TTS AAR: To The Smallest Game 1: Arab Conquest vs Later Lithuanians

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My first game proper at this year’s To The Smallest 15mm TTS tournament in Cardiff was against John’s Later Lithuanians: light cavalry, more light cavalry…and even more light cavalry!

My main concern was getting outflanked and enveloped by the Lithuanian horde, so I took full advantage of my mounted infantry to deploy as close to the enemy as possible.

I should also note at this point that this was actually our second deployment: a mix up regarding what the terrain actually represented meant that I had severely compromised my set up but, once we both understood what was Impassable and, more importantly, what was not, John was very happy for me to adjust my positioning…a generous example of great sportsmanship on his part.

As expected, the Lithuanians’ first move was to advance quickly against my flanks. I was okay on the right, where my outnumbered troops were helped by the marshy terrain, but things were not looking so good on the left, where the beginnings of an overlap were already beginning to show.

Things went from bad to worse on the left as I desperately, and ultimately unsuccessfully, tried to stem the tide of the Lithuanian horde. The left was lost: I would have to win the battle elsewhere.

John’s army might have been large and manoeuvrable, but it was fragile: if I could connect with a unit, even one of his massed lights, then I could probably kill it. It was the connecting bit that would be difficult, as his horsemen could evade away from infantry charges with comparative ease and my cavalry were tied up on the wings.

That was, however, the only thing I could do, so I set about relentlessly charging every light horse unit I could with my infantry. This shot, taken after a couple of turns of this, shows how fragmented the action had become: rather than two battle line clashing in the centre of the table, the game broke down into a myriad of minor actions scattered across the field.

There were several epic chases as my foot soldiers desperately tried to close with the Lithuanian light horse. A unit of veteran Daylami javelinmen chased down some enemy cavalry until the horsemen crashed into a wood on the edge of the table and were forced to fight…and then die!

A unit of fanatical warriors chased some Lithuanians right to their baseline, even taking one of their camps as they did so.

I even managed to bring one of the cavalry units from the right wing back into the action and use them to squish some Lithuanian light horse up against the back of another of my warrior units. I was doign everything I could to whack-a-mole the enemy!

Finally the Lithuanians had had enough: their last victory medal was taken as the survivors fled the field. That had been a 13-9 victory to the Arabs and one hell of a game!

I was just pleased we had been fighting on a simulation of the field of Thermopylae, with the fighting area of the tabletop narrowed by plentiful terrain on the flanks. I might have won this time, but a more open table would, I think, have led to me being enveloped by the Lithuanians even with me trying to chase them down.

A good start to the day!

TTS AAR: To The Smallest Warm-Up Game

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This year’s To The Smallest 15mm tournament for To The Strongest was again held at Firestorm Games in Cardiff: an excellent venue for what is proving to be an excellent event, ably organised by Sid.

I would be using my relatively new Arab Conquest army, figures from Red Copper 3D printing sculpts printed for me by Baueda in Italy before they were sold to the UK.

I got to Cardiff in late afternoon on the Friday and checked into my hotel “room” before heading down to Firestorm to see if anyone fancied a warm-up game.

I say “room” because I was staying in the Cardiff Premier Inn Zip hotel: a pod hotel which only cost me £32 for the night. I highly recommend it for those in a similar “just need somewhere to stay” situation: cheap, plenty of parking, very clean, food & drink available until 3am, and a power shower to die for! Yes, the pod is not very big, but it more than fitted me and my ego!

Then it was down to Firestorm Games to see who was already there and, more importantly, who fancied a game. Mark, Howard and Adrian were all present and correct, so Adrian and I settled dwon to play whilst the other two watched and made helpful comments and suggestions!

The big innovation with To The Smallest is that the figures are based on a 10cm frontage and play is on a 12x18 grid that gives plenty of room for manouevre.

Adrian had brought Later Achaemenid Persians with him, and we scattered a bit of random terrain on the table and prepared to set to: my mounted infantry meaning that the two sides started the game a little closer together than the norm.

My plan, such as it was, was just to close with the enemy as soon as possible. I seemed to have a bit of an advantage of numbers on the left, so that’s where I began my advance.

The Persians chose not to mix it with the Jund cavalry and their light camelry support, evading away and shooting their bows instead.

Meanwhile, on the right, it was my turn to be cautious, as the terrain was quite dense and the Persians had managed to move some of their troops over to outnumber me. The two sides clashed but without much of a resolution, although the tactical picture looked better for the enemy.

