The Eagles are great at 850 points and I can prove it: Cancon Day 1

 

Can the Eagles defeat their arch-nemesis of Dale?

It’s time for my first tournament report of the edition, and it’s a big one: a 78-player event at Cancon. This was the second biggest MESBG tournament Australia’s ever had, so it’s an absolutely awesome way to start off the new edition. And with doubles on the Monday public holiday as well, I was looking forward to an excellent weekend of rolling dice and smashing up battlelines with my birds. And of course, to prove that the birds are still cooked at 850 points.

Tournament Format

Good rulings here, and very good to have them pre-published

The Saturday and Sunday were earmarked for the competitive singles tournament: a whopping 850-point event, with 2:45 per game and 5 rounds. All bar one scenario would be played (rolled randomly on the day), and an array of pre-event rulings were publicised. These ranged from the standard (one spear support per combat) to the controversial (Monstrous Charge not stacking with cavalry bonuses) to the coin flips (Legolas can shoot in combat while mounted, at -1 to hit if he moved). As a competitive tournament before the first real FAQs of the edition, it was a great call to publicise these beforehand, as it meant everyone was on the same page going in.

Listbuilding

850 points is a lot, and it’s actually somewhat hard to find lists that work this high (at least with the models I own). It encourages heavy hitters and ways to deal with heavy hitters, and the constrained listbuilding of the new edition meant many lists would struggle to really function.

My first thought was Minas Morgul, hoping to leverage their powerful magic and efficient horde to overwhelm players that had leaned into the big heroes and monsters. But at 850 points the horde starts to encounter diminishing returns and I wasn’t too sold on the alternative options (Trolls, second Fell Beasts) for spending those points.

The Last Alliance has powerful rules and strong heroes, but here the issue was scenarios. How does a list with no cavalry (except 0-2 mounted heroes) compete with a lot of lists in Supplies or Reconnoitre? Massed shooting is an answer, but a single enemy cavalry model that gets off the board is now worth 12VPs in Recon, and I wanted a list with more flexibility in responding to those scenarios.

Depths of Moria could partially solve that problem with the Watcher, but here the problem was the Balrog. In any 5-round event, I felt like I was guaranteed to have one game of ‘the Balrog can’t roll a 6’, and I didn’t like that risk.

Other lists like Thranduil’s Halls, Men of the West and Muster of Isengard were contemplated, but in each case I struggled to find the tools I needed to feel confident. And looming over every list was the question of what it does into massed shooting. The current scenario pools heavily favoured archery, and many of these lists seemed like they’d fold into a dedicated gunline (a matchup that has bit me in two of my last three big tournaments, which you can read about here and here).

I was at a bit of a loss, until trying out the Eagles in a fun practice game at 800. To my surprise, the list kind of just… worked, and it was a blast to play. I’d previously written them off as definitely better suited to lower points, but it felt like there was maybe something there. I decided I needed to test it out and see, a need that rapidly got obsessive and left me with a whopping 36 practice games completed. All of which culminated in the following list getting locked in:

A comically simple list, but scarier than it looks

It's nothing fancy or unexpected, and as it turned out there were two other identical lists at the event (we formed a little Eagles-only clique and made a lot of bird noises, naturally). But man, the tricks this build can pull are intense. Refused flanks, blocking out of heroes, strategic Hurling, banner sniping, and above all Barge shenanigans are incredibly powerful. Coupled with a surprising amount of durability and damage output, and the game-warping power of Piercing Cry, I felt like it gave me the best chance of never being entirely locked out of any matchup. The list is definitely stronger at lower points (I played one game at 450 with it and it was a total whitewash), but even at high points the flexibility was incredible.

I won’t dive too deeply into how the list works (or the listbuilding decisions involved) in this article, but fear not: there will be a two-part series on the Eagles coming out in the next couple of weeks, touching first on how to run them then cycling to how to beat them. So if you want to read some 6000 words of analysis on the Eagles, you’ll have your opportunity!

For now though, let’s talk about what everyone else was bringing to the first big event of the edition:

Meta analysis

I won’t spend too many words on this, because I’ve already gone on the excellent Mountain Goat Gaming channel to speak about the lists in attendance. Go check that out for some analysis (and if you want to never be able to ‘hear’ my written voice as anything but how I actually speak).

The key points: lots of monsters, lots of big heroes, very few spellcasters, somewhat-low model counts, and quite a spread of different lists. Interesting!

No shortage of scary lists, or monsters!

Of the lists in attendance, I was somewhat worried by the many Depths of Moria and Battle of Fornost lists, which had some scary tools for dealing with my poor birds. Scarier still were the 4 Smaugs in attendance, which would make for an effectively-unwinnable matchup in any scenario except Supplies (which is nearly unwinnable for Smaug instead). And scariest of all was the lone Garrison of Dale list, which had the triple-Windlances of my nightmares. That list would melt me instantly in any scenario except Hold Ground, and still felt quite favoured there with its horde of high Courage infantry with +1 to wound.

