TTS AAR: Venice Abroad vs Almoravid Berber (Roll Call Game Two)

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My second game at Medieval Mayhem at Roll Call this year was against Matt’s Almoravid Berbers.

This was a beautifully painted army consisting of a unit of Black Guard veteran cavalry, a unit of Mercenary Knights, some Shieldwall (including more veteran Black Guard types) and then lots of light horse with javelins.

As the Berbers won the scouting, you’ll see from the montage, below, that my Knights faced off against his cavalry and infantry, with my foot deployed slightly to the right and mainly facing the light horse. Methinks I might get outflanked on the right!

Both sides opened the game with an advance and, with a bit of help from the cards, I was lucky enough to be able to extend my line out to the right before the Berber light horse had a chance to lap around it. Okay, so I only had raw crossbowmen and light crossbowmen out there on the flank, but that was better than nothing at all.

My plan, for those interested in that sort of thing, was to hold his infantry and light horse in the centre and right respectively whilst my Knights and Later Knights punched through his cavalry on the left, took his camp, and then the rest of his line in the rear.

The action began on the right, when Matt’s light cavalry came forward to harrass my advancing infantry. Crossbow bolts headed their way and, much to Matt’s dismay, one of his units was shot off the table. The other made no impression on my infantry, who continued to advance remorselessly.

By this time battle had also been joined on the left, with the Christian mercenary caballeros being blasted from the table by my Knights in one glorious impact whilst my Later Knights attacked the mounted Black Guard.

Unlike the Knights, the Later Knights bounced off the Black Guard and ended up very vulnerable to a counter-attack.

Up to now the plan had worked perfectly, but the cards just wouldn’t let me get the rest of my Knights stuck in on the left. Instead an uneasy stalemate occurred with neither side able to make any headway against the other.

This meant that I had to bring up my infantry before my left was overwhelmed by troops moved to reinforce Matt’s right and, fortunately, my Alabardieri and Lancieri were on tip top form and proceeded to convincingly win the centre.

My Knights on the left still weren’t managing to make any headway…

…so it was up to the Alabardieri to force the last of the Berber light cavalry off the table and win the game.

So having lost the first game 5-12, a 12-5 victory in the second game put me back to even-stevens and all ready for game three.

TTS AAR: Venice Abroad vs Later Swiss (Roll Call Game One)

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My first game at this year’s Medieval Madness competition at Roll Call was against a very testing opponent: Dillon’s Later Swiss with their veteran, extra-deep and, in some cases, fanatical pike blocks!

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do against these beasts: stay away from the front and attack the flanks seemed to be the best course of action, but unfortunately the table we were on didn’t have a huge amount of terrain in place to slow the Swiss down.

Worse, the Swiss were also mounted infantry, so the game began with his pike blocks already one extra square towards me:

Dillon had outscouted, so took his turn first, with a very good run of cards getting the pike unit in front of my camp (the pike block top left in the picture, above) into contact immediately.

No matter, I had troops either side who could advance forward and swing into his flank. Then I pulled my first card of the game:

This was not good, to say the last, but no need to panic: the pike blocks on the other side of the field hadn’t got to me yet, so a decent run of cards there would help out:

Fortunately this was only a temporary set back, and my troops soon surrounded two of the Swiss pike blocks and began thumping at their flanks:

And meanwhile a unit of Knights had snuck through and taken half the Swiss camp:

This was all well and good, but the pike blocks in the centre were just refusing to die. Flank charge after flank charge, rear charge after rear charge, I just couldn’t get the four hits I needed to kill them, and the Swiss light infantry was doing a good job in distracting my men as well.

You can also see that the Swiss pike block facing my camp has chewed its way through one unit of Venetian Spearmen and is now right up against the camp itself: unfortunately defended only by some raw militia types.

This meant that both my camps soon fell, taking the last of my victory medals with them, for a 5-12 loss.

Not a very good start, but not a disaster, and three more games to go!

TTS AAR: Venetians Abroad vs Timurid

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A practice game for the forthcoming Medieval Mayhem competition at Roll Call saw my Venetians travelling Abroad to fight Peter’s Timurids. This was the first time I had used the Venetians using the Venice Abroad list rather than the Later Italian Condotteri list, so I was interested to see how they would do.

First up, the Venetians were outscouted (a distinct lack of canals on the Steppes!), with the result that the two battle lines ended up as below: both sides overlapping only in the middle of the field.

I suspected that Peter planned to lap around my left flank with his cavalry, so quickly moved my Knights across to face his horsemen. My infantry also began to move diagonally forward in order to get into th action as soon as possible.

I was aware that I ran the risk of “wasting” my troops in the centre of the field against scythed chariots and driven slaves - neither of which, if destroyed, would cost Peter any victory medals - but, as I said, this was a test game just to see what the army could do.

My plan, therefore, was to hold the left, or at least achieve like-for-like losses, whilst my centre chewed through the Timurid “disposables” and then pivot my line so we fought each other perpendicular to our start points.

