Game 5 vs Italian Condotta - Britcon, 10th, 11th and 12th August 2012
Fifth round I met Luciano Marchisio, who was leading the pool, with ten points of advantage on me. I needed a win.
I attacked, and the terrain set up was this:
Condotta deployed second between the difficult going, with the swiss pikes three deep covering most of the good going, and the rest of his army covering flanks and back, without any will to move forward. I had flank marched the smaller of my corps on the left.
Ottomans moved to engage the right flank.
My flank march entered immediately, and the Condotta sent its reserve to that flank
When the Jannissary approached the marsh, the condotta skirmishers holding that feature were pulled back
Jannissary started to deal very slowly the advance in the marchy ground, while the Condotta tried to avoid any contact. After an hour of non game, we settled for a 13-12, that was the result my opponent was looking for.
It should have been better to flank march a larger corps. This would have given the opportunity to play a real game. I discussed with some players about this negative attitude I faced for the second time in five games. The best counter is to have an army with good terrain troops. Ottoman unfortunately has very few, and this is the main downside I faced in the tournament. Of course I had in past tournaments my share of games played like that, but on the last round, when a draw would grant the victory. Now having to organize your army to deal with repeated games like that is annoying, expecially when you travel two thousands miles to attend an event and the fun is spoiled by players that behave more like accounters than gamers. Mike Bennett thought that it would be better simply to not let a tie score half the point of a win. He could be right, should a win have a value of three times a non game like that, players would cease to exploit similar tactics.
By the way with just one round to go I was nine points behind the leader.