Week 9 Bumper Special Package!!
- league winners - friendly games - battle reports - special guests - memes -
Week bloody Nine, not in all the Seven Hells did I expect us to get this far this quickly. Anyway, I'll cut to the chase, Cols win against Alex earlier this week meant that the League would come down to one final match, top vs second, Ste vs Col, winner takes all. Not only would the winner be crowned one true warden, but he'd also be taking home Rays beautiful trophy AND these WotNW themed dice!! Would ya look at those….oooooo.
So, a Stark vs Nights Watch (Ste v Col) battle for the trophy. With Ste on 24 points, unbeated and Col on 22, with one loss, anything but a defeat would see Ste roll those dice every week until the next league, but because of Colin's higher SPs a win would see him pip Ste to the top spot taking the glory by a nose.
Game 1. ‘For the League’ Honed and Ready
Both guys had saved their best commanders for this match, Eddard Vs Othell. Col had, as expected, lined up in the typical Othell fashion, protecting the conscripts and tight to the corner protecting the flank from those Tully Cav, whilst Ste had man-spread across the whole board. I know from experience Ste likes to mix things up in deployment to hide his aim, counting on the extra Cav movement to get himself into his actual position during turn one. I guess this was no different, he also dropped a couple of corpse piles, for those conscript panics.
Honed and ready, deployment sorted, and fist bumps done, the game kicked off with Ste. Both players shuffled stuff around in what was a tense the first turn, and finished as below, nothing much happening everyone was now ready for the war to come having drunk some tea and moved some trays.
Turn 2 Colin took the horses and deployed the outflanking Vanguard behind the Stark Bowmen. In response Ste, used Littlefingers once per game ability to control the horses and then dropped him on the bags. On Colin’s next turn Ste played swift reposition moving Eddards Honor guard into view of the outflanking Vanguard, which then activated and charged the rear of the Bowmen, 8 wounds, but Ste wasn’t done doing stuff in Cols turn and dropped ‘Fury for the Fallen’ - what a great hand Ste had here - allowing Eddard to charge.
The Sworn Sheilds, the Bowmen and Tully Knights saw off the Vanguard, and whilst attacking in short of Edward healed up some wounds too, tidy. Nights Watch Crossbowmen took a pop shot at the Sworn Sheilds after the death of the Vanguard. Turn ended 2-2 with Othell on the center objective and the Knights on the right (or left depending how your imagining this in you head).
Turn 3 saw everyone attacking everything. Another Swift Reposition and the Swords allowed the Sworn Shields to charge the rear of the crossbow men for 6 wounds, Col healed up then moved Othell into position ready for his next activation. The specifics of the battle here are lost to the mists of time, but the Tully Cav managed to charge Othell getting shot by the crossbows in the process, Eddard then charged Othell too, leaving him on 4 wounds. Shooting from range Stark Bowmen also shot Othell who suffered only one wound but failed the panic test and suffered 3 more wounds! Dead. The round ended 3-3 with Nights Watch controlling one objective.
Turn 4: With the armies scattered not much happened in round 4, other than the Tully Cav getting killed! Crossbows shot at them, then after they ran away they got crowned, taking three wounds and being collected from the board and placed back in the box. With both forces having now lost their big units, the game was starting to tighten up. Seeing Colin heading for the other objective token with his crossbowmen Ste marched his own bowmen into range of the conscripts, awaiting the next round. His earlier use of Swift Reposition bit him here as at the end of round 4 he was overlapping, but not covering, two objectives, so with no one on any objectives the round ended 4-3 to the Nights Watch. Then Ste lifted from his deck his auto panic pass cards (Norther defiance), seconds too late to save his Cav!
Turn 5 saw Starks take the swords, killing off the conscripts, pew pew. The NW crossbows responded leaving the Stark Bowmen on 1 wound! In a desperate bid to save them Ste manoeuvred them away but Col still managed to kill them off and moved onto an objective taking him up to 6 points, Starks moved Eddard onto another now having two objectives with sworn shields on another taking them to 6 points as well. Round 5, 6-6, Tight.
