This bank holiday weekend featured the only two-day To the Strongest! competition, taking place at the annual Britcon show.

This year’s event took place at the De Montfort University: an excellent venue just on the outskirts of Leicester city centre. There were about 400 gamers there, ten of whom were present to take part in the TTS tournament. There were also plenty of traders present, with a very popular Bring & Buy as well.

For those of you unfamiliar with the TTS-at-Britcon format, most people get there late on Friday afternoon, when there’s an opportunity for a practice game and then an outing to Wagamama’s for dinner.

Saturday sees three games of TTS, with plenty of time for the action to reach a definitive conclusion. In fact, the third game plays until a finish as the hall is open until late - some of you may recall Howard and Simon’s infamous five-hour marathon from a couple of years ago - followed, again, by dinner out somewhere, usually an Indian restaurant local to the venue.

Finally, Sunday sees another two games, again with the second one playing to a definitive conclusion, and then the prize-giving, with everything wrapped up by about 4pm.

The tournament was played at 140 points a side, with any armies from the Ancients or Medieval lists allowed. My thanks to Tim: who couldn’t play but did check and verify all the lists. The terrain system used was the one from the rulebook, which really seemed to encourage a wider choice of armies than usual. There were some really interesting set-ups generated as well: from Greek valleys full of steep hills right the way through to bowling green-like manicured fields.

The To The Strongest competition was, as usual, fought in the very best of spirits: we certainly seemed to be having more fun than anyone else!

The tournament works on a random draw for the first round (although you can ask not to play a regular opponent) followed by a Swiss system for the next four i.e. each round, the top two players fight, then the next two, then the next two etc, but with no-one fighting the same person twice.

Points are awarded for coins taken from your opponent plus coins you have remaining, with a bonus if you achieve an outright victory. This last had been halved for this tournament, something tnhat everyone seemed to think worked very well.

It was an incredibly tight result: going into the last game there were four people who could have won the event with, serendipitously, those four playing each other in the final round. Not only that, but when one of those two games had finished, the result meant that the player who won the other game could still have won overall. It truly was a nail-biting finish when drawing that Ace two games back would mean the difference between 1st to 4th place!

The Results

Here are the round by round match-ups and results:

Round One

Jon White (Ikko Ikki) beat Adrian Downey (Imperial Macedonian)

Chris Cornwell (Bretons) beat Robert Avery (Venice Abroad)

Howard Litton (Later Carthaginian) beat Nigel Phillips (Early Italian Condotta)

Mark Freeth (Middle Carthaginian) beat Ian Ralph (Viking)

Sid Bennet (Early Hoplites) beat Richard Lawrence (Late Achaemenid Persian)

Round Two

Sid Bennet (Early Hoplites) beat Howard Litton (Later Carthaginian)

Robert Avery (Venice Abroad) beat Adrian Downey (Imperial Macedonian)

Richard Lawrence (Late Achaemenid Persian) beat Nigel Phillips (Early Italian Condotta)

Mark Freeth (Middle Carthaginian) beat Chris Cornwell (Bretons)

Jon White (Ikko Ikki) beat Ian Ralph (Viking)

Round Three

Sid Bennet (Early Hoplites) beat Jon White (Ikko Ikki)

Robert Avery (Venice Abroad) beat Howard Litton (Later Carthaginian)

Adrian Downey (Imperial Macedonian) beat Mark Freeth (Middle Carthaginian)

Chris Cornwell (Bretons) beat Richard Lawrence (Late Achaemenid Persian)

Nigel Phillips (Early Italian Condotta) beat Ian Ralph (Viking)

Round Four

Chris Cornwell (Bretons) beat Sid Bennet (Early Hoplites)

Robert Avery (Venice Abroad) beat Mark Freeth (Middle Carthaginian)

Howard Litton (Later Carthaginian) beat Jon White (Ikko Ikki)

Ian Ralph (Viking) beat Richard Lawrence (Late Achaemenid Persian)

Nigel Phillips (Early Italian Condotta) beat Adrian Downey (Imperial Macedonian)

Final Round

Chris Cornwell (Bretons) beat Howard Litton (Later Carthaginian)

Robert Avery (Venice Abroad) beat Sid Bennet (Early Hoplites)

Jon White (Ikko Ikki) beat Richard Lawrence (Late Achaemenid Persian)

Nigel Phillips (Early Italian Condotta) beat Mark Freeth (Middle Carthaginian)

Adrian Downey (Imperial Macedonian) beat Ian Ralph (Viking)

Overall Results

Robert Avery (Venice Abroad) 694
Chris Cornwall (Breton) 682
Sid Bennet (Early Hoplites) 531
Howard Litton (Later Carthaginian) 511
Jon White (Ikko Ikki) 502
Nigel Phillips (Early Italian Condotta) 471
Adrian Downey (Imperial Macedonian) 447
Richard Lawrence (Late Achaemenid Persian) 421
Mark Freeth (Middle Carthaginian) 335
Ian Ralph (Viking) 294

To give you an idea of how close the final result was, the 12 points difference between the top two players represents only about three coins across the five games: the equivalent of only one deep unit. Even the 20 points between positions three and four are only the equivalent of about 2-3 standard units.

Conclusion

The TTS-at-Britcon tournament was a great event that everyone seemed to really enjoy.

I know Briton can be an expensive weekend, but it is well worth it not just for the games themselves but also for the socialising that goes along with them.

And if Britcon still doesn’t appeal, then I highly recommend entering other TTS events: they are all fought in a great spirit of friendliness and fun! Remaining this year we have Colours (6th September); Warfare (15th November) and the Two The Strongest Doubles (29th November). Next year begins with the Welsh Open in January and then the Worlds in February.