Time for a quick game of To The Strongest against friend Rob. As I wanted to use my ‘first time on the table’ pilgrims, I would play the early Crusaders. Rob chose to play the Sassanids.

The Sassanids won the scouting, and chose to deploy a long line of Savaran cavalry on the left, their cataphracts in the centre, all backed up by their infantry and elephants on their right.

The Crusaders deployed all their Knights on their left, their lesser troops (pilgrims etc) in the centre, and their shieldwall foot knights on the right.

On the left hand side of the battlefield, the Knights and cataphracts advanced towards each other slowly. I had four units of Knights handy, so was pretty confident that I could use my numbers to get an advantage here and then sweep into the flank of the rest of the Sassanid cavalry.

I was a little concerned about the horse-archers sweeping past my left flank, but I was about to charge forward so would worry about them later!

Or rather not, as a pair of Aces prevented me from getting that first charge advantage!

Worse, once my Knights had received the Cataphract charge, I checked that my general had survived the combat only to see him murdered by a Sassanid spy! Things had not begun particularly well!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, the Savaran had advanced into contact with my infantry.

This was almost equally disastrous: with two of my shieldwall units fleeing the field after receiving a rain of arrows and a nasty lance-charge, one exposing a unit of archers as they did so. The Savaran then crashed into the archers and, to much hilarity on my side, were disordered then broken by the bowmen!

Back to the left, and I had somewhat recovered the situation, destroying both cataphract units and one lot of horse archers. Both units of Knights were, however, disordered, so I couldn’t afford to lose another combat.

Rob and I were both now so short of coins that one more unit broken would lose either of us the game. The initiative was with me, so I had a quick look around the table to see which Sassanid units were the most vulnerable.

I could charge the disordered Daylami in the woods in the right hand picture above, but I was disordered and couldn’t use my lance amidst the trees, and they were veteran javelinmen who would get saves for defending cover…no, I needed to pick an easier target.

Ah ha! The other unit of Daylami were out in the open, and I had two units of Knights that could charge them. Here was my victory!

In went the first unit of Knights: mutual disorder. Good enough, I had the others to follow.

In they went, but I just couldn’t break the insert expletive javelinmen. The cream of chivalry unable to break disordered mountain men out in the open: pitiful!

Well that was my best chance of a win gone, and I could only watch as his elephants thundered forward and broke the Knights in front of the woods. That was bye-bye two coins and bye-bye the game!

An excellent game that I so nearly managed to recover from early losses to win. So nearly!

My only consolation was the fact that I am painting up a couple of Daylami units for my Arab Conquest force. May they achieve similar success when they hit the tabletop!

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.