Spoiler alert: good vibes and good results were both had
I was lucky enough to be a part of Team Australia at this year’s Nations Cup in Naples, and it was an absolute blast. This was a teams tournament, with all the mayhem and analysis that involves, and I’m nearly as excited to share it with you all as I was to attend. Nearly.
This is gonna be a long one, so let’s dive right in to my journey to the fires of Mount Doom Vesuvius…
Joining the team
Way back when the location of this year’s Nations Cup was announced, I was approached by Alex Colasante to see if I’d be interested in joining the team representing Australia. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long after this that my spouse found out that we were being posted to the Solomon Islands, making a big international holiday 1.5 months before our departure date a bit of a non-starter. I reluctantly declined the invitation, but continued to join calls and help out with practice games and analysis.
Fast forward to a month or so before the event, and the famous Kylie had to drop out of Team Australia because of personal circumstances. This left a gaping hole in the team, which they would struggle to fill from the second Australian team attending (the more chill ‘Commonwealth’ team).
At this point the conversation turned to enticing me to Italy, and with a few generous subsidies from members of the team (and Kylie giving up her ticket to me free of charge) I was convinced. Turns out ‘we’ll subsidise your trip with a bunch of your close friends to go play toy soldiers and see Italy’ is a compelling offer!
Tournament Format
The event itself was very unlike the standard singles events we’re all used to, in ways that fundamentally shaped how the listbuilding and games played out. Each team brought six players, with 3 Good and 3 Evil lists between them. These lists couldn’t overlap in terms of unique heroes, which was particularly impactful for the Good lists competing over Gwaihir and Legolas.
With these lists selected, teams would be matched into other teams and begin a complicated pairings process. That involved teams simultaneously putting forward ‘defender’ lists, which then chose from the two ‘attacker’ lists they were presented with. The chosen lists paired off, while the unchosen attacker lists became their team’s defender for the next round of pairings until all 12 players were successfully paired off.
The net result of all of this is that you wanted to be able to set up situations where your opponent’s defender list had to pick between two hard counters, while your own defender list was able to pick a less concerning matchup. List selection thus leant towards achieving this goal, while on-table strategies were determined by how the pairings ended up playing out. Generally at least one or two players per team would have been thrown under the bus, accepting harder matchups in order to give the rest of the team the matchups they preferred in the given scenario for the round. If your team was able to pull out a win in a matchup where they weren’t favoured then that could flip the entire round in your team’s favour. And conversely, where the team had orchestrated pairings in order to achieve a particular matchup, losing that matchup could be a gut-punch to the team’s prospects.
Listbuilding and team composition
With all this in mind, team composition was of critical importance. After a tumultuous list selection process and many late-night Discord calls, we ended up adopting several approaches in our team in order to achieve various goals.
First, we wanted a couple of lists that could be thrown into just about anything and have a shot. Khazad-dûm and Usurpers of Edoras were perfect for this, and Mike and Ned both had the morale to take the hard matchups they were likely to be thrown into. Depending on scenario, this role could also be taken on by our other lists, but these two were very much taken with this in mind.
Second, we wanted to be able to present at least two counters to certain lists that we expected to see frequently. In particular, we expected a meta centred around Men of the West, Crebain-spam builds and Dwarves of various kinds. The former were primarily answered by my White Hand, Tyler’s Battle of Five Armies and Alex’s Buhrdur’s Horde, while we aimed to take on enemy Evil swarms with our Usurpers, Khazad-dûm and occasionally BoFA (if they were low Courage). Finally, Dwarves and other heavy infantry were the perfect prey for Lothlorien and BoFA, alongside White Hand or Buhrdur if their numbers were too low.
And third, we wanted to introduce some unpredictability to the pairings process. Basically everyone attending would have practiced against and built lists to deal with White Hand and Men of the West (even if the gulf between planning to beat these meta armies and actually doing so can be immense). However, would they have a good sense of how the best pairings change with double-monster BofA versus MotW? Perhaps more significantly, would they have any idea what or how to play into Buhrdur? We planned to put forward Alex first in many scenarios and matchups, in the hopes that opponents would misunderstand the list’s strengths and weaknesses and allow it to ‘scam’ wins it shouldn’t have gotten.
