Well met dear travellers and welcome to another of Dr Grant’s word-count-tastic forays into the world of the UK SBG tournament scene. This time we’ll be discussing the Shadow and Sorcery tournament held at Titans Wargames Club in Finchely in March, it was only a one day event but the organisers still managed to cram 5 games into the schedule, in addition there was an awful lot riding on this tournament so there’s lots to talk about so, as ever, we’re gonna be here for a while. Surely by now you know the drill? Find cuppa, find biscuits, find sofa, COME WITH ME.
So we come to it at last, the great battle of our time…
The board was set, the pieces were (soon to be) moving, after 12 months of competition the inaugural season of the GBHL had reached its climax, this tournament would decide who would be the first ever winner of the Great British Hobbit League! Going into the tournament there were 3 potential winners, Tom Harrison and Ed Ball were tied for first place, whoever finished highest out of the two of them would likely take the trophy. However, lurking in the shadows was the Great Giblin himself, GBHL Jamie! Jamie was third in the league and had a chance of winning but it was out of his hands, he would need to win the tournament and have Ed and Tom both finish no higher than 4th in order to win - no easy task! From my point of view, gong into the tournament I was 5th in the league, I could potentially steal 3rd place from Jamie but to do so I would need him to finish 5 places below me which, given he was attempting to win the tournament, was deeply unlikely. However, my real aim at this tournament was to claim 4th place in the league, Sam Jeffery was above me in 4th place but we were very close in points, no one else could catch us so whoever finished highest out of the 2 of us at this event would claim 4th in the league - exciting stuff!
Perhaps the strangest thing about this tournament, and something that raised the stakes yet further, was that, as the finale of the 2013 league AND the 4th tournament of the 2014 league, league points earned at this tournament would count towards both years’ league. This was a hangover from the fact that the 2013 league started in March and, whilst strange, ensured that Shadow and Sorcery was the most important tournament of the GBHL so far!
The tournament was 350 points and it didn’t take me long to figure out what to take. I knew I wanted to be competitive at this event and that could mean only one thing - my trusty Feral Isengard would ride to war! I really rate this build at low points values as I think it’s incredibly hard for most armies to deal with so many 2 attack models. I had had my first real taste of league success with my Ferals at the same event in March 2013 and that had actually been the event that sent me down my well-trodden Ferally path! That had been a 300 point tournament and my army had lost only one game out of five on its way to 4th place. It was a relatively easy task to expand the list with another 50 points of troops and left me with the following list:
Vrasku (leader)
6 crossbowmen
Shaman with Armour
8 Beserkers
4 Ferals
349 points
4 Might
Break point 10
The eagle-eyed amongst you might notice an unusually large percentage of Beserkers in my army and you’d be right, because of the likely meta. Ferals are best against S2 shooting and S4 combat as their D5 gives them the same chance of survival as the Beserker’s D6. Having a think about the armies people were likely to bring I realised that this was unlikely to be an issue: Tom and Jamie would likely bring some combination of Wood Elves and Gondor/Woses respectively whilst Ed would either bring his Fell Beasts or his Hobbits. That meant an awful lot of S3 shooting from the elves and an awful lot of S3 combat from, well everything really! Also, the local meta has swung somewhat over the last 12 months thanks to the new Hobbit releases, away from the S2/S4 Evil armies and towards S3 heavy good armies. I was expecting to see a lot of Laketowners, a lot of Erebor dwarves and a lot of Mirkwood Rangers, all of which would be S3 heavy and so the Beserker’s D6 (rather than the Feral’s D5) was likely to be incredibly helpful. I felt really dirty about turning my back on my beloved Ferals but I just thought the Beserkers would serve me better at this event - we would see!
