BRULIB 2025

This year's theme was From the fall of St Jean d'Acre to the Nicopolis crusade 1291 to 1396 CE so any any of the Following armies but between 1291 CE till 1396 CE included

The allowed armies were mostly active around the mediterranean and a few mongols as well

I did choose to play an Order of St John army and did not intend to win

Due to circumstances, we being an uneven number of players, the Belgian players agreed to have 4 players play their game before the tournament and each would get a bye at one of the 4 organised games . So I played my real first game before the tournament.

So I played Antoine and his most infamous Ilkhanate army with lots of skilled shooters . I was out scouted, defender ..so I deployed in a very defensive bunkerlike formation

My Genoese ally help the marsh on my right flank. I had putted some knights and crossbowmen in the center . Red knights are SUP with sergeants , the black ones are the fanatics. I had putted my shield cover infantry on my right and waited to see how he would deploy

Not many pictures I know. But here is my reserve and I used it . Floating CIC did help a lot

We were so concentrated on the game that pictures were on Holliday .

Overconfident the Ilkhanate CIC just rushed forward and forgot to pu some unit in loose order and also forgot that crossbows do shoot at 4 MY . So my left flank had a first field day shooting on green . Having good cards I opened my formation and my reserve went forward to slow down the Ilkhanate left flank that had advanced more slowly

The Ilkhanate CIC stunned by the charge of the poor unprotected crossbowmen just froze which means a lot of black and white cards and no retreat no manoeuvring and it gave me the opportunity to slaughter some of his nice cavalry with 9 files of crossbowmen all shooting on green . The knights came in to finish the work even if my crossbowmen did suffer as poor and unprotected is a nice recipe for good enemy shooting as well .

So it ended 15-6 to me mainly because of the lack of patience of the Ilkhanate leadership and his lack of cards on round 2 and 3 which allowed me to outmanoeuvre him easily