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Andy, Max, Graham and I left about 12 lunchtime and set of for the heart of the Evil Empire!! Apart from my ability to eat 6 burgers in 4 minutes the journey was petty uneventful! Tony, Paul and Phil had left earlier and had dropped in on wargames Foundry’s factory and we met them at the Travel Inn to find that nobody had actually bought anything, apparently Tony was going to buy an army (cant remember which!) but when he got there he discovered that Foundry sold Achemenid Persians and this threw him a little as he couldn’t make up his mind…so he left it!!!

Anyway it was a really pleasant afternoon as we just sat outside of the Travel inn/ Beefeater drinking Beer and chatting. I was really having a good time and we hadn’t even seen warhammer world yet. We didn’t spend the entire afternoon talking armies but a brief breakdown of who had what follows:

Andy.. Assyrians. Max..Crusaders. Phil..Han Chinese. Tony..More Han!

Graham..NKE. Paul..Indian. Me..Almoravid.

I racked my brains trying to remember Paul’s army! I think he did ok it though! I was a bit worried about mine as I was borrowing it from Rob Broom and I didn’t have the army list! I was thinking that Max was probably fielding potentially the best army though simply because of what his Templers can do to you!

After a delicious dinner and more beer and a midnight game of warcry between Andy and Paul, which Paul didn’t even remember the next morning! We finally turned in.

We had a large brekkie in the morning and prepared to move out, I somehow managed to keep everybody waiting but eventually met up with them in the reception were I received a comment that I white ¾ length trousers were an amazing find as the material was actually whiter than my legs!!1 (cheers Tony you bitch!)

Off to warhammer World and we weren’t disappointed. It truly is quite impressive just when you drive in to the factory grounds, but when you actually enter the gaming area it is quite incredible. For those of you that haven’t seen it resembles a large castle courtyard complete with inward looking windows that have some kind of candle effect glowing behind them, also the posters warning gamers not to stray to far from the well lit areas as Skaven had been spotted prowling around!!! Seeing all the armies around in this setting was quite a sight and I just couldn’t wait to get started!

My first game was a doubles event and I was teamed up with another almoravid army, I had now bought the El cid army list and had a good idea how to use the army. ( Basically large spear blocks supported by archers and tonnes of light cavalry to cover the flanks.)

Our opponent were Gaul’s teamed with Samurai! I managed to get my light cavalry into a good position and started to pelt his warrior monks (Grrhh) and general with javelins while my ally tried to entice the Gaulish fanatics out on his flank, which he succeeded in doing admirably, luring the smelly naked chaps into a neat ambush! I didn’t fare quite as well against the samurai but managed to skirmish one or two of his units to a standstill but by now the samurai infantry had deployed into a good shooting position and with their longbows started to snipe at my main spear blocks and I don’t know why but those dammed rhino hide shields of mine just didn’t seem to be working! To cut a long story short my ally was eventually overwhelmed by sheer numbers and my plodding spear blocks just didn’t get into contact all the while being hounded by well aimed samurai bow fire (these boys can put out a lot of shooting!)

I can’t remember quite what happened with the others especially Tony and Phil as they were in the art of war Chinese campaign and it all looked quite confusing! Andy and Max and Graham were in the same competion as me and Paul was in the Rome must Die competion (which got changed to Persia must die as only one roman army turned up!) Andy got mauled by some Mongols though!!!

My next Game was against Max and you can see this game in the picture so I wont bore you too much except to say that although (like me ) a lot of you probably would have expected Max to be a bit slimy as he is friends with Chris, he was a brilliant opponent! And promptly trashed me with his Panzers. Sorry Templers!

We had lunch which was surprisingly good and a beer or two from Bugmans Bar which is very well done then absorbed the news that crystal palace had gone down 3 – 0 to Watford (incredible!) Then went out to the gaming hall for our last game of the day which for me was an almoravid versus almoravid affair that was only decided in the last round!

We went back to the hotel and the guys stayed up drinking but I think I hit the sack at about 9…I don’t get out much!

There were two more games the next day the first was against Sassanid Persians and I managed a draw (for me that’s a win!) and I wont dwell on it, nice friendly opponent but the game was a bit dry. The last game was against our own Andy Snelgrove and his gorgeous Assyrian army! This was going to be good and believe it or not I felt quite confident because through some amazing luck I have a good record against him and let’s face it he IS a damn good war gamer!

We deployed along the two short edges just to be different ( these tables were massive, the short edge is 6foot long!) For me my deployment was again simple, spear blocks in the middle light on the flanks. Andy had his King and Chariots in the centre flanked by some meaty looking cavalry on his left and about a billion spearmen archers and slingers on his Right! Well from the outset I knew Andy was up for this one and began to think again about my chance his whole line began to move forward slingers march moving to get within 12 inches( they can each fire twice at that range and that’s a lot of pebbles!)

The chariots came forward in the centre and I resolved not to show them any respect and promptly destroyed one and routed the rest with bow fire from …believe it or not…my skirmishers!!! Andy was not best pleased but he seems to be at his best when under pressure (bit like the English football team) and I knew I was still in for the fight of my life as nothing much happened in the next turn apart from the fact that he managed to rally the chariots and started to wheel the guard spearmen around a wood guarding my flank, my only answer to this was a unit of light cavalry who weren’t particularly keen to get within javelin range (8 inches) as the spearmen had archers in there rear ranks.

I needn’t have worried as these two units spent the rest of the game staring at each other, the battle would be decided in the centre. His slingers were now gleefully pelting my spear blocks as their covering skirmisher had been driven in and a large block of war band were about to charge the flank of my Black guard! Also those chariots were hovering!!!

Amazingly my light horse off to the flank of Andy’s chariots who had managed to avoid the supporting heavy Assyrian cavalry (who now couldn’t put in a charge as they were blocked by their own chariots) managed to force another morale check on the chariots and broke them again!!!

This time they didn’t rally and were heading towards the edge of the world. The war band had meanwhile routed the black guard but the other units passed their morale checks and stood their ground. The game entered its last turn and as Andy’s chariots were heading for the hill I thought I had it in the bag…..this is were everything went wrong.

I hadn’t read the game conditions properly and ONLY units that had actually left the table counted towards points lost. The only thing I had in my army that could possibly charge was my army standard bearer (a very tough individual !) and his target would be those pesky slingers (their only skirmishers) and that as far as I (wrongly) thought would be enough to send the pesky slingers running for there lives giving me more points for another routing unit, it didn’t even cross my mind that I could lose the combat. Well I probably wouldn’t have lost the combat but unfortunately there is a charge reaction that Andy could take…stand and shoot!!!

That’s 14 slingers, now let’s see that’s uuhhhmm 28 shots!!! Bye bye army standard bearer! Oh dear and just to cap it all Andy rolled for his chariots which were about 9 inches from the table edge and on 3 d6 his scored 6….great!!!! What a game it was terrific and a great way to end the weekend. Rob Broom the organiser who had helped to make it such an enjoyable event hosted a reward ceremony in which Tony and Phil were joint winners for and they had to roll off against each other for the prize… Tony lost!!

There is another event in October and I just cant wait to go, I think Max and Tony are definitely going and Im sure that Jock will turn up with some form of Byzantine army as well but seriously a great weekend spent with great people and a great venue and lots of bear and good food, I cant recommend it enough especially with the guys for company. It’s the best wargames experience I’ve ever had