I had chosen not to advance in the centre for the time being, letting the Persians come to me. This let Darius and his deep lancers punch through my centre, chasing some lights right the way back to my fortified camp only to stop there without attempting to take it.

The game had now broken down into a sprawling series of individual melees with no coordination or battle lines evident. It looked as if it was going to be the cumulative effect of all these isolated fights that would decide the game.

On the right, the two sides kept knocking seven bells out of each other until there was literally no-one left alive in that area of the battlefield!

In the centre, some of my Warriors took on the mercenary Greek Hoplites, slogging it out with both sides disordered to no great conclusion.

On the right, my outnumbered troops had fought a rather decent rearguard action, keeping his superior number occupied whilst I tried to win the battle elsewhere.

So where was the battle decided?

Well, if you remember, Darius and his deep cavalry had punched through the middle of my line and had been molesting my light infantry. This left the Persian horsemen a bit isolated on my side of the table…where I had some veteran Daylami tribesmen just itching to take them on.

A flank charge later, the Persians were disordered, and evaded away with the Daylami in hot pursuit.

The Daylami chased them across the tabletop, over hills, eventually coming to grips with the Persians again as they were forced to fight or run the risk of ending up fighting my javelinmen in woods.

Some decent cards later and the Persians were toast: three medals for the unit and a medal for the army standard being enough to give me the game.

That had been a wild and fragmented encounter that could have gone either way.

In the end I had been comparatively lucky to win enough of the individual fights to give me the win but, as you can see in the photo below, neither side had much of their army left at all!

A great way to start the weekend, and my thanks to Adrian for a good game.

IABSM AAR: Storming the Starmerskaya at OML11

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Fantastic game of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum at the afternoon session of this year’s Operation Market Larden Lardy Day.

The game, set during Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, involved me leading a Soviet force forward to clear the field of an advancing German recce force before securing the bridges over the river.

Click on the picture below to see all…

TFL Painting Challenge: Second June Update

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Plenty of big entries into the Challenge since the last post, and a quiet Sunday morning before gaming this afternoon has given me time to log them all in…

First up is Carole, with a vast number of Peter Pig WW2 figures as she prepares to play Chain of Command 2: Germans, Soviets and British.

Next we have Nick’s usual month-late entry ;) . Here we have a selection of fantasy figures from large (a giant) to small (some dwarves) and all sizes in between!

It wouldn’t be a Painting Challenge update without Mr Helliwell’s contribution. Here we have some 15mm Napoleonics and his usual selection of 28mm medieval figures…and there’s a sneaky fantasy figure sneaked in their too!

Mr Burt has been producing figures for Traitor’s Gate at a rapid rate of knots. Here are two more groups of civilians and some geese…

And to finish a couple of singleton’s: Mervyn’s 28mm Napoleonic Portuguese and some more of Ralph’s 15mm Greeks.

Some lovely looking and highly inspiring figures posted there. In fact, I’m off to the painting table myself now. After all, those Berber Spearmen won’t paint themselves…

Sharp Practice AAR: Pizzeria

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My first game at this year’s Operation Market Larden Lardy Day was a game of Sharp Practice set in northern Italy. Those naughty French revolutionaries were terrorising the area foraging for food and Iwould play as 2iC of an Austrian force sent to stop them.

The marauding French arrived and proved annoyingly fleet of food, making their way almost right through the town before us Austrians had much of a chance to stop them.

Finally, however, the Austrians got a decent run of cards and managed to get most of their force onto the table. The skirmishers and infantry in the centre are the troops under my command.

My skirmishers opened fire on the French behind the damaged wall, and did a satisfactory amount of casualties, but then strayed too close and got shot down in their turn, the survivors forced to retreat.

Meanwhile, my infantry had deployed into line and opened fire themselves, shooting down some French voltigeurs who then, being very drunk, charged us. The line opened fire again, and the French skirmishers ceased to exist!

We were a bit penned up in our corner of the battlefield, so needed to create some space for manouevre. My commander therefore sent the cavalry on the left forward with the aim of engaging the French Hussars who were making their way round onto our flank.

The initial charge successfully wiped out more French voltigeurs but failed to reach the Hussars who, in a cowardly fashion, refused to counter-charge but fled forward further round our flank.

The action then switched to the other side of the field, where more French cavalry, Dragoons this time, were makign their way around to our other flank.

