More Britcon Photos

 

I recently posted some photos of one of my games at Britcon, here are some more. This game was against Robert Avery's veteran Imperial Romans; veteran because most of them were, but also because many of them were Minifigs! Above, I threw my army forwards whilst Robert tried to turn my left and threaten the camp.

However, the camp was well defended and the Romans tried to break the left of my battle line. Above a flank charge on my general and dismounted knights, which happily they survived!

One of my  pike blocks broke through. My trouble was that it was too hard to kill the legionaries- every time I disordered them, they fell back and rallied. Some rallied like this two or three times.

However every time they fell back, I took ground, until they became pinned against their camp and baseline. 

Above I'd been doing my best to pretend that the rampaging Roman cavalry unit behind my lines wasn't there, but it proved hard to ignore. Before it could kill a unit though, my knights managed to chop up a unit of legionaries to win the game. This was a lonnnggg game- over three hours - more like a siege than a battle- and I was lucky to win it! Robert has an account of the same battle, here. The longer Britcon game durations really help avoid frustrating draws.

In other news, TtS! is up against Black Powder in the Yarkshire World Cup of Wargames Rules tournament- at the time of writing BP has pulled ahead- we desperately need every vote we can find!

Battles at Britcon

We had an absolute blast this weekend at Britcon. I cannot praise this event enough- the venue is superb, Sid does a great job at organising the tournament, and I enjoy Nottingham. The games were very friendly and there was enough tome to see most to a conclusion, and some of the armies were really beautiful. There were trade stands, too!  I attach some photos, below. I'm already looking forward to next year.

Before the photos though, the next round of the Yarkshire Gamer World Cup of Wargames Rules has begun, and For King and Parliament is up against Grand Manner, it's most serious opponent so far. It's very tight- just one vote in it- so any support for our niche period set with its hard to read font and renaissance woodcuts would be very greatly appreciated! You can vote here.

Here are some photos of my first game of the tournament, proper.

My Hapsburg-Burgundian deployment was the same in most of the games- a camp anchoring my right, with a bombard and crossbows in it, and a long line of pike stretching to the left. English longbows on the extreme left and Maximilian with  a bodyguard of dismounted knights to the right of the pike. In this game I had the stratagem to force march, and pushed my left forward. I was fighting Simon Purchon's Sassanids, he's a very tough opponent and I've rarely (if ever) beaten him.

You can see my line breaking up (above), as Simon shifted most of his strength against my left.

My right began to break up under a hail of arrows and lance-charges by cataphracts. 

Above, the noose tightening around my fortified camp. Assaulted from both sides, it was ultimately defended only by a bombard, which put up a valiant resistance in the face of attacks by no fewer than four enemy units!

Simon was well ahead after the first hour, but I managed to fight back and took a lot of medals off him before he was able to finish me off. This is what usually happens when I play Simon. Although I lost, I felt I'd put up a brave fight!  I'll show pictures of some of the other games, tomorrow.

Late Knights

The Britcon tournament is coming up like a train, and I realised that I urgently need a unit of dismounted knights for my army. Luckily, I found 20-odd prepped minis and am doing a rush paint and base job on them. Knights in full plate are relatively easy to paint, essentially inking over a steel primer, then faces, leatherwork and the wooden bits of the weapons, ink again and highlight the metal. I'm going to leave these as fairly generic later knights, later I'll build a few command stands, and I'll also do some specifically Burgundian knights.