At this point the game came to a grinding halt as the players realised that it could very much end in a draw. Much discussions with the T.O., Greg, took place to determine who’d win what. As per the league document a winner in the event of a draw would be determined by the unit cost left in play, remember anything but a win for Col would see Ste take the top dog award.
Turn 6 With the Armies depleted the remaining forces now occupying objectives, crossbowmen and wall attacks was all that was available to the players. Eddard took some from the crossbows, bringing him down to one wound, and the Crossbows took it from the walls but healed up. Sitting on an objective each, the game ended 7-7. A draw! 9 Weeks, 39 games, over a thousand points destroyed and the whole thing ends in a draw. Madness.
But someone has to win, so with 13 pts left on the table, Ste took the win against Colin’s 10 pts, and thus took the league, and we now all have to suffer hearing about it for the next year ;) So there we have it, here’s the winner taking home his little bag of plastic dice.
The other league games this week, included a cracker between Ray vs Alex, Col vs Alex, and Myself vs Greg.
Euron vs Rattleshirt, Fire & Blood
Me vs Greg, Greyjoy vs Free Folk. I'm still smarting after my last few loses (and general lack of wins) so I spent a bit more time thinking about game tactics and list planning before the game this week.
Luckily for me Greg was on his last commander before his refresh, so I at least knew what sort of list he would likely be running. As such, I went for Fire & Blood and choose another panic based list, this time with Euron, Roose might have been a better panic choice with his 'spread fear order' but I wanted to have some extra fun by stealing his Endless Horde card. Greyjoy Horde FTW!
Deployment. Corpse piles, lots of corpse piles, this was all I'd managed to plan on a terrain despite watching two hours of Tourney Ground terrain analysis last week (my main takeaway from which was Chris’ “pick whatever it doesn’t matter” summary).
Greg deployed first and sat himself behind a wood in the corner quite far back - 'Annoying' I thought, but before I had chance to place my first unit he changed his mind and moved it up to front and center - claiming that he 'doesn't come down every Thursday to turtle in the corner' - 'Excellent' I thought whilst drumming my fingers together and grinning manically. We then all lined up, marked some Bowmen, Reapers, Spearwives and Bonelords.
Turn 1, had a super cagey start. Playing the panic game I wanted him to move up to me, so he was always near the corpse pile and so that I didn't just get charged into oblivion by that chariot, Greg knew I was playing the panic game and didn't want to expose himself so also didn't want to start by moving up, as such we all just kind of shimmied around for a bit. Until, wham, I unleashed Wednygods order on the Bolton Bastards Girls and smashed into his Spearwives faces. Have it. Thanks to Erik the Silenced Men had pillage, and with Ramsey Snow giving BBGs Intimating Presence Spearwives where facing a -5 on their panic, corpse piles FTW. The whole event (2 attacks and thus 2 panic checks) dropped them down to one remains wound. Had I had re-rolls, thanks bog, I might have rolled one better on the charge and they'd have been smashed off the board.
After all the shimmying and Spearwife beating, Greg pulled off a brilliant move using Diversion Tactics' to sweep through my lines with his chariot then swizz it round and be in the rear of three of my units and the flank of another - something to ponder. But being second player I wasn't that bothered as I had the first turn to react next round (double tap those spearwives). To finish Greg charged the Reapers, needing a 3+ and sadly only getting a 2, but amazingly passed their panic despite Silenced Infamy.
