One of the great things about competitions is that you can never tell who you’re going to be fighting next.

Somewhat ironic, then, that my first game at this year’s Ewelme tournament was an exact repeat of my final game at Roll Call 2025, the last event I’d attended: my Venice Abroad versus Nigel’s Konmenon Byzantines…although both sides had slightly different armies as the set points totals were different between the two competitions.

The terrain was unusually dense, with significant patches of impassable or rough ground on the flanks. This had the effect of channelling the battle into the central zone, although it looked as if the Byzantines were going to try and slip round the outside of the poor going on their right flank.

As the game began, both sides advanced forward strongly on one wing. Nigel sent his troops forward against my right, and I slammed forward on my left, hoping to take advantage of the fact that some of the Byzantines were the opposite side of the impassable terrain so had effectively ruled themselves out of the first part of the battle.

I was unfortunately immediately in a bit of tactical trouble as, on the left, my veteran later knights managed to lose their initial charge and ended up disordered and, on the right, the Varangian Guard ran over the other unit of later knights. The famous Venetian cardboard armour striking again!

On the right, the situation was partly stabilised when the (normal) knights there managed to destroy the Byzantine Skutatoi but, in the meantime, battle had been joined in the centre and my men weren’t doing very well at all!

At this point Nigel made possibly the critical decision of the game. If you look at the picture above, you’ll see that (top, right) the Varangians have turned towards my victorious knights rather than turning towards the flank of my beleagured battle line.

Nigel was (quite rightly) very worried about his Varangians getting some knights charging right up their collective backsides, but if he’d turned towards my line, got a hit that killed the already-disordered right hand infantry unit (and his men did have big choppers!) he could perhaps have cascaded that disorder down the line and effectively ended the game.

But he didn’t, and the game went on…

Back to the left flank, and my knights there (both types) had recovered the situation nicely and driven his troops there from the field, apart from the units that had been on the other side of the poor terrain which were now busy driving my light troops on the left back and off the board.

So that is the situation as we hit the final stage of the game: one more significant hit would give me the win and it was still my initiative, but if I didn’t get that hit and win the game this turn, my main line was going to break, losing me at least three units, and probably give Nigel the win.

My crossbowmen had been sitting on a hill throughout the entire game doing sterling service shooting down Nigel’s light cavalry. As mentioned above, some Byzantine horse had driven my light troops back down the far left hand side, although I had managed to disorder them and wound their general as they did so.

The crossbowmen had one shot left so raised their weapons and opened fire: a hit and, I must confess, I can’t remember if it was the Byzantine horse or general who died, but it was enough to give me the last few coins I needed for the win!

Well that had been the closest of close run things, giving me a win 186-33 points: a scoreline that doesn’t reflect the actual situation at all. As I said, if my main battle line had collapsed, and it was about to do so, Nigel could easily had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat!

A great game of To The Strongest: very exciting until the very last moment.