The second game that Peter and I fought at last year’s Doubles (actually held in January this year due to scheduling problems) was against the powerful combination of Principate Romans and Armenians, ably generalled by Matt and Tim respectively.

The Chinese won the scouting and we both immediately advanced strongly against our opponents.

On my side of the table, things went wrong very quickly, with two units of my heavy cavalry disordered in the first charge, and my lights on the wing, who were supposed to be outflanking the enemy line, driven backwards and right off the table!

The Armenian cavalry who had driven my lights back then turned around and headed towards the rear of my horse, who were still very much under pressure from the enemy in front of them.

This had disaster written all over it, but somehow my cavalry threatened by the Armenians in the rear survived the next couple of turns: once because Tim drew Aces and failed to charge them, and then because they managed to make their saves when hit from behind.

A very narrow escape!

And, in fact, a narrow escape that allowed me to charge and disorder an Armenian unit further into the centre of the battlefield, and then assault it with more lights, finally doing enough damage to break them and give me enough coins to win the game.

This was very lucky, as I only had two coins left myslf, and Tim’s other cavalry were about to hit the rear of my other horse again!

So that was my side of the battlefield, what of what Peter was doing on his. Here’s his report:

Peter writes

My CinC , Mulan (of Disney fame), led some brave but nervous LC facing the veteran Lance and javelin armed heavy Roman cavalry. Mulan advanced and sure enough the Romans took the bait and galloped forwards to kill or capture the apparently weak and defenceless girl. But of course she withdrew.

Meanwhile the solid line of Lorica segmenta clad legionaries trundled forward with no gaps across six boxes!

But this was a trap! My nearby command of cavalry and supporting light cav on the other side of the river shot forward. My veteran cav Lance bow, blocked the advancing legions and started shooting although scoring no hits. They then sat there with lowered lance, threatening to countercharge any further advance by the Romans.

Meanwhile, the bow armed cavalry surprised my opponent Mat by turning and offering their flank to the pilum armed pesky praetorians! Why? Because They then charged across the deadly river, at the Ford smashing into the flank of the Roman cavalry! Missing once and hitting the second, which Mat failed to save! The supporting light cavalry followed and again missed and then hit but frutatingly the vet cavalry saved!

So it was up to Mulans squadron of bow armed light cav to pour 6 volleys into the same unit and on the last arrow they failed to save and died!

This left just one unit of Roman cav facing a swarm of formed Chinese cav and Mulans light cav and they very wisely began withdrawing back to their base edge.

Meanwhile my veteran heavy Lance armed cav blocking the menacing Roman mincing machine, activated - and withdrew! This surprised Mat but also delighted him as he wanted to advance to take my camp.

So he blew his cornicens and the whole line of locked red scuta came forward in a rush.

But again this was a cunning trap!

By now the Final Roman cavalry unit had been pursued to their base edge and shot to pieces by the swarm.

This allowed Mulan and one unit of LC to turn and charge across the same Ford that the heavy cavalry had charged across the other way just two turns previoulsy.

You can see the moment in the photo above, where, just like in the AI video based on this very figure that I posted yesterday, the koi carp leapt into the air as Mulans tiger splashed through the water in Hollywood slow motion, before smashing into the flank of the already disordered legion!

The first card missed, the second card hit and the legion, obviously completely surprised by this unexpected attack across what it had assumed was a protective turbulent river, drew a 4 and failed its save!

These were the last two medals that the entire double army had left and the remaining Romans turned tail and ran!

I couldn’t have choreographed such a Hollywood moment any better…

A turbulent and deadly river.
One surprise charge across the Ford with heavy cav to take out Roman vet cav to close one trap.
Then another charge the other way to close the Second trap led by Mulan and her tiger to destroy a legion.
Winning the final medals for a total wipeout victory!

So another big win and on to the final game…

The ‘Two the Strongest’ Doubles tournament for To The Strongest had it’s second outing a couple of weekends ago.

