We’re back with another tournament report! This time around I was attending a doubles event, with some unique list-building and special rules to vary things up. It ended up being an absolutely awesome event, and I’m now in love with the doubles format. It’s just so fun!
Tournament Format
As mentioned, this was a doubles
tournament, with each player bringing 400 points from whatever faction they
wanted. And when I say whatever faction, that includes Good/Evil alliances,
with the potential for some extremely wacky combos as a result. No one brought
Tom Bombadil with a Dragon, but if they had we wouldn’t have stood a chance.
The tournament was using the veto system, with scenarios randomly selected from
amongst the doubles and singles scenarios. There were ‘secret’
objectives in each game (keep your cheapest hero alive in Game 1, hold the
central terrain piece in Game 2, and outnumber your opponent within 6” of the
centre in Game 3), and each player had a once-per-turn free reroll that could
be used for nearly anything. This was actually quite impactful, and was an
interesting boost to reliability across the board.
Listbuilding
Half of our listbuilding was
pretty much set in stone, because my teammate Erin loves fielding Spiders of
all varieties. So Dark Denizens of Mirkwood were locked in, with Erin
reluctantly agreeing to include a Bat Swarm and a single Fell Warg
(disturbingly converted to have 8 legs, and named ‘Spider-Warg’) because Bat
Swarms are amazing. From there, it was basically a matter of pondering which of
my armies would best complement the Spiders, which ended up being pretty easy.
Angmar let me bring Harbinger and a banner (both things that Dark Denizens
would love to have access to), and the thought of combining Gûlavhar with a Bat Swarm just made me happy. As a result,
we ended up with this:
Dark Denizens of Mirkwood:
Spider Queen
Bat Swarm
Fell Warg
4 Mirkwood Spiders
8 Giant Spiders
Angmar:
Gûlavhar
Barrow Wight
14 Orcs (6 shields, 7 spears, 1
banner)
Warg Rider with shield
2 Spectres
The two halves of the list
basically come together into one almighty glass cannon. Nothing but the Barrow
Wight is above D5, it’s got 315 points invested in low-Defence monsters without
Fate, and Spiders and Orcs alike both crumple once they start taking damage. On
the flipside, when the glass cannon fires it really fires, with Gûlavhar eating
one hero at a time while the Spiders chew through troops. The list’s real
strength is its mobility though. In a doubles format it’s very common for one
half of the army to be isolated while the other half races to their aid. In our
case, basically Erin’s entire list has M10 and Swift Movement, while Gûlavhar
has Fly and is pretty much my whole list anyway.
With that in mind, our key route
to victory was to veto our way into scenarios that split up our opponent’s
list, and then combine forces early to get a critical lead in momentum. After
some thorough discussions of the scenario pools on offer, we were ready for our
first round.
Game 1: Rivendell and Hobbit Dwarves in Total
Conquest, 9:0
Our first game was up against
Monty and Tom and their Rivendell/Iron Hills/Army of Thror alliance. They had
brought along a solid spearwall of Elves led by Gildor and Erestor, while Dain
on rocket sausage was backing up Thor and a bunch of Grimhammers. For
scenarios, we had the choices of Capture and Control (I think), Destroy the Supplies and Total
Conquest, but both teams defaulted heavily to the unique teams scenario for the
novelty of it. Plus, we didn’t want Capture and Control and there was no way on earth
that they wouldn’t veto Destroy the Supplies against our build.
Some great rolls for deployment saw Gûlavhar’s band facing off against the Elves in the centre, while the Dwarves and Spiders raced to reinforce their allies from Maelstrom. In other words, our fastest and their slowest force were the reinforcements. Awesome.
Things immediately started to go our way, with Erestor having to burn a Might and both Will to dodge a Paralyse attempt. Gûlavhar then did what he did best by Heroic Combatting off two Elves to force Tom to call Strikes on both Erestor and Gildor.
It was arguably the right call, but it did mean that he was totally
out of Might in the centre, and Gûlavhar was free to take out both Elf heroes
on the next turn. Plus I got to eat his banner with my Heroic Combat, which is
always nice.
Meanwhile, the Spiders had come
on across the board, but with a sizeable contingent directly behind the Elf
shieldwall. With Gûlavhar rampaging, Spiders hitting them from behind, and Orcs
spilling everywhere to add weight of numbers, the Elves were crippled in short
order. Dain had called a March the turn after he came in to try and drag his 5”
move buddies up the field, but there’s an upper limit to how fast Dwarves can
get anywhere. Dain ended up racing ahead of the other Dwarves and charging into
a Spectre, but Gûlavhar Heroic Combatted back into him and picked him up in one
fell swoop (literally).
