My third game at this year’s Roll Call was against Peter and his Tibetans. Peter has sliced and diced me before with this lot, so I was determined to do better this time round.

I had a fair idea of what tactics he was going to employ: one command of light cavalry would dart forward from the outset and attempt to get around one of my flanks. If that worked, then the cataphracts would follow. Failing that, he would use the superior mobility of his all-cavalry army to weight one side of the table, forcing me to fight his whole army with only part of mine.

That was all well and good - I knew what he would try to do - but the real question was whether I could do anything about it!

Things started well when, much to my surprise, I won the scouting. This meant that I could try to counter his intended plans through my deployment.

Note that I have lights on the left to counter his lights, my knights are all in front of his army, and most of my infantry is in the right place as well. Okay, I would have to shift my left flank infantry over to the right as soon as possible, but this was a better position from which to start the battle than I could have anticipated!

The action began on the right, where the heavy cavalry forces on either side advanced cautiously towards each other. I knew I needed to get “first charge” advantage here, so it was a question of tempting Peter into advancing forward and then not quite reaching my troops so I could then charge forward myself.

I didn’t quite manage to do this, but Peter’s first charge on the far right proved unfortunate for him as a unit of Cataphracts disordered themselves charging a unit of my Later Knights whilst my militia Spearmen on hill survived everything the Tibetans could throw at them.

You’ll also see, in the picture above, how Peter has managed to concentrate his forces on my right flank despite me knowing that that was what he was going to do and making every effort to stop him doing so! If you count them up, you’ll see I have two units of Knights, one militia Spear and a Light Cavalry versus four units of Cataphracts, some veteran, and five units of horse archers.

And this is also actually where I lost the battle. On my next turn the Later Knights on the far right charged their disordered opponents and not only failed to sweep them from the board (potentially also taking out some of the light cavalry following through morale checks) but were actually dashed from the tabletop themselves! Extraordinary: but there’s not much you can do against luck like that!

This effectively let Peter through on that flank…but more of that in a moment.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, I had not only countered his annoying light cavalry but was actually driving the Tibetans backwards: the cunning use of Cry Havoc! caltrops giving me an initial advantage that I was quick to exploit.

Unfortunately I just couldn’t pin the mobile mounted Tibetans down for long enough to actually kill them, so although we were about even on medals won, I just couldn’t finish off the units I was fighting.

We had now been playing for almost the whole of the allocated 90 minutes, the scores were about even, and we went into Peter’s last turn.

Firstly, he took full advantage of his success on the right and cleared my troops from that side of the table, including the equally-cunning use of his stratagem Someone has Blundered! to take control of my last remaining unit of Knights there and make them retreat backwards off the table. That was four medals gone immediately, and you can see that the militia Spearmen, already disordered and hit in the flank, are next!

You can, by the way, also see just on the other side of the hill, a unit of my Knights hitting some of his horse. This was originally a flank charge by my Knights into his cavalry that should, by rights, have at least disordered the Tibetans but, no, they survived and by this time had turned to face me. That would have been four coins my way as their general would have gone as well.

At this point we were on for a draw: probably a winning draw in Peter’s favour but still a draw.

Unfortunately all this excitement had caused me to leave the tiniest gap in my defences which, with the last cards of the game, Peter managed to exploit and get into one of my camps.

This took the last of my victory medals and cost me a full loss rather than a losing draw. If only I’d found the time to move those light crossbowmen to the right at some earleir stage!

So I came close, but still ended up being trounced 14-3, with eleven coins lost in the final moments of the game.

I took some consolation, however, in the fact that the result didn’t really reflect the game, and in the thought that I’d pretty much countered Peter’s standard strategies through my deployment and tactics and had been on an even keel with him right up to when my Knights failed to take advantage of a great position on my right. I’ll ‘ave him next time!

This year’s Ewelme tournament was themed For England and St George: later armies from the Medieval lists and one of your generals had an extra hero who could be activated by crying that phrase or one more suited to your army.

My first game was against Peter’s Later Tibetans.

This was extremely amusing as in the run up to the draw for the first round games (televised by Peter and the team from SOGS) I had answered the question “what sort of army would you least like to face” with the slightly facetious “anything commanded by Peter”. Naturally Lady Luck was listening in and, sure enough, out came Peter’s chit swiftly followed by mine! It was going to be a long day!

The Tibetans, being nearly all on horseback, outscouted my holidaying Venetians, with the result that once again I found myself facing an army that was heavily weighted to one flank.

The Tibetan “Peace Mountain” can be seen top left!

I was absolutely determined not to be outflanked, so hung back my right whilst strongly advancing my left.

Unfortunately this made very little difference, and soon I was facing light horse and cataphracts threatening my right flank.

I pondered what to do for some time, then attempted to consolidate my position.

Unfortunately I left the smallest of chinks in my armour and, before I knew it, I had cataphracts pouring in from the right, smashing my units from the table faster than you can say nam myoho renge kyo!

Note that this meant that the yellow cataphracts had to successfully turn and move one forward (difficult move) then move diagonally and charge (another difficult move).

My centre then collapsed under the wright of more flank charges as the Tibetans poured in from the right, and nothing I tried to do seemed to work.

A rather ignominius defeat 17:192 points!

Superb play from Peter, poor play from me. I should have compressed my troops into one corner, formed a wall of spearmen, some in orbis, and used my Knights effectively rather than seeing them smashed from the table without even getting to use their lances.

Not a good start to the day!