I have a serious backlog of tournament recaps to work through, so I’m starting near the end, with a recount of my adventures at Cancon over the Hottest 100 long weekend. After a long battle with temptation, I had finally given in and taken White Hand to a tournament. Would they be as bonkers in my hands as they have in many others? Have a read and find out!
[Note: this report was written pre-FAQ, aside from an addendum at the end. So the (very minor) nerfs to White Hand were not in effect.]
Tournament Format
6 games at a whopping 900 points (Legacies allowed), with scenarios chosen before the event but not announced and a ban on multiple fire-breathing Dragons in the Moria list. Honestly a good call, that list is silly good at 900. The event also had a 3-round doubles event at 1207 points on the following day, from which you’ll get to enjoy a writeup at some point soon.
Listbuilding
My initial plan for this event was Defenders of the Pelennor, relying on the firepower of Legolas and Bolt Throwers to draw my opponents in to my swarm of ghosts and cheap heroes with free Heroic Combats. It was a spicy list, and one that I will probably play more in future, but I did find it a little short on the sort of tricks that I find exciting. A list doesn’t truly feel like mine if I can’t pull some shenanigans out at the last minute to turn a game on its head, and that line of reasoning ultimately led me on an inexorable journey towards…
This list is a
little silly, and was the result of a process of gradual exploration and the
realisation that Crebain really are That Good.
Much of the list
needs no introduction, with the core of Saruman and Grima and all of their
insane tricks in this list being the menace of many a tournament scene. The
bulk of the warriors (mostly Scouts, Orcs and Wildmen, with a few Dunlending
Warriors and Cavalry for points/objective play reasons) are
moderately-efficient troops that hit fairly hard for their cost. The Oathmaker
combines best-in-game Might efficiency with a 6” bubble of Fearless and
board-wide Wound rerolls, while Gorulf is great at troop-munching, hero
tanking, and the occasional assassination run. The Chieftain is a clear step
below the other four heroes, but a couple of cheap Might for Marches or Moves
and some warband slots are always appreciated.
Where the list gets silly, and how it is able to excel at 900 points (notably above the traditional White Hand stalking grounds of 600-750 points) is the 13 flocks of Crebain. These little beasties are honestly cooked, providing incredible mobility, tricksy special rules, surprising damage output and incredible durability. This list ends up with more than 100 Wounds/Fate, half of which are on models that can’t be knocked prone or trapped, and that level of tankiness just takes forever to grind through. Over the 32 practice games I played with the list before the event, there were only a handful of games where I broke, and many more where opponents wasted their whole army’s damage output into birds and I still ended the game with most of them on the table. They tip this list over the top from ‘flexible and powerful but fragile’ to ‘actually horrific to face’. Exactly what I was looking for at one of Australia’s largest and most competitive events.
Meta analysis
I received a slightly early peak at lists in order to
prepare the stats breakdown for Mountain Goat Gaming’s list review video,
and they were eye-opening. A whopping 13 Men of the West lists were the
highlight, complemented by a swathe of effectively-identical Battle of Five
Armies lists and many other hero-heavy builds.
Huge absences were Army of the White Hand (effectively just
my list, plus a much-weaker late submission) and Depths, with only one
Watcher/Balrog combo. A total lack of Dragons, Dale or Defenders of the
Pelennor, and a dramatic fall in the number of Dwarf lists since Masters were
the other big takeaways.
Feeling cautiously optimistic
after a long string of successful practice games, it was time for…
Round 1: Host of the Witch King
in Lead from the Front, 13:2
Nick’s list was actually a bit of a concerning one for
me on paper, with a Crown of Morgul Witch King making his 13(!) Werewolves
extra hard to deal with. He also had the edge on me in Heroic tiers, so I’d
have my work cut out for me on the objectives.
Luckily, a combination of shooting pressure and some mistakes from Nick saw the Werewolves committed too early and in multiple waves, allowing me to swarm them in small groups and quickly whittle down their numbers.
Saruman continued to Compel the Witch King away in order to let the
Oathmaker’s bubble affect my centre, and without the protection of Terror
Nick’s lines melted.
The Shadow of Rhudaur did manage to cling to life to hold the right objective (contested), but I was otherwise able to shred the Angmar army and secure a strong victory to start the tournament.