Key to all of this was quality data. In the lead up to the event we all flung ourselves into testing a variety of matchups, aiming to determine how our lists were likely to do into an array of enemy compositions. It was the quality of the data that came from this that allowed us to determine that Tyler’s BoFA was actually quite favoured into Usurpers (not a good matchup on paper), and determine where our own Crebain lists were most likely to achieve their wins. Where the pairings process went our way, I think it was often a result of our opponents having insufficient or inaccurate data.
We also took on a lot of pairing drills, in which we would take turns doing the pairing for hypothetical (or, after team compositions were made public, real) teams against the rest of us. This gave us practice turning our data into favourable matchups, and allowed us to streamline the process with lots of rules of thumb. For example, against a team with two Crebain lists (e.g. Usurpers and White Hand), we might put forward BoFA on the expectation that they would put both Crebain lists into it. We would then select Usurpers to play BoFA, allowing us to present their White Hand with the unenviable choice of Khazad-dûm or Usurpers. These rule-of-thumb plans made the 15-minute pairing process much easier for us to manage.
The trip
All of this exciting analysis did get put on the backburner, however, as we enjoyed our time in Italy before the event. Flying all the way around the world via San Francisco, I landed in Rome and met up with Chris and eventually Ned from Team Australia, Chris’ wife Jen, and Pat and Kat from Team Commonwealth. Together we enjoyed the incredible sights of Rome (particularly the basilicas, with which I become somewhat obsessed), before heading down to Naples. We dived into the ancient Roman sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, before heading down the coast to Sorrento. There, on the shores of the Mediterranean, with Vesuvius looming across the bay, it was time for the Nations Cup…
Round 1: Team USA in Hold Ground, 4:2
Our first opponents were the fearsome team USA, heavily dominated by members of An Unexpected Podcast. Their lists included a massive Shire horde, an elite Dragon Emperor list, a horde White Hand, a Host of the Witch King with plenty of Spectres and Werewolves, Gwaihir Men of the West and a scary Fields of Celebrant combined arms list.
While these were some powerful lists, they were ones that we were fairly comfortable facing, especially in Hold Ground. The pairings process ended up going our way, with Alex’s Buhrdur smashing the poor Celebrant list, while Chris’ Lothlorien proved a solid counter to the Angmar. Mike’s Khazad-dûm probably weren’t favoured into the Dragon Emperor (piloted by Matt Iverson, who had recently won Adepticon with them), but classic Dwarven stubbornness, good dice and Dominant (2) saw them secure a comfortable win there as well. Ned’s Usurpers lost three Move-offs in a row to be boxed off the centre by White Hand, and Tyler’s BoFA in turn lost out to the Dominant (2) of MotW.
Luckily, my White Hand was very favoured into Alisher’s Shire in Hold Ground, and it delivered. I knew my opponent had a reputation for playing slowly, so I opted to rush the centre and box him away from it while he probably timed himself out. Winning Priority and getting to come on first – using Gale to half-move the Hobbits and force them to clump up – gave me excellent opportunities for Lightning on Turn 2, killing Hobbits by the handful and stripping both Fate off Rosie.
Saruman was then able to kill her with a Sorcerous Blast later in the game, denying Alisher banner VPs. However, I ended up giving up banner VPs of my own, after a cunning double-firework combo from Gandalf proned the Orc touching my banner before smashing the banner itself. Ouch!
Nonetheless, the Hobbits were pinned miles away from the centre, and without Rosie or the wound rerolls from their flowers (all too close to the centre to help) they didn’t stand a chance of breaking through my lines. In the end my birds and infantry scythed through the Hobbits so fast that the game ended naturally, with only one Hobbit having made it anywhere near the centre (and been shredded for his troubles). This gave me a solid 17:2 victory to start off the event in comfortable fashion, securing the team’s win overall.
Round 2: France in Divide and Conquer, 5:1
France were one of the scariest teams at the event, with a series of unconventional lists and a stacked team of talent. Their lists were filled with surprise twists, with their White Hand trading the Oathmaker for two Scout Captains, their Assault on Lothlorien bringing a pair of Warg Chieftains, their Khazad-dûm fielding a trio of Vault Warden teams, their Dale bringing along 16 Knights of Dale, their Lothlorien being 48 models of Pyjama Party, and their Minas Morgul including a whopping 11 Spectres.