That basically closed the game
out, but Thror did have a moment of heroism once he made it to the centre,
surviving a Gulvhar/Bat Swarm ambush attempt thanks to the power of the
Arkenstone and a clutch reroll. That denied us a point in the middle and the surviving
Dwarves contested another objective, but it still left us with a decisive 9:0
victory and the perfect start to the day.
This game was a classic scenario
mismatch, with us able to bring our full 800 points to bear on the Elves from
the second turn, while the Dwarves were never going to catch up in time to
matter. Monty and Tom took the resulting evisceration of their armies
absolutely in their stride though, and were just great opponents to play
against generally. They ended up winning the coveted Wooden Spoon, so the
brutal matchup had at least one benefit for them!
MVP: Gûlavhar by a mile. He
killed his points worth in the first two turns of combat, then killed Dain in a
single turn. Hard to argue with that!
At the end of this round we were
informed that the prize pool included a Shelob, which is the only Spider Erin
doesn’t have in her collection. As a result, we declared that we just had to
win the tournament to guarantee Erin one more spooky arachnid.
Failure simply wasn’t an option.
Game 2: Thranduil’s Halls and Iron Hills in No
Escape, 9:3
If this matchup seems familiar
to you, then that’s because it is! Ben and Jay had brought along another Dain
on pig (this one supported by a solid Iron Hills shieldwall), while Thranduil
had nearly his full kit and about 14 Palace Guards. Thranduil is an absolute
nightmare for our list, so we’d be hoping to smash the Dwarves fast before the
Elves could do too much damage. Yes, our gameplan involved trying to kill Iron
Hills Dwarves at pace. No, I will not be taking feedback.
For scenario, we were vetoing
from Divide and Conquer, No Escape and Breakthrough. Ben and
Jay quickly vetoed Divide and Conquer, leaving us with No Escape as our only way to split up their forces. Unfortunately this time the doubles dice weren’t as with us, as the
Spiders had to start in the middle with the Dwarves while Gûlavhar and the Orcs
raced to provide assistance.
Right from the start this was an extremely technical and challenging game, with Ben and Jay doing an amazing job screening out our tricks and preventing Erin from getting into Dain with a Bat Swarm and the Spider Queen.
Erin responded with Broodlings shenanigans, but
Dain managed to survive a Bat Swarm/Spider combo and run down the Bat, even as
the Spiders started to swing the tempo in our favour with their ludicrous
damage output.
On the second turn of combat
Dain went into the Spider Queen while screening out his flanks from Gûlavhar,
but one Heroic Combat later and Gûlavhar was in there to back up the Queen. She
managed to Strike higher than Dain (with Erin having her reroll specifically
saved for the occasion), and Gûlavhar took out his second Dain of the day.
Elsewhere, more Dwarves were continuing to fall to S5 Spiders, and some poor
rolls from Thranduil saw him quickly out of Might and down to 1W no Fate. The
Barrow Wight returned the favour though, being unable to push a Paralyse though
to finish the deal. Erin did manage to Paralyse Thranduil's horse with a Mirkwood
Spider though, which was extremely amusing.
As the Elves started to join the
fray, I was (perhaps unwisely) convinced to Heroic Combat into their flank and
hurl down the line. It killed two of them, but left me out of position as we
lost three Priority rolls in a row. Gûlavhar therefore got swarmed by basically
the entire Elven force, smashing three Palace Guard in the first combat before
losing the second and third combats as Thranduil got involved. A Heroic Defence
kept me (barely) alive after the first lost combat, but I was out of Might
for the second one and Gûlavhar got taken out by the remaining Kings Guard.
Still, his sacrifice had bought
us enough time for the Spiders and arriving Orcs to gain a critical advantage
in the centre. Thranduil’s Aura of Dismay did a lot to prevent us wiping the
final Dwarves out, and the Iron Hills banner was still alive in the centre at
the end. But with Dain dead, Thranduil wounded and the Good forces Broken, we
were ahead 9:3 as time was called. That could have swung around if we had a bit
more time, and the game continued to feel extremely close right up until the
end.
This was one of those games that
feels amazing to play but takes absolutely everything out of you. The level of
play from Jay and Ben was extremely high, and they really made us work for the
win all game long.