The Grenzers deployed ready to repel the froggie horsemen, but in doing so unfortunately exposed their flank to some French Grenadiers, who punished them with a terrible series of musket volleys.

My main infantry line had been blazing away at the Grenadiers and had dropped a few of them, but those pesky French Hussars were still creeping around our left flank.

The arrival of the French Hussars combined with the shooting from the ruined church had forced my colleague’s infantry to retreat a bit in some confusion, and they were then charged and largely destroyed by said French cavalry, leaving my brave boys effectively surrounded!

With only my infantry unit left in a position to carry on the fight, and them now effectively surrounded, there was nothing for it but to gracefully surrender. The French had won the day!

A great game of Sharp Practice and one where we were just overwhelmed by the French. My thanks to the umpire and all the other players, one of whom at least will be grateful for the fact that I haven’t said it was all his fault that we lost by exposing the flank of our Grenzers!

Operation Market Lardon 11

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A couple of weekends ago I made my annual pilgrimage to Evesham for Operation Market Larden 11: the eleventh incarnation of the longest running independent Lardy day and one that I have been to every one of.

Brilliantly organised by Ade as usual, the game saw some superb games being played from right the way across the Lardy spectrum.

Here are some shots of the games taken from various times throughout the day. I would highly recommend attendance at this or any future Lardy days if you can.

My thanks to Ade for organising, and to the umpires and my opponents on the day, My two battle reports will follow in due course.

TTS AAR: The Arab Conquest of Siam!

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A practice game for the forthcoming To The Smallest tournament saw my Arab Conquest army taking on Rob’s Siamese.

With at least half of my troops being mounted infantry, things were going to move fast in this game!

Looking at the picture above, you’ll see that Rob has deployed all his elephants (and they were legion!) in one command on my right flank. Now Nellies, as anyone who plays TTS knows, are anaethema to cavalry, and I had a brigade of cavalry facing them, so the first thing to do was to effect ‘the ol’ switcheroo’ and move that brigade to the other side of the field as soon as possible.

This proved a good move, as my left flank cavalry brigade had failed to smash through the enemy cavalry there, so needed reinforcement: ably provided by the switched cavaly who helped in to punch through the enemy line.

Meanwhile, the two main lines had clashed, and a fierce but initially inconclusive melee broke out:

A slight distraction was caused by my Arab lance-armed camelry, who manged to sneak through the Siamese battle line and take one of the Thai camps.

This forced Rob to drop back some of his men to defend the camps (the initial Aces causing much hilarity!) and the Arabs were soon evicted and sent fleeing. Although only a fleeting success, this did cause Rob to hold back some of his men to deal with the camelry, so taking some of the pressure off my line.

This was a very relevant factor, as the elephants on my right had pushed the fanatical Arab infantry back…but their mahouts were having difficulty then turning the beasts into the centre towards the rest of my troops, and some light infantry to exploit the situation could have really helped the Thai cause, especially this also meant I had the freedom to move another unit of Arab fanatics forward onto the flank of the advancing pachyderms without having to worry about turnign my flank towards the enemy.

Meanwhile, and after a bit of effort, the Jund cavalry on the other side of the table had finally managed to deal with most of the Siamese horse and had now manoeuvered into a position to roll up the enemy line.

Four times the “blue” unit of Jund cavalry you can see in the right hand picture above tried to charge the Siamese flank: and four times they either failed to move at all, or failed to break the raw archers they had already disordered: a disgraceful performance that almost cost the Arabs the victory!

Things were now cricical for both sides as the advantage in the combat in the main battle lines swung backwards and forwards. Despite my initial successes, the game was very much still in the balance.

Finally, however, the Arab infantry on the right hand side of the field managed to break first one then another enemy unit of elephants, undoubtedly helped by the fact that the units were both deep and fanatical.

This, combined with the initial success of the cavalry on the left, and the one-for-one losses in the centre (which should have been a devastating roll up for the blue unit of Jund cavalry!) gave me the coins I needed to break the Siamese morale, and victory was mine!

Well that had been a very close run thing indeed!

What had looked like a battle-winning success on the left petered out into nothing as the Arab lights were ejected from the camp that they had taken and the Jund cavalry failed to roll up the enemy line as expected. The centre proved a hard fight, with veteran infantry on both sides going at it hammer and tongs, and it was only the fact that the deep fanatics on the right were so hard to kill that gave me the win.

