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!
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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!
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