A New Power is Rising: Tournament Report

The cover photo for the tournament was pretty fitting given what I ended up taking

This week I was lucky enough to attend a new, in person tournament in my home town of Brisbane. It was my first baby step onto the Brisbane scene, and honestly I couldn’t have wished for a better experience. The format was a somewhat unusual one, with a mere 200 points of Good/Evil on a 2’ by 2’ board. Thanks to the smaller game size, we could fit a whopping 6 games into the day, so I got to meet and play against a whole range of absolutely delightful opponents. Before we jump into more detail, I’d like to make clear that all of this article is merely my own memories of the games, and I’m absolutely sure they differ from what actually happened at points. Hopefully the general gist is accurate, and it comes through clearly that everyone I played against and chatted to today was a delight to meet and roll dice with. And to all of you reading this from overseas, I hope that it at least gives you some vicarious joy; at least Tabletop Simulator is a thing, right?

 

Tournament Review

Overall, the tournament was extremely smoothly run. It started and finished on time with only the tiniest of administrative difficulties, the prizes were interesting and well done, the format was fresh and exciting and I think everyone had a blast. Every board was packed full of awesome terrain, and the small game size really made every model matter. I think Rhys as TO deserves an enormous amount of credit, especially given that it was his first tournament! A small amount more space would have been nice, but that would have mean less delightful people crammed in playing MESBG, so it's a very understandable difficulty.

The one thing that I think could be improved on was the mission choice. Because of the small table/army size, missions were assigned from a combination of Battle Companies and the Matched Play Guide, and the book-flicking and confusion this created was a little unfortunate. On the other hand, the system for selecting missions (three were assigned for a round, the Good player vetoed one and the Evil player chose from the remaining two) was excellent, and I think should be a staple of all tournaments. In the player’s pack, the missions were written in groups of three, and I think sticking to these groupings on the day would have made life a little simpler and reduced the number of ‘Okay, so it was Lords of Battle, Seize Ground and which one again?’ queries. But overall, the format was fun and well designed and the tournament ran like clockwork, so a solid 9.5/10 for me.

 I think these were randomised, but honestly, I would've preferred a format like this for each round

Army Lists

The main restrictions on lists were that they needed to be 200 points, couldn’t bring any monsters and were capped at 8 bows. I brainstormed an enormous number of lists in the leadup to the tournament, before eventually realising that I was moving house and didn’t have time to assemble anything I didn’t already have. As it turned out, my paints managed to disappear somewhere in that process anyway, presumably to reappear next week when I don’t need them as urgently, so I wasn’t even able to finish painting the models I did take. I contemplated trying to sell my ticket, but figured I would still have a good time even with unpainted models. Plus, I’d probably lose enough games for the missed bonus points not to matter anyway. I had an optimistic goal of going 3:3, but honestly even a single win would have been exciting.

My Good list was:

              Théodred on horse with shield

7 Riders of Rohan

1 Warrior of Rohan with bow

It was fairly low on numbers, but extremely fast, hit the bow limit, and had a terrifying beatstick as its leader. I ran it in Rohan not the Legendary Legion mostly so I could spam out Riders without needing to field lots of foot troops, but the S4 on the charge was also a big draw.

My shamefully unpainted Riders

For Evil, I was running the Besiegers of Helm’s Deep, with:

               Captain with shield

               9 Uruks (3 with pikes, 6 with shields)

               3 Berserkers

This list was much simpler. It had a cheap beatstick hero and a good amount of durable, dangerous infantry. This list actually lost all three practice games I ran it in, so I wasn’t feeling especially confident with it, but I just didn’t have time to paint up anything different that I wanted to run. Next time, Goblintown, next time.

This photo was taken after the tournament, as you can tell from the bent weapons on a few of them

 

Game 1

I was matched up against a lovely guy named Mick, who I think had gotten back into the game just a little bit before me. The dice left me facing his Good list, which was basically Faramir mounted and a half-dozen Knights. We had the choice of playing Secure the Area, Seize the Treasure or Capture and Control— so, two missions with spread out objectives and one based on holding the board centre.  Mick ended up vetoing Seize the Treasure, which I think was probably a mistake: he had much better mobility than I did, and I would’ve hated to have to chase down his horses after they’d picked up the objectives. I suppose he probably would have been forced to dismount to do so though, so maybe it wasn’t an awful call on his part. However, this did let me pick Secure the Area, knowing that I outnumbered him 2:1 and would thus be able to outnumber him on the central objective unless he outkilled me to a massive degree.