Another great game of TTS!

FK&P AAR: Vanquished at Vanquish!

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I visited the Vanquish wargaming show in Bourne End a couple of weeks ago. It’s a great little event and conveniently close to home, so I always enjoy attending. This year, I had an extra reason to go — the South Oxford Generals (SOGS) were running their Pavia game using the For King & Parliament: Eastern Front variant.

I ended up playing the Ottomans against a combination of friend Gary and a young lad who was at the show with his father…who was helping him, as was everyone else in the room…an important fact to remember when we look at what happened in the game. Very important!

Now the Poles, my opponents, have vast amounts of very, very good cavalry, including the dread Winged Hussars (veteran horsemen armed with lance, pistol, carbine, bow, spear, warhammer, phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range etc) so I decided to see what I could do against the Polish infantry: after all, I had the Janisseries and they’re supposed to be pretty good. So forward went my foot…

First, however, the Poles, understandably keen to get their cavalry into action, advanced their right wing, and soon a massive cavalry melee broke out in the centre of the field.

My chaps didn’t actually do too badly here. In fact they did rather well in that rather than being wiped out to a man, they held their own, gave as good as they got, and soon the left hand side of the battlefield was looking rather empty of formed units.

This shifted the action into the centre where the two sides went at each other again.

Much to my surprise, I was definitely winning the cavalry battle, but just couldn’t quite finish the Poles off.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, the two infantry lines had closed and were sending shot after shot at each other, but to no great conclusion.

By this stage the game had attracted quite some attention with, as I said, the whole room siding with the young lad against me: somewhere along the line I had apparentlly turned into a combination of Dick Dasterdly and a pantomime villain! We won’t talk about who was Mutley, Si…

Anyhoo, we were now neck and neck on the coins front, as my initial gains on the left had been offset by my opponent’s gains in the centre and on the right.

The young lad’s father wanted to go. I agreed: he needed to take his child away before the young scallywag (not what I had originally written!) beat me!

It was all coming down to one final turn. I had cavalry to spare in the centre, but just couldn’t quite get them into the action in time…and the Poles still presented a danger from their last few horsemen.

In the end, I had a turn where I failed to get the last coin I needed to win; then the young lad went through most of his turn equally failing to get the last coin that he needed to win before commiting his last remaining unit of light horse in a desperate charge at a unit of my light horse.

With the crowd cheering them on, the Polish light horse smashed into my chaps and sent them routing from the field! I had lost!

What a cracking game of FK&P and a real example of what wargames shows are all about: not just the shopping but beautifully displayed demo games played with plenty of crowd participation.

My thanks to Si and the rest of the SOGS for putting on such a great game.

Postscript

Afterwards someone came up to me and said how much they had enjoyed watching and that it had been one of the best demo games they’d ever seen. They also wanted to know how difficult it had been to make sure that I lost, and by just one coin. I must, they said, be a very skilled player to manufacture such a close result and yet make sure the young lad won.

Make sure the young lad won? Make sure the young lad won? I was trying everything I could to beat the little…young scallywag!

 

TTS AAR: Ewelme 25 Game 4: Venice Abroad vs Hussites

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My fourth and final game at the Ewelme tournament this year was against the Hussites: a controversial army featuring a large amount of fortified war wagons.

Why controversial, you ask? Well, in a tournament setting that super-rewards an outright victory, it’s hard to achieve a conclusive result when one party sits at the back of the battlefield and just waits for his opponent to attack.

Personally I don’t agree. It’s a competition, it’s a legitimate army list…learn how to beat it in a timely fashion rather than just complaining!

Anyhoo: on to the game. First up, a bit of psychological warfare. I announced to Neil, commanding the Hussites, that I had enough points to rank in the top four or five so didn’t need to risk losing the game, so my Venetians would also stay at the back of the battlefield and not move!

This seemed to somewhat annoy him (which was, after all, the whole idea) so after stretching things out for a bit (as a good joke deserves a bit of time to mature!) I knuckled down and got to work.

The Hussites had set up in their usual formation: a long line of wagons backed by infantry with impassable terrain at either end.

Now I used to play a lot of 19th Century Colonial wargaming, and the one thing that commanding the Mahdists or the Zulus taught me (apart from not fighting a modern war with medieval weapons!) was that it was the corners of a square that were vulnerable i.e. don’t charge straight at it where the whole of one side can target you, go for the corners where only some of the enemy can shoot you.