So naturally, my Round 1 opponent was…

 

Game 1: Garrison of Dale in Hold Ground, 17:5

Not the list I wanted to start my tournament with

Yikes. The game started with Connor deploying his three Windlances on the field, and confidently informing me that Girion’s entire warband got to deploy with them. This was a huge advantage, as they would be able to charge on the first turn of the game and potentially start bringing down Eagles.

Not being a Dale player, I assumed that this must be spelled out somewhere, but doing some digging after the game has complicated this somewhat. In Maelstrom scenarios, it turns out that only Siege Engine models are deployed on the board before the game begins (and there is no general rule that models deploy with their warband leader, that’s only a scenario-specific rule in other scenarios). It is a somewhat complicated question–the RAW answer would be that Girion’s warband could never enter the board, which clearly isn’t how it should be played– but it was still a bit frustrating to have my opponent award themselves an extremely powerful benefit without even acknowledging it as ambiguous.

In any case, I didn’t want to get the TO involved for what was literally deployment of Round 1, so it was time to roll with the punches. Connor won Priority and handed it to me, and I embarked on Operation Windlance dodging. I burned 2 of Gwaihir’s 3 Might to come on right next to the three Windlances (which Connor had deployed much closer together than I’d expected), and used a combination of their 6” minimum ranges and the limited exceptions to the Large Target special rule to prevent even a single Windlance from firing. It took some crazy positioning, but I was really proud of how well I was able to neutralise his most powerful asset. I was also able to destroy one in the first turn thanks to some deployment errors from my opponent, which was a great win.

It's a blurry pic, but it captures quite how crazily I had to spread out to survive this turn

This had forced me into spreading my Eagles into an extremely vulnerable position, however, and the Dale charges on the first turn managed to kill one bird already. I was lucky enough to win the Move-off on the following turn to slightly remedy the situation, but the +1 to-wound bubbles from the Windlances meant that I was haemorrhaging wounds fast.

Not the kind of way Eagles want to fight

A Piercing Cry somewhat bailed me out on Turn 3, and the game deteriorated into a messy melee around the Windlances. Girion managed to survive 4 assassination attempts from Eagles or Gwaihir, even reducing Gwaihir to 1 wound in a single fight. Gwaihir then died on the following turn to 3 random smucks, before Girion at last got taken out by a bird. I’d also managed to destroy the last two Windlances on the Piercing Cry turn, so I was feeling slightly more okay about the situation.

Girion survives attack after attack as Gwaihir gets taken out

Over the next few turns, I managed to survive the grind and whittle down the Dale, while assassinating Captains and Siege Veterans to run them out of Might. At last, I was able to win a Priority after Dale had Broken, getting a bunch of Eagles onto the centre and tying up the Dale heroes. It was all cleanup from there, with my six remaining Eagles easily holding the centre thanks to Dominant (3).

The first of many pictures with an empty 60mm base, because those Eagle wings are honestly such a headache to use

This wasn’t quite the start I wanted to the edition, with a few little things cropping up that forced me to pay closer attention than normal. Captains having one more Might than they should, dice that rolled a 6 to wound suddenly being from a Captain rather than a warrior despite that not aligning with the numbers of dice rolled, Terror checks failed by 1 suddenly having been from the Siege Veteran with 1 Will remaining instead of a basic warrior, that sort of thing. I expect most of it was probably start-of-edition sloppiness, but it did colour my experience of the game somewhat.

In any case, I was happy to have eked out the win against my hardest list to run into, especially because it meant I’d be facing no more Windlances from here on out.

Some pretty Dale march up to swarm my birds 

Game 2: Legions of Mordor in To the Death, 17:2

A very cool list, but not one that can cope with Eagles

After that nightmare matchup, the pendulum of fate had swung entirely around and now I was the nightmare matchup. Poor Jacob’s War Leader/Witch King combo was about to get absolutely victimised by some Eagles, all because someone at GW forgot to include special rules in the ‘War Beasts and Magic’ section of the rules.

Eagles deploy in a crazy pile of wings

Honestly, there wasn’t too much to this game. We both moved carefully in the first turn or so, with my Eagles staying deliberately behind trees that were at least 2” tall (and thus couldn’t be Trampled over). Jacob did pull a sneaky move by Compelling one Eagle out and slamming into it with the Mumak, but impact hits aren’t actually likely to kill an Eagle in one go, so I just countercharged with two more Eagles and started chipping down the big beasty. Moreover, I’d been able to land Gwaihir directly in between the Witch King and War Leader, and a Piercing Cry on the next turn saw the Witch King get flash-killed while the Mumak was brought down to only a couple of wounds remaining.

Pics taken moments before disaster

The War Leader did get off one more Trample, but because models back away after beating a War Beast I’d been able to make sure that he could only hit one of my unwounded Eagles. The big beasty did a single wound to another bird, before getting swarmed and wrecked. Almost everyone on top died, and I hunted down the Orc banner before quartering Jacob.

I felt quite bad for how horrendous the matchup was for him, and for knocking down another Canberran. On the plus side though, we had heaps of time to go look at the excellent second-hand stores! I picked up 24 Mordor Orcs for $12, and managed to resist the lure of too many impulse purchases.

Also, look at this guy. He's so happy!

With that, it was time for the last game of Day 1, against…

Game 3: Ride Out in Domination, 13:2

Some excellent heroes in there, but being forced to charge is awkward into my list

Showing up to my table in Game 3, I was relieved to find myself facing Matthew’s Ride Out. It’s definitely a list with teeth, and it’s beaten my Eagles once already this edition, but it’s also a matchup that I know I have a lot of play into.

A lot of cavalry getting ready to skirmish

The first couple of turns were quite cagey, as Matthew took potshots at my Eagles and I tried to manoeuvre for a devastating first charge. Unfortunately for Ride Out, their army rule is a massive disadvantage in this sort of situation: I could drop Eagles to just within charge range of a few cavalry but outside range of his heroes, and force the Rohirrim to commit. There are ways to play around this with Aragorn’s free Marches and other tricks, but in this instance Matthew dived in to my right flank to start putting it under pressure.

Unfortunately, Aragorn ended up standing a little too close to a Rider that had been forced to charge, so Isildur’s Heir promptly got dismounted by a Hurled Rohirrim (Brego rolled a 1, sadly).

Aragorn is just a hair too close to that Rider of Rohan at the bottom

Nonetheless, winning Priority on the next turn allowed Legolas and Théoden to get into a bird on that flank, while Gwaihir and several other Eagles were tied down by warriors in the centre.

Alas, here was where going pure Eagles over Radagast’s Alliance really shined. First, I still had several extra Eagles to counterattack with, including peeling Legolas off to prevent a Strike/Combat combo and hitting back hard in the centre. Gwaihir also burned a Might to get off a Combat, killing two Royal Guard and landing himself neatly within 6” of all of Matthew’s heroes. Legolas fought off his Eagle and the one trapped by Théoden and a pile of Riders died, but every single Rohan cavalryman in the centre was wiped out the devastating Hurls of the Eagles.

Next turn, of course, I used Piercing Cry to shut down all of the Rohirrim heroes, charging mostly into warriors in order to bait out Strikes or Defences from all of them. In the end I did make the call to Barge into a Striking Théoden with Gwaihir, and burned my last Might to assassinate the King of Rohan after he only Struck to F7. Gamling, Legolas and Aragorn all survived the turn, but I’d inflicted devastating damage on the Rohirrim.

Aragorn and Gamling have to call Defences, Legolas and Theoden have to call Strikes. Piercing cry is mean!

From here, the game turned into two quite separate battles. On the left, three Eagles slowly cleaned up most of the Rohirrim warriors, and despite losing an embarrassing number of fights they eventually managed to end the game holding all three objectives on this flank.

On the right, my decision to burn my last Might killing Théoden meant that Matthew could move first every turn, which allowed him to keep the pressure on and prevent me wiping out his plucky band of (mostly dismounted) heroes. Legolas survived again and again, and even managed to wound an Eagle twice with a single volley in combat. And Aragorn was able to keep burning Might to Strike up against Gwaihir to secure leader wounds through repeated attrition. But Matthew didn’t have the numbers left to finish the job against my D8 birds, and eventually one hero after the next fell. The Rohirrim were quartered, and the Eagles were left solidly in control of the field.

Eagles slowly whittle down the remaining Rohirrim as one after the next gets dismounted

This was a really great game, with lots of swings back and forth and interesting tactical conundrums. We were both setting up plays and shutting down the other’s the whole game long, and I think my matchup advantage went a long way to giving me the edge here. Ride Out is a legitimately strong list, just… probably not into Eagles.

A quick pic of the hall we were playing in. There were at least 5 of these halls going at once, which was exciting

At the end of Day 1, I was sitting pretty on three wins, with two crushing wins and one major win. That felt like a great place to be, especially because there were no Smaugs undefeated at this point in the tournament. Phew! It looked like I’d be able to avoid any more of my hardest counters, but there were still plenty of scary lists undefeated. Alongside conventional builds that I felt I could handle, both Depths of Moria and Battle of Fornost loomed as scary threats that would require all of my Eagle shenanigans to take on.

But that’s for next time. For this moment in our narrative we were sitting on a field of victory, enjoying some well-earned comforts. Specifically, enjoying the fact that the tournament was being held in Canberra, so we could pop back home for a lovely homecooked meal before heading out to the social night. Pat Mitrega was staying at mine for the tournament, and conveniently his Smaug games had also been short enough for him to leave early; 2 hours 45 is a long time when you only have one model, it turns out!

In any case, after a delightful evening socialising, we were off to bed, ready for another big day of gaming tomorrow. We’ll pause our story here for the moment, but check in again in a couple of days to see how my currently-undefeated run goes. Is this the local-boy-made-good story Canberra needs, or will a Melbournian end my run? Find out next time!

And until then, may your bad matchups always come in the best scenarios for them!