TtS! Welsh Opens at Godendag

On Saturday, with Storm Ciara looming ominously overhead, a hardy band of TtS!ers travelled to Cardiff for the one-day Godendag tournament at Firestorm Games.

I will apologise in advance for the partial nature of the photos, I only managed to take pics of my armies and my opponents. Above is my completed Later Condottieri army (Venetian) that I'll also be taking to Chalgrove in 2 weeks. 12 units, 6 heroes and the camp. It's on my new fleece mat from Geek Villain, and very nice it was to play on, too.

Above are some of my new "Venetian" knights; I went with a red and gold colour scheme and one of Pete's super flags, from eBay. Below are some of my mounted crossbows, with a Bande Nere banner.

Above, Milanese knights, painted by Lionel Bechara, and below, the raw Venetian spearmen who typically guard my camp.

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Above, part of a new unit of Stradiots, painted by Shaun Watson.

Here's my new fleece mat from Geek Villain. Saturday was the first time I played on it, and I was  very taken with it! It has a soft, slightly furry surface and a an intense green, which matched my hills very nicely. Has a nifty TtS! logo, too.  :-)

Above and below, Game 1, vs. Phil Sweeting. Phil had a Komnenon Byzantine army, very pretty! Unluckily for Phil, his Varangian Guard, with a general and army standard perished in very short order to some unlucky saves, yielding 7 victory medals, and it was a shorter gamer than it should have been.

Above and below, game 2 vs. Tony Horobin. Tony had a Marian Roman army, deployed very wide across the table. I slammed into it several times, but wasn't able to kill enough units to achieve a decisive victory.

Game 3 vs. Connor Truby. Connor had a splendid Carthaginian army, mostly Victrix, with super hand-painted shields. Out-scouting him, I was able to mostly avoid his left wing and clobber his right centre. Below, his right wing cavalry attacked my camp, which was valiantly and ably defended by my spearmen, in orbis, with the spiritual assistance of  my new cardinal.

....with two decisive victories, I found myself playing in the final against Peter Ryding. Peter is a formidable (and charming) player. He out-scouted me, out-deployed me and then dismembered my army from the right. It was very elegant; I could see he was much more familiar with his army than I was, with mine. A very enjoyable game, though, despite my loss! The highlight form me was using a stratagem in the last turn to ride one of his generals off the table, together with it's unit, which gained me seven VPs in total- four more than I deserved! This is the fourth successive final I've played in (Roll Call, Knight Fever, Glasgow and now Godendag), and the fourth time I've lost!

Above and below, the prizes; Roger Calderbank took the annual dead sheep award....

...and Peter, above, presented by Ty with the victor's laurels, with Tim Thompson (not shown) second, Sid Bennett third and me fourth.

Finally here's the group photo. It was a super day, I hope to be back next year!