My tactics therefore were to concentrate my missile troops on the left front corner of the Hussite line, also getting around their flank and shooting over the impassable terrain, whilst I advanced my dismounted later knights up to attack once the fire from the missile troops had started to have an effect.

Yes, I dismounted my later knights (who dismount with two-handed choppers!) but kept my standard knights on horseback in case I needed a quick reaction force for something.

This worked very nicely indeed, and I had soon killed one war wagon and one unit of supporting infantry for the loss of three quarters of my ammunition, and had my later knights ready to go in.

Unfortunately, the later knights were having one of their off days, and didn’t carve through the oppositio n like they should have done, but things werre progressing nicely, and it was only a matter of time before that end of the Hussite line collapsed.

At this point Neil realised that he had to do something different, so opened up the other end of his line of wagons and let his cavalry (decent lancers and light cavalry) out with the intention of marauding around my right flank.

This was, of course, utterly anticipated, and my knights (still on their horses) moved forward to counter the threat.

The initial clash wasn’t as successful as I had hoped - as I said, for some reason my knights were all having an off day - but with the infantry helping the enemy cavalry were soon on the run.

Particularly pleasing was squishing his light cavalry up against one of his own war wagons now positioned in front of some impassable terrain:

Unfortunately, time had been ticking away, and although I only needed a few more coins to win outright, I only had one last turn to get them.

My later knights didn’t manage it, so the only other chance was my Alabardiers charging into the back of the Hussite veteran cavalry (with general who had no other unit to go to, so would disappear if the cavalry broke): unable to evade because, you guessed it, they were also squished up against the wall of war wagons.

Unfortunately, although the Alabardiers had two goes at breaking the cavalry, and hit several times, the Hussite horse were veterans and managed to save the lot: Neil drawing high cards out of his deck right, left and centre!

So the game ended in 113-53 winning draw for the Venetians: frustrating as I would have had ‘em properly if there had been one more turn to play! Still, a satisfying result that showed the Hussites can be beaten: especially as I achieved this result with all my knights, mounted and dismounted, having a really bad set of cards.

This was the final game of the day, and when the points were totted up, my two wins, one winning draw and one loss saw me into fourth place: not a bad result.

Frustratingly, once the final scores were published, I realised just how close the top spots had been. Had my Alabardiers managed to finish off the Hussite cavalry and their general in the closing moments of the game—securing me an outright victory—I would have taken second place overall! How annoying is that? Probably as annoying as when I turned to Neil and cheerfully declared that the Venetians, too, would be staying right where they were on their side of the table at the start of the game…

 

IABSM AAR: Storming the Starmerskaya

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This weekend coming up I’m off to Evesham for the annual Operation Market Larden event: a cornucopia of Lard now in its 12th year. I’ve been to every OML so far, and had a whale of time on every occasion.

This year I’m playing Sharp Practice in the morning and I Ain’t Been Shot Mum in the afternoon, so it was with great pleasure that I saw that Phil & Jenny Turner have been playtesting the game in preparation. Click on the picture below to see pictures of that playtest…can’t wait!

 

TTS AAR: Ewelme 25 Game 3: Venice Abroad vs Late Romans

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My third game at this year’s Ewelme tournament was against Si and his Late Romans, rapidly becoming my nemesis opponents! It’s a small-ish army but packed full of veteran legionaries and auxilia that do very well against my Venetians, and a nasty shock unit of veteran cataphracts.

Both sides began the battle by advancing forward cautiously. On the left flank, I carelessly allowed the Romans to get an overlap, and would spend the rest of the game defending from a tactically outnumbered position there.

This meant that I needed to force the right as soon as possible, so I advanced my infantry and second command of knights forward as fast as possible.

Battle was generally joined on the right but to no clear outcome in the main line, although some of the Roman infantry on the far left did punch through and head for my baseline. No matter, I had some knights who could sort them out!

Much to my surprise, the infantry battle in the centre wasn’t a complete disaster, with the Venetian foot holding their own against the veteran Auxilia. Maybe I could win on the right before Si’s cavalry stuffed me on the left!

First up, I really needed to get rid of that pesky unit of Legionaries down in the left hand corner: a nice four coins just waiting to be collected by the Knights.

But they needed to get their skates on, as things were not going well on the left…

But in the end it was not to be.

