WotNW League - Game Week 6 round up

   Hi, I'm Aden and you may remember me from infortaining battle round ups such as 'WotNW League - Game Week 2 round up' and 'WotNW League - Game Week 5 round up'. This week we’re looking at the continued spiralling of my results, along with two other players getting battered 13-0 and 15-0. 

Here's this weeks fixtures, just the three games this time, and due to other commitments only two of those at JustPlay 

Home		Away	Stats Link
Roose Bolton	:	The Mountain	Link
Tyrion	:	MoD	Link
Daario	:	Victarian Greyjoy	Link

    With only 17 league games remaining and just two players in contention the outcome of a lot of these games is less important now, but it's been a wild ride trying out all the stuff I would never normally have played - looking at you Theon Greyjoy. We've got a lot to think about how we run these leagues and plenty of lessons learned to discuss.

Like last week I’ll start with my game, again my blog my rules. 

Me vs Ray, Victarian Greyjoy vs Daario Naharis, Honed and Ready. Unlike last weeks pre game planning and thinking, this week life got in the way so I threw two Vic lists at the challenge and turned up to play Honed and Ready against Mr Ray.

    My game plan was simple enough, outflank with Vic in Ironmakers waste whatever unit was near that objective by hammering it on 3+ and twice with Bronn's Bowmen then advance up and hold it. All other units could just fight stuff and contest objectives. Ray's pre game plan was to slow down my big units and try to double up on attacking my other stuff, grab the center objective with the Rose Knights and drop tasty combos on anything engaged with them. 

You can see above our plans on deployment, nothing too exciting.  

    Turn two really saw things kick off, here's the start of turn plans after turn one panned out pretty much as everyone had expected. Sadly though Rays card's weren't angled quite right for me to get a naughty look at them after this taking this photo ;) A lot happens in T2, so there's lots of words to read, grab a cuppa and some biscuits.

   Ray was planning on using my outflank to his advantage, he'd setup such that once I attacked, he would soak up the damage then retreat onto the token, to score the points. Clever. I outflanked with Vic and then changed my mind on what to attack, Ray was convinced I was after his Wardens, because I couldn't see the archers - which is reasonable. But with Wednygod in my NCU line up I knew a sneaky 3" shift would allow me to remove those archers off the board with the Ironmakers, Vic and my own Bowmen in one turn. Then allow me to move Vic up into the Wardens. But foolishly I announced my plans before actually doing it, so Ray got a shot off against my Trappers before his Archer got engaged. It was brutal was well, scoring all of his 6 of his 7 hits and then 3 off the panic, leaving Asha and Qarl with one lone trapper. The worst aspect of this was that he only got the shot off because I'd measured my Bowmen to be out of his Archers range, then dumped Asha next to them without any measuring and stupidly pivoted slightly exposing that red circled corner to his attack - dumb move Aden. Remember ‘measure twice, pivot once’. I shot in with my Bowmen to soften them up ahead of before moving Vic into their bum, but got nothing. The bum move knocked them down to 5, with Vic's second attack off the swords, using sustained Assault (re-rolls) only taking 4 more out. Bugger. 7 dice hitting on 3s, in the rear, with re-rolls only managed 4 wounds.1 man standing, and of course they passed the panic. Stubborn swines. I was a little upset I have to say. 

   

    Ray healed up in his turn and I decided to throw my trappers at Daarios’ Rose Knights, looking for a nice bit of Expert Dualist, to really screw his game up. Needing a 6 to charge in, I once again used Wendmyr to reduce that to a three, then promptly rolled a 1, Bollocks. Luckily though they ended in a position where when charged The Rose Knights didn't fully overlap the token, meaning unless they died immediately then Ray couldn't claim the objective, unluckily they only had three wounds left. So Ray sent in the Rose Knights to dispatch Asha, which obviously they do, but all followers of the Drowned God know that What is Dead May Never Die, so Asha and Qarl stood guard of the objective marker and tying down his commander until I shoved the my Flayed Men up his arse (Daarios, not Rays!), in the rear all the cards surely a dead unit? But no. Passed his panic and stayed alive, bugger. 

    Ray then did some very clever heal and attack combos, healing off the bags gave Asha one wound, killing Qarl. I then did the afore mentioned unsuccessful Vic into Archers attack. Rays Knights then attacked my flayed men meaning he managed to kill off Asha by healing one more wound to Daario! Very clever combo-ing.  

    Turn two ended with me taking max wall damage on my Bowmen and Ray taking one wound on his Wardens, Yay!

    Turn Three. 2-1 to Ray at the start of turn three, even with everyone's plans being pretty straight forward with most units being engaged, you can see in the images, there's plenty of options. Ray's plan here was to kill the Flayed Men as quickly as possible, then move onto the objective but he needed to own the bags to make all this work! As Daario is boss from having the bags. So, Ray took the bags and my Flayed Men promptly died, but somehow left Rays Rose Knights away from the Objective - can't quite remember how, lets assume it was good play by me*. I took the swords but Rays goddamn Archers still didn't die because he dropped Courtney’s order (not for the first time) to force more healing. Another attack from Vic (We Do Not Sow!) still didn't kill the bastards off - thanks a lot Tycho. 10 points tied up the entire game by some lowlife Achers. Whilst keeping his Archers alive Ray had turned them to face, thus exposing their rear to my Bowmen. Dead at last! Huzaah! But sadly not much use, as Vic was now lost in no mans land, and couldn't really go anywhere, not even the bloody objective. I used Balon to bring back Asha, and then realised I'd no Wendy Tokens left to move onto the objective, sigh. Ray charged and killed my bowmen taking the objective off me  - I didn’t think Ray would take this option, given the bowmen would die from the walls next points scoring anyway, had I done I might have approached with Vic and set up for Round 4, but as he did he stopped me scoring, killed a unit and scored the points himself.