MVP: Probably the basic Spiders!
It was ultimately their damage output and durability that gave us the early
edge in kills, without which we probably would have struggled to even hold the
game to a draw. Gûlavhar also got his money’s worth, but a lot of his best work
was just delaying the Elves long enough for the Spiders to Break the Good
force.
Game 3: Lothlorien and Hobbits in Clash of
Champions, 12:0
Still, we weren’t complaining,
as their lists looked vastly less hostile to ours. Sam had Frodo, Merry and
Pippin, backed by Farmer Cotton and about 3-dozen Hobbits of various kinds,
while Nathan’s Lothlorien contingent had Celeborn and Haldir with a swathe of
Galadrim and Guards of the Fountain Court. They still had a lot of shooting,
but anything was better than that Serpent Horde list.
For scenarios, we had the choice
of Take and Hold, Clash of Champions and Duel of Wits. Ultimately we were
pretty happy with any of these, so I made the captain’s call to veto Take and
Hold because it would be easier to swarm one force and ignore the other on Duel
of Wits. Nathan and Sam seemed to accurately predict that risk, and decided
that they’d be better off deploying more safely in Clash of Champions and
hoping Celeborn could do enough to bring their kill tally up.
On our first turn, I was able to Fell Light a Hobbit out of position and into Gûlavhar’s range, who promptly Heroic Combatted all the way into the Good backlines to tear Merry limb from limb (after forcing Haldir to burn a Might to avoid the same fate, of course). One leader down, one to go.
Celeborn responded by Combatting through a pair of
Spiders, but elsewhere the Spider swarm began to pick up some rapid kills.
Sam’s Hobbits seemed to oscillate between extreme bravery and hopeless
cowardice, with the latter allowing us to limit their numbers advantage and
take advantage of our superior combat ability. Our F3 Orcs and F2 Mirkwood
Spiders were particularly excited to have the higher Fight value against a lot
of their opponents. Hobbits make everyone feel elite!
The next turn saw Hobbits and
Elves falling in large numbers, although we were also losing models in the
melee. While Gûlavhar was tied down facing a lone Hobbit, Celeborn Heroic
Combatted through another Spider and a Warg to bring the kill tallies closer to
even. However, he was now out of Might and potentially vulnerable, and the
Spider Queen pounced on Farmer Cotton (instantly dead) and Frodo (barely alive
thanks to Heroic Defence).
On the next turn we won priority
and unleashed our arsenal of tricks onto Haldir and Celeborn, only for every
single one to succeed in a shocking display of overkill. Haldir got Paralysed
by an incoming Mirkwood Spider and minced (not even getting to make his final
strike back thanks to the Paralysis!), while Celeborn ended up Paralysed by the
Barrow Wight, trapped by a Bat Swarm and facing a Heroic Combatting Gûlavhar.
That ended about how you’d expect it to.
The carnage elsewhere had Broken
Nathan and Sam, and Sam’s Hobbits proceeded to swing back to their ‘appalling
cowardice’ setting. 7 failed Break tests in a row later and the Good side was
quartered, but there was still time for one more moment of heroism. Pippin had
ridden to the centre (the secret objective for the round), but been pounced on
by Gûlavhar, a Bat Swarm and two Mirkwood Spiders. In total, we rolled 11 dice
to win the fight, plus a banner reroll and our 2 once-per-turn rerolls to boot.
We capped out at a 5 and Pippin got the 6, even managing to wound Gûlavhar with
his attacks back!
It was the perfect way to round
out a truly hilarious game, with Nathan and Sam both absolutely awesome
opponents the whole way through. This matchup and set of scenarios was extremely tilted
in our favour from the start, but they took it so totally in their stride and
we had a blast. All of our opponents this tournament were great, but the
silliness in this last game was off the charts. Exactly how you want to end a
tournament (especially when it comes with a 12:0 win as well!).
MVP: Everything performed well here, but Gûlavhar was singlehandedly responsible for 8VP worth of kills. Hard to go past that.
With that we had rounded out the day with three major wins and all three secret objectives completed, with a high enough VP differential to secure 1st place!
