Road to Bristol: The Art Of War! #6 Tournament Day 1 (Hyper-G)

Hi folks,
As Lucky-Sixes mentioned in his post it wasn’t long on day 1 before I was called up into the tournament as a replacement player. Even though I’d known for a long time that this might happen it was still very exhilarating when it actually all kicked off!

So... into the breach...as they say!

Here's the link to our channel where the battle reports will be:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6RqtSiZ_YeZP_Sif7Cf65Q?view_as=subscriber

Like, share, subscribe, etc., etc., and you'll be kept up to date with all the action!

Like Lucky-Sixes, I won't go into too much detail, but will summarise the battles and then add some final thoughts about the overall state of affairs.

Game 1 - O&G vs SA

Lining up against Saurian Ancients for the first battle was an interesting start as SA were one of the armies I'd usually control myself. Opponent Mark was a great opening player to go against who clearly knew what he was doing & was happy to help me settle into things. So much so that he allowed me to re-deploy my Cave Goblins after they’d failed a terror test to prevent them from fleeing off the board in the first act of the game!

Unfortunately for me though, this was my opponents only merciful act as before my turn 1 had begun I’d lost my Git Launcher, Wolf Raiders & the entire unit of Common Orcs mainly as a result of Pyromancy Magic and Salamanders (and panic tests!).

I knew I had to react with aggressive tactics & focused everything I had on a central advance which saw some success as my Gargantula, Giant & a Totemic Summon worked hard to eliminate his big unit of Skinks & Caimans. Unfortunately though, Mark had systematically destroyed most of the rest of my army whilst this had been going on, including my Chariot-riding general, leaving the Trolls hopelessly stupid.

My Iron Orcs went on a last gasp run for the objective but even that failed to turn the tide and it ended as a 0-20 loss. However, I’d felt like I’d given it a go after an awful start so I wasn’t too discouraged.

• Deployment has to be managed better as not all my opponents will allow me to reverse my early poor decisions.
• This tournament is going to be a lot of fun. Even though I lost horribly, I enjoyed this game so much!
• I didn’t need to worry too much about losing this one as a lot of the damage had been done before I’d had a chance to do anything (and most of my deployment was alright). This was a good opponent who knew how to play his army and I expected that he’d do well in the tournament.

Game 2 - O&G vs VC

Vampire Covenants is always an army I enjoy playing against & from talking to my opponent, Chris, as we deployed I knew this wouldn’t be any different. I tactically chose to go heavy on the objective in this one with most of my scoring units going for the central area to claim the middle. This was whilst doing everything possible to stay away from Chris’ very scary big unit of Barrow Guard.

In the early game I stuck well to my plan and managed to set up a big grind on the centre with my Orcs outlasting his unit of Crypt Ghouls. In the meantime my Gargantula and Giant had split the Barrow Guard’s attention to take out a Varkolak & sneak into an endless combat with some Zombies with the help of a crucial unit of Cave Goblins that kept the Barrow Guard busy.

Thanks as well to some awesome Troll vomit cleaning out Chris’ Barrow Knights I was well in control of this one and an unfortunate movement mistake towards the end by Chris left the Barrow Guard floundering & me coasting towards a 20-0 win!

• Another really enjoyable battle & this time I felt like I I wasn’t hampered by early mistakes.
• The Gargantula is a real tank that can go off alone so long as he’s focusing on a particular role; in this case flanking after destroying the Varkolak.
• Chris was unlucky with some decisions he made but in this battle I felt in control and that put me in a good position so long as I remained sensible (for goodness sake stay away from the Barrow Guard!!)

Game 3 - O&G vs BH

Beast Herds is an army I’m almost totally unfamiliar with as we just don’t get round to playing with or against them. My opponent Luke had a lot of chariots and a fearsome Minotaur combat character that I knew I'd struggle to take down - my solution - keep away from him!

In my previous battle I felt like I'd found a new niche for my (non-BSB) Iron Orcs as a distraction / re-directing unit that my opponents didn't necessarily think were playing this role.  The longer I kept them on the board the better keeping whatever they were sparing with busy whilst I focused on the rest of the threat.  This was my early plan here and so, despite getting the Gargantula caught up with this (and killed) as well, they managed to almost single-handedly keep back most of the Beast Herd units who were hampered by a bit of terrain forcing them to take a long route round.

Whilst this occurred I baited Luke into declaring 8" / 9" charges with 4 of his Chariots on my Bridge Trolls in the middle.  It was a risk as if they'd all succeeded the impact hits would have wrecked my unit even with the Regen but as it happened only 2 successfully completed the charge and the Trolls revelled in smashing wood, even managing to flee to safety after a 5th chariot eventually flanked them having seen off the 4 others in various turns and a further unit of Centaurs too.

This had left my Common Orcs grabbing the middle objective (it was the treasure one), whilst my BSB Iron Orcs offered discipline support and the Giant helped a unit of Cave Goblins on the other flank.  In the latter situation it all started so well as Luke was left with only a unit of Mongrel Raiders on that side whilst the Cave Goblins claimed the objective but in a very clever move those Mongrels surprised me and charged the Goblins, routing them and evening out the objective tally (as thankfully they couldn't claim it themselves - phew!).

We knew it was close as all the chariots and Centaurs that I'd killed was probably evened out by the Gargantula and Iron Orc sacrifice and so as it went into the last turn Luke risked it all on a charge by his Wildhorn unit with Wizard into the front of my objective-holding Orcs... and the Orcs slapped them up royally!!!

The Wildhorns and Wizard were run down causing a big swing to the overall score at the very end and I emerged with an amazing 11-9 victory!  This was an awesome battle for me, not just because of the result either.