The Saturday evening before the event my flat was invaded by team GBHL for some top quality good times, James and Jamie (along with with Ed Ball and Tom Harrison) all headed round for an evening of fun and frolics. We ate our body weight in pizza, drank twice our body weight in beer and filmed a bunch of unboxing videos for the channel including this one where around the 14:30 mark I make my tournament prediction….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc32xToFYRwSo there you have the proof, I thought I would come 4th in both the tournament and the league, a strong finish to be sure but still settling behind Tom, Ed and Jamie thanks to the cheesy beard strength of their armies. James and I spent the rest of the evening watching a bizarre game of smoke and mirrors play out as Ed, Tom and Jamie attempted to bluff and counter-bluff each other about which armies they were bringing along. This only ended when James had the good sense to record a tournament preview vid where we would all announce our armies and get them all out in the open, if you’re curious to see how the various guys rated their chances then check out the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpG4VjfmfnEAs you may have noticed in the video, 4 of the 5 of us had Alfrid in their forces which wasn’t a huge surprise as it was only the second tournament since the model had been released (I felt like the shining white knight being the only person on the vid who didn’t have Alfrid!). This led to the slightly amusing discussion of how many Alfrid’s there would be at the event in total and, such was the debate, that we decided to place a bet on it with everyone putting in £5 making a tasty £25 prize for whoever got it right! I cant remember exactly what the other guys picked but their guesses were between 7 and 13 as memory serves. However, despite the fact that I knew there were at least 5 Alfrids going for sure (Owen had also tipped me off that he was bringing him) I had more faith in humanity and plumped for a conservative guess of 6. It was a fun little bet that gave us something else to get excited about going in to the tournament!
So with the relative tension diffused we all settled down to a nice relaxing game of Bugman’s, with the amount of tense SBG action that was bound to take place the next day I think we were all happy to restrict our gaming to some drunk dwarves staggering around a pub throwing chairs at each other! Learning an important lesson from our last tournament (where we went to bed at 5:30am the night before), we all called it a night around 1am and headed off to bed to prepare ourselves, physically, mentally and emotionally for the trials ahead…
Sunday morning brought a relatively bright and early start around half 7 (although I’m told that Jamie inexplicably woke up around 6am and started packing the bed away!), we hit the road and arrived at the venue with about 45 minutes to spare. Again, much better than the last tournament where we’d rocked up about 2 minutes before the first game! As is always the way, hands were shook, hugs were hugged and it was good to catch up with so many fellow gamers. The SBG community really is going from strength to strength in the UK and we’re developing a fantastic indie scene, the Shadow and Sorcery event at the ever popular Titans was clear evidence of this as no less than 32 gamers had rocked up making it the biggest indie event in the league’s history - great job guys!
Other Damian and Chris from Titans had done a great job in building a really themed event pack around the Desolation of Smaug and Gandalf’s exploits in Dol Guldur in particular. The scenarios posed a real challenge and did not necessarily favour one style of army over any others, it would certainly be an interesting day as each player tried to find their way through the 3 rulebook scenarios and 2 custom scenarios.
As the draw was announced for the first game of the day I couldn’t help but smile, I’d been drawn against Sam Jeffery - my main competition of the day - It seemed that one of us would get off to a flying start in attempting to finish above the other! Sam had brought a variation on his traditional Moria army with something like: Durburz, a Captain, a Shaman, a Cave Troll, a Warg Marauder, 10 Gundabad Blackshields and 10 Goblin Spearmen. Sam’s a great player and he’s used his Moria army a lot over the years so I knew this wouldn’t be easy. The scenario was a modified form of Reconnoitre, you scored VPs for breaking the enemy and killing the leader as normal but instead of 1 VP per model that escapes the board you scored 1 Vp for getting more models off than your opponent, 3 VPs for getting twice as many off as your opponent and 5 VPs for getting three times as many off. It’s a nice change that changes the dynamic of Recon somewhat as it forces you to try and break the enemy/kill the leader as well.
