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:
**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:
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
Lucky-Sixes & Hyper-G
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