Round 2: Moria in Retrieval, 15:0
After a solid first win, it was on to Antony’s spicy Moria
list with a high model count, Drum, and the classic Druzhag/Drakes combo.
This game was one of my strongest of the event, and
displayed White Hand’s ability to exploit even small mistakes with devastating
power. To start with, Antony deployed clumped up to March on his left flank,
allowing an early Lightning to hit ~16 models and kill 12 of them. This
immediately removed the threat of the horde pushing through on that flank,
allowing me to whittle down its surviving Goblins while the Cave Drake was
neutralised by Saruman’s magic.
In the centre, meanwhile, my shooting had drawn
Antony into overcommitting his Goblins, and the classic White Hand one-two of
‘birds swarm the spears while the troops and heroes smash the frontline’ saw the
warband effectively wiped in two turns.
On the centre-left, Antony had screened his Drum
with only a single Goblin, allowing me to peel it with a bird while the second
destroyed his 75-point banner. It was a huge swing, and I ended up committing
more birds here in an attempt to take out Druzhag. The Moria leader was not to
be taken out so easily, however, eventually Combatting through(!) one bird with
the help of a Bat Swarm and remaining standing at the end of the game.
Without the Drum, however, Antony was unable to
break my left flank, with Gorulf’s warband assassinating a Captain early and
then chewing through Goblins thanks to their banner rerolls and higher Fight.
The nearby Drake was also roundly neutralised by my tagging it with Fearless
Wildmen, alongside some careful and somewhat comic anti-Barge screening.
Finally, with Antony’s army crumbling on all fronts and cavalry and Crebain streaming through the centre, Grima revealed his true allegiance, snatched the relic and ran for it. Antony and I had spent much of the game joking about the Goblin perspective of their buddy Grima hanging out at the back to guard the relic, and the (predictable) payoff of the joke was both funny and effective.
Grima handed the relic off to a Dunlending horseman,
who legged it for my deployment zone and just made it before the game ended.
This completed a fairly brutal demolition of a very cool Moria list, which I
felt some degree of guilt over. Oh well, onto the next round!
Round 3: Battle of Five Armies in
Command the Battlefield, 7:5
I’ve now played Alex Colesante a whopping 5 times in
tournaments, and prior to this game I had neither been outplayed by him nor
managed to take the win. In a suitable bit of irony, this would be the
exception to both of those trends.
The game nearly started with Alex handing me a free win, winning Priority and initially choosing to give it to me, before he gradually puzzled through the fact that I would use Gale on the first turn and absolutely shred him with Lightning on the second. He corrected himself just in time though, and ended up coming in spread all along one board edge.
I opted to bring in Saruman on one flank to threaten his
Laketown (picking off three Dwarves with Lightning as I entered), while
bringing Gorulf and the Oathmaker in on the other side of the board to keep
Alex spread and fighting on two flanks. My plan was basically to attrition him
down to the point where my massive numerical advantage would let me auto-win
the scenario, while assuming that his heroes were likely to rampage fairly
untouched.
This plan started reasonably well, with a noticeable early
kill lead developing and Alex pinned thoroughly in the corner. However, things
went dramatically downhill on the third turn, where I made a trio of extremely
silly mistakes. First, I left the Oathmaker unscreened and just in range of
Gwaihir, who burned two Might and won the Move-off to get into my now-Mightless
hero. Ouch. Second, I rolled to bring on the Wildman Chieftain before I’d moved
Grima, so I couldn’t get my 6” bubble of double-spending within range of
Gwaihir. And third, I left a gap just large enough for Gwaihir to jump into
next to my newly-arrived Chieftain, who turned out to be about 11.5” away from
the big bird. Alex called the Combat, got the sixes he needed in both fights,
and took two heroes off the board in one turn. Ouch!
Elsewhere, the warrior fights were going well enough, with
the Laketown being wiped out and enough Elves and Dwarves falling to Break
Alex. However, my efforts to quarter him were stalling out, and the longer the
game went on the more that I would struggle to keep him pinned into his
starting corner.
As such, I decided to quarter myself, swinging Saruman
around a building to be out of line of sight of most of my troops (after
Transfixing Gwaihir to make sure he couldn’t Barge into my safest quarter) to
turn off my own Courage bonus and let just enough of them flee to end the game.
