was rapidly running out of coins as my two cavalry commands crumbled!

It was now the climax of the battle. From the vast number of victory coins we had started with, we both both down to our final few. Alexander had been forced off the table as the Companions he commanded were routed and, under the new Even Stronger amends, he was too far from any other Macedonian unit to transfer, but all I needed to do was to take out one more Persian unit or take the Persian camp to win, and the initiative was mine.

Could I do it?

No, I couldn’t, and could only watch as Neil finally managed to kill the last unit in my left hand cavalry command (which had been hanging on for dear life) and take my last four coins. Victory for the Persians!

So why did the Macedonians lose despite their initial success in clearing away all the Persian light?

Partly due to Alexander’s strong cavalry command having a very bad day, but mostly because I failed to get my heavy infantry stuck in early enough for them to win the day…and that was partly because I allowed myself to take my eyes off the main prize and partly due to Neil’s use of This Way Effendi at the start of the game and then his retreats in the centre as I pushed fowards in the battle’s final moments.

An excellent game of TTS!

IABSM AAR: Bashnya or Bust #4H: Devnat

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John Paul Hancock and friends present another battle report from the Bashnya or Bust campaign pack. They are on the fourth battle of the campaign: #4H Devnat.

So far the Germans have had it all their own way, with their few Tigers proving unstoppable, but now it’s time for the Soviets to have some fun! Click on the picture below to see all…