As expected, Timurid light horse lapped around my left, but my Knights largely ignored their presence, getting stuck in to the enemy heavy cavalry as soon as they could.

All seemed to be going nicely to plan when fortune kicked me firmly in the fork!

If you look at the picture below, you will see three of my units of Knights in action. Two are engaged with the enemy heavies (one winning their encounter, the other even-stevens) whilst another (the one in the foreground) has got behind Timurid cataphracts and is presumably about to drive them from the field.

At this point, the unit of enemy light cavalry that you can see bottom right turned and attacked my Knights from the flank. No problem, I hear you cry, these are Knights, Later Knights at that, they laugh at the efforts of lights to inconvenience them.

Not so today. Two successful activations followed by a great (from the Timurid point of view) run of cards saw my Knights first disordered then sent fleeing from the field!

Leaving aside the activations, that’s two successful 30% chances to hit followed by two 40% chances of failing a save: or a 1.44% chance of the cards falling as they did.

The Timurids naturally took full advantage of the situation, and soon my Knights on the left were under attack from all sides.

Meanwhile, in the centre, my troops were having a hard time disposing of the Timurid ‘disposables’: they just wouldn’t die!

That changed very rapidly, however, when my veteran Later Knights, with General and Army Standard, intevened and, after a slight hiccup in round one of their attempt, swept both units of Driven Slaves from the field in two glorious charges. It was just a pity they weren’t worth any victory medals!

As one unit of my Knights on the left just refused to die, and I kept pushing the Timurid Light Cavalry off table, the overall situation was actually fairly even at this point: I held the right hand side of the field, Peter held the left and with only a slight advantage in terms of victory medals won.

Most of my troops were, however, now disordered, and before I could get my rallies in, the Timurid horse archers managed to do the damage they need to send one unit of my Spearmen from the table. That, combined with eventually losing the last unit of Knights on the left, was enough to lose me my final victory medal, so the game was Peter’s.


So a bit of a damp squib ending to what had been an absolutely cracking encounter. Some would say the battle was effectively over when I unexpectedly lost the Later Knights on the left, but the Venetians almost pulled it back despite that unlucky blow.

THis weekend, the Venetians continue their voyage Abroad with a trip to, of all places, Milton Keynes for Medieval Mayhem at Roll Call. There must be some canals there, surely!

TTS World Champioships 2024: Game 4: Venetians vs Tang Chinese

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My fourth and last game at World’s pitted my Venetians against another Tang Chinese army…and having lost rather badly against Peter’s Tang in Round 2, I was rather hoping to do a bit better against Roger’s Tang in Round 4!

As things hadn’t been going very well so far, I decided to throw caution to the wind and (a) field most of my Later Knights as dismounted and (b) just get stuck in as soon as possible. Tactics, schmactics and all that!

Accordingly, as soon as the whistle went, I sped forward: my foot Knights sprinting up the field towards the opposition:

The sharp-eyed amngst you will have noticed that Roger had sent some horsemen rushing forward towards my right flank, seeking to get behind my advancing Knights or to sack my camps.

Fortunately I had antipated such a move and left a small force to deal with these intruders and, with a little help from the cards, the two enemy horse units were soon destroyed and my flank secured.

Meanwhile, on the left, I had sent some Knights forward to see if they could work their way around Roger’s flank.

Unfortunately, although I did manage to kill a couple of enemy units, it took me some time to do so - winkling lights out of a wood proved more time-consuming than I had anticipated - and, at the end of the game, my troops here were only just starting to break through.

All of which meant that it was centre that would decide things.

My dismounted knights, spear and pike units stormed forward, intent on causing mayhem, but their earlier sprint up the field had obviously exhausted my knights who proved unable to break the enemy in front of them.

My pikemen, however, did much better: driving forward clearing all before them before turning in to threaten the enemy flank.

By this time, however, Time’s winged chariot had hurried near, and the clock had somewhat un-Marvellously run out, the last game of the day being a either a really long one with no time limit or, in this case, a somewhat truncated affair due to needing to end the day on time.

The result? A winning draw 7-3 for my Venetians: not the score I needed to resurrect my fortunes. This meant that, once the scores had been totted up, that I came 14th overall: very disappointing.

Still, it’s all about the playing, not the winning (he said through gritted teeth with his nose visibly lengthening as he did so) and they had been four great games against four worthy and sporting opponents. The day was also superbly organised, so thanks to all involved: Si, Mark, Bevan, Steve, John et al. I really would recommend this event to any TTS player.

Meanwhile, my troops slunk back to their canals for more training: duri ai banchi as we Venetians like to say!

TTS World Championships 2024: Game 3: Venetians vs Ancient British

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The story so far: one big win, one big defeat…so it was all to play for in game three of the 2024 To The Strongest World Championships.

This time, my Ventians would face Matt’s Ancient British, and lot’s of them there were too!

The Ancient British outcouted, and before I knew it, I had shed loads of barbarians coming right at me: chariots and cavalry on the wings, infantry in the centre.

