TTS AAR: Venetians Abroad vs Later Tibetans (Ewelme 24, Game One)
/This year’s Ewelme tournament was themed For England and St George: later armies from the Medieval lists and one of your generals had an extra hero who could be activated by crying that phrase or one more suited to your army.
My first game was against Peter’s Later Tibetans.
This was extremely amusing as in the run up to the draw for the first round games (televised by Peter and the team from SOGS) I had answered the question “what sort of army would you least like to face” with the slightly facetious “anything commanded by Peter”. Naturally Lady Luck was listening in and, sure enough, out came Peter’s chit swiftly followed by mine! It was going to be a long day!
The Tibetans, being nearly all on horseback, outscouted my holidaying Venetians, with the result that once again I found myself facing an army that was heavily weighted to one flank.
The Tibetan “Peace Mountain” can be seen top left!
I was absolutely determined not to be outflanked, so hung back my right whilst strongly advancing my left.
Unfortunately this made very little difference, and soon I was facing light horse and cataphracts threatening my right flank.
I pondered what to do for some time, then attempted to consolidate my position.
Unfortunately I left the smallest of chinks in my armour and, before I knew it, I had cataphracts pouring in from the right, smashing my units from the table faster than you can say nam myoho renge kyo!
Note that this meant that the yellow cataphracts had to successfully turn and move one forward (difficult move) then move diagonally and charge (another difficult move).
My centre then collapsed under the wright of more flank charges as the Tibetans poured in from the right, and nothing I tried to do seemed to work.
A rather ignominius defeat 17:192 points!
Superb play from Peter, poor play from me. I should have compressed my troops into one corner, formed a wall of spearmen, some in orbis, and used my Knights effectively rather than seeing them smashed from the table without even getting to use their lances.
Not a good start to the day!
