Nottingham 2002
Finally, after a 3 year break, me and Mick entered the first, Biblical, round of the doubles. Partly because of a new gap in my diary, partly because we now had a viable biblical army, and partly because might try and play in 4 rounds this year and the 2nd (of 5) in March looks very difficult.
After 3 years of victimization and abuse by the mysterious and dubious secret society known as "The BHGS" - whose only remit in life seemed to be to stop me and Mick succeeding in any competition - we were trembling with dread to see what would happen. Spotting the possibility of a fixed draw, we initiated a campaign to pre-empt this by a vote posted on the BHGS website - also it served to prove that our paranoia was not a delusion - many other people agreed that our persecution was very real indeed.....as the following voting clearly shows:
POLL QUESTION: Who
will the BHGS Computer draw Mick & Tim against in the first round of the
BHGS doubles in Nottingham?
CHOICES AND RESULTS
-25.00% A team of Bunnies,
-0.00% An average team,
-8.33% A good team,
-16.67% Last years winners,
-50.00% A bizarre computer error will create a brand new bespoke team of 3
player comprised of Graham Evans, Iain McNeil & Eric Doman,
So,
having staved off this potential fix by bringing the evil plot to light before
we started, we turned up. To find yet another banana skin placed in our
path!!! After being "team 7" since as long as we can remember,
this year for some unaccountable reason, we were now "Team 13". Chance
- we think not... just another indication of how desperate the evil masterminds
behind "The BHGS" are to drag us down.... now turning to trying to put
a bad luck curse on us...!!!
Our first game saw us placed against a later Assyrian Empire & Bedouin army commanded by Hammy and Martin. We wheeled out our wheel-less Lydian army... As usual, some of the images are THUMBNAILS - i.e. you can click on them and they will open in a bigger size in a new window.
With a wood on our right, and a couple of rough hills on our left our deployment was fairly straight forwards - threaten the wood with a handful of Ax & Ps, then extending a Sp line across the table - stuff all our knights between the spears and the rough hills, occupy the rough with our big Ax command and try to fit the allied Greeks between the hills. Martin & Hammy deployed their Bedouin on a flank march on our right, and set their 2 major Ax commands against ours, with Kn chariotry protecting their flanks against our Kn (F) - Wisely, they refuse to take on the 30+ spears lined up in the open!
The game starts...
We moved first, and rapidly threw our two sets of knights at the exposed end of the Assyrian line - whilst double ranked Bd supported are not easy pickings, they are a neat target !! Martin & Hammy rapidly threw in their two sets of chariotry to face us off, and in probably only the 2nd or 3rd turn we were squared off, Kn against Kn.
Well, even though its often best to let Kn (F) be charged by Kn (O), especially when they are chariotry, we were already threatening the Auxilia & blade line, and had reinforcements coming up both on our right in the shape of lots of Spears (a very pointy shape...) and reserves in the shape of ample numbers of LH, so we threw our Kn (F) into the fray regardless of the textbooks !
The fist round went slightly in our favour, and we started to push the chariotry back.... but then martin & Hammy fought back and in their round had the chance to exploit our temporary disarray. The dice rolled.... but to no avail - we survived intact, and now the boots were definitely on the feet of the army who relied on more on legs and less on wheels !!!
Soon we were pushing back the Kn (O), and our greater numbers of knights, and their lack of reserve LH was starting to show - we were even winning the Auxilia battle in the center, helped considerably by a stalwart action by the Greek allies who were holding off Assyrian chariotry, delaying the flank march, and giving the Assyrian auxilia's flanks a good kicking for good measure. Over on our right our spears were slowly creeping up on the delaying LH. With little chance of killing them, our massive spear block concentrated on breaking their formation, hoping to increase the number of pips required to keep pulling them out of danger - even a LH foray round the wood was initiated to further erode the Assyrians ability to protect their beleaguered chariotry in the center...
Eventually the greater numbers we were able to feed into the central food Processor of Kn vs Kn combat paid off and we exposed the flanks of the Assyrian foot.
Now it was time for the Assyrian Blades to face the harsh reality of the Ancient Greek Ritual of "Lave Pronto".....as they were sent back home for
With the knights removed as a fighting force, the Assyrian infantry were rounded up and removed from play, by Greek Spears and Lydian Knights - the flank march had by now gotten almost in reach of our baggage, but failed to break into the Greeks 40mm x 40mm based electric thermidor before their paymasters army collapsed .........so, even for the Bedouin there was this time to be no cigar! 10 - 0 (30-2) to us !!
Interestingly we used a chess clock, and despite forgetting to press the button a few times we used about 1 hr 20 minutes, whereas Martin & Hammy used about 1 hr 5. We got through 9 bounds.