There was nothing for it but to get straight back at them and see what happened!

The two lines came together with a mighty crash…

…but honours were fairly even. The Brit infantry were in deep units, but my Knights had better saves, so things pretty much cancelled themselves out.

Cue a grinding melee that swung backwards and forwards between us: before too long, most of Matt’s units were on two disorders and most of mine were on one, but my pikemen and spearmen were having a good day and were pushing forwards towards the British camps: it was all going to be down to who gave way first.

Then disaster struck: one of Matt’s warbands broke through my line and charged towards my camp.

No matter, I thought, I have light infantry handgunners behind fortifications, and whenever I have tried taking a fortified camp packed full of light infantry, I have failed again and again and again.

Not today, however.

With barely a pause to draw breath, the British warband smashed straight through the fortifications into the camp, killing my lights as they did so. Four coins down!

Next thing, the game ended due to time considerations, with the Venetians recording a 4-9 losing draw: actually the first time I have not had a clear “win/lose” result in a competition game.

It had been a great encounter with a tough opponent. Had we continued, I think Matt would have quickly taken the rest of my camp and therefore the game but, on the other hand, there was also a fair possibility that I could have caused a general collapse in his line first, which could just about have given me the win…but I guess we will never know.

Must be an excuse for a return match some time in the future!

TTS World Championships 2024: Game 2: Venetians vs Tang Chinese

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The consequence, or course, of having had such a good first game meant that in round two I was once again up against Peter - winner of many, many tournaments and a regular opponent - and his Tang Chinese.

To my shame, I must admit that I did have a minor temper tantrum at the news: but, in my defence, I was very tired after a very long week’s work, and who would want to face Peter in a tournament…charming chap that he is, he does have a tendancy to win!

Anyhoo, tantrum over, it was time to settle down to the game:

As you can see from the picture, above, things did not start off very well for me!

Peter’s Tang outscouted my Venetians, and a superb deployment on his part and some good cards to begin saw his light cavalry, soon to be followed by heavier cavalry, all over my right flank.

This move to the (his) left, also meant that a third of my army was effectively facing thin air: not a good situation.

Some good manouevring on my part, however, brought the left hand contingent of my heavy knights back into the action and, in fact, got them into a great position to flank charge some of his central units.

Unfortunately, my new specially-bought,Venice-backed playing cards chose that moment to wobble, and my flank charges and moves across the field failed to happen as I had planned: disaster!

This meant that rather than putting the battle on a more even footing with some locally good superior numbers and flank attack possibilities, Peter had the time to turn to face my troops coming at him from his right flank to block my advance there. He was effectively where I had been at the start of the battle on my right, but also in an echelon formation that further prevented me using my superior numbers to advantage.

Meanwhile, of course, he had already achieved superiority of numbers on my right flank, and was able to use them to bash me up there before I had the chance to do the same to him on his right. He was (as ever, some would say) one step ahead of me.

Now it was just a matter of time, and Peter was soon able to start to sending my troops fleeing from the field, meaning that I suffered a very bad 2-12 loss!

A superb example of how to wrong-foot your opponent from deployment, and although I was a trifle unlucky not to be able to at least partly rescue the situation in the middle part of the game, as we all know, a plan that depends on luck is not a plan at all!

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

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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.

TTS AAR: Timurids vs Vikings

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This was the return match from the game reported on Feb 15th: last time my Vikings beat Kavan’s Timurids, now we would swap sides and play again.

As you can see from the pictures above, I won the scouting phase and set off towards my opponent at a rapid rate of knots.

When Kavan moved his Vikings forward to meet me, he accidentally created a gap between his two wings where his longboats were beached…and I thought “ah ha! I can defeat the two halves of his army one at a time and hit him from his inner flank”.

The Left Flank

This was the side where I needed to hold his troops up for long enough for me to defeat the Viking right flank.

I assigned three Turkoman horse archer and three Timurid lancer bases for this task. Facing them were four Viking warbands supported by two light archer units.

As you will see from the pictures, below, things initially went quite well for me: flank charging and destroying a Viking warband and disordering two more.

Unfortunately, that was the high point of my success here: the Vikings recovered well and, with the help of one of their reserve warbands from their camp, managed to finish this phase of the game ahead: two warbands destroyed, three warbands and two light units remaining versus my Timurid force reduced down to two horse archer bases!

So the Vikings slightly ahead, but that was okay, as the idea was just to hold them whilst my right wing went to work.

The Right Wing

Although I initially only assigned one Timurid lancer unit here, they were supported by three bases of Turkoman horse archers, and the Vikings had got themselves pinned up against some impassable ground, meaning I could just focus on one of their bases at a time. I also quickly sent one reserve lancer unit to help finish them off.

This was potentially rich pickings for me, as the not-pinned base had an army standard (so was worth four coins) and the pinned base had King Cnut himself in charge, making the base worth six, or maybe even seven coins. Take out these two, and that was two thirds of the Viking hoard (not horde!) taken care of.

