Just like the old days, Bruce and I making the trip down together to our favorite HMGS convention, Cold Wars. CW is much less crowded than Historicon and it's like Spring Break to get out and travel a bit. The weather was great, but it was a real eye opener seeing how much snow there was in Southern Pennsylvania and ice covering much of the Susquehanna River this late. Mitch Abrams had called me the night before, informing me that he would not be able to make the trip due to a huge storm that had swung up the seaboard to Massachusetts. The weather most certainly had an impact on attendance, along with the military situation, noted by the absence of may good friends called up for active duty abroad.

Arriving at the Host, we found our room to be ready and we proceeded to unload. Next, we went to our SAGA events room, the Limerock, where Rich Jarosz was putting on a series of demos of our new Siege Warfare rules. Rich had some real silver bars as loot for the winner or his three round game! Unfortunately, Karen Jarosz was unable to attend CW this year, but we are certainly looking forward to seeing her this July at Historicon.

Friday evening, Paul Dobbins put on his Trojan War game while Steve DeLucas and Keith Eshelman ran their Durazzo MW game, both well attended. Bruce prepared his NW games for Saturday and I readied myself to play in the MW tournament.

Saturday morning, I sent to the Lampeter Room and found we had been placed at the far end of the room - well, at least we didn't have to deal with fighting for table space for a change! There were tournaments running for DBM, Warrior and WAB as well as our own MW, but no Armati in evidence. The turnout seemed lighter than usual, as was expected. We had lost 1/3 of our signed up gamers due to weather, work, etc., but still had 10 players and 2 sub-commanders playing in the 25mm and 4 players and 2 sub-commanders playing in the 15mm MW. Rob Robertson has taken over as tournament umpire for the AW/MW tournaments and did an admirable job.

My first game was against Bert Caveny, a new MW player. Bert was using Conquest period Saxons and I was using my Early Normans in Italy - almost a perfect historical matchup from Rob. I was used to playing against Saxons and fully expected to find them sitting on their hills. As such, I expected nothing less from Bert, and I waited for him to set up his shieldwalls and give them Defend orders…and wait for me to charge him. In this expectation, I couldn't have been more wrong.

Bert had all of his cavalry, both Norman mercenaries and Saxon heavy cavalry thegns anchoring his right. I also had a concentration of heavy cavalry Normans on that flank as well as on my own right. I had my foot in the center, desiring to use my extensive archer fire to soften up the Saxon foot who would, I was sure, be sitting on those hills Bert had managed to place.

I knew things were not going to go as planned when the Saxon foot continued to swarm forward, over the hills, not only on the flanks, but in the center as well. Bert explained to me that he was a 'very aggressive' player. I attempted to slow his foot down with concentrated bowfire, but the Saxons did not falter. They didn't slow down a bit, but just kept coming.

The cavalry on my left charged and engaged the enemy heavy cavalry and a series of seesaw battles developed, with my own cavalry slowly getting the better of the Saxon horse. Unfortunately, before Bert's cavalry folded, the Saxons hit the Norman center. It was not a pretty sight. As I attempted to retreat, trying to outrun the slower close order Saxon foot, one of my archer units failed to outdistance the charging Saxons (I had rolled a miserable '1' for my retreat move while Bert had rolled a '6' for his charge distance). The resulting debacle proved disastrous (getting hit in the flank or rear in MW causes double casualties and the enemy gets a free random die roll against you as well). My archers routed.

Units around the routing Norman archer unit all had to test morale for seeing the rout. Unit after unit failed to pass. The center was caving very quickly and the Saxons continued to pour more foot into the battle.

The Saxons kept up the pressure, continuing to charge my retreating units and catching those which I elected to have hold their ground.

On my right, I was sweeping around the enemy flank after sending a shipload of crossbowmen up the major water feature I had placed there. They had disembarked, recovered their order, and were firing with good results into the Saxons packed on that flank. I also sent in two units of loose order foot to take on the fyrd and has success here as well. But it was a matter of too little too late. My center totally collapsed and the Norman army reached their breakpoint. The game was over, with a tough fought 5-4 victory for Bert.

This was a very bloody battle, with heavy losses on both sides, hence the close final score. I felt fortunate to be in the hunt after the first round and looked forward to my next game…against Paul Dobbins' Vikings.

Pauld tried to get some good terrain, but it all ended up on my side of the field! So the Vikings were left with no terrain to work with against the Norman army. Paul put his army in a strong shieldwall and waited.

The Normans at first tired to smash his flanks while keeping pressure on his center. Archer fire was effective, but Paul also had a good number of archers, so my units were taking numbers of casualties as well, being unarmored against lightly armored Vikings.

As the attacker, I waded in, but Paul had bought a Sacred Raven banner (instead of a priest) and this saved his men time and again as they passed numerous morale tests for being charged by heavy cavalry and by stand losses. The banner kept the Vikings in the game and at the end, I could not get them to rout. The game ended at the 3 1/2 hour time limit, with a 3-2 marginal victory for the Normans.

This was a relaxing, fun tournament, as all of our AW/MW ones are. We are already planning ahead for Historicon where the AW 25mm and the MW 15mm tournaments will be the ones to play in. I'm already dusting off my troops, but haven't decided whether to go with Galatians, Carthaginians or Marian Romans. I'll see what feels right and go from there.

That night, Rich put on his final game and the silver bars were awarded! We also had sat in on Allen Kaplen's Swashbuckler game which ran into the wee hours, all great fun, and a very good weekend.