This unconventional approach did bring with it problems, however, some of which we were able to exploit in pairings. The lack of Oathmaker and minimal Crebain made their White Hand much less reliable at shutting down monsters, which Tyler’s BoFA was able to exploit in a close victory. The low model count and single Windlance of their Dale meant is had less in the tank to handle Buhrdur’s ambush, allowing Alex to run away with that game too. The Minas Morgul Spectre-spam was scary, but didn’t quite have the punch to grind through Mike’s Dwarves, while the Lothlorien mirror-match (in which neither list had the Mirror) saw Chris box his opponent off the centre after he was forced to skirmish for 2 hours. Some spiky shooting from the opposing Khazad-dûm list did see Ned’s Usurpers melt too fast, however, and I was nervous about Assault on Lothlorien doing the same thing to me.
At deployment, however, I noticed that Ben had made a critical error: he had deployed Muzgur in the smaller section of his army, and not with Druzhag (with whom Grima was hanging out). That meant that I could Lightning a big chunk of Muzgur’s troops early and then dive onto them with basically my whole army, while the rest of Ben’s troops were out of the fight.
Slowed by the Gale and taking turns to shoot, they were unable to meaningfully impact the battle until after Muzgur’s force had been shredded.
This did leave Ben in control of all three objectives, but Divide and Conquer effectively gives 5 VPs for taking out the enemy leader (because they can no longer be within 3” of the centre for another 2VPs), so once I had broken Ben and killed Muzgur all I needed to do was contest the three objectives with birds or Grima and I would win.
As it happened though, Ben’s shooting was appalling, and I was able to secure a massive lead in materiel. Finally, on the first turn after I broke Ben, I won a Move-off to tag his remaining heroes and use my Fearful ability. That meant the entire C8+ army was forced to take Courage tests to both stick around and charge, and by the end of the turn the Orcs and Goblins were basically cleared off the board. This transformed what should have been a close-but-reliable win into a thrashing, and I felt somewhat bad for Ben’s appalling dice there, even as it gave us a decisive win over Team France.
Round 3: England in Treasure Hoard, 3:3
Our after two big wins now put us into Team England, last year’s winners. Pairings were a mixed bag here, with Tyler’s BoFA getting to face off against their Usurpers and secure a big win, while Mike’s Dwarves secured something of an upset win against the opposing Halls of Thranduil. On the flipside, Ned was once again thrown under the bus, this time to be hosed down by a Serpent Horde gunline. We felt more confident in Alex’s Buhrdur against Reclamation of Osgiliath, but it ended up falling in an extremely close game. Finally, Chris took a loss against Khazad-dûm as well, which was an unpleasant surprise and put a lot of pressure onto my game.
Luckily I was facing known mediocre player David Farmer, so I expected an easy ride. His Minas Morgul pushed up early towards his objectives, after I made a mistake in calling a Move with Saruman to try to snipe the Drummer with Lightning. I did set up a cunning assassination run against Kardush on the right flank (taking advantage of his added movement from the Drum to Compel him further into the open and jump on him), but he managed to fend off my birds and cavalry and survive an entire game’s worth of attacks.
I was more successful on the other flank, however, where the Orc Captain was Compelled forward to drop his relic and Gorulf was able to scoop it up. This meant that by the mid-game I was holding 4 relics to Dave’s 2, with 3 of mine on Saruman and the fourth on Gorulf. With a lone bird hiding in the corner resisting one Fell Light test after the next, I was guaranteed a win as long as I could hold onto the relics, even if Dave broke my army (which he did on the final turn, thanks to some brutal combat rolls).
As such, it all came down to whether Gorulf could survive against waves of Orcs, and whether Saruman could escape the Witch King. My screening Orc was Compelled away on a turn the Witch King was moving second, and a juicy Heroic Combat followed by a Move-off going Mordor’s way allowed the Witch King to get into my leader. I did manage to resist the incoming Transfix, however, allowing me to call a Heroic Defence and survive the attempted Morgul shanking. Winning the combat had also cost the Witch King his last Might, guaranteeing that I could move first on the next two turns and escape with Saruman.