Again things started very well, with the standard-bearing warband destroyed and King Cnut lightly wounded. Go the Timruids!

Unfortunately, rather than debilitating Cnut, his wound seemed to inspire him, and the beggar just wound’t die no matter what I threw at him and his men:

In fact, the game ended with Cnut and his men retreating back towards their longships presumably in need of some refreshing beverages, with far too much of my army in hot pursuit!

The Final Phase

By now we were almost out of time. The Vikings still had just over half their warbands intact, whereas my Timurids were down to only three medals. The result was therefore only slightly in doubt and I was happy to resign the game rather than to flog the proverbial dead horse.

So that was two games of Vikings versus Timurids and two victories for the Vikings: slightly surprising considering how underrated they usually are.

Okay, so their victory in the last game was slightly lucky - King Cnut holding out against extraordinary odds despite being wounded and all that - but that’s presumably why he’s counted as a Brilliant General!

I still haven’t properly got the hang of using Timurids - that combination of missile fire to soften the enemy up then a charge home with lances to finish them off - but that just means more practice needed…

TTS AAR: Vikings vs Timurids

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Another game of To The Strongest, this time featuring my Vikings against a Timurid army played by Daughter #1’s boyfriend, Kavan - who hopefully realises that the key to his continued relationship with my offspring is to lose heavily whilst loudly congratulating me on my brilliant play!

A rather empty battlefield: more tundra than fjord!

Beached longships form the Viking camp

The Timurid right wing

As the Vikings are an infantry-only army (no room for horses on those cross-North Sea longship ferries) my big fear was being outflanked and suddenly finding Timurid cavalry in my camp and up my backside!

I therefore put a couple of strong shieldwall units on either flank, rather than concentrating them in the centre and leaving the flanks to the lights as I usually would.

As with many of my more brilliant ideas, this worked well in theory but not in practice, as the cards conspired to prevent my deep shieldwall unit on the left making a very simple diagonal charge to drive two units of horse archers off the table.

This allowed those two units to neatly bypass the shieldwallers, leaving them nicely in a position to turn and either hit me in the rear or to ride for my camps:

“Four or more needed…”

not an ideal outcome

I was also in a bit of trouble on the right, as although I did manage to dispose of his lights there, Kavan had followed up his horsearchers with a couple of meaty heavy cavalry units, who also managed to get around onto my flank and were quickly set to drive at least one shieldwall unit from the field.

Fortunately the top unit in the picture above (the one with the Raven banner) was on fire, and although the bottom unit did indeed get driven from the field, the top unit managed to take out both of the Timurid cavalry units shown, although they did need a bit of luck to do so:

All this action on the flanks did mean that the Timurid centre was a bit weaker than it might have been, and soon another Viking shieldwall unit had broken through towards the Timurid camp, defended only by kharash (driven slaves).

The Timurid camp wasn’t the only one under attack.

Although I had managed to hold off some horse archers, Timurid heavy cavalry charged into one part of my camp, and threatened to take the other, even with two bases of Viking light archers present.

I had started with fifteen victory coins, but was now down to nine, which was about to become six.

Kavan had started with eleven victory coins, but was now down to three. This was unlucky for him, because the Viking unit that threatened his camp had now cleared the kharash off the field, and was able to crash, unopposed, into the Timurid camp.

This was enough, just, to give me the win: a surprise victory for the Norsemen over the more manoeuvrable Timurids.

Here’s the game in longshot…

First of the Venetian Foot Knights

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As regualr visitors will know, I have been building a 28mm Later Italian Condotteri Venetian army to use on the To The Strongest competition circuit this year.

It’s a nice little army: five units of mounted Later Knights with Lances provide the punch, with light cavalry and foot units in support.

One problem I might encounter, however, is facing elephants. I know it isn’t exactly historically accurate for Venetians to expect to face elephants in combat (although I understand it’s hellish difficult to get them out of the canals once they’re in!) but this is competition gaming so a certain flexibility of approach is required.

Anyway, back to the problems facing of facing elephants. In TTS, cavalry of all types do very badly against elephants as the horses, unless they are familiar with pachyderms, won’t close with the beasts, giving an elephant base a huge advantage in any combat with them.

The solution is to dismount some or all of the Knights, who are somewhat slower but equally formidable on foot: their Lances change to 2-handed cutting weapons, giving a bonus in combat, and they gain extra bonuses when saving against missile fire.

Elephants? We poop on elephants!

As I like to be able to field the right figures rather than proxies or mark a mounted unit as dismounted, and its a good excuse to buy more figures, I decided I needed a foot equivalent for each of my five Later Knights bases. Here are the first two.

These are Perry Foot Knights: easy to build and even easier to paint: black with a silvery steel drybrush then add a bit of detail as required.

Three more bases to go!

TTS AAR: Welsh Open, Game 4: Venetians vs Parthians

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The stage was now set for my final game of the tournament. With two wins and a draw behind me, I would need a substantial win to have any chance of placing towards the top of the leaderboard.

