A brief account of my games at Britcon. My army was Early German, the Batavian option in 69 AD.

C-in-C Cv(O), 18 x Wb(F), 6 x Wb(S), 7 x Ps(I), 2 x Ps(O). 25.5 ME
Sub Wb(S), 18 x Wb(F), 6 x Wb(S), 7 x Ps(I). 24 ME
Sub Cv(O), 5 x Irr Cv(O), 1 x Reg Cv(O), 6 x Ax(S), 6 x Ps(S). 21 ME
Usippi ally Cv(O), 5 x Irr Cv(O), 3 x Ps(I), 5 x Ps(S), 2 x Bge(F). 15 ME
Army baggage 6 x Bge(I).

The basic doctrine is to place the 2 warband commands in the centre and go and whack something whilst the 2 cav commands protect the flanks. The warband command will be 6 wide and the positioning of the Wb(S) and Ps(I) depends on opponents in front of them. The normal rule being that if anything quick kills them then they go to the rear.

Game 1 v Thom Richardson¡¦s Wallachians.
Only terrain of note was a hill in my left centre on which I anchored my left flank. Thom pilled knights into the middle and LH(S) against my Cav on my right. The LH(S) died horribly, but the Kn started stripping ranks off the warband. I pushed forward Cav into the supporting LH of the Hungarian ally and Ax into the supports of the badly handled LH(S) to break that command. The Hungarian ally broke at the same time as one of my commands. This broke Thom¡¦s army and almost did mine as well. 15-10 to me.

Game 2 v Tom Worden¡¦s Alans.
I camped my army between a gentle hill on my left flank and a wooded hill in the left centre. Tom piled in with masses of LH(S). On my left he moved the bank ranks of his LH over to double ranks against my foot. This allowed my cav to charge off the hill. We both proceeded to take large numbers of elements off, although many of Tom¡¦s were only spent. I managed to break the enemy command on my left, but this did not affect anything. In Toms next turn one of his generals had an accident which broke that command but he did break one of mine. When we did the maths at the end of the bound both armies were broken, one command having lost + spent enough for more than 50%. 13-12 to Tom.

Game 3 v Dave Houston¡¦s Batavians ¡V Will the real Civilis please stand up!
The terrain consisted of various bits of difficult going blocking off my left flank. I¡¦d actually not bothered to pick any terrain (mostly because I had no idea what to select) so the rest of the table was a smooth plain. Dave deployed first from the difficult terrain. I concentrated on the right. This gave me 3 key advantages. Dave¡¦s Wb(S) had no solid target, mine were facing Wb(O) and I had Ax(S) and Cv(O) facing Cv(O) and Ps. The two armies crunched and again large clumps were removed from both armies. I did not play the left hand flank of the warband very well and they were under great pressure. Dave came very close to breaking one of my commands on a turn which left 3 of mine disheartened and 2 of his similar. In my turn the one good command got decent pips and combat dice to break one of Dave¡¦s commands and his army. I¡¦d survived by a hair¡¦s breadth. 18-7 to me.

Game 5 v David Thompson¡¦s Burgundian Ordnance
A lot of terrain scattered about. I had to deploy on the right and after a fair amount of faffing around by both of us to get into position we faced each other off between 2 wooded hills. We had started fighting and not really much had happened so far when time was called. We both thought we were in with a good chance with a few more bounds though. 14-11 to me.

Game 5 v Chris Jolley¡¦s HYW English
A game of hills. My warband commands separated by difficult hills had to manoeuvre to get into position whilst Chris realigned to shoot with the strong wind. I was fortunate to get the PIPs to allow me to do this and piled forward onto Chris¡¦s left flank, looting his baggage and breaking his left most command anchored on a gentle hill. This left my left hand warband command exposed and it was routed in short order. As both armies were realigning to take out the remnant of the opposition time was called. 14-11 to me.

Game 6 v Richard Aynsley¡¦s Early Vietnamese
The terrain provided a nice flat plain between a rocky hill and large wood on my left and a wide river on my right. I had the pleasure of deploying first and put Ps in front, the Wb(S) then Wb(F) in the warband commands. Ax(S) and Cav by the river and the Usippi covering the left flank. Richard had two flanks commands of Bw(I) and Ps and a large centre of Wb(F) and elephants. 2 Art on the flanks and some Bts(S) in the river was a bit of a nasty surprise but I just rushed forward as quickly as possible. The shape of things to come was seen when one of the elephants was 6-1d by a Ps(I). My two commands of Wb(S)/(F) were taking large chunks out of the Wb(F) for not much loss whilst the Ax(S) got to grips with some Bw(I) by the river. In desperation Richard threw in a general for a 5F to 1S shot that did not come off and succumbed to the responding 4S to 2F next turn to break that command as the centre also collapsed. 23-2 to me.

That left me on 96 points for second place with a fine display of submarining ļ. 6 thoroughly good games played in great spirit. Most of my games were real bloodbaths and this is not an army for the faint hearted. It is a lot of fun though.