Tournament Review
This tournament was probably the
most fun I’ve had in ages. Having never been to a doubles tournament I didn’t
really know what to expect, but the games were an absolute hoot. If you haven’t
made it to one then do yourself a favour and find yourself a buddy, because it
really improved the games dramatically. From a competitive perspective it’s
great to have another player to consult with or catch your errors: in the first
round I barely looked up from chewing through Monty and Tom’s armies, and when
the game suddenly ended it came as a bit of a surprise to see that there were
Spiders on all of the objectives! And from an enjoyability perspective having 4
people around the table meant the jokes were always flowing, while having
someone to share the highs and lows with made victory all the sweeter.
Outside of the general team
format, the tournament was generally organised really well. The prize support
was amazing, there was a good amount of space, everything proceeded more or
less on time and there were very few administrative hiccoughs. I don’t really
know what happened to have Nathan and Sam paired up into us in the final round,
but given how enjoyable that game was I’m certainly not complaining. The
scenarios picked for the vetoing seemed to have a good variety in them, and I
really liked the tournament special rule. I think it’s really easy to go
overboard with tricky special rules, but having one free reroll per turn for
all the games meant we actually remembered to use them and led to a lot of cool
moments. Thror using his reroll and the Arkenstone to survive Gûlavhar’s attack
(after I’d used my free reroll to deal 5 wounds!) was a great moment for both
sides.
Thanks again to David for TOing,
and to Irresistible Force for hosting and the awesome prize support. Great
stuff.
List review
Obviously any list that wins a
tournament is probably a solid list, but I want to emphasise quite how much fun this
combo was to play. Gûlavhar and co are always a delight to use, with so many
tools and an instant feeling of reward when you use them right. There are few
feelings quite as good as ‘solving the puzzle’ your opponent has presented you
with and having Gûlavhar shred some poor hero as an instant reward. Adding in
the extra shenanigans of the Spiders and Bats just took it to the next level,
and meant that we had so much flexibility to adapt to whatever situation we
were presented with.
Pictured: Gûlavhar 'solving the puzzle' and presenting our opponents with a much harder puzzle to solve
On a competitive note, the
Spiders also really complemented the Angmar half with their damage output.
Angmar generally has a fairly middling damage output outside of its monsters,
and Gûlavhar can only be in one place at once (that one place being, of course,
wherever your opponents least want him). With the Spiders along though, it was
vastly easier to win the war of attrition while the Angmar half neutralised the
enemy heroes. Indeed, the second game (our tightest) was largely won by the
Spiders massacring the Dwarves, with Gûlavhar killing Dain but otherwise mostly
just holding back the Elves.
This tournament also
demonstrated perhaps the most important part of doubles tournaments from a
competitive perspective: life is vastly easier if both lists
are capable of moving fast. You don’t need the whole list to be mobile; only Gûlavhar
and the Warg Rider were mobile in my half, but Gûlavhar just happened to be the
majority of my list’s hitting power. What that meant is that in the event that
the two halves of the army didn’t get to deploy together, we could concentrate
our hitting power much faster than our opponents could. That was basically game-winning
in all three rounds: in the first two the ability to rapidly reinforce our
engaged half let us get the critical edge in the early turns of combats, while
in the third round the mere threat of us doing so was enough to force our
opponents into selecting a nearly-unwinnable scenario. It’s a
sometimes-underrated effect of the veto system: not only does a tactically
flexible army allow you to compete in a range of scenarios, it also increases
the number of scenarios that your opponent has to veto. Increase that number
enough and eventually you’re guaranteed a favourable matchups.
If I were to run these lists
again (which, given the extremely specific nature of the listbuilding for this
tournament, probably will never happen), I’d contemplate ditching the Barrow
Wight for an Orc Captain on Warg. The Barrow Wight is amazing, and severely
undercosted, but without the Witch King along he can feel a bit like a roulette
wheel. Sometimes he’s a cute little Terror bubble and forces out a few
resources from your opponent, while other times he Paralyses your opponent’s
centrepiece model. The tradeoff is basically between the Orc Captain, who will
always be great, versus the Barrow Wight who will often be adequate and will
occasionally win a game single-handedly. There’s value to both, but I think I’m
starting to lean towards the Captain as the more consistent, reliable choice
(at least when I don’t have another caster along). It’s a great merit of Angmar
that their list design is filled with such even tradeoffs, where every choice
feels great but has a real opportunity cost.
Overall, I had an absolute blast
this tournament, and I hope that you enjoyed reading about it. Thanks again to
everyone involved in organising it, and to Erin for being a great doubles
partner who thoroughly earned her new Shelob model!
Until next time, may your Mirkwood Spiders always Paralyse heroes when they charge in!
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