Earlier this month I took part in the inaugral To The Longest event: a 28mm To The Strongest battle day featuring eight players aside fighting three linked games, two individual mano e mano games in the morning and one gigantic group game in the afternoon.

You can get some idea of the scale of the event by looking at the picture, opposite, that shows the table set up first thing in the morning before the game got started. As you can see, the battlefield stretched the entire length of the hall we were in, including passing through a relatively narrow partition…but more of that later.

The Hundred Years War was the theme of the day, with one side playing England, the other France. As I’m a bit short on 28mm armies, I was using my trusty, but in this case slightly anachronistic and geographically challenged, Venetians as a Late Italian Condotta army…well, it’s so hard to get work sometimes you just have to get on your bike, cross Europe and go looking for it!

My first game was against Dean, playing an English 100YW army that was the usual mixture of knights, billmen and longbowmen.

At this point it’s also worth noting that the weather was dry, and the ploughed fields still counted as good going.

My plan was to use my strong infantry command to take the walled field on my right. At the same time, my light cavalry would secure the small herd of sheep on the left (as this was the first in a series of linked games, you got extra points for securing supplies) whilst the Knights in the centre waited to see what happened.

Well, the good news was that my Stradiotti soon secured the sheep and herded them off the table to be consumed roasted with some mint sauce later on.

The less good news was that although my infantry command quickly reached the walled field on the other side of the table, they would spend the entire game bashing themselves against the troops within in, unable to make any real headway.

The battle would therefore be decided mainly in the centre of the field, where both sides moved their “heavies” into position for a fight.

My plan was working: with so much of Dean’s army concentrated on his wings, I effectively had five fighting units versus his three, giving me the advantage.

It would have been six versus three except for the fact that one unit of knights stubbornly refused to move away from the Italian camp (you can see them bottom left in the picture, above) wasting vast amounts of time and initiative as I tried to get them into the fray.

Worse, my other Knights were having one of their off days: failing to smite the enemy from the field with their initial charges.

The grinding combat in the centre gradually worked its way through, with honours ending up about even.

I lost a unit of Knights to English dismounted knights but had some Lancierii all ready to take advantage of where the victorious enemy knights ended up, but luck was on the side of the English and this pivotal moment to flank charge King Henry passed without result.

I had another chance to smash through the enemy line when some more of my Knights ended a unit of English billmen.

This could have meant the opportunity to roll the English up, but Dean cunningly withdrew his vulnerable units into a defensive position in the top left of the field, meaning that my Knights now faced nothing but a row of longbowmen rather than the flanks and rear of retreating billmen.

By this time my Venetians were also getting a little tired and emotional!

Dean had gradually been knocking off my light units which, whilst individually unimportant, collectively mounted up to a significant amount of coins.

Add to this King Henry’s unit turning and polishing off the Lancierii and I had lost too many to recover from. Excellent play from Dean meant a bad start to the day with a 6-14 defeat for the Venetians!