I had two chances to win the game (as we were both now down to minimal coins): the Knights I’ve already mentioned and the Later Knights who had punched through at the other end of the field and were now in as position to threaten the enemy camp.

Unfortunately, the Knights just couldn’t get anywhere against the Legionaries, despite still having their lances for the first clash. Frontally charging undisordered veteran infantry is not a an easy clash to win!

And although the Later Knights took one of the enemy camps, Si managed to get some light infantry into the other camp meaning it was just an activation too far to take that one as well and get enough coins to win the game.

In the end, the game ended with a bit of a damp squib: with one of my Spear units falling foul of the javelins thrown by some Roman cavalry, and the game was lost before I could win it next turn.

Not a good result for the Venetians, but a great game of To The Strongest.

On the left, Si’s tactics gave him an immediate advantage but I managed to defend the position for longer than I expected to. On the right, the game could have gone to either side, mainly due to the unexpected efforts of the Venetian infantry, so it was just the way it goes that Si dealt the winning blow first.

Editor’s Note: Subsequent to the battle, Si has pointed out that although outside of competitions we have a fairly evenly matched success rate, I’ve never actually beaten him in a tournament. Thank you, mate, I’ll bear that in mind for next time!

Painting Challenge: End of May update

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It’s a ovely sunny morning and all are asleep except me…which gives me time to do a bit of basing (they are drying) and to update the Painting Challenge.

First up is Carole, with a whole grimmace of ogres:

Next we have, as always, Mr Helliwell, with some more 28mm medievals: the result of a large Bring & Buy purchase!

Next we have four singleton picture entries, with the caption telling all…

So a short but sweet Challenge update this time. Keep them coming!

TTS AAR: Ewelme 25 Game 2: Venice Abroad vs Ikko-Ikki

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My second game at this year’s Ewelme tournament was against Colin’s Ikkio-Ikki: a nasty bunch of Japanese samurai monks who all happened to be (a) fanatic and (b) carry big choppers i.e. hard to kill and lethal in combat!

As expected, as the battle began, the Ikko-Ikki eschewed any tactics and just headed straight for my battle line intending to use their naginatas to deadly effect.

My plan was to weight everything away from the left flank, aiming to defeat half their army with two-thirds of mine on the frest of the table, and then turn back to defeat the second half in due course. The knights would punch through their line on the far left and far right of my line whilst my over-matched infantry just held on until the knights could turn and hit the Ikko-Ikki in the rear.

On the left flank, the Later Knights did their jobs very nicely, but the helmet-heads didn’t: the usual cardboard Venetian armour coming into play.

This effectively left my left flank wide open apart from some nervous looking light infantry, meaning that I really needed to win on the right as soon as possible, or see my super-expensive camps fall to the religeous nutters costing me a lot of coins!

Meanwhile, in the centre, my infantry were hanging on for dear life: only really surviving because I had one extra unit that could help hold the left part of the line…but the Ikko-Ikki were remorseless in attack, and soon the centre began to look very shaky indeed.

It was all down to the knights on the right, helped by the victorious later knights on the left.

They had indeed punched through the enemy line, and were now looking at how best to finish the game before the left and centre finally gave way.

Everything now worked out rather nicely.

The later knights that had been successful on the left swept into the centre and smashed some of the Ikko-Ikki cavalry reserve that had been coming forward to plug the gap, from the field.

This allowed the knights of the right to position themselves perfectly to turn the tide of the battle my way: one unit headed for the flank of the Ikko-Ikki line that was threatening my infantry, the other spotted a chance to make a sudden thrust forward and take the enemy camp, not undefended but currently unoccupied!

Here’s an overview of the positions as we moved into the final phase of the game. You can see that my plan has worked: four of Colin’s units on the left (as you look at the picture) are facing one unit of Venetian light infantry, leaving the rest of my army free to attack the rear and flanks of the rest of his troops.

Note the lone Ikko-Ikki unit at my baseline on the right. They could have caused me some trouble, but Colin was unlucky with the cards, and they never really got a look in to the action after their initial success.

The end of the game the came quickly, as my knights on the right went to work.

The enemy camp was taken, and the flank of the Ikko-Ikki infantry line was charged, with even the intervention of the rest of the enemy cavalry having no effect on the later knights that had come over from the left.

So a 158-83 victory for the Venetians, but it had not been the easy battle the scoreline suggest. Those fanatical, naginata-wielding Ikko-Ikki are very tasty in combat, and had Colin managed to get the whole lot of them in against my troops, things would have been very different indeed!

