WotNW League - Game Week 5 round up.

Week 5.

A bit quieter this week as schedules start to clash so just the three league games, but somehow I've written more words - go figure. Follow along here: wotnw.com

Home		Away	Stats Link
Euron Greyjoy	:	Vargo Hoat	Link
Harma	:	Loras	Link
Benjen Stark	:	Vargo Hoat	Link

Knowing which commander to play against who, based on faction and player rating has become quite the meta game, along with organising who to play when, with the reset coming up - or at least it has for the top few. Us plebs propping up the league are just taking games when we can.

Now I know this is a league round up, but as I'm writing it I'm going to talk about my game for a bit more than usual, my house my rules and all that. 

After last weeks shocker of an opener, and to ensure that I didn't once again flush my chances away in the first activation I did some practice openers on TTS, on my own by myself, just getting my first moves out of my head and onto the 'table'. Judging where stuff needed to go during deployment and measuring firing arcs to setup for my master game plan. This helped me develop quite the scheme, which I think it might be tricky, quite situational, needs good positioning, and requires me to bait Ste, but as I’m not playing for anything I might as well start trying some fun stuff/stupid.

 

 

 

Let me explain, Im going to move Jaqen attachment (in reavers) onto the objective, push bowmen up within shooting range of the centre objective, and then bait Ste into pulling over to the right and killing Euron, my commander, who will have moved up to the other objective. Hopefully the arrow wall and Jaqen will be less appealing than the tasty flankable commander on the objective. Then on to the meat of the scheme; have Euron die in turn two, then use Jaqens order to turn him into Euron. Followed by activating The ‘King of Salt and Rock’ Balon NCU to bring back OG Euron near the far objective, use my boy Wendymr to shift OG Euron over the token then drop the mic for 4 VPs (2 off each commander). Assuming Ste is also holding an objective, although I'm guessing not with his commander, then he'd have 3 to my 4, and would be on the back foot to stop that becoming 5-8. This however is where my game plan stops, at this point I'm hoping to basically hold on for one or two more turns score 4 vps per turn, and see the game out, maybe take out a unit if I get the chance, but holding is my main game plan. 

Let's see how that goes....

Deployment went well, I dropped my commander first starting my baiting plan, allowing Ste to place a strong unit opposite. Which he did with his commander, planning on using Vargos order to destroy Euron. Ste brought two Cav so it makes no real difference where he puts them, but he set up the middle with his Stark Sword Swords, nice I thought. Knowing he was heavily out activated (9v7) Ste took first turn and started planning for turn 3 immediately. I setup as planned and after making a brew we got going. 

You can see above how I planned to start out, I was expecting Ste to be a little more reckless - in future two bowmen is probably not needed, but he was (rightfully) very wary of the bowmen firing line, so we all just moved carefully up into a cagy position, I'd purposely left enough of Eurons flank open to make it look appealing but not enough to make it look like a moon  a trap. 

Turn two started well for me again with him spending all his activations to destroy Euron, despite all this Euron annoyingly didn't die. So on two wounds I chose to take the bags and remove the weakend token from Vic’s Bowmen! Again I was hoping I wasn't being too blatant but luckily Ste just assumed I'd forgotten about the crown. So he very kindly took the crown and killed Euron, Joy. A couple of more manoeuvres took place before I used Jaq and Balon to copy Euron and bring OG Euron back. At this stage I was extremely happy with how this was going for me, unfortunately though Ste had moved his sworn swords onto the objective, ignoring firing squad, the Tully Cav onto another and used his surge forth to move back onto a third objective, this meant that Ste hit 5 VPs to my 4, rather than the 2-4 or 3-4 I'd hoped for. 

Turn three, I had the momentum but not seeing the wood for the trees I lost the game on the first activation. Vargo could see maybe 1mm of my OG Eurons tray, which was very lucky for Ste but panicked me, as it meant I was flankable, which this time I did not want, so focusing on keeping OG Euron alive I played devious methods to rotate him round, but to do this I activated the Reavers facing the Stes Flayed Men, here in lies todays mistake. I should have charged them into his flayed men to keep them tied up and - and thus indirectly protecting OG Euron. Ste later revealed he was bricking me charging in and was delighted when I didn’t, knowing that he could charge my commander and take him out with attacked and with assault orders card. 

Had I charged the turn could have ended 9 or 10 to me. I'd have kept the two points from OG Euron, two points from JEuron, killed his Sworn Swords thus taking me to 9, maybe 10 if I could have managed to hold the centre, leaving Ste on 8 or 7 if he'd moved his Tully Cav off the objective to contest one I was holding. But obviously this is wild speculation, as I could have charged in failed the charge, missed all my bowmen rolls and saw Ste kill both bowmen with his Cav. 

 

And that was it. A very short game, Nothing in Turn one, Shenanigans in Turn Two, Ended in the first activation of Turn three. Think it all took an hour. I'm pleased with how I played though, I didn't see the reavers not charging as a game changer, maybe a little more thought here and I would have noticed but I didn't fuck anything up this week so that's an improvement!