Finally, Gorulf on the other flank hung in there, smiting Orcs left and right and securing his relic for a tight 9:7 victory that could have easily gone the other way.
This excellent game was just enough to pull us back to a draw, ensuring we ended Day 1 undefeated and excited for the next day.
Round 4: Poland in Stake a Claim, 2:4
Team Poland were a somewhat concerning matchup for us, with skilled players and a nearly-identical team setup to ours. In effect they had the exact same lists as us, with Alex’s Buhrdur swapped for a horrific Harad gunline that none of us really wanted to face.
Pairings went reasonably well, given those constraints, with Ned’s Usurpers getting their coin toss against White Hand, while Chris’ Lothlorien got to match up into a traditional BoFA list that it should be able to hard-counter. Alex was feeling reasonably confident into another Lothlorien, while Tyler and Mike both had shots into Khazad and Usurpers respectively. Overall, it felt like we had set ourselves up for success in what was effectively a mirror match.
My game against Cichy’s Haradrim started reasonably well from a points perspective, with the birds getting me an early lead in Fortification Points (although not the 8:2 lead I could have secured if I’d managed to win the Move-off on Turn 1 to half-move the Haradrim). I used my birds aggressively in the early turns to screen Cichy off the objectives, and did manage to secure a significant early lead in VPs.
However, a litany of small things went wrong throughout the game, with failed casts, losing basically all the Priorities and Move-offs, and the birds melting extra fast. Particularly frustrating were the two birds I flung into Cichy’s backfield dying to a handful of random warriors, preventing me from flipping or even contesting his back objective.
Both of my flanks crumbled far faster than expected against similar numbers, and in the end the game went on just one turn too long. This prevented me from doubling Cichy on Fortification Points, allowing him to sneak a narrow 5:4 win on Break and holding 3/5 objectives at the end.
This was unfortunately a fairly negative game from the start, with a lot of contested rulings, tricky measuring and general disagreements. Part of this was presumably down to the language difficulties, and another part the challenge of fighting over three objectives in the middle of a 3D river. I did feel that my opponent did attempt to take advantage of the situation at points, but I’m sure the pressure of a high-stakes international game wasn’t making me my kindest or fairest self either.
In any case, my narrow defeat felt extra bad because it undid the rest of the team as well. Tyler’s BoFA got out-Dominated by Khazad-dûm, while Mike’s Dwarves were successfully pinned away from the objectives by a horde of Crebain. Ned lost the critical first Move-off against Poland’s White Hand to get Galed and fall behind on points (losing by a single Fortification Point, heartbreakingly), while Alex and Chris were able to bully through and secure major wins. This meant that even a minor win from me would have won us the round, but alas it was not to be.
Round 5: Northern Ireland in Fog of War, 5:1
Pairings for this round started by throwing Mike somewhat under the bus, giving him a very mixed matchup into a classic Gûlavhar Shadows list. This did allow us to get Chris’ Lothlorien into an Army of Erebor that he was perfectly setup to demolish, as well as Alex into the Khazad-dûm that he’s well-practiced against. A bit of mis-pairing by Team Norther Ireland also allowed Ned to face off with their Assault on Lothlorien, while Tyler got to bully some poor Usurpers with his monsters. I gather Northern Ireland were really keen to avoid an Usurpers mirror-match, but in doing so they ended up sacrificing both their Usurpers and AoL players to unfavourable matchups.
This left me facing Raffaele’s Lothlorien, which was an intimidating sight in Fog. I’m normally quite confident into Lothlorien with this list, but in a scenario where they can sit back and shoot I was a bit nervous. Raffaele was lovely, however, and we had some good laughs as I sprinted up the board to meet him.
Luckily a combination of misplays and bad dice from Raffaele gave me an early lead, as his plan to Compel Grima to prevent me getting off a good Lightning failed and I was able to drop 5-6 models off the bat. His shooting then wildly underperformed, while my Crebain again laughed off Intelligence checks from the two Sentinels.