As it turned out, the Uruks didn’t need to play the objective too much at all really. Mick claimed the middle early, only to be worn down by my F4 S4 horde. He pulled some clever manoeuvres by disengaging from a few of my models to leave them out of position, but ultimately my troops were just too scary and too numerous. My Captain did his best to mess things up by using a Heroic Combat to slingshot himself and three other Uruks into a charging Knight, only to roll a 4 high and be taken down to a single Wound by the Knight, but otherwise the Uruks feasted well on man-flesh. I guess Faramir doesn’t have a great track record for heroic cavalry charges.

Every time I rolled a six I could hear this weird Hobbit singing in the background

Mick was absolutely lovely, and even lent me one of his range rulers to use for the day when I realised I’d forgotten my own. The perfect opponent to start the day!

Result: 12-1 Victory

 

Game 2

This round I was facing another absolutely charming opponent, this time by the name of Jack. I’m probably going to start waxing less lyrical about my opponents in the later games, but don’t take that as a statement of anything, it just gets repetitive to write about how charming they all were. I was facing Jack’s Evil list, a force very similar to my own Uruk force. A few more crossbows and one less Berserker were basically the only real changes, so I was a bit scared to take it on. We ended up playing Retrieval after I vetoed Kill the Messenger and he vetoed Storm the Camp, so it was basically a ‘capture the flag’ style mission. Our forces started skirmishing across quite a wide front before Théodred went charging bravely in, Heroic Combatting off a lone Warrior to ride down his Captain. Or, rather, losing the fight to the Warrior, getting charged by the Captain and Striking up, having to spend his last Might to win the Fight and do nothing, and then being slaughtered on the next turn. So, he was off to a great start to the tournament.

The state of the game after Théodred's first failed charge

I had, however, managed to sneak two Riders through his lines and stolen his flag, cantering back towards the safety of my deployment edge. Had they managed to hold onto it as my other Riders defended my objective, I would have snatched a win from the jaws of defeat. Alas, a handful of small errors of positioning on my part combined with a remarkable capacity to roll exactly the number that would see his Fight value trump mine saw my defences crumble, and my own objective was swamped just as a Berserker smashed my objective-carrying Rider out of his saddle. I think I killed literally a single model all game, which I guess is what happens when you lose all bar two of the duel rolls. Of course, this does emphasise the importance of Fight value, and doesn’t at all take away from how my opponent played: he took every advantage that he was given and did an excellent job of keeping the pressure on me. Ultimately, this game also highlighted that a weakness of the list is its dependence on Théodred for damage. Once he died, it was really hard to break through the Uruks.

On the plus side, I was proud of myself for coming up with a proactive plan to win the game in spite of the dice swings, and for remaining upbeat and cheery as my troops got slaughtered. This was also helped by Jack being utterly gracious in victory, so I was still feeling good going into game 3.

He also had a sick display board

Result: 1-8 Defeat.

 

Game 3

I was now matched up against Callan and his beautifully painted Mahud camels. I immediately vetoed Clash by Moonlight, as his blowpipes were 12” range anyway, and he vetoed Heirlooms to save him needing to dismount. This left us with Breakthrough, a Capture and Control style missions where the objectives are worth more the further they are from you deployment zone. Annoyingly, this meant I needed to centreline deploy, so it was an all-in gamble on that Heroic Move-off. The thought of a 50/50 dice roll being all that stood between my squishy horses and those Oliphant tusks was not a pleasant one.

Scary spikes, beautiful models

I proceeded to carefully position Théodred slightly behind my lines, such that only a single camel could charge him if they moved first, but he could still charge out at them. Except that when we actually measured it, that wasn’t the case, and he was totally stuck and unable to move. On a turn where I needed him to call a Heroic Move. Right. I won the roll-off anyway, thankfully, and tried to shut down his charges. He got a few off, including a Heroic Combat from the King, but I was still in an okay shape at the end of the round, and was now up two Might points. Over the next few turns an almighty brawl developed, with Théodred calling a Heroic Move when I lost Priority and otherwise just butchering the Mahud. My own numbers were thinning fast though, and eventually I was down to Theodred, a Rider and a dismount. The Rider got smashed apart by one of his last two Camels, and I was left with a narrow 5-7 defeat. We shook hands, made a few jokes, chatted about what let me down (deployment, in case you hadn’t guessed) and went and told Rhys our scores.

