Earlier in June, I made the long journey to the excellent Firestorm Games in Cardiff for the inaugral To The Smallest competition i.e. a To The Strongest tournament played in 15mm.

This featured 160 point armies (15-20% larger than the usual 28mm tournament armies) played on a 10mm rather than a 15mm grid, giving everybody much more room to manouevre.

My problem was that all my existing armies were set up for a 15mm grid, so the only army that I could easily convert (i.e. no re-basing, just purpose built movement trays) were my Timurids. This wasn’t actually a problem: the Timurids conquered quite a bit of the world, so were bound to do well in competition!

My first game was up against Matt Slade’s Classical Indians on the Khadesh battlefield: so at least my horsemen would indeed have lots of room.

My plan was to keep his heavy chariot strikeforce busy with one of my cavalry commands whilst sweeping around his right flank with the other, attacking from front and sides to get the advantage.

As the game began, I therefore advanced strongly towards the Indians.

On the left, I quickly got in amongst it with one of his commands, although the elephants there caused my cavalry plenty of problems (in TTS, horse fight very badly against nellies); whilst on the right, I hung back and began peppering his charioteers with arrows, unfortunately to no effect.

Unfortunately, I just couldn’t break through on the right (fighting elephants with cavalry was one reason - I just couldn’t kill that elephant no matter what I threw at it) but Matt’s heavy chariots burst through my light cavalry screen and then my heavy cavalry as well.

Things were not looking good!

I needed to do something to break through on the left, so committed my reserves: the kharash units of driven-slaves. Here you see them moving up into action (bottom left).

The kharash c-rashed into the fight and, combined with some heavy cavalry, knocked an Indian infantry unit out of action. I was whittling his forces down on the left, but two units of elephants were still giving me problems.

Meanwhile, on the left, my troops had given up the ghost, leaving the way clear for his chariots to head for my now-undefended camps.

Which then promptly fell, giving Matt all the coins he could possibly need to win the game!

The score was a 9-14 loss for me, with Matt justly rewarded for his good play: his use of elephants to de-fang my heavy cavalry was excellent. I should have hung back and peppered the pachyderms with arrows instead of mixing it in melee!

Three games to go…and my Timurids had better pull their socks up!