Dale vs Col, was the second match up this week, I’ve not heard much from either of them this week so I I'm just going to make my own review up.... Smoke billowed as Dale entered the room flanked by his entourage, he’d brought his game face. The lights panned down silhouetting his figure in the doorway against the dark background of the Liverpool Streets. He reached for his duelling glove and approached Colin. No? Ok, Benjen vs Vargo, the result looks rough with Col bringing his A game trying to chase Ste down and beating Dale 10-0, the game was fast and furious so no pictures in everyone’s haste it seems. Cols two units of ranger hunters did their shitting out attacks routine and those Ranger Vanguards outflanking cavalry meant it was ‘absolute slaughter’. I feel for Dale here, he’s playing into a competitive list against a competitive player, who’s on the back foot to catch Ste at the top of the league, and given how I was slaughtered by Col last week I know how it feels. A tough match up to be sure.

Also this week was Greg vs Ray, Rays league chances require him not to get beat but obviously Greg is keen to find his first win, so there’s much at stake. They’d chosen Dance of Dragons and brought Harma and Lorras to the table for the fight.

Greg sent me quite a nice review over, which I don’t want to dilute with my crap sarcasm, and poor attempts at humour, so I’ll hand over to him:

End of turn one Ray had prepared for round 2 by taking advantage of having his commander on the token whilst positioning to charge with champions of stag.

 

Sure enough, the Champions of the stag charged the spearwives dealing out a few wounds. The wives retreated to get the heal combo but this meant Greg had fluffed his combo with the raid leader. Having rolled the retreat dice and it being a league game both Colin, from across the room and, Ray shouted “no take backs Greg” (this is important). 

The raiders still charged in and used co-ordinated tactics for the extra hits. Petyr was constantly blocking the horses for endless horde and clever Penrose play kept Greg from healing.

The rose knights got overgrowth on them giving Harma the advantage for charging, reducing the Cave Dweller Savages  rank by one giving them +1 and extra dice….nice!
The chariot also charged the rose knights but it didn’t go as well with 4 wounds to the chariot.
5-5 end of 3, and it felt as close as it looked.

Round 4 is when it all really kicked off.
With a stale mate in the middle of the field, re-group and reform was used to switch Harma and Rattleshirt to get the 2 point objectives but this obviously meant Harma was out of the fight. The chariot retreated and the Cave Dweller Savages did fuck all. The stags eventually tore through the raiders and the spearwives and turned to move towards the Cave Dweller Savages. 

End of round 4 8-8. Close. 

The game was on a knife edge….
The chariot took a hit and got a retreat off.
The knights moved closer.
Endless horde saw the spearwives re-enter the arena behind the wardens, ready for a flank charge!
They charged and dealt 10 wounds in total.
Ray retreated but only then remember he had final strike in his hand “no take backs Ray” hahahaha
And this way the beginning of how Ray lost the game.
A crown zap saw the rose knights drop the token after they had activated, allowing the chariot to take it from them. The Champions of the Stag failed a 3 up charge into the spearwives leaving the FF to pick up 3 points to the Baratheons 2 ending 11-10. - Greg 

 

So if you made it this far, well done and thanks! But you’ll have noticed I didn’t win and I also didn’t review and Red Dwarf, not wanting to break a promise, to you Dear Reader, here’s a very short review of Polymorph; ‘the best episode from the best series, 9/10’.

The results and standings leave only two in contention for the title with the rest of us fighting for scraps. Col and Ste have scheduled in to play each other on the last game, which could potentially be the decider.  

- Aden

P.S. thanks to Ste for sharing his turn plans for me to sketch on the pics :)

Home	VP	DP		DP	VP	Away	Stats Link
Euron	6	0	:	10	11	Vargo	Link
Harma	11	0	:	19	10	Loras	Link
Benjen Stark	10	22	:	0	0	Vargo Hoat	Link

Which you can follow here: wotnw.com

Current League Standings
Player	Tag	Faction	GP	W	D	L	VP	UPD	VPDiff	SP	Pts
Ste	Psychoste	Starks	7	7	0	0	79	149	57	22	21
Col	Kolco	NW	6	5	0	1	65	106	30	20	16
Ray	Mr Ray	Bara	5	3	0	2	55	68	41	14	11
Andy	Lord Robbo	Targs	5	3	0	2	46	55	37	13	11
Brian	Bannockburn	Neutrals	5	3	0	2	45	63	37	10	11
Dale	DK117	Starks	7	1	0	6	36	73	65	6	9
Aden	Spykr	Greyjoy	5	1	0	4	34	48	45	7	7
Alex	Avandijk	Lann	3	1	0	2	27	22	34	4	5
Greg	Greggers	FF	3	1	0	2	23	0	37	2	5
Jamie	Rudesby	Lann	4	0	0	4	21	0	48	2	4