However here's lots of eye candy:
My first game was against Tom who'd proved to be my nemesis at the El Cid event, and we went with the form book in this one too. He was using the Fall of the West Warlords list and the heavy throwing spears hurt. A lot. We also got the warband rules wrong, which resulted in more Panic than strictly necessary, but as it affected us both equally no harm was done. A good fun game against a thoroughly jolly chap
Game two was against Pete, who I'd not played before, but as he'd travelled down in the car with Jim and Tom I knew he'd be a good guy to play soldiers with, and so it proved. He had some form of Late Roman thing going down (nicely painted too) I think from FotW but they could have been AoA (they all look the same to me, coming over here, killing our Saxons). Largely in this game I spent my tme bouncing of the Roman shieldwalls and running away. Sigh. Another good fun game against a good opponent.
In the third round I was paired with tournament leader Scrivs and his very similar early Saxon army. Well, similar in that we'd both used Musketeer Miniatures models and had similar sized units. His were however much more nicely painted than mine and he knew how to use them. I still had most of my units in 6x4 formations from the old WAB rules (largely because I'm too lazy/tight to make new movement trays) whereas Scrivs had his as 8x3 with the result that he was kicking out more attacks than me in any even match-ups. Couple that with a knowledge of the rules that meant the match-ups weren't even in the first place and I was onto another hiding. But I never mind taking a beating from a decent chap, so we had a very jolly time watching me shovel off dead men.
Finally I played Chris in the last game, who I'd sneaked a win against in the El Cid event thanks to some unlikely heroics from the Kamel Korps. Chris was using some late Saxons, so I was attempting to kill my own descendants. I'd finally started to remember how to play WAB by this stage, so at one point I was doing rather well, but sadly Chris fought back well and I was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Another great game with a nice opponent.
In the final wrap-up I'd come a distant last, but I'd had four great games, met up with some great folks and had a top day. I even "won" a Wargames Illustrated six month sub in the end of tournament dice off (actually I didn't win, Scrivs conceded as he'd already snagged a prize as overall winner - what a nice chap).
Thanks must go to Tommy for organising a great event, to all my opponents for great games and to Maelstrom for hosting.
Many of the chaps will be doing it all over again at the Weekender in May (apart from Chris, he's doing a Demo game at Triples) and I'm looking forward to it a lot.