This meant I was able to cross the table more or less intact, before diving into combat with birds jumping the line and the horde descending. I even managed to assassinate his banner after a few false starts, taking away a key defensive tool for the Elves.
The Lothlorien line basically got slaughtered after that, but Raffaele did pull off some neat moves to try to swing things back a little. He managed to contest my terrain piece, while his Captain (my target) clung to life and even wounded the Oathmaker after Galadriel Compelled him into combat. Celeborn and Galadriel also copped some hits as the Elf line descended into chaos, but I needed at least one more turn after breaking the Elves to lock in the major win.
The dice opted not to comply, and we ended early with an 8:1 win to White Hand: 1VP off a major! Still, the rest of the team were able to pull through, with Mike’s Dwarves losing to Shadows of Angmar (entirely because Mike forgot which of his heroes he had written down to protect…) but the others picking up 4 major wins. That lifted us back up the rankings to have a shot at the podium. All we needed to do was take down the English one last time.
Round 6: Lions in Lords of Battle, 5:1
Team Lions (England's 7th-12th best players) has a similar set of Evil lists to ours, with Ugluk's traded in as an alternative to Buhrdur's. Their good lists seemed much more doable, however, with a Three Hunters Men of the West backed by standard Radagast's Alliance and Reclamation of Osgiliath lists. Looking at the matchups and boards on offer, we realised that Chris' Lothlorien was pretty happy in Lords into anything but Radagast's, so it went down first. That ended up with Ugluk's boys being thrown onto the turtling wall of Elven pikes in a chokepoint, which we felt pretty good about. Ned ended up in an Usurpers mirror match, while Mike's Dwarves had to face Reclamation to avoid the Eagles. This let us pair Tyler into Radagast's, where his own monsters would chew through the opponents' quick-smart. The Lions ended up avoiding the White Hand mirror match by pairing their White Hand into Alex's Buhrdur instead, which ended up being somewhat of a mistake.
I thus ended up facing Men of the West in the hands of Sam Grattan (from the Gollum’s Gamers podcast!), which on paper is a very favourable matchup for me. I’ve brutalised MotW with White Hand many, many times, and this variant had replaced Gwaihir with an easily-ignored Gimli and a mount for Aragorn (which was unlikely to last more than a turn or two against Saruman). However, discussions of the matchup had always had the caveat of ‘White Hand is favoured unless we’re playing Lords’. And, uh, we were playing Lords. Hmmm.
Luckily, dice luck can mitigate any number of matchup difficulties. The game started with a deployment mistake from each of us: I deployed Grima with Aragorn, while Sam put Legolas’ warband all the way on the other side of a big forest. My mistake impacted immediately, as I was forced to jink Grima backwards in order to get off a big Lightning against 11 Warriors of Minas Tirith (of which only 3 died, because the event was playing Lightning as affecting all models simultaneously and thus not breaking Shieldwall). Once Sam moved forward with the rest of his army, this left Grima out of the fight for the first several turns of combat. If I’d just deployed Grima with my own army then this would all have been avoided, and he still realistically would have faced no threat from Sam’s list.
As the MotW stormed forward, I peppered them with shots and then dived hard on Legolas’ warband, swarming them and wiping them out with minimal casualties as Sam’s own deployment mistake came home to roost. Legolas himself got trapped by 3 Crebain, only to roll a 3-high, decide not to blow all 3 Might, and get immediately flash-killed. This is why we buy the armour on our Legolas, everyone!
On the other flank, Aragorn had burned resources to resist the first Sorcerous Blast, before charging headlong into my lines. The Channelled second Blast managed to dismount him, and he then rolled a 5-high in combat against my handful of troops.
Sam made the probably-too-conservative call not to spend the Might here, reasoning that I only had 6 dice to wound and needed sixes. I think this was the wrong call in any case, because it kept his banner and best combat piece prone for next turn, but neither of us expected my random swings to do any damage to him.
So naturally I rolled 2 sixes and 2 ones, and rerolled both ones into 2 more sixes. Aragorn had to burn both remaining Might just to survive, and after I won the Move-off on the following turn Gorulf bopped him on the head and sealed the deal. Oof.
