TTS AAR: Battles on the Border

Off to friend Bevan’s house for some To The Strongest with some action from the Welsh Borders.

For the first game, I would play the Welsh, with Bevan taking the part of the Feudal English.

Here are the Welsh: a brigade of cavalry, then three mixed brigades of spearmen, bowmen and light bowmen.

As you can see, my plan is to use the stream running across the battlefield to give me the time I need to soften the English up with a storm of arrows before charging into contact.

And here are the perfidious English. A brigade of Knights, a mixed brigade of Knights and Spearmen, then two brigades all of foot, nearly all spear. In fact, the English only had two units with ranged weapons: two light units armed with crossbows.

As you can imagine, their plan, therefore, was to make contact asap and smash me from the tabletop!

The English come forward into a veritable hail of arrows: no wonder they decided to adopt the longbow shortly afterwards!

My tactics are paying off: holes start to appear in the English line. Their horse cannot seem to get across the stream with enough impetus to break my foot units, and all the time are being worn down by missile fire.

Elsewhere, the English foot are suffering the same fate, especially as my spearmen generally outclass them once contact is actually made.

A stunning victory!

Bevan rains victory coins in my general direction as I win the game without losing a single unit!

Game Two

It was now only fair that we swapped sides and gave things another go. I would take exactly the same Feudal English that I had just beaten, and Bevan would take my victorious Welsh for a spin.

For this game, I split my Knights. One mixed brigade would be on my right flank, the rest on my left.

The plan was to get over the river on the left asap, punch a way through the Welsh horse opposite with my Knights, then move forward to engage generally as any surviving Knights either went after the Welsh flank or camp.

Timing -wise, my plan worked beautifully: my Knights did indeed hit the Welsh horse without taking a single casualty from bow fire.

The problem was in the execution: despite charging with lances and generals, I just couldn’t break the Welsh horse.

Which meant my right flank had to work harder than planned: the Welsh’s five units came forward and engaged my three units.

I really do need the Knights on the left to punch a bit faster!

Things went south on the right very quickly indeed, and I soon found myself losing victory medals much faster than I could afford to do so.

On the left, my Knights were really making heavy weather of things. Yes, they had now disordered two enemy cavalry units, but unfortunately had become disordered themselves in the process.

Come on: you’re supposed to be better than this!

In the centre, however, things were going very much better.

Riding the “storm of arrows” from the Welsh archers, my spearmen had got in amongst them and were wreaking havoc. Perhaps all was not lost!

But they needed to wreak havoc very quickly, as my right flank was about to disappear, along with the last of my victory medals.

So it was my turn again: and it was a turn in which I had to win the battle because, if I didn’t, the Welsh would almost certainly break the one unit more that they needed to win the game.

It wasn’t all bad: the Welsh had five disordered units (i.e. one more hit would kill them) and taking out three of them would win me the game. Not only that, but I had the units to do it with: all ordered and raring to go.

Now I don’t usually like to blame luck for a defeat, but the tale of woe that followed has no other explanation.

There are 80 playing cards in a TTS deck, with eight Aces being the worst cards you can draw. In this, the last turn of the game, I would draw 15 cards…of which six were Aces!

Better mathematicians than I will be able to calculate the odds of that happening but, put it this way, I’m definitely buying a lottery ticket for the next Euromillions draw!

My turn ended with not a single enemy unit broken and then, as predicted, on Bevan’s go, he polished off my Knights, my last victory coins and therefore the game!

So two great games of To The Strongest and, overall, I edged victory over the two battles. The real pity was that there was no time for a third game as a decider!