As Peter had returned from his self-imposed sabbatical from competition playing, I made sure to enlist him as my partner for the event. After the thrashing he gave me (and others) at this year’s Warfare event, it was very much a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them”!

After much discussion, Peter decided that we would take the powerful but perhaps risky combination of heavily armoured Teutonic Knights (my bit) and dancing horse-archer Lithuanians (Peter’s command).

The plan (hatched over Peter’s various and mandatory training sessions) was for the Lithuanians to keep one half of the opposition occupied with two thirds of their force, whilst I borrowed the other third, combining it with my own troops to smash my way through the other half of the enemy before turning to hit the remaining foe in the flank. I don’t remember much about what was said, but there were chalkboards and diagrams, plans of action, timetables, many military acronyms, homework, and much army-appropriate talk of schwerepunkt and kesselschlact and the like!

We even brought along this very portable helmet: ideal for the post-match conversations with forest fans (who lost 3-0 BTW)

The event itself would take place at Kingdom Games in north London, only a few minutes away from Arsenal’s Emirates stadium…very convenient, as it meant we (veteran Later Knights) could share the streets with the 60,298 fans (raw Mobs, and, yes, I looked up the attendance figures: there’s a lot of work goes into these AARs!) leaving the ground as we struggled back to where my car was parked (75% premium on cost as it was match day but, like the Murphys, I’m not bitter) pushing the immense amount of display boards and scenery that Peter had brought along to accompany the soldiers we would use. They fitted into two easily portable Really Useful containers rather than the six foot high tower of boxes that were actually on the trolley we pushed over the uneven pavements to the venue.

Anyhoo, moving swiftly on, our first game was against other-Rob and Will’s combination of Principate Romans and Armenians. We won the scouting so lined up with my Teutonics versus the Armenians, whist Peter attempted to delay the Romans.

The Armenians deployed right up against their Roman allies in a very narrow fashion, so my first move saw half my knights heading rapidly towards the Armenian left flank. If I could get around the side, then rolling up his line should be easy.

This very much proved to be the case, and before long I was in a great position to threaten the Armenian flank whilst also keeping the deadly Armenian lancers (yellow lances) at bay.

Around this point Peter began pointing out that there was quite a bit of Armenian light cavalry out on my flank, and that I should be careful they didn’t slip through to threaten my camps, but my Teutonic Knights were not concerned: we’d left some peasants in place to guard the camps and the foot sergeants were somewhere around as well. What mattered was smashing the enemy from the field, not making sure the cooking pots were safe!

And smash them from the field they did…

…and pretty soon the Armenians had been disposed of and I could head over to the other side of the battlefield to see what was going on there.

To be fair, Peter did seem to have done very well against the Romans: turning all the legionaries and their cavalry into stuck-full-of-arrows hedgehogs. They just needed a bit of Teutonic Knight goodness to finish them off!

So a good start to the day with a 39-0 victory.

Now it’s always good to fact check my reports, so here’s the view from the left hand side of the table…

Peter’s Report

At last year’s excellent Two the Strongest tournament Rob and I learnt that to maximise points to win the tournament you had to obliterate BOTH enemy armies in every battle. And in the limited time available the best way to achieve that was to focus our combined resources on blitzing one army first and then quickly switch both of our armies onto the remaining one with a big flank attack sweeping in from where our first enemy had been smashed.

So before this tournament we agreed a strategy that I would donate the best 25% of my army to Rob, to give overwhelming superiority to his side of the battle. And I would then act as a speed bump to the army I was facing to stop it supporting Rob’s opponent. I would further reduce my punch by holding a tactical reserve ready to respond to any cunning plan that the enemy came up with.

To allow this to work we chose a knight heavy Teutonic army for Rob supported by light cavalry Lithuanian allies for me.

We also had a playbook that defined in more detail how we would operate together and individually, with critical timings as to what we each had to achieve by when.