• The Iron Orcs emerged as my favourite unit to use for tactical purposes
• Cave Goblins can't be trusted - even though they are useful Mad Git delivery systems they shouldn't hold objectives... even against Mongrels!
• I need to think about using the Terror special rule better on my Giant who could have caused some problems to the Mongrel unit that cost me the objective as his General & BSB were no-where near.
• Totemic Summons are amazing.  They popped up multiple times again to assist in the re-directing and limited Luke's combat character to limited points scoring.

There were so many positives taken so far from day 1, and somehow I was also 2 wins out of 3 with slightly less points than Lucky-Sixes (31) but very much feeling good about the tournament so far!

Thanks for reading,
Kind regards,
Hyper-G

Road to Bristol: The Art of War! #5 Tournament Day 1 (Lucky-Sixes)

Today is the day! All the hard work (ha!), preparation and painting has come down to this.

We rocked up, as eager as ever and put our armies down on the table ready to pit our wits against England's finest and come out triumphant... hopefully!

It was very exciting and we were both buzzing to see what it would be like to participate in a tournament. We had been getting hints and tips all week from people going or that had gone to tournaments in the past, both on the forums and in person; so naively, we felt very prepared and ready for the day ahead.

About 10 minutes in and we were interrupted by one of the TO's, saying that they had a drop out and that Hyper-G was needed! And like the hero he is, he stepped up into the breach and was now an official participant of the tournament! Woop. So, we both had a jam packed day ahead and despite being thrown into the mix, Hyper-G had had a pretty good preparation to the tournament as well, finishing his 3 battles undefeated with his Orcs.

So for day 1, my fixture list was pitting me against Empire of Sonnstahl, Ogre Khans and Orcs & Goblins (again!); while Hyper-G went up against Saurian Ancients, Vampire Covenant and Beastmen. We were actually pitted against each other in the 2nd match up, but we spoke to the TO's, explained that we couldn't stand battling each other again and they kindly changed us up, which was very nice of them. As always, for full video battle reports make sure you visit our YouTube channel first, as I will likely be giving away some key details of the match ups and definitely the scores below!

Here's the link to our channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6RqtSiZ_YeZP_Sif7Cf65Q?view_as=subscriber

Like, share, subscribe, etc., etc., and you'll be kept up to date with all the action!

Onto the battles then! I wont go into too much detail, but will summarize the battles and then come out with some learning points that we took from it. We will do my battles here and Hyper-G's in a seperate post I think so that its not too long.

Game 1 - HBE vs EoS

So for my first match up I went against a very good player in Felix Newman (Captain of Team Scotland!) and his gun-line EoS with some cool looking Griffon characters to support. My bright eyed eagerness and enthusiasm got quickly nullified as he quickly dismantles my army with his accurate, Str4, AP2 infantry and Str5, multiple shots, multiple wounds war machines with magic support.

In key events, I got my deployment all wrong - spreading out and putting my army down early to get the first turn (in order to put the pressure on) and lining my shooting against his Reiters. Normally this would actually be a fairly good tactic, but I completely neglected to recognize that he had placed both his Reiters on a hill, and then subsequently vanguarded behind the hill and kept them safely hidden from my shooters. Damn! And to rub salt in the wound I had put my Knights on that side thinking that I would have a clear run (and also use the hill as protection - shame I didn't consider that he could us it too) from his shooting and he was able to use them to tear the unit apart with the fully loaded Reiter shots. One of the Griffons was over that side too and similarly to the Spider in my previous battle, killed both my shooting units with ease. There was a point where I nearly managed a Seaguard cover fire stand and shoot to double up with the Queensguard against his BSB Great Griffon, but unfortunately I forgot to move half an inch back and that meant I was within the advance move of the beast, and therefore unable to stand and shoot. Gutted. The Dragon had to wait a turn for the other units to march over to the left side and then got pummeled with other shooting from the war machines. The rest kind of just crumbled. 20-0 to the Empire.

We had a bit of spare time at the end of the battle (as he crushed me) and Felix was nice enough to talk me through what I could've done and how those changes in tactics might have changed the outcome of the battle. So with these tips in mind here are my learning points:

• Don't forget about vanguard and terrain! This cost me a shooting phase and essentially my Knight unit, and without that I was never going to even threaten him so potentially him vanguarding behind the hill won the battle before turn 1! Now that's what I call being outplayed.
• Be more aggressive with the Dragon. I should have just put my dragon up and got him to charge me or focus all his shooting on me turn 1. staying back allowed an extra shooting phase from his war machines and cost me the Dragon. It wasn't even close either, he did like 7 wounds in the second round with his volley guns so I should have made him sweat right from the start
• Deploy better. My knights need to be in the thick of things rather than so far away. Gave my opponent too much time to focus fire on the units he wanted to and gave them little chance of reaching the enemy lines intact.

Game 2 - HBE vs Ogre Khans

I had been well and truly schooled in my last game and the only consolation was that I was against someone else who had been 20-0'd. Having said that, the other guys (Ross Stevenson) had been beaten by a vampire player who I think ended up finishing 3rd so that actually made no difference and didn't really give me indication about skill level. However, I did know Ross from our last outing to Bristol so at least I knew I would be against a fun player. And besides, Hyper-G beat him so surely that was a good omen for me! The list Ross was sporting, however, was completely different so i was in no better place in knowing how to deal with the list. He had a huge unit of tribesman housing his General, BSB,and mage, with a few Bruiser darts, 2 big monsters, a unit of Tusker Cav and some Scratapults.