My opponent for this final clash was the formidable Sid and his equally formidable Parthians:

Things started quite well: Sid’s cataphracts on my left attempted to charge forward, drew an Ace, so over-extended themselves into disorder. Unfortunately, I was unable to capitalise on this, and the veteran heavies quickly re-ordered themselves.

Equally unfortunately, this proved the high point of the game for my Venetians!

On the left, a combination of horse archers and heavy cavalry/cataphracts disposed of my Knights, and began curling into my centre. I had my Schioppettiere handgunners to defend my camps, but that meant I couldn’t use them elsewhere.

On my right, the same combination of lights and heavies overwhelmed my troops, although I did manage to do some damage before the flank crumbled.

I was now beginning to think that the Parthians had been taking lessons from the Zulus, as the horns of the buffalo began to close on my centre…

And it wasn’t long before the final curtain as the Parthians on my left flank broke through and took one of my camps and the last of my victory medals!

Excellent play from Sid, leaving me trounced 5-12!

So what did that mean for my overall ranking? Well, two wins, a draw and a loss left me an unexpectedly high 6th place: disappointing but not a complete disaster. Here are the rankings:

Overall a highly enjoyable event, and Firestorm Games is a fantastic venue. I would highly recomend the TTS Competition Circuit to players of the game. Next up are the World Championships “To the World’s Strongest” at the end of Feb.

TTA AAR: Welsh Open, Game 3: Venetians vs Tang Chinese

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One of the problems with winning your first two games in a competition is that the Swiss Chess system usually in place means that you then have to fight someone else who’s won two games i.e. someone a bit good!

And so it was with the Welsh Open, where I found myself up against Peter and his Tang Chinese. Not it’s fair to say that Peter is a very good player. He’s knows all the rules back to front, and has a very tricky way of getting you on the back foot right from the start of the battle. This was a game that was going to be very tough!

The deployment phase was interesting. Rather than being spread out along the baseline, Peter went for a very one-sided deployment, which I then followed. I told you: very tricky…

The grey patches are woods, by the way

As I advanced forward, Peter didn’t come forward to meet me, but started to shift his troops to the right…

This was obviously part of some cunning plan that I needed to counter…so I moved my men to the right as well…whereupon Peter switched back to advancing on the left…so I shuffled my men back that way to match.

This was a period of move and counter-move with neither side prepared to commit.

One interesting point was that I had drawn the “Lost!” card as my strategem for the game: meaning that one of my units had begun the game lost off the table. I could choose when to bring it on, but it would appear at a random location somewhere on the table’s edge.

That meant that I had to wait until Peter had moved his troops forward a bit, as otherwise I would have just been swamped with flank charges rather than the rear charge that I would be hoping to perform. This was important, as I had taken a bit of a risk and it was a unit of Later Knights that I had declared lost i.e. one of my main fighting bases rather than something like a unit of lights or the like. As it happens, the Knights appeared on the right flank of Peter’s line: you can just see them top right in the photograph, above.

Finally Peter seemed to have had enough of all this shilly-shallying around and sent his heavy cavalry forward. On my left, I lost a unit of Later Knight, but managed to tie up the troops that had broken through with my light cavalry.

In the centre, however, things had gone much more my way, and I had pushed forward and knocked one of his decent cavalry units off the table. Honours were even so far.

Unfortunately my ex-lost Knights hadn’t managed to do much,and had retreated back to their hill to rally and re-arm with lances.

You’ll also see the pikemen, disordered, just by my pack of cards. What I really wanted to do now was to re-order them and move forward again. Here are the cards I drew: activation cards behind the unit, rally cards to their right…

The Pikemen are keen to do anything except rally!

Unfortunately at this point we ran out of time: all that tactical manoeuvring at the beginning of the game had soaked up all the fighting time required later on!

Tallying up the points, the game was an absolute draw: five victory medals versus five victory medals.

What would have happened if we had carried on? Who can say? At the point we ended the battle I was perhaps in a very slightly advantageous position, but that means nothing when facing a player of Peter’s calibre. A draw it was and, as someone said at the time, a result that really opened up the overall tournament ranking overall.

One game to go!

TTS AAR: Welsh Open, Game 2: Venetians vs Later (Eastern) Romans

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My second game at this year’s Welsh Open To The Strongest tournament was against William and his Later (Eastern) Romans.

William’s army was truly massive: 16 victory medals worth versus the mere 12 that I was fielding. The only downside was that many of his troops were raw but, being Auxilia, they still had an averagely decent save.

The terrain was quite heavy (the flat grey patches in the pictures are actually woods) and infantry get a lot of advantage defending against mounted, so I decided to dismount two of my Later Knights units to give me a bit of flexibility in attack.

The action began on my left, with the Roman cavalry advancing quickly towards my lines. As luck would have it, that’s where I’d put one of my dismounted knights…which just goes to show what can happen when you try to be too clever!