Turn 2, all hell broke loose, and unfortunately for Greg it was looking bleak. Opting to ignore the Chariot I decided to dispatch the Spearwives with the BBGs off the swords and surged forth passed the Followers of Bone. We then both spent the best part of ten minutes deciding how I needed to rotate to be out of line FoB, moving removing, getting laughed at from across the room because despite everyone else being on turn 4 we'd just managed Turn 1 and a bit. When happy I could be out of line of sight we notice BBGs would be less than 1 inch away, FFS, that’s time I'll never get back in my life. At this point I pivoted to prevent a flank charge from FoB, but opening up the flank to the chariot. This, I was hoping, would stop Greg ramming the chariot up my commanders rear. Keeping his chariot options open for now, Greg charged with the FoB into the BBGs, doing some decent damaged, knocking them down to 3 wounds. I countered by Tycho-ing, and then to everyone surprise, including my own, took the horses to retreat the BBGs turning them to face the flank of the marked Rattleshirt.
Greg then charged his Chariot into the BBG taking the flank bait against moving into the rear of my Silenced men - phew. I was willing to loose the BBG at this stage but unfortunately for Greg his rolls weren’t great and he couldn’t manage to take them out. Euron activated charging the chariots rear and obviously mushing it to dust. The writing was on the wall at this point. Free folk Raiders charged the reapers to try for at least some points. BBGs flank charged Rattleshirt and his Bonelords Chosen ruining them on the panic. Greg retaliated with Followers of Bone finally ending BBGs reign of terror. Bowmen with 'We Do Not Sow' and their activation got two volleys off against the rear of FoB leaving them on two wounds. With only one activation now left Greg had a choice to make, to crown or not to crown, the decision was made difficult by my earlier use of Mind Games on the crowns (if he takes it I may also do the action), this left him the option to take the crowns and have me use it to zap his FoB or to just nod off the NCU. Seeing that he’d get wiped if it went to round three Greg chose to crown zap me, and give me the option to crown zap him and end the game. As we’d be playing for two hours at this point I opted to zap them, unbelievably though he rolled a one on the white, dragging the game out into round three and sealing his fate of being wiped out.
Turn 3 - Few attacks wiped the FF out, nothing exciting or unexpected in this round, other than Colin pointing out that 'maybe turtling in the corner on a Thursday is sometimes the right thing to-do'. Game ended 12-2, rough.
Honestly probably the best I’ve played to date, the game mode, Greg’s remaining commander plus his decision not to sit off in the corner and attrition the win all really played into my hands. I also didn’t make any really bloody dumb mistakes for a change, which was nice. This is the third time I’ve run the silenced men and I feel like I’ve got a really good handle on how I run them, I’ve tweaked my list to be more efficient but suspect I could drop Bronn for someone else, and the BBGs for Blackguard. Greg played some nice manoeuvres but once his Spearwives fell and he failed the reapers charge it was inevitable I’d win.
We also had Brian vs 'Special Guest' Carlo who was up for the Ribble Rumble Compo at the weekend (now finished) Pop over to Brian’s blog to read all about that 'friendly' fire and blood match, and look at both of those beautiful painted armies.
Alex and Ray where also playing fire and blood (the best game mode?), but for league points! Alex came out the blocks strong.......
....but unfortunately ended up loosing 10-6 in a game that could have gone anyway. This means that with Rays one remaining match he could beat Colin to second place! Here's the summary of this weeks matches:
It’s been a wild ride, there’s still a few games left to play, which we may or may not do, and which I may or may not write up.
Over all it’s been great to have something to drive games and to force list variation, but not something we’ll be doing every month! There does need to be space for friendly matches and trying out weird stuff without worrying about the result. So I think we'll be taking a long break before the next league, but I'll be at the JustPlay Event on the 8th of Jan, along with a few of the others who'll be warming up ahead of the Winter GT.
Well done Ste - Psychoste.
If you have been following along, I hope you've enjoyed it and thanks for taking the time to read my written diarrhoea.
Aden out.
Excellent write up Aden. Glad to see you winning with em, as I'm currently nought from five with Greyjoys...
ReplyDeleteHoping I've turned a corner. They are very swingy though. The standard we have to play against doesn't help though does it!
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