My first thoughts were actually quite positive despite having my a$$ handed to me in the first round. Prior to the tournament I thought Ogres were a good match up for me, with my Knight unit as the key to the win. They could easily handle the big monsters and Tusker cav, so the only problem would be the big core unit with characters. I would have to duel charge them in order to hurt them, or they would just grind me out. My shooting was pretty good for this game too to kill off the chaff and plink away at the big unit when they were gone. So, if I could stick to the game plan I thought I would do quite well.

He deployed everything to get the first turn and then moved up a little bit to leave me some long charges and get some early shots with his Scratapults. Luckily for me, on turn 1, I made an 10" charge with my knights into the flank of his Rock Aurock, which then took me into his Mammoth which was behind his lines. In doing so, I did give a flank to both his Scratapults on his turn 2, who both charged, but due to hereditary and some good armour saving roles (I think I got the armour buff on them too), I did enough wounds to the Mammoth to kill it and send the chariots running. My Reavers who had vanguarded behind his lines were then available to subsequently charge and run down both of them in my turn 2/3 and actually pick up some points - which is a very rare thing indeed. Meanwhile my Dragon was able to charge the Tusker Cav on his flank, with the help of a sacrificial Eagle, and took them out with the help of Molten Copper in the Magic phase (and thus making the unit flammable) and the Dragon's boosted attacks. This whole situation meant I was able to surround the big deathstar unit and after a few rounds of shooting to take a few bodies away (which to be fair I did pretty well to do) I charged my Dragon, Knight unit and Lancers in (who had been playing around with a bruiser dart for a bit). With the subsequent magic support and a few bad dispel rolls on my opponents part i then murdered the unit over a few rounds and the game was won! 20-0 to me!

I thought I had played this one pretty well, but realistically it came down to a ballsy 10" charge on turn 1 from my Knight unit which won me the battle. The rest came together very nicely and I managed to keep my focus after the early jubilation to make sure nothing silly happened. It was made quicker by some bad magic dice rolling on my opponents part, but in truth there wasn't much more he could do. Learning points:

• Don't leave your opponent long charges. I didn't have much to lose by declaring the long charge and the reward for pulling it off was massive. So the lesson here is don't even leave the possibility for a charge, especially if the damage done is that big!
• Re-rolls to wound on Dragon/Knights is devastating. This was most prevalent in this battle as it just allowed my units to make quick work of his. I was already capable of doing a lot of wounds but having that in my arsenal was very useful. With magic the way it is now, you are going to get at least one spell off unless you are really unlucky so the alchemy spells + hereditary is working with pretty good synergy on my list so far. Need to make sure I utilize this fully in future
• Chaffing is crucial. I out-chaffed my opponent in this battle, and this lead to the downfall of the tusker cav. To be fair they are one of the units that don't necessarily need the charge, but I certainly do - both for devastating charge and for getting magic support on my units. I need to keep this up if I am going to win more battles in this tournament.

Game 3 - HBE vs O&G

Last up for the day were the Orcs. Now by this point, despite being buzzed off my last win and effectively reaching my goal of one victory (I know I may have mentioned complete domination of the world before, but my actual goal was just to beat one player), I was pretty tired / mentally drained before going into the battle. It was a long day and it took more out of me than I expected. Thankfully, I had an awesome opponent and we were both doing pictures for battle reports and chatting and having fun. It was his first tournament too, so we ended up playing this one very laid back and I have to say this was the most fun game I had at the tournament, perhaps even ever! Cheers for the game Simon!

Looking at his list, he had 2 chaff raiders, some goblin bows & a big unit of spear goblins (both with mad gits and the spears had 3 goblin chiefs in it!), a big unit of feral Orcs with his apocalypse wielding general, a chariot, a splatterer, some trolls, a spider and a giant. Lots of units and bodies. We played Spoils of War and Counterthrust for this match up I think. With all the battles I have had against O&G and the knowledge I had of them bestowed from Hyper-G, I felt pretty confident going into this one as well. Similar to the ogre battle, I knew my knights could handle everything apart from a grind with his big units, and from the very first battle I had against a Orc horde unit, I knew my Dragon could wreck face against these infantry, and especially those with minimal save so I was keen to sort that match up too. I wasn't too scared of his ranged threat and knew if I could concentrate on his chaff early on, I would be able to pretty much set up the match-ups I wanted. He dropped his chaff and surprisingly his spider down early (which he put on his own on his flank), so when I had the chance I dropped to get first turn. I put my Knights directly opposite his Spider - who to be fair was hiding at the back of a forest - thinking that was a perfect match up for me, and when I got the charge off on him I would wipe him out and turn to face the rest of his army. My shooting I dropped opposite his wolf raiders and my dragon and Catclaw just stayed with them as a mini counter-charge force. My Lancers I put on the right flank next to one of the objectives and planned to take that and hide for the rest of the battle.

After a few turns of slight movements with the knights vs Spider, i managed to get a 9" charge off and was super lucky to take ZERO wounds to dangerous terrain. I think I actually rolled one but ward saved it. They did exactly as expected and reformed, again not taking any damage from the forest. In the middle, my first turn of shooting/magic did their job and took away his 2 units of chaff and the chariot as well, so that was awesome. I then picked on his trolls to whittle them down with my flaming ranged attacks before sending the Dragon in to kill them off and overrun into the Giant. Simon kind of chaffed himself up in one of his turns, which allowed me to kill the Giant over a few rounds of combat, but then, seeing that they would also take the central objective in doing so, he was able to charge his feral orc unit into me and the general clearly was not happy in letting my dragon take off his unit and in rather spectacular style, wiped my dragon out in a single round of combat. That hurt! But we were getting really into the game at this point and we saw this as a pretty epic kill for the Orc lord which painted a pretty cinematic picture. We had a few people that had finished their game come over to watch and we ended up having a bit of a crowd which was brilliant! Really good atmosphere. Anyway sorry, back to the battle...