It was all largely cleanup from there, as I’d been carefully picking good fights to whittle down the Gondorians while their heroes were cleaned up. Gimli threatened a Combat through to get into Saruman, but another lost Move-off and a successful Transfix saw him also fall to Gorulf.
The game continued and the MotW ended up tabled, with Sam and I enjoying a good laugh over the final few combats as his army collapsed.
Sam was a delightful opponent, and I did feel bad for quite how devastatingly the dice skewed against him. In any case, it was an excellent way to end the event, made even more so by the rest of the team picking up 4 more wins to lock in a big team win. Mega-Boz did his thing and tore apart Mike’s Dwarves, but the rest of the team pulled out wins of varying size to fell the second England team.
With that win the mid-event submarine finally crested the waves, shooting Team Australia into an amazing third place! We ended up only a single point behind Team Germany and Team Bieda, who had knocked out Teams England and Poland respectively to secure their spots. It was an awesome finish to a great weekend, capped by excellent Aussie enthusiasm and a first place on Sportsmanship for Team Commonwealth (who had recovered to a respectable 3:3 by the end of the event, and clearly had a great time doing so).
Diving deeper into the statistics, our team had absolutely shone, with Alex, myself and Chris ending up in the Top 10 players overall (8th for me!), and all ending up with the best placements for our respective factions. Although that last point is probably a bigger flex for Chris and I than for Alex on Buhrdur’s! With our comically-large and shiny trophies, it was the perfect way to cap off an excellent holiday.
Event review
Nation’s Cup was a blast, and I’m so glad I went. The vibes were amazing, the venue was incredible, and it was beyond enjoyable to catch up with wonderful members of the hobby from all over the world. I had extremely flattering conversations with far too many people to shout out about this blog, which certainly gave me a lot of incentive to get this written up quickly (he says, a full month after the event)! Particular shoutouts to the delightful members of Team Denmark, with whom I had many excellent conversations and who even passed on one of their team jerseys.
The event ran really smoothly over the weekend, but I do think a bit more pre-event communication would have been helpful. The player’s pack and international FAQ dropped quite close to the event, and there were a few confusions about things like whether scenarios would be announced pre- or post-pairings.
In any case, it was an amazing event. Thanks to everyone involved in pulling together what must have been a mammoth task, and I’m keen to attend another one (although probably not next year – flying to Italy from Australia is expensive!).
List and team composition review
Starting with my list, it’s hard to argue with the eventual outcome of best-placed White Hand list. Clearly 46-model White Hand is the way to go!
Stepping away from the smugness a little, I do think the tweaks I took relative to the more common 50+ model variants at the event provided a lot of value. In short, these were to bring Gorulf rather than two Wildmen Chieftains (or Gorulf and a Chieftain at the cost of many less Crebain), and to go for more Scouts and Crebain rather than more total models.
Overall, these played out very well on the field. The extra birds made an enormous difference in Rounds 1 and 2, helping me pin the Hobbits well away from the objectives and swarm the weak Assault on Lothlorien corner. Having one extra bird was very handy for securing me a critical VP in the game against David Farmer, while bird screening was a big deal in getting me the early lead against the Serpent Horde. Jumping the Lothlorien lines with extra Crebain was critical in Round 5, and Round 6 was made dramatically easier by the extra Scouts (who were also very valuable against Minas Morgul in Round 3). Finally, the choice to include Gorulf was absolutely game-winning in Rounds 2, 3, and 6, and I didn’t really feel the absence of March or the extra Might points from a Chieftain in any of the games. March would have been nice in the Stake a Claim game but wasn’t likely to have made the difference there, and I never really ran out of Might points. The closest I got was against Minas Morgul in Round 3, where I had just enough to get Saruman out of dodge at the end – but without Gorulf, I wouldn’t have been able to keep hold of the left-most objective that I pilfered, flipping the scoreline back to a Mordor victory. Of note, the top 3 White Hand lists all had Gorulf, so clearly my view that he’s essential had some merit.
