Operation Market Larden X

/

It seems extraordinary, but the Operation Market Larden Lardy Day in Evesham has reached its 10th manifestation i.e. leaving aside COVID lockdowns, it’s now ten years old…and I’ve been to every one.

This year’s event was the usual cornucopia of excellently run Lardy games, all played in the very best of Lardy spirits. Unfortunately real life commitments kept me from both the Friday night pre’s and the Saturday night meal, but I very much enjoyed the day itself.

Before I talk about the games I participated in, here’s a quick table-by-table look at what was on offer. All the pics are taken from first thing in the morning, so are devoid of any action, but just look at the set-ups!

In the morning, I played in Sid’s excellent Blood on Fallen Snow scenario for When the Last Sword is Drawn or Banzai Bonkers for short!

I partnered with Gareth, and our task was to secure several treasures at a shrine nominally under protection.

In short, although we succeeded in our mission and slaughtered the enemy, we technically lost the game as our opposition gained more on or honour than we did: something my partner in crime was largely responsible for as every duel he was in consisted of his Dirty Tricks technique verses the honourable conduct of the enemy!

I was so caught up in the action that I neglected to take more than a couple of shots of the game. Here they are:

Superbly created and umpired by Sid, I cannot recommend When the Last Sword is Drawn enough!

I’ll cover my afternoon game in the next post…

TTS World Championships 2024: Game 1: Venetians vs Sengoku Samurai

/

This year’s To The Strongest World Championships was held at Blewberry in Oxfordshire. It was a superbly organised event that all who took part agreed was good fun.

My first opponent was Colin and his Sengoku Samurai: a nasty combination of Samurai types,both mounted and dismounted, with their longbows and naginata two-handed cutting weapons, and Ashigaru Teppo mixture of spearmen, bowmen and musketeers. This was not going to be easy!

Fortunately I won the deployment, and watched as Colin set up his troops crowded on to the left hand side of the battlefield.

This gave me an excellent opportunity (helped by a suitable stratagem card) to get on to his left flank, and that’s exactly what I did:

Unfortunately, however, his corner unit of veteran Samurai proved tough as old boots (or whatever the Japanese equivalent is) and, to make matters worse, my pike block took not one but two surprising hits from missile fire.

Meanwhile, the rest of my troops had got stuck in to the Japanese main line, with my left hand unit of Knights also managing to see off one unit of Samurai horse and threaten the flank of another.

With my troops now fully committed, it was time to turn from Athena to Mars and hope that my troops were up to the task:

As you can see, although the Samurai centra began to give way, the remaining Samurai horse on the left wing proved very resilient despite the cards giving me every opportunity to best them!

Fortunately most of my frontline troops were Later Knights, and quality began to tell. More and more of Colin’s units were either sent fleeing the field or forced to retreat into his camp, and eventually victory was mine.

A good start to the competition with a 13-1 victory.

6th Game of To The Strongest

/

This game was a replay of the last i.e. a clash between two homogeneous Sengoku Samurai forces. You can see the sides in the post from December 12th.

The Battle is about to begin

I deployed half my foot samurai on each of the left and right flanks, with my Ashigaru right-centre and my mounted cavalry left-centre. As before, my plan was to hold the centre and then loop around whichever flank opened up first.

Neil, as last game, deployed quite in depth. He placed his “mobs” on his left; his big Ashigaru command mixed in with his cavalry in the centre; and his main samurai command on his right.

This was a much closer game than last time. On the right, I pushed forward quickly with one Samurai command and an Ashigaru command, leaving the other Ashigaru command in reserve. Over the course of the battle, this wing would hit the enemy line several times , but not quite manage to gain a significant advantage. In fact, towards the end of the battle, I had to commit my reserves to prop up this section of my line or risk being pushed back.

My right wing advances

In the centre/left-centre, my cavalry moved forward and managed to get a positional advantage on the Ashigaru facing them. Again, however, no mater how much I tried, I couldn’t quite get in a blow hard enough to crack Neil’s line and, again, towards the end of the battle, my troops began to look a bit “thin”. Fortunately I had a spare unit of foot Samurai from the left that I could move right in order to cover my camps against enemy breakthrough, so the situation remained at least stable.

My left flank moves forward

On my left flank, I advanced strongly and, again, had mixed success. Although, as above, I couldn’t break through Neil’s line, my command of three foot samurai units managed to kill three of the four foot samurai units in front of them for the loss of only one of their own. This left me with two units, one of which I used to reinforce the centre, the other managing to manoeuvre around a rocky outcrop and get behind the enemy line.

At this point, both sides were down to around four to six Victory Coins, and each side had three to four units disordered i.e. about to break at a cost of two Victory Coins per unit: so it was definitely turning out to be a very close run thing.