No matter: the Roman horse pushed a couple of my light cavalry units back but left themselves in a position where I could charge them from the flank with the foot knights. Should be no problem: I had an officer with the knights, so all I needed for success was anything except a couple of Aces in a row…

Meanwhile the two lines had come together in the centre and on the right as two separate clashes.

On the right, my mounted Knights charged home and had initial success, disordering two of the enemy Auxilia units and leaving them ripe for destruction. unfortunately, his men then turned on their personal forcefields: William spectacularly saving against every attack I could throw at them. I distinctly remember four flank charges going in against disordered Auxilia with no result!

Equally anoyingly, my dismounted knights could see a way through to his three undefended camps, and were the boys to take the nine victory medals that they represented, but just couldn’t get the cards/freedom to do so.

The Aces were also still coming thick and fast!

If you look at the photo above, you’ll see two of them on the table: one (on the far side) stopping my light cavalry from taking his camps (the nine points eluding me again); the other preventing a unit of Later Knights from rallying for the third or fourth time in a row.

By now I had actually killed his cavalry, meaning that the dismounted knights that had disposed of them could head back into the centre to help out the pike- and spearmen, who were under some pressure from advancing Romans. You’ll also see, in the photo below, that on the right I have withdrawn to regroup, although I did kill two to three of his units before doing so.

Things finally turned my way. The unit in front of the pikemen (about to be hit in the flank by dismounted knights) charged forward already disordered. Unfortunately for them, the cards fell my way, and they managed only to impale themselves on the pikes facing them, taking them and their general off the table.

Almost unbelievably, this turned out to be the straw that broke the Roman camel’s back: the four victory medals gained being enough for me to win the game 16-5, despite the fact that it had seemed to me as if I was on the back foot throughout.

Or it might have been that the Knights then crashed into the Bowmen behind the unfortunate infantry, and it was those two victory medals that won me the day. To be honest, I can’t remember which it was!

It had been a thrilling battle: the epitomy of a small number of elites versus a huge number of less than veteran troops. William’s troops’ ability to save against my attacks was truly legendary, and I seriously thought I was going to be swamped at any moment.

Two games in and two wins: good going so far…

TTS AAR: Welsh Open, Game 1: Venetians vs Ayyubid

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This weekend just gone I started off the 2024 To The Strongest competition season with the Welsh Open in Cardiff.

This was held at Firestorm Games: an excellent venue with a cafe, toilets, plenty of light, plenty of parking and plenty of shopping opportunities! Highly recommended to all wargamers if you happen to be in the area.

Last year on the ‘circuit’ I exclusively used my only 28mm army: the Early Imperial Romans. I fancied a change this year, so over Christmas invested in a Later Italian Condotteri army, specifically designed (and sort-of painted up) as Venetians. The Welsh Open would its first airing and I was looking forward to see what it could do, even if I was feeling a little “jaded” after going out into Cardiff for a curry the night before!

My first opponent was Mark and his Ayyubid Egyptians.

The battle started well, with my Venetians outscouting and moving forward to dominate the cengtre of the field. On the right flank, a unit of my Later Knights dashed some Ayyubid heavy cavalry from the table only to have the Someone has Blundered strategem card played on me: not only was my glorious victory annulled, but my Knights decided that they’d heard the dinner bell and ended up facing away from their opponents just asking to be charged up the backside!

“Someone has Blundered” on the right

Melee on the left

Honours even in the centre

The advantage now swung towards the Ayyubids for a bit (my Later Knights seemed to have decided to wear cardboard rather than steel armour!) until a lucky charge knocked back the Ayyubid Al-Halqa al-Khassa veteran cavalry and killed Salah-ad-Din himself!

This caused the momentum to swing back towards the Venetians, and the game now teetered on a knife edge with both sides down to only a few coins left.

The Ayyubid’s salute their fallen leader!

At this point I should mention that Mark and I both forgot that as a ‘great leader’ Salah-ad-Din should have had another save which may have resulted in him being wounded rather than killed.

But forget we did, and a final charge from either the pike of the Condotteri Knights broke the ayyubid morale and the game was mine.

My final charge goes in…

The final result was a 12-8 victory to the Venetians, so a win by the skin of our teeth.

My Later Knights, although very effective when charging forward, proved very vulnerable to enemy action: as you’ll see in the picture above, I only had two of five left at the end of the game.

Mark made superb use of his Someone has Blundered strategem, completely reversing my initial success and firmly taking the initiative, and if it wasn’t for Salah-ad-Din’s untimely demise, things could have been very different.

So one win and on to the next game.

Not an AAR: Romans versus Indians

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As the title says, not a full battle report, but just some pictures of a “noodling game” that friend Peter and I played recently to test out the effect of the new rallying rule.

Early Imperial Romans versus Classical Indians, with the Romans facing a penalty for successfully rallying and the Indians maxing out their longbows and veteran, escorted elephants.

More Condotta

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Here’s a few more figures off the Christmas-break production line: more later Venetian Condotta types for the 2024 To The Strongest competition season. Let’s just hope I can get them all finished before Wales at the end of the month or it will be back to my trusty Romans!