And then we realised that Callan hadn’t taken a Break Test for his last camel on the final turn. And when we rolled the dice, he would have failed by miles. He was well outside the King’s Stand Fast, his movement was basically the last thing that either of us did, and he was worth a massive four points to Callan. Suddenly a quite unexpected moral quandary had arisen, and I was stumped. I’m normally very much in the camp of ‘the game state has changed, just move on’, but this was the last decision to have been made in the game. And it wasn’t a missed opportunity to use an optional rule, it was a missed obligation to take a test that he had to take. As a new player on the scene, I was feeling very out of my element and underequipped to make the call. Callan, to his absolute credit, was excellent: he owned the mistake as his own and was very insistent that if I wanted to change the score, we could definitely go right to the TO and do so. Impeccable sportsmanship, but it didn’t solve my issue— should I change the score to reflect what actually should have happened, or should I stick with the general rule of not rewinding the clock? The solution, of course, was to roll a dice. It came up with a five, and off we went and changed the score. We got a little confused here and decided that Callan would have moved his spare camel onto my back objective if he had actually failed the test, which we thought would have left the score at 7 all. In hindsight, had he done that I would have actually scored another 2 points as well for the objective he didn’t clear me off, so that would have left us with a 9-7 split in my favour. But honestly, after such excellent sportsmanship from my opponent, who probably had outplayed me overall, I feel like a draw was an eminently fair result. At the end of the tournament, I was very glad to see Callan awarded the Most Sportsmanlike award; he did an excellent job of navigating a difficult position.

Result: a 7-7 Draw

 

Game 4

With a 1:1:1 record, I was feeling pretty good, and that feeling grew when I was matched up against Riley’s Army of the Dead. He did very well with it over the tournament, but with 3 Berserkers, pikes, and F4/S4/C3 on everyone, it was always gonna be a rough matchup for him. I think he missed an opportunity to push for Lords of Battle here, instead vetoing it and letting me choose Divide and Conquer. With three objectives spaced across the board, I felt quite confident in winning the game on those, even if he did outscore me, and it prevented him turtling up on the beautiful Dol-Goldûr board we were playing on.

Deployment and a pic of the beautiful board

As it happened, it didn’t really matter that much. My Berserkers and Captain were able to consistently charge and get pike supports, my other Warriors were able to play a cheerleading role and stand 0.5” behind the Dead and Trap them without needing to pass Courage tests, and my sheer numbers and higher Fight value saw his spirits banished rapidly. I thought I did some good manoeuvring as well, peeling the King of the Dead off my Captain on a critical turn with a surprise Berserker charge from behind and ensuring he was always Trapped and rolling less dice than I was. I did manage to almost throw it all away when his Rider of the Dead charged my Captain and I only rolled a 4 high. I was going to let it pass and save my Might when I realised that he would be Wounding me on 4s with 4 dice and could genuinely spike out my leader. Once I burnt all my Might to win that duel, the game played out about as one would have expected; it was a great matchup for me, and Riley was a bit down about how outmatched his undead were. The dice were quite fair overall I thought, but I almost always had a Fight value edge and more dice. Under those circumstances, things are only going to go one way. It was still a fun game though, and credit to Riley for taking the awful matchup with a grin.

 

Result: 12:0 Victory

Game 5

I was now facing Sean’s Dunédain, which was a scary proposition as I believe he was currently undefeated at this point. With my Uruks once again, I got to choose between Command the Battlefield and Hold Ground 2 after he vetoed Reconnoitre. Unsure whether I could win a straight fight against him, I went for Command, which gives points for holding table quarters as long as you aren’t too close to the middle of the board.

At least there was a fair amount of cover to hide behind

After Maelstrom basically gave us opposite edge deployment (aside from one Berserker, who found himself facing 7 bows turn one and promptly died), I rushed towards him, aiming to stick to cover but still pin him in his half. My thoughts were that if I could hold my two quarters unopposed and contest his, I could squeak out a win as he slaughtered my list. The first few turns bore this out, as he massacred a number of my Uruks for almost no losses in return while I tried to otherwise dominate the board. The tide began to shift as the remains of my western flank clustered into a tight little defensive block that began to whittle him down, and my Captain decided to assert his dominance over these measly F4 Rangers and slaughter everything within reach. That forced Sean to fall back and try and get away from him, but as we came into the final turn I was left with just enough models in his table quarters to score a narrow 5-4 win in an extremely close game.

An after-action shot of the Rangers

At this point I was feeling great. I had achieved my goal of three wins, and had an absolute blast, so whatever came next would be just gravy on top.