The Lancers had completely abandoned their project of objective scoring as his big unit of spear goblins were placed opposite and too scary for me to take on. So they chose to go round the back and go after the goblin bows and war machine. They did this very nicely, and the mad gits only managed to do 1 or 2 wounds to them and so they easily got their points back. After they did this I ended up combo charging them into the feral orcs (who had now turned around after killing the dragon and were caught goading my units) with my Knight unit - who once again, passed through the forest they were in with finesse. I did so many wounds and killed his general in a challenge with my general. I managed to kill him without him striking back due to my high initiative and combat build so my lord definitely earned his stripes there and got the revenge for slaying my dragon! We spoke about it afterwards and he said this was a mistake, but I think I would have killed him with my chaps either way, but would have killed less Orcs maybe but who knows. But after a few rounds of grinding, on the last turn (and last roll of the game!) he had a re-roll-able 7 discipline test to keep them from running. He failed the first one and we were on the edge of our seat for the second roll. This was so important because down in my deployment zone we had managed to get into a fight between my seaguard & lion chariot (who was in his flank) and his spear goblins (who had the objective that the Lancers bailed from). That was going pretty well for both sides as I was winning combat but he wasn't losing enough bodies to prevent him being steadfast. He still had Ld 7/8 tests to make but did so valiantly throughout the game. But, crucially, this meant that currently he was winning the objective 2-1, so the last dice roll would decide who would win the secondary part of the battle and whether I would get the points for his feral orc unit or not. He couldn't look... I couldn't look (but did because I was willing him to fail - in a sportsmanlike manner of course... even half the audience dare not glance at the dice! He rolled it and rolled... a 4!!! Wow, what a battle. Gutted he managed to stick, but very pleased we had just played a very intense, really fun battle!

When all was said and done, it ended up being 15-5 to me on the scores, but due to the objective, a 12-8 overall! Learning points:

• Kill chaff early. It really helped me to set up the charges I wanted and keep my Knight unit free to charge on my terms.
• Know what your units can handle! My dragon mage is good, but he cant handle a whole unit of feral orcs with a beast of a general. He did do well to handle his giant and trolls and it may have been a necessary sacrifice as there wasn't much else that could deal with them so well; but its worth thinking about for future battles. On the other hand, I did well to put my knights against his spider who brushed him aside quite easily. As opposed to the last Orc battle I had where I didn't do this and the spider went to town on the rest of my army.
• T9A is really fun! Sorry for the cheese but I thought I would add this in as I hear a lot of people on the forums saying the fun is being slowly drawn from the game but this experience has really quelled all that animosity for me (#Orcpun!). For me this is proof the fun is still alive!

After all that I was knackered! But I was standing at around the middle of the pack with 32 / 60 points, and with 2 wins no less! Pretty pleased with myself, I went back to the hotel to have a well deserved beer. Bring on day 2!

Road to Bristol: The Art of War! #4 - Practice Day (Friday)

So here we are folks, all the preparation and planning has led to this!

We finally made it to Bristol and like the eager geeks that we are, we turned up the day before to get some practice battles in with our armies to warm up for the big event. And very appropriately, we were battling at BIG - Bristol Independent Gaming store and were met by some very friendly members of the Bristol Ninjas Team who were hosting the weekend.

Callum and Shane were running the tournament on the days ahead but still (somehow) managed to fit in giving us some games the day before, and between them and some other chaps having a similar attitude to us turning up early, we had a great day of chat, dice rolling and lager drinking which was fantastic. A huge thanks goes out to those chaps who made us feel very welcome in Bristol leading up to the event and then of course when we met them at the venue!

Overall we had 3 games on the day, 2 for my Highborn Elves (Dwarven Holds and O&G) and 1 for the Orcs (Infernal Dwarves). Again, if you want to catch the full reports we have them listed on our YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6RqtSiZ_YeZP_Sif7Cf65Q

**Spoiler Alert** we will do a mini review of each battle below so make sure to watch the videos first before reading on if you don't want to spoil any of the magic!

Game 1 - Highborn Elves vs Dwarven Holds

I played a wonderful chap named Terry as we both turned up pretty much when the building opened and got straight to it! We played the encircle deployment and the spoils of war secondary objective. He had a big block of Spear Clan Warriors, Crossbow Clan Marksmen, and Deep Watch supported by 2 Grudge Throwers and 2 units of Miners. He also had 5 characters in his roster - mainly defensive minded. This included an Engineer, 3 defensive Thanes and a killy general.

He castled up on my left flank surrounding a hill and I spread out with my Knights and Dragon and Catclaw (Lion Chariot) facing him off, Shooting units in the middle and Lancers completely out of the way and ready to take the objective on the right. My thoughts were to get the objective sorted with Lancers early on (and then later on with my shooting units) and then send my Knights and Dragon into his troops. His blocks were pretty big (30 odd) but putting both my big guns in together should mean I fly through them pretty quickly - I would just have to make sure I only take them on one unit at a time!

In the early part of the battle I moved my units up to set up the charges against his left side first - although they were a big unit of spears - so plenty of armour penetration, which I was a little scared of to be honest, but being a practice game I really wanted to see how my guys would fare. Shooting focused on his crossbow unit to try to limit the shooting I took in return and magic was aimed at his war machines and getting the hereditary spell off, which thankfully I managed to do more often than not. My Dragon took 4 wounds(!) in the first turn to his Grudge Throwers - and that was even with my 1/2 damage shield to the first multiple wounds damage and with the hereditary off! Safe to say I needed to get into combat quick.

In my turn 2, the Knights went head first into the spears. A dangerous game (with Hyper-G grumbling about this being suicidal if it was any historical battle) but one I had to risk to prevent any shooting casualties. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the Dragon in as well as he had chaffed me with a character, so I charged him in to face off and again get out of the reach of the catapults. The plus for this though, was that he had left me a 10" overrun into his crossbows if I did manage to kill him (or probably more likely make him run due to being pretty tanky). My Knights wrecked face, doing like 13/14 wounds with no response - which is a very lucky return (insert Hyper-G grumble), although the hereditary spell did help a lot here, as well as some poor rolling on my opponents front. They were steadfast though and reformed to get more attacks in. This ended up being a mistake as I managed to continue to kill off his guys and meant on his turn he was not steadfast, ran and was caught. Meanwhile my Dragon whiffed, but my opponent's luck continued and he failed a discipline 8 re-rollable break test to stick around and fled away. Unfortunately, I didn't chase him down or make it into the crossbows which lead to a dangerous shooting phase, but thankfully (and once again thanks to the hereditary spell) I only took one wound from the missile fire and eventually charged into both his war machines and saved my Dragon. Phew!

Elsewhere, my shooting did a few wounds to his shooters before both fleeing charges from the oncoming Dwarfs to the back of the board. This allowed my Catclaw to charge and subsequently run down the crossbows which was very welcomed. I did have a bit of an issue with a unit of Miners in my backfield who took the attention of both my shooting units, but in the end it was too much for them and I managed to kill them but it was over several turns and I took a lot of casualties in doing so.

A few learning points I took from this:

• My Knights are class! With the Prince in there they can deal out some serious damage. Overall they boast 23 str7 ap4 attacks, including the Prince's 6 lethal strike and divine attacks which is just crazy. Not much can stand up to that and with the right protection they will be a real threat.
• Hereditary spell rocks! Speaking of protection this basically single-handedly saved my Dragon and essentially won me the game - or at least ensured it was not close. This is going to have to be my priority moving forward. I will need to cast this to be successful.
• Lancers helped to secure the objective. They did not do a lot during the battle but were an easy win when thinking about the objectives. This was the first time I had used them solely for this purpose and was maybe something I would have to do regularly to make sure I keep the objective points on my side

In the end, a solid victory but I cant say it was all down to skill, as my opponent was getting quite unlucky on some of his rolls, but a fun game and a nice way to start the practice off. Confidence was high!

Game 2 - Orcs & Goblins vs Infernal Dwarves

This time it was Hyper-G's turn to take on Callum's Infernal Dwarves, and his list had not changed from when I 'played' him. I say that in inverted comma's because it wasn't really much of a match up due to my terrible play with the Knights that ended up chaffing the majority of my army and meaning I only had a meaningful charge with him on turn 6. So it was up to Hyper-G to show me how to do it in what would be a very interesting fight. As a recap, Callum had a big unit of Immortals with a killy Overlord and BSB, a 30 strong unit of Citadel Guard, 50x Hobgoblins, 2 units of chaff Wolf Riders, 1 unit of baby Kadims, an Engineer and 3 war machines - Rocket Battery, Volley Gun and a Flamethrower. The Orcs sported a massive unit of Common Orcs, 2 lots of Cave Goblins with a Mad Git each, 2 lots of Iron Orcs (each with an Iron Orc character to make them bodyguard), a Giant, a Gargantula, Bridge Trolls, chaffing Goblin Wolf Riders, Git Launcher, Skewerer(ererer) and an Orc Shaman general on a Boar Chariot. It ended up being front-line clash and capture the flags, and similar to the Highborn Elves battle Callum castled up in the right corner surrounding a hill and left all the attacking to the other player - in this case it was up to Hyper-G to advance! Not something he was unfamiliar with, being an Orc after all. The Orcs mainly stuck to the centre, with a unit of Cave Goblins on the left flank with the Giant and a unit of Iron Orcs occupying the right flank - goading the unit of Citadel Guard in front of them.

In the early stages, the Infernal Dwarves shuffled around with his Incarnates as the only real advancing unit. The Orcs moved up aggressively and otherwise both armies just set themselves up for later. Hyper-G did chaff himself up a bit with his Bridge Trolls, purely due to the amount of units he had and a very annoying bit of impassable terrain in the centre of the battlefield.  I'll hand over to Hyper-G for the rest...

So the first major moment involved the Kadim Incarnates who weighed up various charges and eventually settled on going into the Gargantula in Callum's turn 2.  This proved to be a bad call thanks to the Spider chewing them up pretty swiftly taking minimal damage in return.

Callum had been prioritising his shooting on killing off my minimal defence Orc general on his Chariot and he was bleeding wounds regularly but somehow, over the course of numerous turns, he was just hanging on, crucially getting Awaken The Beast off on himself and narrowly avoiding death whilst he also managed some important other magical support too.  It was one of Callum's biggest annoyances how much attention the Orc was taking and obviously I loved it!

The chaffing game was well underway in the middle but one of the Hobgoblin Wolf Rider units fled due to a terror test and it opened the door for my Orc block and the Giant to charge into and efficiently kill off the massive Hobgoblin block that had caused Lucky-Sixes so much of a headache getting to in his battle.  I don't really know what the problem was to be honest!

With my Bridge Trolls still chaffed by my own army and the Cave Goblins on the left playing their own game the attention shifted towards Callum's big infantry blocks and after eventually losing my Orc general (much Dwarven cheering mixed with grumbling at this point) it was game on for the second half of the battle!

My Orcs and Gargantula now had the support of a Totemic Summon that was only there thanks to the stubbornness of my Orc Shaman in staying alive and between them most of the Infernal Dwarf war machines and chaff were eliminated.  In trying to keep the scary Immortals and slightly less scary (but still scary) Citadel Guard at bay my other unit of Cave Goblins had done a sterling job with its Mad Git and combined with a teasing unit of Iron Orcs the turns were running out fast as the Orcs looked to surround the remaining Dwarves.

As turn 5 for me hit I finally plucked up the courage to use the angles available and charge the Iron Orcs into the Citadel Guard and although they managed to kill a few that combat ended in a stalemate with the Iron Orcs probably losing out had there been a few more turns.  Despite that (they kept their points anyway as they were still healthy enough at game end) I was delighted with how much of a distraction they'd been in this battle while the rest of my army dealt with the rest of business!

All this going on meant that my Trolls, other Iron Orcs, Gargantula and Orc unit could all sit back and wave at the Immortals refusing to go anywhere near them and sit pretty.  The Giant went on a mission and successfully took out the final Rocket Battery war machine but the highlight of the end game was still to come!

The Mad Git that had so effectively held up the Dwarf Infantry weaved his way between them and struck with the accuracy of a sniper to roll exactly what he needed to land on Callum's Engineer, doing exactly the right amount of wounds to kill him as well.  What a trooper!  (I won't mention that he then went on to wound the Giant and the Totemic Summon afterwards as well!)

We didn't count up the exact winning margin but with very few casualties on the Greenskin side it was an extremely successful outcome and meant I was going into the tournament undefeated with this O&G list (albeit only from 2 battles but I'll take it!) although obviously at this point I was only a spare player anyway.  Perhaps Lucky-Sixes should just move aside?!?

My learning points:

• My fears over my Orc Shaman General being very vulnerable to shooting were confirmed here but by doing everything possible to keep him alive as long as possible he can still be a thorn in an opponent's side.
• The Iron Orc unit that controlled half of the board for a long period were excellent and I decided to use them exclusively in this role if I had the chance, which wasn't necessarily what I'd expected of them prior to this.
• The Skewerer (which killed one single Dwarf in this battle) is absolutely fine to deploy on its own away from everything else.  If the opponent takes the time to kill it, fine by me!
• I have a lot of units!  It's really hard getting everything where it needs to be so preventing the chaffing of my own army was something I'd need to work on.

Game 3 - Highborn Elves vs Orcs & Goblins

So with a bit of time to spare, we managed to squeeze in one more battle with the Highborn Elves and it was against an Orc & Goblin list, commanded by the other Tournament organizer - Shane. Normally I would be quite confident against O&G as they were one of the armies I was most familiar with due to playing against them several times and Hyper-G taking them along - so I felt like I had a reasonable knowledge of the army. However, this list had 7 Chariots, 2 big units of Boar Boys, a huge Iron Orc unit and a Gargantula! This was not something I had come across before and seemed like a really interesting list - both to play and to play against. Safe to say I was looking forward to it. Shane was a great sport as well and was talking me through things to think about when the tournament came around, so we had some good tactical chats about movement and options during the battle, so thanks for that Shane!

With the tournament in mind, we decided to play marching columns for the deployment, as it was one of the new ones and a tricky one to get your head around - so the perfect choice for a practice! Capture the flags was our secondary objective and we were ready to go! He had spread his forces out across the whole length of his deployment, with his 2 Boar Boy units on the right, his Iron Orcs in the centre and his Spider on the left. Chariots were spread out and his General on a Boar was hiding behind his Gargantula, safe from my shooting. I put my chaff on the left, shooting and Catclaw in the centre and my Lancers & Knight unit on the right facing down his Boar Riders. The Dragon stayed over on the right looking to magic missile some cavalry and the Chariots where I could.

At a glance, I thought this was a good match up for me - my shooting to focus on a Chariot a turn and hope to cause some panics whilst my Knights were poised to go against his cavalry - pretty much guaranteed to beat them - especially if they got a charge off, which was likely due to having better movement. Plus he had no magic or shooting for me to worry about so all I had to focus on was getting the right match ups in combat. Easy!

He moved up (as you might expect) and one thing I did notice was how good he was at his angles and setting up counter charges. He ended up leaving me a 10/11" charge for my Knights into his more central Boars and I took it! I was lucky enough to get the charge off and completely murder the unit, before overrunning to safety - although it did leave me needing a turn to move around and re-group. My Lancers on that side did a pretty good job of holding off the other unit of Boars, especially when I managed to knock off 3 or 4 in the early magic rounds with Molten Copper, so I was pretty happy with how my right flank was looking.

On the other side though my shooting did not manage to do much and instead of trying to get wounds off on the Chariots I chose to focus on the Gargantula and was struggling to do any real damage, doing one or two wounds before it got in my face ready to charge. I had to take a gamble with my Lion Chariot, who charged the Spider head on. My thoughts were that the guys on top had multiple wounds 2 versus the beast and my Lions and impact hits had str5, so I was hoping to do as much damage as possible before it got to my shooters. This unfortunately was not to be though and I got obliterated (on the turn that I charged no less!) without doing any damage whatsoever. To make matters worse, I had even managed to get flaming attacks and flammable off on the Chariot/Spider meaning I was re-rolling my wounding rolls on the damn thing, but I did zilch! And then it was his turn and he charged into my Queensguard for some hurt. Keeping in mind I had a stand and shoot (from both the QG and SG) as well as a round of shooting and a Lion Chariot charge in... I had done 3 wounds to him. Meaning he had 5 left! That was not a good place to be for my shooty Elves and both the QG and the SG who were close by all succumbed to the spider over the remainder of the game. Tough break and a sh*t ton of points. Gutted!

Back up with my Knights and they had turned to get in the back of the Iron Orcs, who had to turn around and face what was coming. I took the Knights into them and did shed loads of wounds (like 14 or 15) in the first round - as well as killing the BSB - with him doing 2 or 3 in return. He was still steadfast and stuck around. This lead to one of the remaining Chariots charging into the side of me and boy oh boy did that hurt! With all the impacts and attacks I took another 4 or 5 casualties and left the unit seriously depleted. I actually still managed to do more wounds to him and his Chariot fled while his unit stuck around again. One more round and I did enough wounds to make him flee and catch him, as well as overrun into a Chariot, but at this point he had his General and two other Chariots ready to charge me on his turn. He duly obliged and while I managed  to kill the Chariot I charged into, he killed of the rest of my Knights and combat resolution saw my General flee and get caught. Oh dear.

By this point my Lancers were participating in a bit of a Mexican stand-off with the other Boar Boys, but now with no support and my centre gone, the Spider and remaining Chariots had managed to surround me. Despite managing to dance around a little with my superior movement, he caught me on the final turn and my Lancers were toast. Now you will have noticed that I have not even mentioned my Dragon Mage. This is because I was flying around trying to use my magic missiles to do damage (unsuccessfully) instead of charging into Chariots left right and centre and being aggressive like I should've been. I paid for a combat Dragon but decided to just use him as a flying carpet for my Mage. Looking back on it now, I had several good chances to charge in but chose not to and it cost me in the late game. I did manage to pick off his General in the latter stages but it wasn't enough and it ended up being a resounding win for Shane. Well played sir, I definitely got schooled by a better player there...

Learning points:

• Charge the feckin' Dragon into combat! Also, I found myself being scared of the Chariot charges when in fact I should have used him as bait and got some of the Chariots to charge me. He can take it, he's a big boy. But dancing around and trying to cast magic is the wrong thing to do with a 1,100pt combat model. Shame on me!
• Hereditary spell. I didn't even attempt to cast it this game and it cost me big time. As was said before, I really need it to be prevalent in my battles so that I don't lose too much. HBEs weakness is how elite they are and this seriously helps to mitigate that so I need to get better at getting this off

However, I can't complain too much as I had a really good time in this battle and it was a pleasure to play against Shane and his very fun O&G army. But the grudge has definitely been set and I will look forward to the rematch! By that point I'll have a tournament under my belt and pretty much be a pro so I'm bound to win, right...?

Well with all this said and done, we rested our heads and got ready for our first tournament ever! Hyper-G ready with his pom-poms to cheer me on as I go and had his O&G in reserve just in case. We were very excited and raring to go, so naturally went back to the hotel and had a few beers to settle the nerves! The first round had been drawn and I was up against Felix Newman and his gunline & Griffons Empire of Sonnstahl, so it would be a tough start but one I was very ready for. Bring it on Bristol!

Lucky-Sixes & Hyper-G

Road to Bristol: The Art of War #3

So a few weeks on, and with several battles under our belt to look back on I think its time for a quick update of where we are at, don't you?

We have now finished all of our practice battles and are ready for our trip down to Bristol with our final draft armies - preparing to conquer the world! Well England... or maybe just prove we are better than the people in Bristol... OK, yeah, just hoping to scrape at least one win!

A reminder, you can find full video reports of all our games up to this point on our YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6RqtSiZ_YeZP_Sif7Cf65Q

**Spoiler Alert** the following will do a recap of these battles with a bit of a review so if you haven't already - check it out so I don't spoil it for you. But if you aren't bothered and want to just read on then it's all gravy!

So, from the Highborn Elves point of view, they faced Orcs & Goblins, Saurian Ancients, Infernal Dwarves and then regular Dwarfs (but don't tell them I said they were regular!) - managing a draw, a win, a loss and another draw, respectively, which isn't bad. The list itself has changed only slightly, with musicians being added and items being juggled around but for the main part staying pretty much the same. The final list (and the one that was submitted saw the Lancers, Seaguard and Queensguard add musicians to their roster at the cost of a few Queensguard bodies and a musician on the Knights; while the Dragonmage decided to go with the Magical Heirloom and Rod of Battle in the Artefacts department - now boasting 6 spells, some combat offence and multiple wounds defence. A true all-rounder! Everything else was unchanged.

During the preparations, a few things popped out at me as priorities for the tournament:

• Think about the secondary objective earlier! This had cost me a few times now and is a big swing in terms of the final battle points. In a tournament this would be crucial to get my points up and could even swing a loss on points to a win, which would obviously help my rankings. I need to think about how best to win the scenario earlier than turn 4/5 when often this was already lost for me.
• Musicians are crucial. This was especially apparent in the Infernal Dwarves battle where I could not swift reform my lancers or shoot my Seaguard after reforming. As you can see I have now added them so was confident on this front at least.
• Be aggressive. This list is all about the hitting power with my Ryma Knights and Prince combo, and the Dragon cannot afford to be shot for too long (especially against a gun line!). So, I need to get them into combat ASAP. My dragon can chew up infantry, and the Knights are perfect against any monsters or units with about 20 wounds or so. Any more than that and my knights will struggle on the grind and especially don't let them get charged.
• Magic is key! Alchemy is pretty good and the dragon will need to get one of these off to a) get his attacks up and b) get the flammable against his opponent. Also the hereditary is pretty god-damn good!

