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