Last Saturday it was off to the Lee Valley Athletics Centre for the To The Strongest British Open, part of the BHGS Teams event at SELWG.

My first opponent was Andy and his Dacians. It’s fast becoming a tradition for me to face Andy first at a competition: we’ve faced off first in three of the four tournaments I’ve played in this year.

I had lost the Scouting phase, so had to deploy first. I set up my legionaries in a long line starting from the left, with the equites (cavalry) on my right.

As the game began, the Dacians rapidly shot forward and, almost immediately, the two battle lines crashed into each other

To summarise the rest of the game, I badly lost the right flank, with my equites alares and cohortales crumbling under the onslaught, but in the centre and on the left the legionaries had the bit between their teeth and steadily pushed the enemy back.

I had to reinforce the right with a unit of legionaries borrowed from the centre, but this gave me time to decisively win on the left and in the centre, with the coup de grace being the Praetorians taking the Dacian camp.

A hard fought game (the Dacians warbands are tough!) that ended in a 12-6 victory in my favour.

Here are some shots of the rest of the game:

My first game of the tournament proper was against Andy’s Dacians. Co-incidentally, Andy was also the first person I played against at the European’s in Ewelme, so it was good to see him on the other side of the table again.

As per usual with the Romans, I got into trouble on both flanks, but somehow held on for long enough for the Legionaries to win the battle in the centre.

On my left flank, the cavalry achieved nothing except to hang on against multiple flank attacks: not good for veteran cavalry but a considerable improvement compared to their usual dire performances.

On the right, one unit of Legionaries held on against a series of vicious flank and rear attacks for three consecutive turns: laurel wreaths all round.

In the end the battle was decided by my equites sagittarii (horse archer Auxiliaries) who managed to charge some rather nasty cataphract types in the flank and took them out.

Result: a 13:6 victory, worth 17 points once the extra for winning all my opponent’s coins was added in.