From the Orcs point of view, the 2 lists used in practice changed pretty dramatically, and not having as many battles means if Hyper-G does get called up for the tournament then he will have to blag it somewhat. However, he is unbeaten so far so looking pretty strong in terms of confidence and has been with the Orcs for a long time so knows the army inside out and won't be in the dark too much if he does get called into battle. The final list stuck to the mantra of his successful battle versus the Ogre Khans having a wizard master Shaman general and 2 Iron Orc characters rather than a combat general and BSB with a apprentice wizard; splitting up the Iron Orc and Cave Goblin units into 2 (for both) and adding a Bridge Troll unit. It gave him more magic, more scoring units and more tricks! Perfect for the Green-skins don't ya think!

Going off the Ogre battle mainly (as well as thoughts from the forums), the learning points for this list were:

• Ld8 General is worrying and he doesn't have too much in the way of defence. However, the miscast doesn't seem too damaging for the Res5 of the chariot. Plus the scarification spell attribute from Shamanism is pretty nifty for combat defence so that will be one to remember.
• Speaking of magic, Totemic summon! This was something that immediately caught the eye and will be useful for either draining the dispel dice from the opponent or having a free unit in the enemy's backfield! Very exciting spell and one that will be highly prioritised when casting spells - every time!
• Iron Orcs with bodyguard are scary. These will be good for distractions but not against anything quick and elite. However, good for zoning out areas of the battlefield as they are not to be taken lightly and at worst can hold off the opponent for a few turns while the other units get into position.
• Don't expect much from the war machines. These guys are not much more than a distraction and aren't that unreliable but don't get too bothered if they get picked on as it just means the other stuff is not, which is a good thing. And you never know, they may do the odd wound here and there!

Well that was our thoughts going into our first tournament as while we would've both wanted a few more battles for practice we were pretty happy with our armies. It was unlikely that Hyper-G would participate in the tournament itself but we were going down the day before so would be looking for a few practice games to test out the Orcs, and would be supporting Lucky-Sixes with his Highborn Elves during the main event nonetheless so it was all good. Needless to say we were both buzzing and really excited to be getting involved in the tournament scene and a 60-man battle royale was not a bad place to start!

Lucky-Sixes

PTG YouTube Channel - T9A 2.0 Beta Battle Reports

Hi folks,

Check out our YouTube channel as the first of our Battle Reports has now gone up!

These were all practices for the big Bristol Tournament 'Art of War'.

Watch as we get used to T9A 2.0 Beta rules and let us know what you think of our channel, etc.

Kind regards,
Hyper-G

PTG YouTube Channel - T9A 2.0 Beta Rulebook Review

Hi folks,

It's exciting times at the moment within PTG as we're looking to not only bring you this blog but also we've started up a YouTube channel which we'll be posting videos onto as well!

Link to Proxy Table Gaming You Tube Channel

There will be lots of different content going up in the future and what better way to begin than a few videos where we review the 9th Age 2.0 (Beta) rulebook.  Check them out, leave us some comments and let us know what you think.  If you're feeling really nice you may even like to subscribe to us as well!  Lucky-Sixes will send a chocolate bar to our first subscriber that officially subscribes and says something relevant about a video so get on it! (he doesn't know this yet but it will happen! - totally his fault if it doesn't happen - just saying...) (disclaimer about something relevant added... internet robots don't tend to enjoy chocolate... probably!)

We'll be looking to improve as we go so whilst these initial videos may be quite rough around the edges our journey needed to begin somewhere!

Look out for more videos soon, including our first ever video battle report as Lucky-Sixes pits his first draft Tournament Highborn Elves against my first draft Tournament (spare) Orcs & Goblins!

Kind regards,
Hyper-G

Road to Bristol: The Art of War! #2

Hi folks,

The Bristol Tournament is fast approaching so it's time to catch up with what's been happening regarding our preparations!

As Lucky-Sixes has said; whilst we may not have expectations of winning the tournament and returning home in ultimate glory we do want to do as well as possible thus set ourselves up with some practice 2.0 (Beta) battles to prepare ourselves.

At this stage it looks as though officially only Lucky-Sixes' Highborn Elves will be entering the tournament itself whilst I look to provide photo support, cheer-leading and add lots of banter to the equation but nonetheless I've been listed as a tournament back-up player therefore at any moment I could be drafted in to compete for real.  As a result I've been looking to prepare my own army; in case I get a last minute place!

This leads nicely into our first battle practice as I rallied together a relatively non-proxy Orcs & Goblins army to take on the Highborns.

My list contained:

Iron Orc Warlord (General w. War Cry) - Paired Weapons (Blessed Inscriptions), Plate Armour (Tuktek's Guard), Pan Of Protection Pinchin', Potion Of Swiftness, War Boar

Iron Orc Chief (BSB) - Shield, Green Tide Banner, Talisman Of Shielding

Orc Shaman (Wizard Apprenctice - Pyromancy) - Magical Heirloom

35x Orc 'Eadbashers - Full Command, Spears, Green Tide Banner
30x Cave Goblins - 2x Mad Gits

33x Iron Orcs - Full Command, Mikinok's Totem
Orc Boar Chariot
5x Goblin Raider Wolf Riders

Skewerer
Greenhide Catapult (Git Launcher) w. Orc Overseer

Gargantula
Giant w. Giant Club

The list was built around a couple of gribblies in the Gargantula & Giant whilst my Iron Orc General on his War Boar would be roaming around solo hopefully causing some trouble.  My two big infantry blocks (I'm not counting the Cave Goblins) would be my main objective grabbers and fighters whilst the Gobbos, Boar Chariot & War Machines provided some support.

With only a Wizard Apprentice (albeit with the Heirloom to get the additional spell) I was intrigued to see how I'd compete in that phase, especially against a Wizard master.

Battle would commence in an age-old Elves vs. Greenskins!

Kind regards,
Hyper-G