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We supplied a pretty wide range of W.European armies for people to choose from,
ending up with two teams as follows:

French Ordonnance (Tony Farrell), Ottoman Turks (Brian Ronayne), Anglo-Irish
(Rob Brennan) and Late Swiss (Alan Condron, making his DBMM debut)
V
WotR English - Henry VIII (Mike Whelan), Late Hungarians (Dave Lederer),
Medieval German - Territorial states (Jan Van Embden) and Italian Condotta -
Florentines (Me).

So more of a Tudor/Valois war really. We used preset terrain boards of variable
size, the defender getting to choose which side. Games were timed for 1 hour.

My Florentine list was: 1xReg Kn(S) general, 3xReg Kn(O), 2xReg Sp(I), 4xReg
Pk(F), 2xReg Bw(X/O) DBEs, 2xReg Ps(O), 1xIrr Bge(I)

Round 1:

I played Rob's Anglo-Irish on a narrow board. Rob's army was a real elite force
of Justiciar's Bd(S) and Bw(S), Art(S) and lots of Irish LH dismounting as Ax(S)
plus a few Ax(O) and Ps. I invaded. He had Ax(S) on the right, a centre of Bw(S)
backed by Bd(S), Art(S) and Ax/Ps on the left. He had a reserve of LH. My plan
was to fight the Bw(S) with my foot while the Kn rolled up his left. Rob
advanced his centre and right but his PIPs weren't good enough to get his Ax(S)
around my left. I had better luck shooting (his Bw was 1 deep) and made contact
in the centre. The key factor here was that Rob's general stuck against a
double-overlapped Bw(X/O) element for 2 bounds which gave me time to eliminate
his Bw(S) (it helped that he rolled 1 for PIPs); when his general finally broke
through his pursuit exposed him to rear attack by my Pk and he died. That
crippled the Anglo-Irish and a Kn charge on my right finished them off.

Results were: Turks (10) V Hungarians (0); Anglo-Irish (0) V Florentines (10);
French (1) V German (9); Swiss (6) V English (4)

So the English team had a slight advantage going in to round 2.

Round 2:

I defended against Brian's Ottomans on a wide table. The campaign system kicked
in here, as 50% of any losses suffered would be carried forward to the next
round. I deployed Ps in a wood on my left, Kn in my centre and foot on my right
– my army faced diagonally across the table. Brian had Bw(S), WWg and LH and a
couple of other elements on his right, some Ps in RGo in his centre and Cv(O) on
his left. I sent my Kn to chase down the Cv while my foot redeployed to face
left. Brian sent his LH around the wood to threaten my baggage, but was blocked
by a Ps element; meanwhile his foot and WWg wheeled to face my infantry. My Kn
killed his Cv and my foot were chewing up the disheartened janissaries when time
was called. 8-2 to me, with Brian's army weakened for the final round.

Results were: Turks (2) V Florentines (8); Swiss (10) V Germans (0); French (3)
V English (7); Hungarians (2) V Anglo-Irish (8);

which pulled the French team back to parity. Jan's Germans also suffered
campaign losses, in his case quite serious ones, as a result of coaching Alan
rather than playing too competitively. He says :)

Round 3:

I defended against Alan's Swiss. I had foot in the centre, at an angle, Ps on
the right defending a wood and Kn on the left (should have deployed them
dismounted, I suppose, but I wanted to get them out to a hill on my left to get
around him; unfortunately he had great PIPs for the first 2 bounds so got close
enough to stop me doing anything clever). My Ps supported by a Pk element beat
up his left wing of Ps and Bd but took a long time doing so and thus couldn't
help the main fight. The Pk proved arrow-proof (though he used them 2 deep
against my Bw(X) so they couldn't break through). Although the Kn/Pk fight was
bloodless for a long time eventually he started to kill me and I broke.

Final round results: Swiss (10) V Florentines (0); Anglo-Irish (10) V Germans
(0); French (0) V Hungarians (10); Ottomans (0) V English (10)

Which left things at a tie, with each team on 60: indecisive, just like the real
Italian Wars!

Alan was top scorer and sufficiently impressed to consider playing a full-scale
game in the future (he's not played ancients since before the advent of 7th
edition), which is a good thumbs up for the rules. No rules issues arose, and
very few queries which says something about clarity.

5 of the 12 games timed out; had we played that armies break at >33% losses (our
convention under 1.0) instead of the break happening at >50%, I believe only 1
would have timed out.

Final scores:
1. Alan (Swiss) 26
2. Mike (English) 21
=3. Mick (Florentine) 18
=3. Rob (Anglo-Irish)18
=5. Brian (Ottomans) 12
=5. Dave (Hungarians) 12
7. Jan (Germans) 9
8. Tony (French) 4

Cheers
Mick

Photos from the Competition: