Orcs and Camels clash in a dramatic game
After an uneasy night’s rest (after Day 1 of the Queensland GT, which you can read about here), we pick up our story on Sunday morning as I nervously prepared for Round 4. There were only a handful of undefeated players remaining, and if I could pick up one more win then I would have good odds of podiuming. To do so, however, I would have to overcome Isla and her nasty Half Troll/Camel list…
Game 4: Far Harad in Lords of Battle, 8:2
This was an extremely interesting matchup, especially in a flat killing scenario. Isla’s troops are much scarier than mine, but my heroes eat hers for breakfast. Her warriors are extremely vulnerable to my Courage shenanigans, but can auto-pass Courage checks if their leaders are fighting. It was a fascinating combination of strengths and weakness, and with two glass cannon lists it seemed likely that the game would be decided quickly.
After the first turn, it certainly felt like things were snowballing out of control. One King went in and began carving his way through my frontline with impact hits and combat, taking out 6 Orcs in the first turn. In retaliation, Gûlavhar had gone into a Half Troll to threaten a Heroic Combat into either King, forcing Isla to call a Strike with one and a Combat with the other. I was feeling great about this, as it meant that I had burned 2 of Isla’s only Striking Might and could still bounce into the Combatting King to take it out on the first turn. Of course, that was all premised on Gûlavhar winning his combat, which is generally pretty reliable with 5 dice and 2 Might to spare. One 3-high roll and 2 wounds taken from the Half Troll later and I was feeling very bad about my position.
Thankfully, on the next turn I was able to rapidly turn things around. The other King and some camels went in and started killing Orcs, while Gûlavhar was tied up by two more Half Trolls. However, I was able to set up a great pathway through my backline where the Witch King and my Captain could charge into one King, call a Strike/Combat, and then charge into the other King on the same turn.
This worked a treat, and the two of them managed to take out both Mahud Kings on the same turn (conveniently recovering both of the Captain’s Might in doing so). Gûlavhar also managed to win his fight and kill a Half Troll, so things were looking up.
From there I was able to get Gûlavhar into the Mahud Tribemaster and take him out, while the Witch King and Captain swept around the left flank. Unfortunately the Witch King was charged by a Camel and dismounted, before flubbing his duel rolls and being ridden down in a single turn. It was a bit demoralising, but thankfully the carnage elsewhere had broken the Mahud. Winning Priority on the next turn, I decided to pull everyone back and let the poor Mahud Courage deal with them. Two turns of Break checks later and the Mahud were tabled, with Gûlavhar completing the surprise comeback with a final Heroic Combat.
Isla was great to play against, and this was an extremely enjoyable game. Both of our armies have such a unique playstyle that it felt totally different to most matchups, and the carnage inflicted early really showed off what each force can do. Ultimately, I was happy that my strategy of ‘kill the heroes and the warriors will crumple’ paid off, as once the Kings were gone it was much harder for Isla to push into my lines and get the kills she needed.
Game 5: Gondor in Destroy the Supplies, 7:2
If there was one model I wouldn’t have expected to meet at the top table in Round 5 it would probably be Aragorn Elessar. I absolutely love the model, but most competitive players view him as at least somewhat overcosted. Josh was keen to show off what the King of Gondor could do, and his Elessar/Hurin/Ingold combo had seen him undefeated so far.
This game was dominated from the start by the terrain, with lots of fences and walls making it difficult for either of us to concentrate our forces. Josh opted to play defensively, obviously hoping to whittle me down then push back in the lategame. I think he was a little too defensive, however, and I was able to sneak a protected Orc Warrior onto his left supplies and destroy them in the first turn of combat. This left that group of Orcs badly exposed, and they were largely slaughtered over the following turns. They’d accomplished their job, however, so I was happy to make that trade.
In the centre, Ingold had had to burn all his Might early in order to resist a Compel by the Witch King. It was a big expenditure, but a failure to do so would have meant Gûlavhar swooping in and picking him up for free that turn anyway. As the lines clashed, Elessar ended up burning through all of his Will and most of his Might to resist a Transfix and try to get some kills happening in the centre, but botched his rolls against two Orcs and failed to cut his way through my lines. On subsequent turns he spent a lot of time standing still while the Witch King Transfixed him, but his banner aura (plus the superior Gondorian numbers in the centre) meant I was soon struggling to maintain the line here.
That wasn’t helped by Gûlavhar needing to burn all of his Might to win a combat against 4 Gondorians, which could otherwise have been fatal. Josh was doing a great job screening off Gûlavhar from getting into his heroes, and without the Might to force the issue I ended up flying him over to try and win the contest on my right flank.
Here, the Gondorians were defending a long fence against a larger force of Orcs and my Barrow Wight. Gûlavhar mostly whiffed on this flank, but eventually my superior numbers began to tell and I was able to take out a second set of supplies. This could have actually happened one turn earlier than it did, as I’d set it up perfectly on the second last turn before boneheadedly moving one of the Orcs involved off to trap a Gondorian. It wasn’t an error that ended up costing me, but it was an annoying one to make.
As we came into the final turns, my centre and left flank were distinctly crumbling beneath the Gondorian onslaught. One Knight had burst out down my left flank, but would take one turn too many to reach my supplies (and would have been vulnerable to a Spectre on the turn he did do so in any case). My Barrow Wight finally managed to work his way around the buildings and fences into range of Aragorn, where he threw down a 5-die Paralyse onto the King of Gondor. Aragorn had just charged into the Witch King, and was stripped of his Fate and wounded for his troubles.
Finally, the Gondorian warriors did what they had to do and killed just enough models to break me. This valiant effort gave Josh two critical VPs, which ended up having a huge impact on the tournament placings later. Still, with two Supplies destroyed and my banner hanging in there in the centre, this gave me a minor win of 7:2. It was a great game that was tactical and interesting but with a chill and silly vibe, which is always how you want to finish out the tournament.
Speaking of finishing the tournament, this win left me as the only undefeated player, earning first place overall! It also earned me ‘Best Evil Geeneral’, a trophy so amusing my fiancé has allowed it pride of place out in our dining room. Josh ended up a well-deserved second, narrowly pipping out Jay (my Round 3 opponent) thanks to those two VPs for breaking me on the final turn!
This win also unexpectedly catapulted me into 6th place for the Queensland League overall, which ended up being taken out by Sean Rossato. Yes, it was a bit of a flex to top the league without even playing in its most competitive event. Looking at the numbers, it seems my absurd rolls against Jay in Round 3 had been the deciding factor preventing him from taking the top spot! I’ll be taking my payment by bank transfer, Sean.
Tournament Review
This tournament was absolutely great, with good vibes the whole time and an awesome atmosphere. Every opponent was a consistent delight, with constant laughter through the Angmar shenanigans and wacky dice. Things ran smoothly throughout (no mean feat for a two-day tournament!), and Sean generally did a really solid job of pulling things together. In particular, the prizes were amazing. I ended up taking home the Osgiliath starter set(!), a Mordor catapult, some Medbury Dunlandings, a Medbury Dwarf, two trophies, multiple things of dice (one of which was printed with cute ‘1st place’ symbols in place of the 6, which I think will be great to pull out for mindgames in future tournaments), and the all-important sticker. That’s a frankly absurd amount of loot to be giving out at a tournament, and certainly felt like a great return on investment for my $40 ticket.
Apparently tournament success is inversely correlated with height. Tolkien would approve
More generally, the way the prizes were done was really cool at this tournament. Separate prizes were available for Best Army, Best Display Board and Favourite Model (as well as Best Sport), which I really liked. It was great to be able to reward people for doing well at a variety of hobby aspects, rather than all the accolades going to one person. I sometimes feel like it’s hard to weight other factors as heavily as a cool display board, so separating out those categories was a nice touch. In this case, Best Display Board was always going to go to Elias’ pirate ship, but it was nice to be able to vote for some of the other awesome armies floating around (like the terrifying Dark Denizens brought by Erin (my doubles partner from last report)). There was also a raffle with a variety of great prizes —this was the source of my Medbury Dunlandings— with the top prize being a full table of awesome Osgiliath ruins. I gather that both of the tickets I put in the raffle ended up being drawn, but Sean made the (reasonable) decision that I’d probably gotten enough prizes for the day.
Speaking of me getting enough prizes, I think my one critique of the tournament would be that having prizes for Best Evil and Best Good ‘Geenerals’ was potentially redundant when the top 3 were already receiving prizes. I certainly wasn’t complaining about taking home even more goodies, but it did feel slightly weird getting a second award and prize for the same thing. Still, gift horses and their mouths aside, the prize support was easily the best I’ve ever seen at this tournament.
List review
Turns out Angmar’s still got it! 5 years on and it remains the trickiest faction in the game, and that shone through in all my matchups. In five games against excellent players, I was able to leverage the list’s flexibility to pull out wins that I wouldn’t have expected. Ultimately, I think it’s that flexibility that’s the core to how the list plays. Yes, Gûlavhar is devastating and can win games on his own, but what wins tournaments is being able to win games in a wide variety of circumstances. Across the 5 games I leant on first my mobility, then my numbers and Gûlavhar, then my Terror and Spectres, then my Terror and heroes, then finally on my mobility and magic. Different aspects of the list came to the fore in each game, with no element of the list getting to shine in every matchup but every element making its mark at least once.
If you haven’t played this style of Angmar then I do thoroughly recommend it. It’s not an easy army to play by any means, but that also makes it a hard army to play against. There’s a real risk of analysis paralysis when you can move your opponent’s models as well as your own, but all it takes is one play your opponent didn’t see coming to break a game wide open for you. Moreover, its fragility and the low quality of its troops means you have real weaknesses to overcome, which keeps that ‘it could all fall apart at any moment’ feeling throughout the game.
As far as what I’d change for next time, I’m going to be controversial here: I don’t think the Witch King actually needs 12 Will. I acknowledge that this take is an extremely unpopular one (almost everyone seems to run at least 14), but in 3 tournaments with variants of this list I have never run out of Will or even been overly constrained by my Will store. Tournament games rarely last as long as people expect them to, even when they come to a natural conclusion, and every Will point you didn’t need to spend is an Orc you could have had on the field. In this case, the 10 points I’m saving will let me upgrade two Orcs to a Spectre and a Warg, giving me more mobility and more opportunity to move my opponent’s models while retaining the same model-count. Every time my Spectre moves someone it’ll be about as useful as the Witch King casting Compel, and in some matchups more reliable too. I’ll regret it if I next end up facing piles of spellcasters, but even then they normally care too much about Gully to target the Witch King.
Tournament Wrap-up
This was my first ever multi-day event, and I loved it. The camaraderie, the competition, the hobbying: all of it was great, even by the normally high standards at these events. I was also really proud of how I played, and particularly the strategies I picked. I made a lot of tactical errors, but in every game my overall strategy was correct and broadly carried out. I’d been feeling a little down about this aspect of my gameplay after two incorrect strategic choices at recent tournaments, so it was a good vindication to pick correctly in 5 games out of 5.
Thanks to all my opponents for 5 amazing games, to Sean for running a great tournament, and to Irresistible Force for hosting us (and even throwing the Osgiliath box into the prize pool, I was personally pretty excited about that!). I will probably be in Canberra for the next one, but maybe I’ll just be one of the interstate visitors for it.
Until next time, may your good dice always come in your bad matchups!
Congrats on the win mate - glad to see your army hung in there against the camels and half-trolls (I hate fighting those things)!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I was pretty terrified going into that matchup, and somewhat surprised by how well the handled them. I think ultimately it ends up a matchup more slanted in my favour than I expected, just because of how reliant they are on their heroes to both be fighting and also alive at the end of the game. With Gulavhar around, those two goals are pretty firmly in conflict haha
Delete