Of blowouts and birthdays.

My recent return to To the Strongest! has now concluded. Unfortunately, there were a few problems with the camera, but now that I have a new SD card installed, we are back to normal on that score. The other camera problem is that the tabletop looks a tad forlorn, though this is not the camera's fault. My carpet tiles are fine for a biggish 5 x 4 game with five hundred figures on the table, but rather sad and flat for a 3 x 2 one with only 150. So too do my generic 100 yen shop hovels look rather less than impressive. Not for the first time I can see that I'm going to need to up my terrain game...

Anyway, to my surprise, the game ended up a blowout in favour of the Normans, who I thought were going to struggle to make much headway against the Anglo-Saxon shieldwall. As it turns out, the Anglo-Saxons were a little too enthusiastic in their attempts to bring the Norman horse to battle, and as a consequence the line became disjointed early and the Normans were able to gang up on poorly supported units and wear them down.

The deep shieldwalls were tough, but they just could not get back into position and suffered for it, by being out of command and/or teamed-up upon.

Any normal wargamer would have known this already - as did I in fact - but sometimes it seems I just have to learn the hard way!

The Anglo-Saxons lost three deep shieldwall units and 2 generals (13 victory banners) against no losses for the Normans, so the game was up. The Norman horse managed to evade Anglo-Saxon charges for the most part, but even when they were caught or elected to stand they were able to pull back or rally before they were finished off.

Anglo-Saxons/Normans is quite an intriguing match-up (as you would hope!) in TtS. There are some nice tactics to play around with, but I must have the Anglo-Saxons hold their line and their discipline better in future.

View from behind the victorious Norman left. Dodgy hovels can be seen in the distance.

Again from the Norman centre.

And finally from the Norman right.

In other news, it was my birthday earlier this week, and my dear and long-suffering wife sanctioned the online purchasing of some birthday treats. A visit to the Book Depository website later and the reprint of Ian Heath's classic Armies of Feudal Europe and the Dan Mersey fantasy skirmish rules Dragon Rampant were on their way here. I was sorely tempted to pick up Bloody Big Battles too, but will save that one for next time.

On the figure front I see that I'm not quite finished with my Dark Age project after all: I'm going to have to pick a few more Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans to paint up as hero and leader figures so that I don't need to cover the table with those mood-damaging cube markers.

It seems a wargamer's armies are never done!