Intro
Monday morning sees me sick as a dog (thanks for passing that on Dave; this is how civilsations crumble) and, with no wife and kids at home, in the perfect place (emotionally) to start blogging my experiences at the fanatastic Tin Soldiers tournament held at the Onehunga RSA (is there any better?!) over the weekend.
I spent Friday enduring 6 hours of barbershop music, better than actually working, but some of it was a real horror show - good barbershop is AWESOME, bad barbershop is musical butchery - seriously not cool. So not only did I have a cranking headache on Friday night, but the damn music had ingrained itself so thoroughly in my subconscious mind that I couldn't stop singing those ridiculously catchy tunes. Argh! Got to sleep around 11pm, woke up at 1am and every hour on the hour after that until the kids really woke me up at 5:30am. Not the ideal start...
Had organised to play taxi for some friends so picked up Chris (ringer for the tourney using Dave's Tomb Kings - good on ya for playing Chris!), (real) Nick aka Nick "No.1" aka "Wood Elf" Nick (Nick Irvine - famously placing second on national rankings by virtue of awesome sports scores and dodging all the dangerous players - the King of Inconsistent Battle Points), and (other) Nick aka "The Lone Asian" using Carl's entirely unoptimised Empire army. Despite forgetting to put Real Nick's mobile number on my cellphone everyone was picked up on time and we arrived at the venue at around 8:20am with plenty of time to catch up with other players, meet the Wellington crowd (and good on them for coming up!), and make sure we had the right army with us and all of our models (eh Pete? how do you pack but forget 4 Dryads?).
Dave rather smartly used a projector to do all the shouting of draws (and Derick and I are definitely nicking this idea for Fields) and I was pleased to see I had drawn Josh and his Tomb Kings.
Round One - Josh - Tomb Kings
Josh is a mate from the City Guard; helluva nice guy, very calm, somewhat relentless (suits the army really) and a great first draw for me because I'd played his list a while back (see previous posts and my disappointment vis a vis Warriors and failed Terror needing 10).
Josh had 3 naked chariots, 10 bows, skelly block, tomb guard, SSC, 2 Scorps, bone giant, 2 priests (one a heirophant with standard kit, the other mounted with Staff of Ravening), princess on foot and king on foot with Destroyer of Eternities. Oh, and the Ushabti. Mustn't forget those!
I was faced with the immediate issue of a forest in the middle of my deployment zone and a hill and impassable feature in the centre left and right respectively. I chose the right (wrong choice in retrospect), placing the artillery on the left to hopefully lure scorps away from the rest of the army, the Hammerers on the left but as close to the centre as possible to get into the action (mistake), the Organ Gun (which gives Josh "the fear") in the forest itself and then left to right Thunderers, Lonmgbeards, Warriors, Gyro and Quarrellers (Quarrellers ending up in a line on the right flank). My left to right Josh placed Chariots, giant (behind a forest), heirophant by itself, guard with king, SSC, Ushabti, skellies with Princess, and light cav (with priest) and bows on the right (facing off against Quarrellers). I was NOT happy with my deployment and retrospectively would have gone for a castle on the left but either way LOS was compromised. Josh placed both scorp markers next to the Organ Gun. I won first turn and took it.
Cannon at the King, perfect guess and bounce took out a couple of guard (king made Look Out Sir! roll) and right into the SSC. Wounded, D3 wounds for 3 wounds = dead SSC. Great start! Grudgethrower into the guard took down 3 or 4 more. Quarrellers nabbed a light cav horseman. The Hammerers moved forward and angled to look at covering both scorp markers (the plan being that, of they hit, they would be automatically in combat with the Hammerers - static res of 6 - 3 ranks, outnumber, warbanner (2) and kills from the boss and I could pop them both straight away). Everything else (including Thunderers) moved up tentatively. Gyro moved up to hide behind a forest just outside his deployment zone.
Josh was less than pleased with the shooting. He shuffled a bit and started his magic phase.
I hate Tomb Kings magic. I just don't feel I can manage in well enough and can never hang onto my scrolls until I really need them (this battle being a case in point). Josh's focus this turn was on reviving the SSC (cheesey TKs can resurrect their damn warmachine!) and I went all out to stop that at the cost of a scroll and all my dice. A waste of a scroll really - should've sucked down what the SSC chucked at me (possibly famous last words...) and just tapped it with the Miners when they came on (ah, wonderful hindsight). Anyway, fairly painless although I would REALLY regret burning the scroll so early. Chariots were out of range for shooting, Quarrellers took some hits, no biggie.
My turn two and some shuffling forward. Cannon nabbed a chariot and grudgethrower went long at the skellies but overshot. Organ Gun opened up on skellies and bagged 4-5 and Josh grumbled something about cheesey Dwarfs (jokes). Gyro steamed cav and skellies and got a light horse and I suddenly realised I was an idiot and REALLY shouldn't have done that (you'll see why shortly). Thunderers took out a couple of guard. Hammerers made their position next to the scorp markers and I crossed my fingers.
