On Sunday 20^th March 2011, five SAD Wargamers went up to Evesham to take part in the one day Warhammer Ancient Battle tournament called “Havoc”.

Andy kindly lent out all the armies from his huge medieval army, making up five 2500 point armies, although some players bought their own figures along too.

We all met up at McDonalds in Evesham for a good breakfast, then onto the tournament at the Gripping Beast warehouse.

I was using a Hungarian New Men army out of the “Vlad the Impaler” book.  It had three units of mounted knights, all with characters in them, two units of Armati with flails in mixed order with crossbowmen, a unit of crossbowmen with pavises, and two war-wagons.

My first battle was against Ian Jones and his Burgundians.  This game I started with two units off table, and these were two of my knights units.  They turned up on Turn 3.  Tired of being shot at by 3 cannons and large units of archers with longbows, my knights charged the nearest archers.  This was uniformly disastrous, and I lost all three knight units, taking out just two cannons with them.  My shooting took one unit of skirmishing archers below half-strength, and that was it.  I lost by 272 points to 1726 points.

Game 2 was against John Wall and his Burgundians.  This game was won and lost on the dice roll for deployment – the table had a river along its length, 12” in from one side.  I won the die roll and deployed on the open side – and Ian had to squash his units along the river bank.  There was a useful hill in the middle of the table on my right hand side, and I deployed my knights and war-wagons behind it.  My knights and war-wagons advanced to the brow of the hill, to be met by Ian’s knights.  The knights were tied up in knots by the war-wagons, and this allowed my own unit of knights to get the charge.  My Character in the unit challenged the enemy General, and inflicted two wounds – and then his war-horse inflicted another!  I beat the unit and it fled off the table, and John’s units had to take Panic tests for the death of the General.  A number of these failed, and, being so close to their table edge, some went straight off the table.  After that it was just a bit of mopping up before the game ended.  Ian had a unit of dismounted knights with halberds, and a unit of pikemen, but both of these took ages to get across the river and never got into the battle.  I won by 1866 points to 243 points.

Game 3 was against Francis Healey-McAdam and his Wars of the Roses English.  This was very much a game of two halves – on the right my knights beat a unit of halberdiers, and the resulting Panic tests removed virtually all the troops on this side of the table.  One of my knight units was reduced to a single figure, who gleefully charged those fleeing enemy units that were not fleeing fast enough.  On my left the resolute march of dismounted knights spelled doom for my foot, but two events were pivotal.  Firstly, Francis charged a war-wagon with his main knights unit (after several turns trying to manoeuvre around it) and the war-wagon held the knights in combat for several turns, keeping it out of the game – otherwise my centre would have gone too.  Secondly a unit of my knights charged one of his foot units and had rubber lances – 7 attacks hitting on 3s and wounding on 1^s yielded just two wounds – even the warhorses fluffed, and I suffered two wounds back after rolling snake-eyes for the armour saves.  Had I won this combat it would probably have won me the game – as it was, I lost by 1342 points to 1556 points.

After the game came the prize giving.  I came in 16^th, and the other SAD wargamers came in 9^{th –} (Andy), 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th.  Plenty of money was raised for the British Legion through the charity dice roll-off, and Derek won a nice box of toys.  Afterwards we went for a very pleasant meal in a Tai restaurant, having a good meal and chatting over the day’s events.

Overall it was an extremely good days gaming, with beautifully painted armies, good opponents and excellent company.  I would recommend these events to anyone.