For example, Rob couldn’t sit back with his significantly boosted army and play a typical advance with confidence. Instead he needed to aggressively pin the enemy from the front whilst rapidly outflanking the rest and smashing into its side with repeated flank and Lance bonuses. All this to pulverise that army by the end of turn 3! This was critical becasue he then needed to sweep across his half of the battlefield and smash into the flank of the enemy that I was holding up. Anything later and we wouldn’t have time to blitz both armies in the limited time.

So that was the plan.

Our first opponents were a tough Roman Principate army with very resilient ( and beautifully painted) legionaries, auxilia and veteran cavalry. Plus a Palmyran allies army with scary cataphracts, lance cavalry, hordes of light cavalry with bow and heavily defended camps which we would never be able to take.

I volunteered to dance around the Romans whilst Rob took my veteran knights to outnumber the Palmyran cataphracts and chase away the hordes, and then swing in on the flank of what was left.

Given the Romans lack of missiles my light cavalry could get right up close to the heavy infantry and pepper them with an annoying drizzle of arrows. But the Romans are super resilient with their big shields and this only caused minor damage that was quickly rallied off. But it did slow them down. The speed bump was working! Only half of my army was holding up the entire Roman force!

Meanwhile on Rob’s half of the battlefield my veteran knights, backed up with light cavalry shooting overhead, successfully took on a unit of cataphracts. Rob pinned the other cataphracts with his Polish knights whilst getting his veteran Teutonic knights around the flank ready to flank charge the rest of the Palmyrans.

The plan seemed to be working. But then two of the Palmyran light cavalry cunningly worked their way through the wood on the far edge of the battlefield weaving past a unit of spear armed brudders and light cavalry and threatening the unfortified double camp that had only one raw light infantry unit to defend it.

Oh no! That was potentially seven victory points at risk and the whole plan could go wrong!

Thank goodness for our uncommitted reserve on my side of the battlefield! It consisted of three light cavalry with a general so was as mobile as you could possibly want. So I moved each in turn and then double moved whichever unit had the lowest card. The first unit drew a 10, that wasn’t going to work! The next drew a 2, and the third one drew a 4 so I then moved the 2 again but it drew a 9 - clearly they had blown their horses too early! So I had to leave that unit behind and I then refocuussed on the unit that had drawn a 4. I drew a 5, then a 9! By now I had marched across 9 boxes but still needed another box to ZOC (zone of control) the Palmyran lights to stop them taking the camp. I still had my general redraw ability. I could do it! So I then drew an ace! No problem. I had my general redraw! Can I do it? And I drew another ace! Oh no how frustrating! Still I had covered a lot of ground so just be thankful for the previous cards I had drawn!

However because we had won the scouting (the Lithuanians alone brought ten scouting points!) we chose the first command to move, and so instead of Rob going first, which was our playbook norm to allow him to get his knights in first each round, we agreed that my reserve Command went first. My light cavalry charged into the flank of the enemy light cavalry still stuck in the wood so at a big disadvantage! They tried but failed to evade! But then I drew more aces and caused no damage! But atleast I had ZOC’d the blighters and saved any risk to the camp!

Meanwhile, my veteran knights supported by light cavalry bows behind, beat the cataphracts and eventually, despite some bad cards, Rob’s veteran knights smashed into the flank of the Palmyrans and swept the rest of the army away.

However this had taken four turns not three, which meant we were a whole turn behind schedule!

Fortunately back on my side of the battlefield a combination of sustained shooting from my dancing light cavalry and a couple of flank attacks (each delivering three cards!) had killed one unit and a general.

As soon as the Teutons turned up on the flank, and the Romans turned to face them my annoying lights turned into killers that charged into their flanks with their lances wounding them so that the Teutons simply rode down what was left to take the final victory medals and secure the double victory we had sought! All achieved without losing a single victory medal!

Thanks to Nate’s tournament design - strategy, tactics, teamwork and even reserves had all played their part!

We had had a mix of good and bad lack, as you always do, but overall the plan had worked. So next, on to our second battle - where it didn’t!

I hope these insights encourage YOU to attend this superb event next year!