First up are a couple of units of schioppettiere light infantry handgunners.

And next some lancieri delle ordinanze pikemen:

All three units are Perry plastics in 28mm, and from the same box of Mercenary Infantry. As I paid only £18.50 for the box, and still have eight infantry to add to my next unit, that seems like very good value to me indeed.

Do I find having to build the miniatures a pain? Well, yes…but no more of a pain than prepping an all metal or plastic figure for painting and, as you will hopefully see in the pics above, you do get the chance to build figures with individual character: there are some weary looking individual in that pike block!

I still need to build more infantry and all the horse before the army is ready to hit the gaming table. I got a lot done over Christmas (32 infantry, 12 cavalry) but I can see it’s going to be tough to finish everything in time for my first tournament.

TTS AAR: Timurids versus Normans

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Here’s an After Action Report left over from last year: a game against an old friend of mine, Nog, that I hadn’t seen for ages. He’s only an occasionaly wargamer, and hadn’t played To The Strongest before, so this would be a teaching/learning game rather than all out battle.

I was keen to get my two newest armies onto the table, so Nog would play the Normans and I would play the Timurids. Not historically accurate, maybe, but somewhat mimincing a Crusdaer-rtyle clash!

The Timurids ready for action

Nog’s normans

I had ther initiative, so decided to advnace forward rapidly in order to engage the enemy with bowfire before closing to polish off any left standing.

Unfortunately, my mass advance faltered with my very first card, leaving my troops awkwardly split: some forward, some not.

Amusingly, Nog then proceeded to draw an Ace for his first card, but this time for the foot command in the centre, leaving his horsemen charging forward with the infantry left behind, and a very attractive (to me, anyway) hole in the middle of his line.

In my eagerness to get into bow range I had forgotten that there’s nothing a Norman likes more than charging home, so all those points spent on missile weapons for my Timurids were somewhat wasted as suddenly I had heavy horse all over me!

Both sides rapidly began losing units in the melee that followed. Although my lighter bowmen were outclassed and had to evade backwards, I had enough heavy cavalry of my own to hold the centre, although I did have to deploy the kharash (driven slaves) to bolsetr my line.

As the Normans pushed forward, I did manage to get some of my troops around his left flank and prepared to start rolling the Frenchmen up.

This led to an extraordinary run of cards, as shown in the photo below:

For the unitiated:

  • Draw a 6 to move into a position to charge the enemy flank

  • Try to charge, but draw a 2

  • Use the General to re-draw, pull a 9 and in they go…but combat cards are A and 2 meanign two misses

  • Need to draw a natural 10 to go in again: 10 drawn, but 2 and 5 for combat mean two more misses

  • Need to draw another natural 10 to go in a third time: 10 drawn (!) and two 8’s mean two hits and the enemy flee the field

By this time neither of us had many men left at all, and most of mine were on the point of fleeing:

We were, in fact, both down to our last coin, so it was a case of sudden death: whoever loses the next unit loses the game and, as mentioned above, my troops were in a lot worse state than his.

Fortunately, however, the luck remained with me, and a charge with some light troops returning from having evaded, hit the back of some of his, and just managed to dash them from the field. The last coin and the victory were mine!

It had been a great game, full of incident an excitement. We both agreed that I had been foolish to allow the Normans to close with my troops so early on in the game, and that Nog had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, helped by a final surge of luck on my part at the end of the encounter.

Cracking stuff, and we’re both eagerly awaiting our next battle.

First of the Condotta

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Regular visitors will know that this year for the first time in a long time (35 years plus!) I decided to go back to competitive wargaming: entering as many To The Strongest tournaments as I could.

Apart from the Europeans at Ewelme, I have exclusively used the Early Imperial Romans: mainly because it was the only 28mm Ancients army that I had, and that only because a friend left it at my mother’s house some 40 years ago!

The Romans have proved a very good army to use, but after almost thirty games with them I fancied a change…so when I won a box of Perry Medievals at the ‘Two the Strongest’ doubles tournament in November I thought that I’d use it as a basis for a new army: settling on some kind of Later Italian Condotta force (each city state is slightly different) as that list provides a wide variety of troop types.

Father Christmas was good to me this year, bringing me more boxes of Perry’s to complete what I need, and time off work has given me the chance to paint some of the units up.

First off the production line were two units of balestrieri montati or mounted crossbowmen:

I’m using a combination of Contrast and standard acrylic paints, and have chosen a black and red colour scheme. As the way you build the figures means that each figure is unique, I will therefore get an army that is ‘uniformed but not uniform’: very suitable for a force from that period.

Next up are some stradiotti: veteran light cavalry with lances and perhaps crossbows. Very useful for annoying the opposition!

And the final unit of light horse, for the moment, are some more balestrieri montati but this time armed with handguns rather than crossbows:

The above are all from one box of WR 60 Light Cavalry 1450-1500 which retails at £22 or £1.83 per figure. To quote the blurb: The box contains 12 lightly armoured horsemen which can be assembled with light lances, crossbows or as mounted archers. command options are included as are banners and historical information.