Luckily the lone Wildman in the far corner did stay, but I
made one final boneheaded play: I’d casually thrown my last cavalry model into
the top-left corner, not even bothering to move my full distance or dismount because
he seemed clearly in. But a subsequent measure at the end of the game saw him on
the line not over it, meaning that a quarter I could have held
effortlessly went unclaimed. Aaaaargh!
Still, I’d managed to hold two quarters to Alex’s one, and even
with my extremely silly play my list’s power had been able to drag me over the
line. It definitely wasn’t how I had expected the game to go, but sometimes you
just have the stronger list for the scenario and it wins in spite of you.
In any case, it was then off to the social night, where I
had a delightful time catching up with far flung friends and talking shop.
There were even good vegetarian options, which is always a pleasant surprise
for a pub meal.
Suitably knackered, it was time for bed before Day 2 of
Cancon…
Round 4: Battle of Five Armies in
Assassination, 9:6
The next round was basically a rematch of the last one,
in that I was facing Tyler Deleon (Alex’s fellow Mountain Goat, and another
prolific tournament winner) using an effectively-identical list. This time
around we would be in a much harder scenario for me, so I would have to make at
least a few less mistakes than against Alex.
Luckily, things went much smoother this time around. Tyler
clumped up a bit too much early, so an underperforming Lightning still managed
to chew up around 6 Laketown, and the initial shooting as Tyler pushed up
traded fairly evenly. Gwaihir and Beorn swept forward with the Dwarves, but
Saruman’s magic managed to neutralise Gwaihir reasonably well and I didn’t give
him any targets as juicy as in the previous game. My swarm descended on the
warriors and Tyler’s army melted, with his list Broken by the third turn of
combat while I was still at least fifteen kills away myself. White Hand
absolutely shreds elite lists like this one!
From there, the game turned on a handful of key errors
and dice swings.
First, Tyler had brought his Laketown Captain (my
obvious target) forward into too exposed a position. This meant that instead of
facing birds in the backfield, I was able to get into him with Gorulf (my
assassin) while a Dunlanding cavalry charged into him from behind.
Second, that Dunlanding cavalryman should have been a
Crebain, because Tyler’s Legolas (who had gotten the Might-less six he needed
to survive a Crebain swarm on the previous turn) was able to shoot into combat
and kill the horseman to untrap his Militia Captain. Gorulf and his friend
ended up needing to Might to a six to win the combat, and then were one pip off
the third Wound after Tyler passed his Fate roll with no Might in the tank.
Damn!
Third, I had kept my Dunlanding Chieftain safe in cover
for one turn too many, forcing the Oathmaker to call Moves on Turns 2 and 3 of
combat. As such, he had been forced to stay in Beorn’s line of sight, allowing
the bear to Wound me twice with Hurls. I passed my Fate with two Might to
spare, but it gave Tyler a Wound on his target with his assassin.
And finally, the game ended on the very first turn it
could. As a result, both of us had Wounded our targets with our assassins, but
neither had gotten the kill, and I could only scrape a win through Break/un-Broken.
Had the game continued I was feeling very confident, with 5 Might on the field
to Tyler’s effective 2 (both on Beorn, and thus unable to affect anyone except
himself) and around 35 models to Tyler’s 10, plus Gwaihir being out of Will to
resist Saruman’s continued barrage. But it was not to be, and the Laketown
Captain got to cling to life long enough to deny me the major victory.
Still, a win is a win, and I was feeling great moving onto Round 5 having beaten two of the best players in the country. Up next would be an especially tricky matchup, however…
Round 5: Army of Erebor in
Breakthrough, 9:9
My next opponent
has a bit of an unfortunate reputation, and with 49 Erebor Dwarves (plus Bofur
to shut down most of my tricks!) in Breakthrough I was in for a difficult time.
It was genuinely my worst army matchup at the event in one of my harder
scenarios, so I was feeling nervous!
I recognised immediately that I couldn’t afford to get into a straight battleline clash with this many Dwarves, so I executed a massive refused-flank manoeuvre over the first few turns. I used my Lightning to hit a dense section of Dwarves and kill 5, before pivoting almost my whole army that way and throwing everything into that flank. I also used a Crebain/Sorcerous Blast combo (costing me two of Saruman’s Will and Might) to take out the Dwarf banner early.