Turn four saw us at 5-2 with me on the back foot in both the scores and the board.

    It was all looking pretty for Ray at this point, but I took the horses and moved the trappers right up to Daario, passing over the token - all or nothing right? On my activation charged and assassinated him with Qarl, ha! plus nearly wiping the unit, had I done one more wound here the game would have flipped in my favour, as his Rose Knights would have died. Leaving two units each, but with me having a commander in play. I didn’t do one more wound did I though and Ray followed this with more Courtney healing which brought the Daario unit back up to two ranks. I’d lost at this point so kind of stopped caring until I realised I could be wiped, sure enough the Trappers took it face on from the Rose Knights leaving them on a single wound, which Ray promptly followed up  with another heal! Once again killing Asha with Deadly Bloom, and truly cementing the fact that There is no rose without a thorn. Vic followed soon after, after some fighting with the Champions of the Stag, signalling the end of the Game. A great game which could have gone my way a couple of times with a bit more luck. It was very swingy and twice was in my favour, but ultimately ended like all my other recent games, in disappointment, resentment and despondency. Luckily I’m and Evertonian so have been trained to deal with these feeling over many decades. 

   Matches like this always leave me wondering if I’ve taken the actions in a slightly different order or if I’d have done something ever so slightly differently could I have got through that one extra wound, it's these close calls I like about Song, and what stopped me getting too upset about having no units left at the end of the day. Kudos to Ray on some fantastic combo-ing skills, he really knows Baratheons inside out and I was pleased just to keep pace with him, despite getting wiped, and the score being 8-2. Plus for sharing his game plans with me (and you), for me to add to the images. 

    Game two: on the list of weekly matchups was Andy vs Jamie. Andy choose to bring Mother of Dragons to fight with Jamie and demonstrate to our newest player that there are some occasions that this game is far from a fun experience. As you would expect the game was over quickly with Tyrion falling 15-0 against Daenerys Targaryen. I'm not going to dwell on this for long, but having myself been smashed in a few times against MoD and the Khal Drogo list I do think that there is some rebalancing to be done, not a lot mind, because I enjoy that there are power levels within the factions, MoD is easy to pickup and win with, this is good because it levels the playing field when one if playing against better players. This is great for casual play and I can't wait to start running friendlies again, where we can use list match ups to better level the experience. The flip side is because MoD, Khal and Othell lists are so good they get used at competitive matches to win games, it makes for a really bad play experience, and isn't enjoyable for anyone. There's not much else to write on that game though, Dragons are tough for anyone to deal with. 

    Game Three: (and four!) Brian managed to squeeze in two games this week, one league and one friendly both on the same night! His league game was a absolute cracker, Roose vs The Mountain in another Honed and Ready match, and is well worth the read over on his blog. here's a teaser:

His second was to play another prospective Warden, Dom who got in touch with us on facebook after coming down to JustPlays last tournament. Both games are nicely reported so go read before you look at the results/table at the bottom of this page and then come back.

Wrap-up:

It's been a low effort write up from me this week, because I spent most of my time playing this big beautiful bastard:

For anyone who's made it to the bottom of this page the above game is Twilight Imperium 4th ed, and in my opinion is a much smoother game play than 3rd, comes with an easier to follow tech tree and is significantly more streamlined in it's game play, but somehow still requires 12 hours to play. If you have 5 friends, the biggest table ever and a weekend to play I highly recommend it. 

That's the lot for this week, here's the results

Home	VP	DP		DP	VP	Away
Roose	0	0	:	31	13	The Mountain
Tyrion	0	0	:	31	15	MoD
Daario	8	33	:	7	2	Victarian Greyjoy

and here's the current standings:

Player	Faction	GP	W	D	L	TP
Ste	Starks	7	7	0	0	21
Col	NW	6	5	0	1	16
Ray	Bara	6	4	0	2	14
Andy	Targs	6	4	0	2	14
Brian	Neutrals	6	3	0	3	12
Dale	Starks	7	1	0	6	9
Alex	Lann	4	2	0	2	8
Aden	Greyjoy	6	1	0	5	8
Greg	FF	3	1	0	2	5
Jamie	Lann	5	0	0	5	5

Now you've read Brians Reports, (you have haven't you?) can you believe how bad his dice where! It looks like Alex played really well and took Brian to town. Alex having played only 4 games really stands a good chance of finishing strong, and could land third place.

Don't forget all the previous battle reports, links to other reports and the live league is located here: wotnw.com

gg's, Aden.

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* Ray has since pointed out the actual series of events here..... The Rose Knights retreated from the Flayed Men to prevent them from dying. The Flayed Men where engaged with the Champions of the Stag too so they couldn't move, however because it was a retreat he couldn't do anything but straight line, which meant no objective, but it did allow him to position for a flank charge. So using the horses shifted then charged the Flayed Mens, they too enjoyed some drown god love, and what is dead may never died (most annoying card in the game?) The Champions of the Stag then finished off the Flayed Men, meaning they couldn't charge Vic on the surge forth. And that's the story of how his Rose Knights didn't get the objective, good (but unlucky) play by Ray, not by Me. Thanks for the correction Ray.