Wargames Workshop is a great little place with two shops and I try to attend their monthly tournaments as much as I can. This month it was in Milton Kenyes, a modern shop with a rather large Tesco nearby. Great for free parking. But enough about that, let's go through the games.
Game 1, Incursion, vs Niell Sherry, Protectorate of Menoth
I'm guessing that it was Niell's first tournament but as he played I realised he knows the game very well. Hopefully he'll keep going and I can see him beating some big names. Today he was using Reznik and Kreoss2. I think Kreoss wasn't running his theme list and I went for the easy choice of Gaspy as Niell choose Kreoss with two knight exemplars, bastions, errants, vanquisher and Eiryss1.
I took first turn and the raiders claimed the centre area with Nightmare running behind with the blood witches. Niell sent exemplars up both flanks, bastions centre left and the vanquisher centre right as the left hand flag disappeared.
Time to jam up the errants with Ashen Veiled raiders so I can score on the right flag then. Blood witches went left to sort out Eiryss, they missed but she was engaged by two incorporeal witches so not much hope for escape there. The raiders started killing as many errants as possible while engaging the vanquisher and blocking the right exemplars from much of the board. Neill attempted to clear off the raiders from the vanquisher and mostly succeeded apart from one stopping the large pie plate of fire from landing nearby. Everything attacked what it could reach as a few of the blood witches exploded from the exemplars on that side.
My third turn and I decided to be aggressive. Gaspy gets up to the right hand flag to dominate as the raiders on that side attempted to deal with the exemplars over there. All but one were killed so I was quite happy with that though the last guy was contesting the flag. On my left the blood witches attack as much as they can and deal out a bit of damage to Niell's troops. Finally, Nightmare takes down the vanquisher and prey switches to Kreoss.
Niell takes the opportunity and Kreoss feats and charges Nightmare. With his armour piercing attack and a couple of follow-ups Nightmare is scrap and the rest of his troops start killing. Errants take care of the blocking raiders and the blood witches are decimated by bastions and exemplars. Then the last remaining right hand errant moves up to gaspy, taking two free strikes and surviving. He then swings and as he was under Kreoss' feat he had two, automatically hitting weapon master attacks. On perfectly average dice I think Gaspy dies. However, I lived on 3 boxes. (Barrie, the organiser was amused to see my panicked face at this moment.)
Anyways, my turn and I instantly take care of the errant with Gaspy and consolidate my position with mechanithralls coming from my back lines to do more damage. At this point Neill realises he can't get anything to contest the flag and we call the game there.
Things learnt: Don't rely on criticals or free strikes to save me. I was also slightly too far up. The pictures will show that I was actually on the far side of the flag. I shouldn't have been there.
Game 2, Process of Elimination, vs Hamish Chisholm-Brown, Legion of Everblight
Ever since going to Wargames Workshop tournaments I've mostly seen Hamish there as well. Great guy to chat to and play games against (even when he's been out the night before). This time around he had Thagrosh1 and Vayl1 to bring against me and I thought Vayl1 was out of the question (no beasts and the scenario is fairly active). Out came Gaspy again and Hamish took Thags (warspears, legionnaires (min), spawning vessel (max), scythian, and Ravagore).
He took first turn and legionaires took cover behind a wall on the right while the warspears took the left zone. The pot (spawning vessel) had position behind the legionaires and the ravagore was hanging at the back in the centre as the scythian went on an extreme flanking maneuver. I clarified if the legionaires had pathfinder and as they didn't the raiders went quite far up the table to bring them out. Blood witches were slightly restrained as they moved left and Nightmare swung out right to force the preyed ravagore to the left as well.
Hamish ran the legionaires into the raiders to jam them up and the pot took up the wall position. The warspears gathered around his end of the left zone and possibly threw a stick or two at the blood witches. Thags with his ravagore moved up to that zone as well. My second turn and it was time to turn up the pressure for scenario. Nightmare took care of the objective (needing a full focus load). The right hand necrosurgeon unit moved heavily up to surround the legionaires as the raiders took care of most of them. This lead to my necrosurgeon being full of corpse tokens as the pot stood there empty (closest model takes the corpse). The blood witches went incorporeal and flooded the left zone while Gaspy hung back to be safe.
Hamish decides to do something similar and with the warspears moving to clear a path, Thagrosh charged into the objective and smashed it to the ground while creating a couple of clouds from nearby blood witches. The pot moves into the zone as the remaining legionnaires take out a couple of raiders. The Scythian comes into the zone from the left and the ravagore stays at the back.
Time to clear the zone then. The raiders do their best to kill legionnaires but a couple remain. So instead of walking to the pot, nightmare tramples and after two purchased attacks the pot is done and the zone is empty. Three control points for me then. The blood witches attack the Scythian and block up the left hand zone.
But Hamish clears the left zone. After being told I was on three CPs he wanted to keep in the game so ran a couple of warspears across to the right zone and used the scythian and Thagrosh to clear the left. From the pictures I can see the ravagore in the right zone before this turn but I can't see it at the end game stage. So I think the ravagore also got into the zone. So to win all I had to do was clear the right zone. If the ravagore was in there I used nightmare to get rid of him. Wounded the warspears with raiders then finished them off with Gaspy himself. Win via scenario.
Things learnt:
Hamish was a great opponent and even graciously let me move a contesting model into the left zone after I had forgotten to do so. When I took down the pot Hamish hadn't realised that I only needed to destroy the vessel and not the acolytes. So I should have pointed that out at the beginning of the turn to give him the time to check the back of the card. But that's a minor thing.