So how did I get on with Perry plastics?

Yes, I quite like them. Glueing the horses together was easy. The men were slightly more difficult in that, even using Superglue, the heads take a bit of time to set in place, and the individual arms can be tricky in that the you’re glueing two completely flat, angled surfaces together so that it’s tough to exert pressure in the right direction…but it’s generally a painless process.

For those interested, I built the horse first, then built the figure by glueing the head on first then each arm. As this is a competition army that is going to get a lot of use, I didn’t bother with a lot of extra equipment (and there’s a ton of it on the sprues) but just focussed on the main weapon that shows the function of the unit…so that the mounted crossbowmen have only their crossbows, not a quiver, winding machine, sword, dagger, buckler etc, all of which are provided if you want to use them.

Painting the figures is easy. I let the Contrast paints do the work, but used two different reds to get a bit of variety and, here’s the top tip of this post, highlighted the black on the upper body clothing with a very dark blue standard acrylic paint, leaving the black hose as is.

Now it’s on to the first of the two infantry boxes…

Two the Strongest Tournament: Game Three

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I’m still working my way through a backlog of battle reports that seems to have built up over the last couple of months.

Today features the third and final game at the Two the Strongest doubles tournament organised by the London Wargaming Guild back in November. My partner, Peter, and I had won our first two games and woulkd now face Tim and Matt playing Normans and 100YW French respectively.

The game would be fought across quite an unusual set-up representing a famous battle from history. Apologies, but I can’t remeber which one…but there were a lot of hills on the flanks!

The Romans

The French

For this battle, Peter and I reversed our roles: I would go forward against the Normans whilst Peter hung back against the 100YW French.

My cavalry (Equites Alares and Equites Contarium) duly swung out to the right and advanced forward at speed. They soon met the enemy coming the other way and, much to my delight, almost immediately knocked one Norman unit off the table and sent another to the retreat.

My Roman cavalry have tken some stick this year for their performance on the tabletop, but I must confess that they didn’t put a foot (hoof?) wrong this game: a fitting redemption in the last tournament game of the season.

Meanwhile, my legionaries had also advanced towards the enemy line and pinned them in place as planned. I needed to get a move on, however, as I could see that Peter’s troops were under some pressure from a horde of Late Knights!

My troops began to wheel to their left, ready to roll up the enemy line but, before they could do any significant damage, my cavalry inflicted another loss on the Normans, including killing their commander in chief. This was too much for these early Frenchies to take, and they fled the field, leaving their later compatriots to fight on alone.

The game was a bit of a foregone conclusion from then on, as Peter’s troops were still resisting, leading to an eventual 15-6 victory for the Romans.

Points were totted up and it turned out the Peter and I had actually won the day!

A very good way to end the season, with my first tournament win, and huge thanks to all the Guilders for organising an excellent competition that I shall certainly enter again next year.

If you look at the picture to the right, you will see I am clutching a box of Perry Plastics as a prize (along with the rather marvellous “playing card” trophy). This box turned out to be the naissance of my new 28mm army for 2024, although which later medieval army I will actually paint up is still in doubt at time of writing, along with whether I can actually get it finished in time for the Welsh Open at the end of January!

Two the Strongest Tournament: Game Two

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Peter and I’s second game at the inaugural Two the Strongest Doubles tournament organised by the London Guild of Wargames was against Tom and Nathanial, each fielding a Wars of the Roses army: lots of longbows, billmen and knights!

Our plan was very much the same as in the first game of the tournament. My solid legionaries would hold the bulk of the enemy in place whilst Peter’s lighter cavalry got around the enemy flank and rolled them up. As our opponents wavered at the sight of their flank collapsing, in would go my Roman mincing machine to finish them off.

Much to our surprise, the first stages of the game saw everything going to the plan: Peter’s men got around the right flank of Tom’s troops and started knocking units off the table, then turning to head into the centre. Meanwhile, I advanced cautiously forward, wary of a storm of longbow fire.

Nathaniel also took a cautious approach so, for a time, all the action was on one side. Here’s a montage of these first evolutions:

Then I’m afarid our opponents made what must be considered a fateful mistake.

Concerned about their right flank, they turned some of their units in the centre to the right, intending to take Peter’s legionaries, now heavily engaged with the right side of the enemy line, in the flank. This, of course, left them open to a rapid advance from my troops into their now-exposed left sides, knocking a couple off the table and certainly preventing them intervening to the right as Tom had planned.

At this point Tom’s half of their army collapsed, leading to all his remaining troops being removed from the board and leaving Nathaniel to face the might of the Empire alone!

Now severely outnumbered and already in a poor tactical situation, it was only a matter of time before Nathaniel’s troops were overwhelmed. It also didn’t help that his artillery now showed an alarming propensity to draw Aces!

So in all a fairly convincing 16-0 victory for the Romans, leaving us in a good position overall as we faced the final game of the day.