To The Smallest: Game Four: Khurasanians vs Galatians
/My fourth and final game at this year's To The Smallest 15mm competition in Cardiff was due to be against Simon Miller, the author of the rules, whose Galatians had, presumably, also won their first three games.
Unfortunately Simon was on a time limit and had to leave the competition early to catch a train, but luckily fellow-player Mike was around to substitute in and lead the fanatical Celts into battle. As Mike later said on his blog: But, the laughter stopped for me as Sid called me forward in round four to face the hot favourite, Rob. My opponent was high in the rankings and Mr Miller remembered he had a train to catch. Against an opponent who actually read the scenarios and practised against numerous opponents; it wasn’t going to end well…
I was a bit concerned about facing Galatians: having played them myself at Ewelme this year, I knew that if they could get their warbands stuck into my troops, infantry or cavalry, it would be all over very quickly. I was therefore very pleased to see that we were going to play on the Issus battlefield i.e. the one with a (fordable) river running right across the middle of it. My plan wrote itself: shoot the Galatians, with their unwieldy deep warbands, full of arrows as they were trying to cross the river, then hit the disordered survivors fast and hard!
The terrain could not have been better for me: open ground with a barrier bisecting the table
The game began with the Galatians advancing to the river line. A group move attempt on my right was stymied by an early Ace and gave the enemy a chance to cross the river with three of their warbands.
This was not in the plan, but still meant that I could focus my attacks on the part of his force that was across the river (i.e. giving me a local advantage in numbers) and still bottle up the troops on Mike’s far left.
My ghilman cavalry duly charged forward and before long I had destroyed two of the Galatian warbands, which put me 40% towards an overall victory.
Meanwhile, on the far right, Galatian cavalry and a chariot had also finally managed to get across the stream. These were also engaged, this time by a combination of my lancers and some Turkoman horse archers, but although the enemy advance was checked, I just couldn’t seem to knock any of his units off the table.
Ed’s note: there is a difference between the two photos, below. In the right hand photo, the Galatian chariots have been disordered by bowfire from the horse-archers.
Meanwhile on the left, my infantry had been girding their loins for an expected Galatian all-out assault. This didn’t happen, so the infantry began to slide sideways towards the centre of the table: eyes open for a sudden Galatian surge forward.
Some of the more central units essayed across the river but soon changed their minds and retreated in the face of enemy aggression., although they did cause a few casualties, including the Galatian cavalry general.
Back to the centre and right hand side of the field. I finally dispatched the enemy horsemen in melee with the lancers, which left me very close to taking all Mike’s coins.
These I finally did acquire when the loan warband in the centre failed to pull back and was caught between two units of ghilman horse and annihilated along with their general.
So a massive 171-7 victory over the Galatians. To be fair to Mike, he was playing an army he’d literally just been given and thrown well and truly into the deep end with an anvil chained to his feet!
Once all the games had finished, the points were totted up. I was not the only player on four wins out of four - I think there were three of us - so it was a bit of a nerve-wracking wait. In the end, however, I had done enough to win the tournament overall, coming out just ahead of Matt and Si:
It had been a cracking day’s gaming, and not just because I had won. A terrific, well-organised event fought in very good humour by all, in a great venue and with some great people. If you play TTS, I highly recommend you try a competition or two: great fun!
