Bakewell Wimps Winter Warmer 15 Feb 2020

Talk about splitting hairs (see Welsh Open thread)! I found myself in a game yesterday arguing the finer points of being uphill and only slowly realising I was in the wrong.
In all the years I have been playing this flawed but fantastic game nobody has ever claimed uphill of me in the situation I found myself in yesterday. It’s probably been a case of ‘gentlemanly’ play and not bothering. I have never understood ‘uphill’ and there seem to be nearly as many interpretations as players. Fortunately, it is usually easy to observe if an element is clearly uphill – but yesterday, to my eye, it wasn’t. Since both of us playing the game were near the top of the table and since the uphill issue was critical to us both within the game, we argued. Nothing unpleasant but both assertive. It wasn’t really until Mark Skelton gave me an excellent lesson that I understood how to quickly identify ‘uphill’.

So, thanks to Mark for the eye opening eureka moment and apologies to my opponent again. Incidentally, we drew the game. An impossible situation where knights could not enter the steep hills and light troops on the other side could not venture out.

Mark’s method (as it shall hence forth be known in my mind) gives some uphill positions which to the casual eye do not look uphill and situations in which players have never claimed uphill against me, but technically I can now see the logic of it. Doh! Don’t ask me to explain it or to post a diagram; I need someone with a better brain than mine on the job.

I love playing this game and now at last I think I have a means of quickly and simply deciding ‘uphill’. I plan to explain it to all my opponent’s in future in the hope that I don’t start splitting hairs and worse, find to my horror that I am in the wrong.

As for the wider Bakewell Winter Wimps tournament, it was a great theme which generated many excellent games and was played, as usual, by a warm and friendly group of guys. It may never get warm in the Peak District but visually it is stunning and after a long drive, it was a joy to behold.

I took Nabataeans II/22a. Having just painted the Ps bowmen for the army just before the tournament was announced I knew that if I was able to attend it would be Nabataeans. Although not a strong force, particularly since it needed to be Ps strong, knowing that alternate games would be played with my opponent’s army I felt that it didn’t much matter what I took. Mark let me use his excellent Petra inspired camp which was perfect. I expected lots of knights and light horse which is why I took maximum fast bows and it was the bows, when in my hands, that did the most damage yesterday. With the extremes of army types – some very light and others with lots of knights – terrain proved to be a very significant factor. I saw knights mowing down their light infantry enemies in open terrain and at other times knights having nowhere to go and being played completely out of the game.

Thanks Simon, for a great day – I only wish we lived a bit closer to each other.

Colin the Wimp