TTS AAR: Ewelme 25 Game 1: Venice Abroad vs Konmenon Byzantines

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One of the great things about competitions is that you can never tell who you’re going to be fighting next.

Somewhat ironic, then, that my first game at this year’s Ewelme tournament was an exact repeat of my final game at Roll Call 2025, the last event I’d attended: my Venice Abroad versus Nigel’s Konmenon Byzantines…although both sides had slightly different armies as the set points totals were different between the two competitions.

The terrain was unusually dense, with significant patches of impassable or rough ground on the flanks. This had the effect of channelling the battle into the central zone, although it looked as if the Byzantines were going to try and slip round the outside of the poor going on their right flank.

As the game began, both sides advanced forward strongly on one wing. Nigel sent his troops forward against my right, and I slammed forward on my left, hoping to take advantage of the fact that some of the Byzantines were the opposite side of the impassable terrain so had effectively ruled themselves out of the first part of the battle.

I was unfortunately immediately in a bit of tactical trouble as, on the left, my veteran later knights managed to lose their initial charge and ended up disordered and, on the right, the Varangian Guard ran over the other unit of later knights. The famous Venetian cardboard armour striking again!

On the right, the situation was partly stabilised when the (normal) knights there managed to destroy the Byzantine Skutatoi but, in the meantime, battle had been joined in the centre and my men weren’t doing very well at all!

At this point Nigel made possibly the critical decision of the game. If you look at the picture above, you’ll see that (top, right) the Varangians have turned towards my victorious knights rather than turning towards the flank of my beleagured battle line.

Nigel was (quite rightly) very worried about his Varangians getting some knights charging right up their collective backsides, but if he’d turned towards my line, got a hit that killed the already-disordered right hand infantry unit (and his men did have big choppers!) he could perhaps have cascaded that disorder down the line and effectively ended the game.

But he didn’t, and the game went on…

Back to the left flank, and my knights there (both types) had recovered the situation nicely and driven his troops there from the field, apart from the units that had been on the other side of the poor terrain which were now busy driving my light troops on the left back and off the board.

So that is the situation as we hit the final stage of the game: one more significant hit would give me the win and it was still my initiative, but if I didn’t get that hit and win the game this turn, my main line was going to break, losing me at least three units, and probably give Nigel the win.

My crossbowmen had been sitting on a hill throughout the entire game doing sterling service shooting down Nigel’s light cavalry. As mentioned above, some Byzantine horse had driven my light troops back down the far left hand side, although I had managed to disorder them and wound their general as they did so.

The crossbowmen had one shot left so raised their weapons and opened fire: a hit and, I must confess, I can’t remember if it was the Byzantine horse or general who died, but it was enough to give me the last few coins I needed for the win!

Well that had been the closest of close run things, giving me a win 186-33 points: a scoreline that doesn’t reflect the actual situation at all. As I said, if my main battle line had collapsed, and it was about to do so, Nigel could easily had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat!

A great game of To The Strongest: very exciting until the very last moment.

Enter the Caliphate Arabs

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With my 15mm Arab Conquest army now complete, it was time to start looking at ways I could add units in order to run it into one of the later caliphate armies such as the Umayyads who invaded the Iberian peninsular.

First up was to look at the infantry, who transitioned from largely Arabic warbands to units of Berber spearmen sometimes incorporating archers. Some of these could be veteran, so I decided to paint up a couple of units as “Black Guard”.

Painting an entirely black-clothed figure is always quite hard so, if it helps, here’s how I do it. Undercoat in Grey Seer then Contrast black over the entire figure except for the spear, shield and any flesh. Leave to dry. Lightly dry brush a medium grey. Very, very, very lightly dry brush a white. Paint the odd bit of clothing a dark blue or dark purple to add a bit of variety. Then finish the spear, shield and flesh as normal (the shields are painted Contrast Wyldwood then dry brushed in bronze then given an Agrax Earthshade wash).

These I followed with a couple of “standard” units, one of which contained archers and one of which didn’t:

All the infantry are Red Copper sculpts printed for me by Baueda.

Having seen a couple of fantastic-looking Arabic armies at the recent Ewelme competition, I’m a bit disappointed I haven’t got any big flags with the units, but I do like the way these have turned out…which is lucky, as I have another four units to complete!