TTS AAR: Britcon Game 5: Venetians vs Florentines
/My final game at Britcon this year was against another Italian Condotteri army: Nigel’s Florentines.
Although technically a different army to mine (an Early Italian Condotteri army versus my Later one, and from Florence as opposed to Venice), Nigel’s force was actually/obviously quite similar to mine, with the contemporaneous nature of the clash promising an interesting game.
As you can see in the picture below, we even deployed in a similar way!
The oppening phases of the game saw both sides plagued by a series of Aces, something I had (quite surprisingly!) managed to avoid in the tournament so far.
Nevertheless, the Venetian Knights advanced strongly on the left wing, and managed to get into a position where I could threaten to roll up the Florentine line, with the only thing standing in their way being a couple of units of enemy Lights…
…who were disposed of in short order:
My other command of Knights was also in the process of doing the same thing on the other side of the battlefield:
Back to the left flank, where my initial success was now being slightly stymied by a combination of a really annoying unit of enemy Knights that just wouldn’t die and my decks of cards who had obviously decided that I had been having far too easy up until now:
Despite this, however, the rest of my troops on that flank had started to knock Florentine units off the board, helped by the Venetian infantry who had now caught up and were eager to join in the fun.
Things were also still going well on the right flank apart, again, for one really annoying enemy unit: this time a bunch of Light Infantry with Melee Weapons: a relatively new troop type who had the temerity to charge my overall commander, with army standard, bodyguard knights etc, in the flank!
I remember this being a deeply frustrating phase of the game, where a couple of Florentine units on the wings distracted me so much that it kept me from properly enjoying the process of destroying his centre…but the writing was on the walls of Florence and soon Nigel’s last victory medal was mine for a 181-38 point victory.
With all five games now done, as organiser I totted up everyone’s points from all the games and discovered, a bit to my embarrassment, that I was actually the overall winner, and with a clean sweep of five victories out of five.
So a good result at what had beena cracking tournament overall. All the games were fought with a great spirit of friendly, competitive, fair play, with no arguments marring the event at all.
My thanks to all those who took part (especially my opponents), to all the organisers at BHGS, and to Derek, who was kind enough to do all the list checking. Make sure you keep 7-9th August 2025 clear for next year’s competition.