This all allowed
me to get a strong early lead in warrior kills, and took much of his list out
of the fight for the early game (especially after I was able to half-move them
and stand Grima in annoying places over subsequent turns).
However, things had
already started going wrong, with Gorulf taking three crossbow shots on the
approach and being reduced to no Fate and 1 Wound. He promptly botched against
a Dwarf and had to Might to win the fight, before going into a Might-less Bofur
with the support of three warriors and being straight up killed through Heroic
Defence. Oof!
Elsewhere, some big
swings in the backfield had seen my Crebain melt faster than I normally expect,
while Nori’s flank had finally gotten into my back lines to start dealing
damage. A lost Move-off let Nori get into Saruman and buddies and do three
Wounds off three Attacks, although I at least managed to survive the following
turn after losing another Move-off. The carnage across the board had seen both
of us Broken, and the skirmishes on the far flanks ended with all of our models
fleeing from the right objective while his Dwarves still held my backfield.
On the final turn I
was moving second, and all my heroes were pinned to let my warriors flee. Or
rather, all my non-Grima heroes were pinned, with the sneaky little dude
passing his Break check and using his Stand Fast to keep critical Crebain and
Orcs around to hold both the Dwarf backfield objective and the left one.
In the end, I was
able to narrowly scrape out a draw, with the early deaths of the banner and
Gorulf balancing each other out, and the flukey Wound on Saruman compensating
for holding two of the remaining objectives to the Dwarves’ one.
This game had a decent amount of the things that I’d been warned to expect from this opponent, and wasn’t my favourite game of the event. Nonetheless I was extremely proud of the result, with my massive strategic plays early being the decisive factors that swung a probable major loss all the way to a draw.
Round 6: Arnor in Convergence, 14:3
Luckily I had an excellent final opponent lined up in
Ryan, whose Arnor were another of the lists I was most scared to face
going into the event. Convergence would give me a leg-up, however, with my
list’s superior mobility and tools giving me strong initial plays.
These started out as expected, with Lightning chipping a few warriors out of Arvedui’s flank before a Heroic Move from Saruman let me half-move the whole Arnorian army to prevent them picking up two of the Heirlooms on the second turn (as well as forcing a Might out of Argadir to March and pick his up).
This allowed me to dismount my two cavalry behind a
wall of Crebain to secure two of the Heirlooms, while Ryan abandoned a third as
Gorulf and the Chieftain’s warbands descended on it.
From here, we ended up in a scattered fight all across
the board. Over on Ryan’s side of the board, Malbeth and Aranath’s warbands
gradually ground through my rearguard that I had left on that flank, while most
of the rest of their models began the long walk to the centre. The remaining
warriors on my side were jumped on and slaughtered, although they did delay me
enough that I ended up needing to call two Combats with Gorulf and the Chieftain
to get them into play.
Over near Arvedui was where the real meat of the fighting took place, with my local numerical advantage letting me get ahead early and eventually assassinate Arvedui with a Gorulf Strike and a swarm of warriors.
However, his warriors and the wounded Captain nearby held on
valiantly, and as Malbeth’s troops arrived I found myself fighting a battle on
two fronts. Stalling with Crebain let me hang onto a position close to the
centre with 3 Heirlooms in my grasp, but things were starting to go wrong.
That wasn’t helped by a cunning Heroic Combat by
Aranath, pivoting himself and two Knights all the way around into my backfield
to force me into defending yet another front. I received a bit of luck on the
Move-off there to keep Aranath pinned, and was also able to take advantage of some
aggressive play on Ryan’s part to get into Malbeth with Gorulf and the
Chieftain and take him off the board.
Finally, as both of our armies crumbled, Ryan pushed
Argadir (delayed until this point by an Heirlooms Transfix and a sneaky Saruman
Compel) into combat to try to break through. Out of Might and Will, however, I
was able to pin him with the Gorulf/Chieftain tag team and hack him down,
claiming the fourth heirloom in the dying stages of the game as my army
collapsed around me.