Josh's turn two. Both scorps came up and both SCATTERED! Nooooo! Worse - they were both able to see the Organ Gun! Nooooooo! They charged immediately and I knew I was in trouble. The giant moved up, and there was a general advance from the TKs except for the archers who turned to face the Gyro beind them. The sinking feeling really set in as the archers were magicked into the Gyro, won but outnumber, auto-broke it, and it fled off the board. Stupid stupid stupid! Josh spent the turn setting up some charges for turn 4 (that's how far ahead you need to think in this game and I am definitely not there yet!). The chariots snuck up some more and took a model from the Hammerers, reducing them by a rank. The Quarrellers were smashed by the Ravening staff after Josh rolled 5 6s to wound, leaving 2 Quarrellers who didn't panic. The Ushabti also moved up (this ended up causing something of a traffic jam in the next turn). The Organ Gun got rightly pasted, both scorps overrunning, one of them having LOS to the cannon in the next turn.
Damage control. I moved the Hammerers to get them into the fight that was about to happen and suddenly seemed so very far away. The Longbeards and Warriors (who by this time were almost halfway across the board) decided to force the hand ofthe Tomb Kings and advanced in their faces aligning to take frontal charges from the Ushabti and the Skellies if they both went in, the the BSB and Runesmith and a stack of static res I was iffy about what might happen here but keen(ish) to find out. Shooting went into the Bone Giant for all that it was worth - I needed to start taking units out of the fast developing equation in the centre and he was high on the list. I think he took a couple of wounds (i.e. not nearly enough at this point). That was that and I cried inside as I saw what was going to happen next.
Unshabti into the Longbeards (with Runesmith)... Skellies into the Warriors (led by BSB), light horse into their flank! and the Warriors fail their Fear test! NO0000! Hitting on 6s!!!! The guard and giant advanced, the scorp ate the cannon, the chariots parked in front of the grudgethrower and the writing was on the wall. In combat the Longbeards held after taking some damage and dishing out a little too, but the Warriors got smashed, fled from fear-causers and ran into the impassable terrain and died! Goodbye BSB! The only good thing to come out of this was that Josh chose not to pursue with either unit and so didn't capture the 2 banners that the unit was carrying. Unfortunately the Skellies were now in primo position to flank the Longbeards in his next turn.
Starting to scratch for options now... the Hammerers vainly moved up, too little too late. Shooting into the giant somehow managed to kill it off (which really surprised us both I think!). In combat the Longbeards held but it was all over rover. Oh, and the Miners decide to show up and come on next to the remaining crew of the SSC.
Bam! Skellies into the flank of the Longbeards, they get caned and flee but manage to escape and subsequently rally. Chariots smash the grudgethrower. Ushabti and Skellies (who both pursued and failed to catch the Longbeards) are almost in range of the Hammerers so I've at least got options to attack now. The last Quarrellers die at some point... hardly matters now. Thunderers are rear-charged by a wandering scorpion and they go down.
Getting on towards the end game now and time to give Josh a bloody nose before I have nothing left. Hammerers annilihate the Ushabti and overrun into the Skelly block - here comes the real fight.
Guard magic charge into the rear of the Hammerers and start to do their thing. I lose by a trillion but the Hammerers fight on. The chariots align to charge the depleted Longbeards next turn and the scorps look to take a shot at the Miners (who have since duffed up the remaining SSC crew so at least it can't be resurrected now!
Turn 5 is the Hammerers losing (again) and holding, the chariots charging the Longbeards, fluffing and that combat continuing
Turn 6 is the same except a scorpion manages a charge against the Miners, fluffs and pops (any win in a combat at this point has me much happier than I have any right to be).
End result is a convincing (and well-deserved) win to Josh by about 950VPs. Would have been much worse had the giant got in amongst the Hammerers as the Ushabti would have survived. Josh is a great player and I took heart in the fact that, having lost my first game by a decent margin, I would immediately be fighting people who (hopefully) were on the same gaming wavelength as myself. Josh went on to face some VERY tough opposition (including a tough lesson against Dave's Lizards where Josh lost 20-0!!!!) but that's what you get for being so good in the first place. As I discussed with someone over the weekend - lose your first couple of games and make headway in the 3rd-5th and you can actually get a decent placing (I was never looking at a podium finish anyway).
Lessons learnt against TKs? I just can't hold my scrolls back for that crucial turn, despite having been told several times to do so by very knowledgable players. Another hard lesson against Tomb Kings...
I was however quite surprised that I got 5 points out of the game and this gave me an important insight into the mechanics of tournament scoring that I was able to work into some of my future games in the weekend.
Loss 15-5
No comments:
Post a Comment