TTS AAR: To The Smallest Warm-Up Game
/This year’s To The Smallest 15mm tournament for To The Strongest was again held at Firestorm Games in Cardiff: an excellent venue for what is proving to be an excellent event, ably organised by Sid.
I would be using my relatively new Arab Conquest army, figures from Red Copper 3D printing sculpts printed for me by Baueda in Italy before they were sold to the UK.
I got to Cardiff in late afternoon on the Friday and checked into my hotel “room” before heading down to Firestorm to see if anyone fancied a warm-up game.
I say “room” because I was staying in the Cardiff Premier Inn Zip hotel: a pod hotel which only cost me £32 for the night. I highly recommend it for those in a similar “just need somewhere to stay” situation: cheap, plenty of parking, very clean, food & drink available until 3am, and a power shower to die for! Yes, the pod is not very big, but it more than fitted me and my ego!
Then it was down to Firestorm Games to see who was already there and, more importantly, who fancied a game. Mark, Howard and Adrian were all present and correct, so Adrian and I settled dwon to play whilst the other two watched and made helpful comments and suggestions!
The big innovation with To The Smallest is that the figures are based on a 10cm frontage and play is on a 12x18 grid that gives plenty of room for manouevre.
Adrian had brought Later Achaemenid Persians with him, and we scattered a bit of random terrain on the table and prepared to set to: my mounted infantry meaning that the two sides started the game a little closer together than the norm.
My plan, such as it was, was just to close with the enemy as soon as possible. I seemed to have a bit of an advantage of numbers on the left, so that’s where I began my advance.
The Persians chose not to mix it with the Jund cavalry and their light camelry support, evading away and shooting their bows instead.
Meanwhile, on the right, it was my turn to be cautious, as the terrain was quite dense and the Persians had managed to move some of their troops over to outnumber me. The two sides clashed but without much of a resolution, although the tactical picture looked better for the enemy.
I had chosen not to advance in the centre for the time being, letting the Persians come to me. This let Darius and his deep lancers punch through my centre, chasing some lights right the way back to my fortified camp only to stop there without attempting to take it.
The game had now broken down into a sprawling series of individual melees with no coordination or battle lines evident. It looked as if it was going to be the cumulative effect of all these isolated fights that would decide the game.
On the right, the two sides kept knocking seven bells out of each other until there was literally no-one left alive in that area of the battlefield!
In the centre, some of my Warriors took on the mercenary Greek Hoplites, slogging it out with both sides disordered to no great conclusion.
On the right, my outnumbered troops had fought a rather decent rearguard action, keeping his superior number occupied whilst I tried to win the battle elsewhere.
So where was the battle decided?
Well, if you remember, Darius and his deep cavalry had punched through the middle of my line and had been molesting my light infantry. This left the Persian horsemen a bit isolated on my side of the table…where I had some veteran Daylami tribesmen just itching to take them on.
A flank charge later, the Persians were disordered, and evaded away with the Daylami in hot pursuit.
The Daylami chased them across the tabletop, over hills, eventually coming to grips with the Persians again as they were forced to fight or run the risk of ending up fighting my javelinmen in woods.
Some decent cards later and the Persians were toast: three medals for the unit and a medal for the army standard being enough to give me the game.
That had been a wild and fragmented encounter that could have gone either way.
In the end I had been comparatively lucky to win enough of the individual fights to give me the win but, as you can see in the photo below, neither side had much of their army left at all!
A great way to start the weekend, and my thanks to Adrian for a good game.
