Murad 1 Hunyadi 0

Peter and I had a play through the Varna scenario which has been set up in the annexe for the last couple of weeks. Naturally I hadn't got round to having a solo run through - although I had made a Janos Hunyadi command stand, and a one for King Vladislav while I was at it - but in all worked fairly well. As usual it would have worked even better had we played the rules correctly, but you can't have everything. Amongst the other things that we can't have this week are photographs because I didn't take any. Normally when we play at the Casa Epictetus I umpire, which gives me plenty of opportunity to take some, but on this occasion a a player I couldn't find the time, or find the camera, or something.

It all panned out fairly historically with Vladislav charging the Ottoman fortifications, almost getting across the barricades, but ultimately dying to no effect. I thought it might be a bit one sided as a game, but the crusaders were well-placed for much of the game. The king's demise, which meant the centre was permanently out of command, was really the turning point. Having weathered the storm the janissaries eventually advanced out of their camp and dealt the coup de grace. If I have one regret a the Christian commander it's that I didn't move the wagenburg across earlier to provide cover for the crumbling Wallachians on my left flank to hide behind.

Let's focus on the things that seemed to work:

• The mechanism for causing Vladislav and the Papal Legate to be liable to move forward impetuously.
• Classing jannisaries as legionaries in TtS! terms.
• The markers behind each unit showing commands they belonged to; the reminders of saving throws were useful as well.
• The new tokens; you can easily see what number they are, they are very unlikely to be overlooked when putting them back in the bag and they don't stick together.

All in all I thought it was a good scenario and I may well get it back on the table again sometime.