My final game at the 2024 Ewelme tournament was against Rob’s Later Crusader army. This was an army reasonably similar to mine: strong cavalry backed up by bog standard infantry, although my Knights were slightly better than his horse, and his infantry all had crossbows.

My plan was not especially subtle: use my superior cavalry to win the wings whilst my infantry held the centre, then curl in and roll the Crusaders up from both flanks. Accordingly, I advanced my two brigades of Knights and Lights rapidly towards the enemy.

On the left flank, it proved quite hard to get through his Crusader Knights. I lost a unit of “Broken Lances” shortly after the first clash and had to send some spearmen in for support.

Although things eventually began turning my way, it took all five of my units (two Knights, two Lights and the Spearmen) to get the advantage on his two units of Crusader Knights and some infantry. The battle was not going to be won on the left!

On the right, however, things went much better for the Venetians.

A rapid advance with some Knights and light horse actually worked brilliantly with, for once in the whole tournament, my ‘veteran Knights’ and ‘veteran Later Knights with Army Standard’ actually doing what they were supposed to do: smashing enemy units from the field with abandon whilst proving impervious to attacks from the flanks and rear.

In fact, it’s so unusual for my Later Knights and Knights to actually survive a combat despite their 4+ and 5+ saves respectively, that it’s worth another picture:

By now the Crusaders were beginning to fold, with both flanks under extreme pressure from my surviving Knights.

A final couple of Crusader units gave way, and the game was mine: a hard-fought win 183 points to 67 points (12-8 in terms of victory medals).

So that was the last game, and I had amassed one huge loss, one losing draw, one big win, and the win against the Crusaders, above.

The points were totted up and I had managed 5th place: a lot better than I had expected given my first two games.

It had been an excellent day’s play against three great opponents, and I cannot but recommend the To The Strongest competition circuit to all. Although there are competitions before then, the biggie this year is the two-day Britcon event (well, it’s three days if you count the Friday evening as well) with five games (six if you count Friday’s warm-up) over two days.

Entries are open now.