TTS AAR: Two the Strongest Game Three: Teutonics & Lithuanians vs Burgundians & French HYW

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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!

TTS AAR: Two the Strongest Game Two: Teutonic Knights & Lithuanians vs Macedonians and Thracians

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Our second game at this year’s Two the Strongest doubles tournament was against Alex and Alex’s Macedonians and Thracians. As the right hand side of the table had a huge riverine terrain obstacle on it, I let Peter put his Lithuanians there with the aim that they held off the Thracians until I could beat the Macedonians.

We outscouted again (these Lithuanians do have some uses!) and I had a superb run of cards in my first turn allowing the Teutonics to get around the flank of the Macedonians in front of me.

Macedonian Alex, however, defended superbly against my flank attack, meaning that I couldn’t immediately roll up his line but, as Peter has proved many times in the past, once you get troops behind the enemy line, it’s incredibly difficult to rescue the situation, and Alex soon found himself at risk of losing his entire right flank.

Peter, meanwhile, was holding his own against the advancing Thracians, so I had no need to worry about that side of things and could concentrate on what I was doing.

And what was I doing? Well, by now I had disposed of the Macedonian right wing and could start focussing on the two phalanx in the centre.

The veteran Macedonian cavalry had died hard, however, so a little bit of reorganising was necessary, and there was that pesky unit of Companions out on the far wing, but normal service was soon resumed as I hammered Knights into the flanks of the unfortunate pikemen.

In the last picture, bottom right, you can see Peter’s spare Teutonics heading in from the right of the Macedonian line: he had by now disposed of the Thracians (speed bump, my backside, as they say: the Lithuanian light horse with bow and lance were proving as deadly as my veteran Knights in this tournament) and could send troops across to my side of the field to help finish the Maccy’s off. You can also see in the top left of the picture how I’ve neutralised the “pesky Companions” with a unit of Knights.

The Macedonians weren’t giving up, however: a retreat backwards took their flanks out of immediate danger as all our horse were still wary of charging a phalanx frontally, whether or not the pikemen were disordered.

But by now, despite these heroic attempts, it was only a matter of time before the Macedonians also lost their last coin and game was ours with a 38-8 victory.

Peter’s Report

Deployment and Plan

This was team mate Rob‘s and my second battle which turned out to be very different to the first and needed us to rip up Plan A within the first two turns!

We faced a Lysamachid successor army of pike, deep spears and companion cavalry and an allied Thracian army of wild rhomphai wielding javelin thugs with a light cavalry flank guard.

Plus there was a wide river (the river Larsen) on one far side that Rob wanted to avoid.

So we agreed that Rob would face the Lysamachids. He would use his heavy veteran knights command to take out the enemy Companions command then turn and flank charge the phalanx.

His other Knights command would draw the pike forwards into a position where his first veteran Knights and my command that I donated to Rob could get flank attacks. He would finish off his outnumbered enemies by turn three as per our playbook, and then whack into the flank of the Thracians that I was facing, just before my smaller army was overrun. That was the plan!

I would be the somewhat nervous speed bump facing a solid wall of hairy barbarians who, as javelin men with big choppers (2HCW) , could dash straight through any rough terrain without slowing down or difficult activations.

It Starts…

As agreed in our playbook, I sent my veteran Knights with three supporting light cavalry to Rob’s side of the battlefield to counter the Lysamachid deep spears.

I then deployed a screen of light cav to go forward and harass and slow down the hairies. On my far right I had one command of light cavalry on the far side of the river Larsen - designed to draw enemy to that side of the river - but frustratingly it only attracted one matching command of enemy light cavalry.

Rob’s Teutonics shot down his left flank and turned to threaten a deadly flank attack to the Companions. My donated command distracted the deep spears and opened up a gap for my lights to exploit. But my Teutonics couldn’t risk charging the deep spears frontally. So instead spotted a vulnerable unit of hairies and charged it, whilst my ligth cavalry swarm distracted nearby enemy units to discourage them from worrying my Knights.

Rob was facing gritty Companions on his far left, and his other knights were pinned by the phalanx. My donated command was distracting the enemy deep spear and had opened up a gap ready to be exploited. My knights had disordered a unit of hairIEs but then backed out to avoid the double risk of 2HCW hairy flank attacks.

On my far right, having failed to draw more enemies to waste their time on the far side of the river Larsen, I crossed most of them back over to the main battlefield which drew Alex’s mounted general and bodyguard after them. The single unit I left behind was cunningly protected from being charged by a curve in the river and before long I shot to death Alex’s remaining unit giving me complete freedom on that side of the river. I galloped alongside the river, over the ford and inflicted another flank charge with lance. Three chances to hit! But they were only lights , drew an Ace, Two and a Three and inflicted no damage! Hey ho!

On my side I had pulled most of my far right flank command back over the river drawing Alex's CinC with it and into a vulnerable position with two of my units ready to flank charge with lances and with his evade blocked . On the far side of the Larsen I was about to kill his inferior LC and then gallop up that side of the river, over the ford and into the flank of more hairIEs.

Meanwhile on the main battlefield the Thracian hairy hordes were steadily advancing towards me and threatening to pin me to my table edge. This is normally OK as it’s what speed bumps do, whilst waiting (literally!) for Rob’s cavalry to come over the hill and rescue the day.

…To Go Wrong

However when I looked over to see when Rob would be smashing into the Thracian flanks, I saw that he was stuck facing annoyingly resilient Companions and had Knights stuck in the ZOC of the pike block! No rescue was coming from there ! So it was time for plan B. For me to somehow beat the Thracians and me to then go over and help finish off the Lysamachids!

What Makes Two the Strongest Different To Other Tournament

At this critical stage something happened that I think reflects the whole ethos of TtS Tournaments. In my experience no one wants to win because they know the rules better. They want to win through better tactics and manoeuver and perhaps the odd lucky draw!

So my opponent Alex had galloped his light cavalry general and bodyguard across the river chasing after my “distraction command” but in doing so had exposed his flank - with his evade route blocked by a big unit of hairies.

So I charged into his flank with the first of two lance armed light cavalry. Three cards to hit!

He chose to evade his first unit which could just fit in front of the hairies. But his second unit with his general had no room left and so was due to be wiped out. However, Alex said he did not know that was how the rules worked and if he had done he would not have evaded. So straight away, we all agreed that was unfair to Alex and we went back in time (half a dozen cards drawn) and started again.

Plan B!

Anyway, by this stage my Teutonic knights had finished off the hairies that they had previously disordered. My swirling light archery had killed another unit and a lucky cannon shot from my camp all contributed enough hits, together with a dead general to rout the Thracians! This also left my final unactivated command on my left, to turn and flank charge the deep units facing Rob.

This was happening just as Rob finally killed the stubborn companions and within just one more turn the combined attacks brought us the final VMs needed to rout the Lysamachids as well!

Not at all as planned but a double victory never the less!

Alex’s hairies had killed four of my lights by throwing just four of their pesky pointy sticks (missiles can be deadly in TtS) but thanks to my lights’ ability to dance away from their big units we had avoided any melees and survived long enough to inflict enough hits before being pinned to our base line. A near run thing but with enough safety to not suffer from the “squirting” that @johnhilary has suffered from when using the very similarly brittle Pecheneg horde.

TTS AAR: Two the Strongest Game One: Teutonic Knights & Lithuanians vs Principate Romans & Armenians

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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!

We even brought along this very portable helmet: ideal for the post-match conversations with forest fans (who lost 3-0 BTW)

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!