My first game at this year’s Roll Call ‘Medievals-Only’ tournament was against Adrian’s Medieval Scots-Irish army.

The Venetians were outscouted, so deployed in a traditional “infantry in the centre, cavalry on the wings” formation. The woods on the right hand side of the battlefield looked ideal terrain for the enemy, so my plan was to hang back on the right, advance on the left and, quite frankly, see what opportunities presented themselves!

First up, however, was a general advance forward one square to give the Venetians some fighting room, making sure to keep the integrity of the line intact. Note the large numbers of Irish light troops trying to get around my right flank.

And it was on the right that the first threat emerged: those advancing enemy lights being joined by a unit that had started the game lost off table to pose a potentially tricky situation that required a bit of careful manoeuvring to deal with.

But in one of those coincidences that makes life interesting, I too had had one of my units lost off table: a squadron of light mounted crossbowmen appearing directly behind the Scots-Irish.

This disrupted Adrian’s plans as neatly as the appearance of his lights on the right had disrupted mine. He turned his longbowmen, safely ensconsed behind stakes on the central hill, to deal with the threat, only to see the flank of the archers charged by some of my knights coming in from the left.

Charging uphill against infantry behind stakes rarely goes well, even when from the flank: the knights failed to budge the enemy archers, leaving the situation as shown in the photo below:

Adrian (who was not having much luck in this game) turned some Scots spearmen to threaten the knights, only to see my horsemen retreat backwards two squares and then charge the same spearmen in the flank (whilst they still could, as ES14 has stopped this cheesy manoeuvre happening), whilst the Ballesteri Montati (mounted light crossbowmen) charged the rear of another bunch of Scots.

Meanwhile, the fighting on the right hand side of the field had intensified, with the superior armour of my knights there countered by the larger numbers of troops they were facing. Neither side seemed able to make much progress.

Back to the centre, where the Scots spearmen in the centre had crumbled under the loving attentions of the Venetian Alabardiers. The Scots spearmen near the hill, however, although disordered and attacked on the flanks, were still putting up a brave fight.

This stabilised Adrian’s centre, but I now had fresh knights, still with their lances, coming in from the left…but then a unit of veteran Irish javelinmen were thereatening the rear of my line.

Adrian had, however, gradually been losing coins throughout the game: in particular losing light infantry to crossbow fire and one, or perhaps it was two, generals in combat: as I said, he was having a particularly unlucky day.

The three coins lost when the spear in the centre routed took him close to the edge, and a final charge from my Knights into disordered Irish javelinmen on the right broke his army as a whole, although it took a Venetian hero to do so.

So a big 14-1 victory for the Venetians to open proceedings…although I was glad that the battle ended then as too many of my units had fallen into disorder and, of course. that Lady Luck had shunned my opponent throughout!

Time for a bit of training before the first tournament of the year: a friendly game involving my Early imperial Romans taking on Peter’s Medieval Irish.

The Romans leave their box for the first time in twelve months

Outscouting me, Peter had tried his usual trick of weighting his troops on the side of the table (my left) opposite to where my command of veteran legionaries had deployed: the idea being that he would win the battle on my left without the vets having had the chance to properly take part in the game.

To counter this cunning tactic, I refused my left flank cavalry command and began moving the veteran legionaries over to the left as fast as they could march. This left my right flank open and, sure enough, Peter had light cavalry on the way there to exploit the gap.

The situation was compounded by a lucky shot from Irish light bowmen that took out my Equites Sagittarrii light horse, leaving that flank even more vulnerable!

I wasn’t too worried on my left, as even my standard legionaries are a pretty tough bunch, with the Roman cavalry all being veterans as well.

This was good, as battle there was joined very quickly, with both sides rapidly being drawn into a grinding melee.

Meanwhile, on my right, I had been forced to deploy to contain the Irish lights and the troops Peter had moved up to support them.

This, of course, meant that he had achieved exactly what he had set out to do, although not as successfully as he migth have hoped as, on the far right (picture bottom left in the gallery above) it had taken him abiut 20 points of lights to occupy 20 points of legionaries/auxiliaries.

Meanwhile, back on the left, the grinding melee had not gone my way. We both thought that this was to do with Peter having had the cards when he needed them (i.e. luck) as on paper the two sides were evenly matched with five decent fighting units apiece. Whatever the reason, I had decidedly lost the fight there and was on the point of being wiped out!

The game ended when, on the right/centre of the field, the Irish lights finally slipped through my cordon of legionaries and auxiliaries and managed to take one of my camps. A rather ignominious 4-11 defeat for the Romans!

Some valuable lessons re-learned after the Christmas break: and not just “don’t play Peter if you want to win”!

I understand that Irish armies are this year’s “thing”, and one can see why given how they performed in this game. We Romans are, however, a resilient lot, so it’s just a matter of time before even the Irish will be conjugating their Latin just like the Gauls, Germans, Spaniards etc!