TTS AAR: Welsh Open Game Two: Venice Abroad versus Later Romans
/After dispatching Colin’s Ikko-Ikki in Game One, my opponent in Game Two was friend Si and his Later Romans: in effect, a repeat of my third battle at last year’s Warfare tournament. well, I’d won that one (beating Si for the first time in competition ever) so settled down to try and do so again.
Things didn’t start very well, as I lost the scouting and had to watch as significant numbers of Roman heavy cavalry thundered towards my left wing!
At this point I managed to muck up the settings on my camera, so some of the photos are weirdly focused: which is absolutely gutting as this was the key moment of the battle!
I advanced my Knights towards the Roman horse and managed to get the first charge in. Incredibly, a fortuitous run of the cards saw me knock out one of the Roman cavalry units along with their General, with their accompanying lights also fleeing the field in shock. That’s five coins won (about half the Roman total) in one hit!
It was now very much the case of not throwing away this advantage, so I calmed myself down (no easy feat after that bit of good luck) and took stock. A plan quickly evolved: the Knights to finish off his Roman cavalry on the left then advance on his camp; send everything else in against the so-far-untouched Romans on the right.
Romans are really hard to kill, especially when commanded by an experienced general like Si. I threw everything I had available at the enemy on the right, and despite having a considerable numerical advantage and Knights, at the end of the game I still hadn’t fully broken them there!
So it would all be down to what happened on the left.
First task was to polish off the rest of the Roman cavalry…
Again, this took much longer than it should have done, particularly once some Roman infantry got involved…but eventually the last enemy cavalryman fled the field and it was time to break the foot.
Stubborn? That word doesn’t properly encompass how difficult it was to finish them off!
In particular, the Roman legionaries on the hill at the back survived charge after charge in the rear from my light horse, and weren’t even much bothered by my Knights coming in from the front, disordering them the first time they tried it!
In the end, however, the Later Knights managed to break the infantry unit caught out in the open, and the game was mine.
This was another big win (12-2) but, I emphasise, solely down to the luck I had in the first turn in knocking five coins worth of veteran Roman cavalry and their general off the table with my first charge. Without that bit of extreme good fortune, things would have been very different indeed!
