Well, it’s been a long time coming but at last I can announce the final results for the SWA tournament for 2003! It’s probably best to go straight to the results (and then I’ll waffle on for a bit …). The final league positions are: NAME ARMY Game 1 Game 2 TOTAL Marvin Scott Romano-Britons 59 182 241 Peter Colbeck Border Reivers 131 86 217 Chris Grice Scots Islanders 82 89 171 Geoff Barker Byzantines 34 130 164 Marvin Scott Vikings 85 70 155 Henry Mclaughlin Venetian Mercenaries 124 19 143 Chris Banks Alans 50 34 84 Mark Stokes Vikings 65 7 72 Kevin White Medieval 28 43 71 Mike Buttle Medieval 47 21 68 So, Marvin Scott is the official undisputed master tactician of the solo wargaming world! His trophy is in the post! Who was it who thought a below maximum points mainly cavalry force couldn’t win? Well, it was me actually, which just goes to show what I know. Peter Colbeck also jumped up the chart partly due to a successful 2nd battle, partly due to my forgetting to add his victory points for objectives on last time …. I thought the rules (see the previous update article for more details on these) worked quite well – of course “next time” there would be some additional tweaks. I liked the way that units could sometimes crumble after a smallish setback, then reform and come back in dribs and drabs – I find it hard to believe that a dozen men can regain their resolve en masse! And, although it could get a little frustrating to play out, when infantry units of roughly equal strength met it did mean that things generally settled down into a lengthy slogging match until one side or the other finally made a breakthrough (e.g. got a bit lucky and inflicted more hits than their opponents and this caused their opponents morale to break) or were able to reinforce the fight. Light foot archers behind cover could be quite deadly – but in big trouble if they got into a melee. Cavalry at the charge could be wonderfully effective, but if they happened to pass through a foot unit with no real effect and then lost the initiative on the following turn then they stood a good chance of being massacred simply because they would be outnumbered! A leader in heavy armour on a horse was literally the lord of the battlefield – unless his horse was killed from under him, he stood a very good chance of survival. Horse archers, who proved to be quite a popular choice, did quite well, but they were expensive and so few in number. The points value of the figures reflected to some extent their “real life cost” as opposed to their pure effectiveness. Ill-trained, ill-armed horse archers who avoided melee would have been a fairly cheap option for a big horse army, but I think there’s an inbuilt tendency to avoid “ill-trained” when picking one’s armies. I’d say that probably at least 90% of the time I felt the games had gone “well” – every now and again there’d be a “run of luck” for one side – good or bad – but this usually averaged itself out over the two games. Two that stick in the mind were watching Marvin Scott’s expensive cavalry taking multiple hits - and casualties - from a fairly small group of archers (luckily they held their morale) and from the last game an epic melee which went on for ages with no real advantage to one side, then suddenly in the last round of melee fight after fight went to Peter Colbeck’s troops leading to a very sudden slaughter and the end of the game! I’ve really enjoyed running the games, and am grateful for everyone’s patience when there have been slow turn arounds. It’s also been fun getting glimpses into other people’s gaming worlds when their orders have been accompanied with a “where I am at” letter describing their own wargaming. So it just remains for me to thank everyone for participating - and I look forward to the next tournament (any volunteers to run this?). In the meantime, I’m turning the games table back into a painting table, as I seem to have got a little behind with the brushwork. [Editor – A big ‘Thank You’ to Jonathan for running this tournament, hearty congratulations to all who took part and especially our old wargaming pal from across The Pond, Marvin, on winning.] Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior # 148 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com