This was an absolutely awesome game, with all of my
tricks on full show as the relentless green tide whittled me down. Ryan was a
delight to play against, and I’m definitely keen for a rematch.
With 5 wins and 1 draw, this left me as the only
undefeated player at Cancon! Alas, my minor wins against Alex and Tyler were
about to come back to bite me, as I ended up falling out of the podium by a
single TP and all the way to 5th. If I convert either of those wins
to majors then I win the event, but such was not to be my fate.
Still, I was extremely happy with an undefeated run that included two of Australia’s best players and two of the hardest matchups for my list. And at least Ned sneaking into third meant that one Canberran had gotten some prizes!
Tournament Review
Cancon has been amazing both times I’ve attended, and it was
a delight again. Things ran as smoothly as a tournament of this size can, the
boards and prizes were excellent, the various TO rulings across the weekend
were reasonable and well-justified, and the social night was as enjoyable as
ever. Great stuff from Stuckey, Aleisha and Chris!
List review: is White Hand A Bit
Much?
So, it turns out White
Hand is pretty strong. Who knew? More seriously, I think this run did highlight
a few related shifts in the White Hand meta.
To start with,
White Hand has traditionally been considered strong in the 600-750 range, where
you can fit in the tools you need while getting a major numbers edge over your
competitors. Above 750 the conventional view was that the list fell away
because of diminishing returns in what it could field. But clearly, this list
was not suffering from diminishing returns!
That’s primarily
because Crebain really are That Good, and ‘just add more Crebain as the points
levels go up’ turns out to be an extremely strong solution to the diminishing
returns of extra troops. More Crebain means I have truly silly objective play, can
utterly disrupt enemy battlelines, and reach levels of durability that frankly
shouldn’t be possible. At lower points and with less birds White Hand feels
like a list with strong output and good tricks but a fairly weak jaw; with this
many Crebain flying around the list simply isn’t fragile anymore. Their ability
to peel spears and kill surprisingly often is also critical: I managed to Break
all six of my opponent’s this weekend, including against lists as durable as 49
Iron Hills Dwarves or 59 Arnorians. If you’re building a White Hand list right
now and wondering whether to include more Crebain, I guarantee you that the
answer is probably yes.
I won’t dwell too
much on the rest of the list, because it is something of a known quantity at
this point. Saruman and Grima and all of their tricks in this list are
game-winning, the Oathmaker is at least 30 points undercosted, Gorulf is
absolutely silly good (even if he’s somehow a controversial choice – most lists
would kill to bring this guy, and yet people choose to take Thryadan or Vrasku
over him?), and the warriors are solid enough to fill out the list’s damage
output.
Putting all of
those together, you have a list that is legitimately too strong. I have played just
under 40 games with the list in total (including more than a dozen against the rest of Australia’s Nation’s Cup team!) and lost none of them, and that
isn’t a thing that should happen. [Edit: since Nations Cup, this number has made it over 60, and now includes a single 5:4 loss]. It can win grinding battleline clashes
against its theoretical hard counters, absolutely stomps some lists out of
contention entirely, and is nearly unbeatable in any of the manoeuvring or
object scenarios. It’s also specifically strong into both Depths and Men of the
West, which is obviously extremely relevant at the moment.
There seems to have
been some amount of community consensus recently that the days of White Hand’s
glory are past, and that they only need a light touch in this month’s FAQ. I
fundamentally disagree, and can only assume this consensus to be a product of
Grima’s deceitful counsel. They’re perhaps a higher-skill army than Depths or Men
of the West, but in my view they are at least as potent. The February FAQ will
hopefully tone them down, but if they only cop a glancing blow then be ready
for this list to wildly outperform in the coming months.
[Edit: the February FAQ did, in fact, only give a glancing blow to White Hand, and they are, in fact, continuing to overperform. None of my games this event would have been significantly impacted by the small tweaks to Grima, and I expect this list to continue overperforming post-Nations Cup as well.]
Tournament Wrap-up
I had a great time at Cancon, and was super happy with the
run. I got to play some great games against amazing opponents, and (mostly) was
very happy with how I played them. My undefeated run may not have gotten me any
prizes this time around, but luckily there was doubles (coming up next article)
for that!
Until next time, may your mistakes always come in games where you’re favoured enough to win anyway!
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