As it happened, in the endgame, the cards fell my way. My unit of foot samurai that had managed to get around the end of Neil’s line had a series of activations that allowed them to take one of his camps, and one of my reserve Ashigaru Teppo units, firing for the first time, blew a unit of disordered mounted samurai away. With that, Neil’s Victory Coins were all gone, and he was forced to retreat. The day was mine!

Analysis

Another cracking game of To The Strongest. Again, the maxims of trying to break your opponents line and making sure you have a reserve held true, with flank charges and taking camps being very successful routes to victory.

Back to painting the 15mm Ancients now: loving the Samurai armies, but they are very small!

5th Game of To The Strongest

/

Wargaming buddy Neil told me that he had a couple of large 10mm Samurai armies in his attic somewhere. They were based for Warmaster Ancients but, with a bit of jiggery-pokery, translated nicely into two Sengoku Samurai armies for To The Strongest.

The sides, largely homogeneous, were as follows:

The Soft-top Box Samurai

  • Senior General

    • 3 x Mounted Samurai

  • General 1

    • 3 x Foot Samurai

  • General 2

    • 3 x Foot Samurai

  • General 3

    • 2 x Ashigaru Spearmen

    • 2 x Ashigaru Teppo

  • General 4

    • 2 x Ashigaru Spearmen

    • 2 x Ashigaru Teppo

The Hard-top Box Samurai

  • Senior General

    • 4 x Mounted Samurai

  • General 1

    • 6 x Foot Samurai

  • General 2

    • 1 x Foot Samurai

    • 3 x Mobs

  • General 3

    • 4 x Ashigaru Spearmen

    • 3 x Ashigaru Teppo

Mounted Samurai from the Soft-top Box Clan (the red markers are Heroes)

The Game

Neil and I each deployed one command at a time. I was playing the Soft-top Box Clan (i.e. the figures from the box with the soft top!) and deployed my mounted Samurai on my right, opposite Neil’s mounted Samurai; one of my Ashigaru commands in the middle, opposite Neil’s large Ashigaru command; and both units of Foot Samurai on the left, opposite Neil’s mob unit and unit of Foot Samurai. I kept one Ashigaru command in reserve behind my centre.

My plan was to hold the right and centre whilst my superior numbers on the left beat his right, and then swept on into the rest of his line from the flank.

The centre of my line (the teppo are behind pavises)

The left of my line

The key difference between our two set-ups were that, without a reserve, Neil’s line was stacked two deep in places. This would have a significant effect on the forthcoming action, as where he had a numerical advantage, he would have difficulty bringing these superior numbers to bear.

The action began on my right, where my three units of Mounted Samurai faced off against his four units of the same. I took advantage of some rocky terrain and tried to lure him into attacking me, but Neil was too canny to fall into that trap. I therefore bit the bullet and charged forward: his double-stacking meaning that I could fight two-vs-two rather than four-vs-three.

The action on the right unfolds

My initial charge met with mixed success. One unit of his cavalry were destroyed, but one of mine became disordered and was forced to retreat and rally. I renewed my attack, this time supported by a unit of Ashigaru spearmen and, eventually and largely due to the cards very much falling my way, his cavalry crumbled and were removed from the field. This would then leave the way clear for the CinC’s Mounted Samurai to get past his line and capture Neil’s left hand camp.

Meanwhile, on my left, I had pushed my Foot Samurai forward, intending to being superior numbers to bear on that end of Neil’s line. Unfortunately, the Yellow command got a bit tangled in the terrain, and I ended up with one unit destroyed, leaving two more units facing four units of his Foot samurai. This would usually spell disaster, but some how these two units refused to be beaten. Despite being disordered again and again, the brave Yellow Samurai rallied each time and, at the end of the game, were still very much in the battle.

This left me with four Ashigaru units facing Neil’s six Ashigaru units in the centre. Again, however, Neil’s stacked line meant that we each had four units in play and, again, the cards fell in my favour, and I quickly destroyed two of his units. I was then able to bring in my reserve force of four more Ashigaru units, guns fully loaded, and win the resultant eight-vs-four combat. Neil should have been able to support his Ashigaru with his command of peasant Mobs, but the fact that by this time my cavalry had broken through and was threatening his camps meant that he had had to withdraw them in order to defend his baseline.

Ashigaru action in the centre

Once Neil had started haemorrhaging victory coins, it was hard to stop, and eventually he ran out and was forced to retreat. Somehow I had managed to inflict a pretty hefty defeat on him: I had lost only four coins by the end of the game, Neil had lost twenty!

Post-Game Analysis

Although we both agreed that the cards had very much fallen my way, we also agreed that Neil had perhaps stacked his units too deeply to begin with: my rapid advances never giving him the chance to properly deploy. Significantly, I had run into difficulty on my left, where I had also stacked units deep, so it seems as if that is something to avoid.

Although I did seem to win by a lot, it never seemed to me as if I were winning, except right at the end. A good game, made interesting by the homogeneous forces involved.