As far as the general question of ‘should I have brought White Hand’, I think we don’t need to spend too much time on it. White Hand remains the best army in the game under these conditions (veteran players at above 600 points), and there were absolutely 0 games this event where I wanted to have a different list. Even in the pairings process it did work, forcing hard pairings from our opponents and generally just beating whatever it faced anyway. Strong list, would bring again.
In terms of the rest of the team, I think our decision to go ‘unconventional’ with Alex on Buhrdur’s and Tyler on double-monster BoFA clearly paid off. Opponents clearly had no idea how to pair or play against Alex, and the sneaky Orcs and Trolls combined to achieve a number of wins that surprised both our opponents and (often) the rest of the team. And similarly, I think a lot of players paired and played into Tyler’s BoFA as if it was MotW, not realising the ways that the two monsters play together very differently to Aragorn and Gwaihir.
Chris’ Lothlorien had been on the chopping block a number of times in the team listbuilding process, but were kept in to answer specific listbuilding problems that the rest of the team didn’t want to face (and because Chris is excellent with them). In the end the pike block did what was asked of it, and there were a number of rounds where we were extremely grateful to have brought it along. Even in Round 1, not that many of our lists wanted to face the Host of the Witch King that Chris stomped.
Mike’s Khazad-dum broadly performed as expected: it provided an ‘anchoring’ sort of effect, by tanking whatever matchups needed tanking and threatening to spike up in a semi-random fashion. Day 1 was absolutely flipped our way by Mike’s dice running hot, and when the Dwarves started dying faster than expected on Day 2 it still left us in a decent position. The same factors that keep Khazad-dum from being a truly top list in singles make it an excellent pick for teams, and I’m overall glad that we brought it along. If nothing else, it’s one of perhaps two lists in the game with a solid answer to the swarms of White Hand players, which made it feel fairly obligatory.
Definitely the biggest question mark was our Usurpers list, in terms of eventual results. Now, a huge asterisk here is that we threw Ned hard under the bus throughout this event, taking on three Crebain lists, a vicious Serpent Horde gunline in a shooting scenario, and Khazad-dum (probably the worst matchup possible for Usurpers in an objectives scenario). A lot of our pairings process involved accepting that Ned might get tough matchups, and paying that price such that my White Hand or Chris’ Loth could get good ones. In that context, Ned’s eventual 2:4 seems pretty reasonable. Moreover, many of the lists he took on were ones that the rest of the team would have struggled with, so having Usurpers available to throw onto those grenades was valuable.
Probably the biggest lesson from it, from my perspective, was that we should have listened to the data more on the Usurpers/White Hand matchup. Ned and I practiced this matchup three times before the event, and my Saruman came away with two wins and a draw. We broadly attributed this to me having way more experience with my list than Ned had with his, noted that it fitted into the comic and unrepresentative trend of Ned’s and my games (in between podiuming at three of Australia’s most competitive events, Ned won perhaps one of our 20+ practice games), and emphasised how winnable each of the games had been for Usurpers. After all, on paper Usurpers has an excellent matchup into White Hand, having more F4, no heroes it cares about too much, better shooting and even more Crebain.
And we weren’t totally wrong, in that Usurpers absolutely has the tools to take on White Hand at its own game and put itself in winning positions. Where we went wrong was probably a matter of confidence more than assessment: Usurpers generally is favoured into White Hand, but the beauty of White Hand is its capacity to attach asterisks to the end of statements like that. Here, that asterisk is that Usurpers is favoured into White Hand * but White Hand tricks always give them a decent shot at winning anyway. Our pairings process was perhaps a bit too optimistic about Ned’s chances in the two White Hand games he played, such that things got a bit hairy when White Hand scamming did its thing in two extremely tight games.
Probably the bigger issue was that we came to the conclusion that we needed Usurpers in the team too late in the piece, so Ned only had about a month to practice the list. Being a machine, he still fitted in nearly twenty practice games, but more time (and thus more games) would have undoubtedly helped. Given the value the Usurpers brought in answering things like Ugluk’s Scouts and White Hand (otherwise a tricky matchup for most of our lists), this probably would have been optimal.
In any case, third place was an amazing result, and I’m so proud of everyone in the team for the effort they put in to achieve it. Next time, Germany and Team Bieda, we’ll be coming for the top spot!
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