Result: 5-4 Victory

 

 

Game 6

For the final game, I was playing Laurence and his Hunter Orcs. More concerningly, I had realised that I was on the top table, with the results from my game directly determining whether Laurence would end up topping the tournament! So, no pressure! We had the options of Seize Ground, Destroy the Supplies and To the Death, and I eventually vetoed Seize Ground because it would have let Laurence place objectives atop a quite substantial escarpment and in a forest. He then selected To the Death, clearly hoping to massacre my fragile Rohirrim. I was obviously not quite as keen on this plan. With eight bows I had a substantial ranged advantage, his troops were very fragile and hit incredibly hard, there was a big area of open ground for him to run through to reach me, and the scenario let me engage wherever I wanted. So, I sat and shot. 

I think this frustrated Laurence a fair amount, and it honestly wasn’t as much fun as if I’d charged bravely in to my doom. But we were playing on the top table and there was a clear most competitive decision for me, so I felt like it was the only real option. In any case, the shooting strategy worked quite well, killing several Orcs and leading to him engaging in dribs and drabs. Théodred’s counterattack slaughtered all before him, Fimbul’s rampage down my flank ended in my cavalry riding him down, and the rest of his mounted Orcs were Trapped and slaughtered. I was feeling great, until Narzug’s two shots on Théodred (through two In The Way checks and needing 6’s followed by 4’s) managed to strip his Fate and Wound him once. And of course, I then rolled a one on the very next turn to put my leader in the dirt and Laurence in front. Ouch.

Would've been nice to have this scene happen a little later in the game, but oh well

From there, the game got a bit scrappy. Laurence forgot to roll his Break tests again and we rolled off to see what happened (we ignored them and moved on), and there were a few other little rules disputes that I think were mainly just a result of us feeling exhausted and very tense. I also made a couple of dumb mistakes, letting a Hunter Orc charge me and down a couple of Riders. The game finally ended up coming down to Narzug fleeing the field as I ran down the charging Hunter Orc, quartering him and giving me another narrow win! It was an exhausting but exhilarating conclusion to a massive day of gaming, and I was incredibly excited to be sitting on 4:1:1 at the end of the day!

After the game, Laurence came up to me and apologised for being a bit annoyed by my choice of tactics, and I apologised for doing the competitive thing that made the game less fun. It was a nice touch to end on, and I hope our next game gives us a bit more of a good old-fashioned brawl. 

After the game, I was absolutely drained. I think normally I play about six games of MESBG a month, so doing so in a day left me utterly exhausted. But it was absolutely worth it to have played so many brilliant games against lovely opponents, and I learnt so much about how to improve my own game. To come fourth in my first ever tournament was also absolutely amazing, especially out of a field of around three dozen. Maybe the fairly small VP differential between me and a podium position will make sure I get my models all painted and based before the next tournament too!

 

Army Review

Going into this tournament, I was quite confident in my Good list, which had brutally slaughtered everything it faced, and pretty nervous about my then-winless Evil force. Naturally, my Evil list managed to go 3:0, while my Good force barely scraped through with a 1:1:1 ratio. While some of this was down to luck of the draw and the dice, it did raise interesting questions as to why one did so much better than the other. Part of the answer is probably that I’ve got a lot more experience fielding infantry lists than all-cavalry armies, and I don’t think I was always the best at deciding when to engage and when to keep skirmishing. In the last round, I think I should have gone more aggressively for Narzug with Théodred, as ultimately there wasn’t anything on the bord that could stop him except that Orc sniping from a distance. On the other hand, maybe I should have held him back against Jack for another turn or so, or flung more weight against the other flank to try and collapse it. With my Isengard on the other hand, most of the decision-making process was ‘move Uruks forward --> Uruks kill things.’ The simplicity in the list itself gave me a bit more time to think about strategy I think, which showed itself particularly strongly in the game against Sean. He slaughtered a lot of my troops, but ultimately I was ahead on VPs almost every turn of that game. The lesson from this is probably ‘stick with what you know’, which I feel I probably could have guessed before a tournament, but is still a good thing to remember.

I think the Uruks were also a bit better suited to the smaller table. With much less space and plentiful terrain, it was quite difficult for me to leverage the mobility and ranged power of the Riders, while the sheer brutality of the Uruks was scary in every matchup (including the one I played against them!). Were I to play this tournament again, I think I’d back the Uruks up with a detachment of efficient infantry, like Laketown or Iron Hills, as that definitely seems to be what I’m best at using. Overall though, I’m extremely happy with my performance, so I can hardly critique the list too much.

Next time, if I can afford it (Games Workshop)

 And finally, a huge thank you to Rhys for running a great tournament, and to everyone I talked to and played against on the day. You guys were awesome, and I've very keen for BrisCon!