Game 3, Close Quarters, vs Daniel Bearup, Cygnar
Another regular at the Wargames Workshop tournaments and another great guy. Don't know what they are doing there but keep at it. Anyways, last time I faced Daniel he was playing Siege vs Gaspy3 (same list). This time around he also had Haley2. I stuck to my plan and Daniel chose Haley2, with a couple of jack marshelled fireflies, sword knights, bonded stormclad and three stormcallers. Bye bye infantry.
Daniel had first turn and gets the Fireflies up the table with Pronto and running. I'd better attempt to deal with them. The sword knights follow and Haley with her stormcall take the left side. My raiders take the right flag but cautiously. Blood witches go towards the enemy's flag and Nightmare and Gaspy are slightly right but not too far due to the killbox and Anistasia De Bray.
And here Daniel's plan comes to the fore, the fireflies get to either side of my lines and the stormcallers deal very easily with my front line of troops. Haley takes position behind her flag and the sword knights take cover behind the walls. I know I can't take too long dealing with the light warjacks but I can see a route to Haley. A sword knight might block my way so I deal with him via the handcannons on my satyxis raiders. Nightmare is fully loaded with focus and goes in under Carnage to kill Haley. Charge attack hits as do all but one of the three normal claw attacks. But, by the end of it, Haley is left with one wound. Bugger. Because of the needing to deal with the sword knight and keep the charge lane clear the raiders are now slightly out of position and giving ground to Haley. All the blood witches can do is attack the left hand firefly putting some damage down there. Gaspy has feated though so should be fairly safe from assassination attempts.
The stormcallers do their best to kill a few more of my front line and then the sword knights jam me out of contest range for Daniel's flag. The stormclad deals with Nightmare so Haley scores a control point, and she has feated. So I've feated on the wrong turn. Daniel controls my turn fairly well and I kill as much as possible but Daniel is still able to score a control point. The reason I say I feated on the wrong turn is that I gained some focus from the feat but with Vociferon being outside Haley's control area I couldn't get an arc node to Haley to use it. At least I'm safe camping away.
Now the turns get slightly blurry as I try my best to get that last damage box from Haley but Gaspy cannot get anywhere close and I stupidly had Vociferon engaged by a stormcaller and can't risk the free strike. Handcannon shots and blood witches try to get to Haley but nothing works. Dice down is called a little bit later and though my mechanithralls had started to come through and kill a few things Daniel won four control points to nil.
Things learnt:
The major mistake was not keeping Vociferon free, and it's only after writing this report that I've realised this. Daniel had built a very good list and later I learned that he had designed the list to defeat mine in particular. It did it's job but I think I can see a way to deal with something similar now.
Game 4, Rally Point, vs Pete Boyce, Protectorate of Menoth
First time meeting Pete and another good guy. I know I enjoyed the friendly atmosphere, which is something I worry about giving back as a dirty Cryx player. Anyways, Pete had Kreoss1 and Feora2. Knowing how badly Feora can deal with infantry and having brought infantry heavy lists I thought I was buggered so I kept on playing Gaspy :) Pete chose Kreoss though, with zealots, errants, redeemer, a heavy jack (reckoner I think) and some support.
He had first turn and the zealots took the right side and the errants the left with the jacks and Kreoss in the centre. I run the raiders to my edge of the right zone and the blood witches to the edge of the left zone. Nightmare and Gaspy in the centre but I move my objective forwards so next turn I can move it into either zone yet still hide behind it. The raider captain also hides behind the objective, for no real reason at all :D
Pete shoots at a couple of blood witches with the errants while moving into the centre of the zone. The jacks hang back as the Zealots use their invulnerability to run and engage some of the raiders. My turn and I'd better deal with those two units first. Blood witches also use their mini-feat and kill a few of the errants as the blood hag dispelled Defender's Ward. The raiders have Ashen Veil put upon them, move into the right zone and engage as many of the zealots as possible to stop bombs. I also send in Nightmare into the reckoner but he only cripples it.
Nightmare gets killed by Kreoss and the reckoner as errants try to deal with engaging blood witches as best they can. The zealots also try their best to kill raiders but I think at the end of Pete's turn I still had 8-9 raiders and 4-6 blood witches. Having had the major threat to Gaspy crippled I moved him into the left zone and feated for some extra protection. The blood witches deal with the last of the errants in the zone and that zone is clear for me to score. At this point the raiders suffer a major failure and they only kill a couple of the zealots. Oh well, at least I have scored ahead of Pete.
Kreoss feats this turn but most of the satyxis were under the captain's protection and the ones who weren't were outside of Kreoss' control range. Gaspy was protected by the objectives as well so I wasn't in much danger of assassination. The reckoner moves into the zone but that's about it on the left side. Finally, the raiders kept dodging the zealots and again only 1-2 died. Unfortunately the raiders had a similar hard time of killing the zealots so only 3 or so of them were whipped to the ground. Gaspy camped everything he could and sent in the blood witches to deal with the reckoner some more.
Then around that time dice down was called. I win via my one control point.
Things learnt:
Not many people seem to use the rally point objectives as moveable cover. So I need to keep doing that to annoy my opponent. Other than that, maybe a bit better usage of combined melee to deal with those zealots.
After those four games Gav had played well enough to be the overall winner of the tournament so we stopped there. I came in second with a reasonable strength of schedule and a load of CPs. All the guys there were great and I hope to see them around elsewhere as well.
Oh and the next tournament there will be on the 16th of November.
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