Julians 70th Birthday Bash - A Slight Change to Our Advertised Programme

 Sunday 23rd November was the day we gathered to celebrate great gaming buddy Julians 70th (I think his actual birthday is Weds 26th)

As mentioned previously, we understood it was going to be a V&F Napoleonic game, but when Andrew and I arrived, this had morphed into Dark Ages Britian using TtS!

No matter, a great game was had, and all sides could take something away from the result. 

The scenario was, the Saxons have been besieging Bath when Arfur and his Romano-British turn up in their rear to break the siege. 

Barry, Rick, John and I commanded the Saxons (or in John's case, their Pictish allies), whilst Chris, Andrew, Nick and Julian were the Brits. (Julian, as King Arfur, would arrive at some yet to be determined time and location once battle was well and truly joined).

Here are lots of pics, increased in number by some nice close-up contributions by John, plus some AI generated "Cinematic" effect images I did tonight. For those interested, this is the AI site I have been using  AI Image Generator (free, no sign-up, unlimited)

Let's start with a couple of my AI creations!

                         

 

The table at commencement of hostilities, Romano-Brits on the left - they had to advance quickly to avoid being stuck behind the river (the Severn, perhaps?)

My command in our Saxon right centre 

The Arthurian army on the far bank of the river

Nick was on the Arthurian left, opposite John and me

One of the disadvantages of TtS is all the playing cards and other markers and paraphernalia you need to keep track of everything......

I think this was the "hilarious" moment John turned two ones in a row after using his attached leader to redraw for activation... it wasn't so funny later on after I had lost my leader and I did the same thing three MOVES in a row!

My Saxons took up position atop a handy hill and waited for Nicks boys to come to them 

Which very shortly, they did!

To my left, Rick faced the advancing Britons under Andrw, whilst on the flank, Chris was attacking Barry in the wooded area

Despite his double 1 for activation, John was doing rather well against Nicks cavalry on our right flank

By this stage, the Arthurian light cavalry had all been driven from the field and the Picts looked like they might run rampant behind Nicks infantry

At around 1130, Julians wife and daughters supplied us with a little sustenance to keep us going until luncheon - jolly civilised!

By this stage, Julian had arrived - fortunately for us in the right rear of the Britons position rather right on John's flank, as he would have done if he turned a 9 or 10 card!

A view along the length of the table from John's end (the figures in the woods bottom left are actually deid!)

The Saxons had taken a bit of a battering and had lost a few units (and army morale coins) but were still holding the line pretty well. The Pictish light cavalry pulled back when faced with the Arthurian heavies.

Arthur led his cavalry along the rear of the Britons and crossed the river to attack John and me.

And here they come!

Nicks boys came in against my front line again

To my left, Andrew was smashing a path into the heart of Ricks Saxons

Arthur himself led the charge against my line

But the Britons were repulsed, and the shield wall held firm!

And now - luncheon is served!

Very nice it was too, al fresco on a pleasantly warm late Spring Day in leafy Remuera!

Right, let's get back to it!

By this stage, despite the relatively stable tactical situation, the Saxon morale was pretty shaky at 3 coins left to around 8 or 10 for the Brits!

Another unit of Arthurian cavalry, minus the Great Leader this time, finally managed to break one of my shield walls

The cavalry, in turn, were disrupted and beat a hasty retreat so they did not end up as a broken unit too!

Despite my atrocious run of three failures to activate in a row, I managed to get my lines rearranged, pulling back the battered troops who had done all the heavy fighting thus far, and substituting them with fresh warriors!

But we had just about done our dash - at the other end of the table, Chris had finally turned Barry's flank, and despite taking quite a battering, Andrew and Nick still had plenty of fight left in them

I think the final Saxon points went when Julian, in the shape of King Arthur and his personal cavalry unit, broke another of my shield walls and that was the game. However, the table still looked reasonably tidy, and the Saxons had a pretty strong position right along the line, so our side didn't feel too badly about losing - and it was nice that the birthday boy won the game for his side!

Here are more close ups from John I could not work into my narrative. All the figures are Julians but quite a few were painted for him by either Nick or Andrew 10+ years ago,

Pict cavalry

Pict general

Finally, the images below are specially for Iain's (Caveadsum) wife 😁😉

Our tree in action Friday night after I got home from Julians, courtesy of my dear wife

And as a bonus, the tree our staff put up in our head office at work late last week!

That has taken me about two hours to post, partly due to Blogger deciding to load all my images in reverse order for the first time in years - so I had to delete them all and start again! Hopefully some readers think the effort was time well spent - please leave a comment and let me know!