Things started off well for me as I got most of my warbands on fairly quickly and some of Sam’s were delayed, I think he had to use a fair bit of Might to get on the board too. My main worry was that he outnumbered me and so could just attempt to run past me (although the large number of points invested in the troll and marauder mitigated this somewhat). With this in mind I pushed up the table quite far to fight Sam as far away from my table edge as possible. When the armies clashed I was fortunate with the priority/Heroic Move rolls and was able to get the jump on his Marauder and kill him fairly early on, this was a great relief as Marauders can be very destructive on the charge and their 10” move could easily allow Sam to run him off the board. Sam’s Cave Troll was also clearly drunk and fluffed his attack dice against a single Beserker 2 turns in a row. Gradually over a few turns I was slowly able to gain control of the left flank, overwhelming his goblins with my crossbowmen whilst the Ferals/Beserkers held up Durburz & the Cave Troll in the centre. I was able to break Sam and started to clear up his remaining goblins, no-one was near the board edge at this point and things looked fairly comfortable for me. As the game wound down I got a bit too complacent and left Vrasku far too close to Sam’s Cave Troll and after defeating the Beserker he was fighting the troll Barged him out of the way and charged Vrasku! Fortunately, Sam only caused one wound on Vrasku but it was terrifying how close I’d come to losing my leader right at the death. Thankfully I’d also managed to get 3 Beserkers surrounding Durburz and after beating him in combat was able to kill him granting me a 6-1 win. It was a really fun game played in good spirits as ever by Sam, he’s a great player but I think he had too many points tied up in the troll and Marauder for the Moria Horde to work well at this low points value. Still, it was good to get my campaign started with a win!
After the first game I had a wander round the tables and started counting Alfrids and was rather delighted to see that there were a grand total of 5! Yep, the only people who had brought Alfrid were the 5 that we already knew about - HOORAY, not everyone is a slave to cheese! That meant that my guess of 6 was the closest and I took great pleasure in taking £5 each from Tom, James, Jamie and Ed - cracking start to the day!
So as round 2 started who should wander up but the Southern Dunedain himself - Mr Sam Page! Sam’s a good friend and we regularly travel to the Northern tournaments together so I was happy to see another friendly face rock up to the table. My Ferals have got a 100% win record against Sam’s Hunter Orc army and a 100% loss record against his Erebor army so I was quite relieved to see him turn up with a tray of squishy D4 orcs! Sam had brought Fimbul with 12 Hunter Orcs, a
Shade (!) with 10 Angmar Orcs with spears and 3 Fell Wargs. It was an intimidating battle line, 12 hunter orcs supported by orc spearmen with a shade behind, I would need my guys to really perform to get through this! The scenario was To The Death and knowing that Sam didn’t have any missile troops I set up as far back as I could to give my Crossbowmen the most time to lower Sam’s numbers. I started off by shooting at the Shade through 2 ranks or orcs in a desperate attempt to kill it before the lines clashed. However, after a few shots bounced off (6s to wound) I changed tactic and decided I’d be better off killing the 2 Attack Hunter Orcs running towards me so the Shade wouldn’t have any troops to buff. I must say my Crossbowmen absolutely shone, across about 3 turns of shooting, my 8 shots per turn accounted for 8 dead Hunter orcs - I was overjoyed! This meant that when the lines finally clashed I was pretty much pairing off each Feral/Beserker against a single orc spearman, even with the Shade Sam’s forces couldn’t stand up to the sheer number of dice I was rolling and gradually his numbers crumbled and I broke his force. Sam wasn’t giving up yet though and Fimbul called a Heroic Combat to charge Vrasku and hopefully get some VPs for killing my leader, Fimbul killed the Crossbowman he was fighting and barrelled into Vrasku. In the Fight phase Vrasku had to use all of his remaining Might just to draw the combat, Fimbul then won the roll-off and killed my Vrasku! My leader was dead in one turn to only 2 Attacks - with Fury and a Fate point! This was the second tournament in a row where Vrasku had unexpectedly gone down to a 2 dice attack (the first being Game 2 in my Best Event Ever review if you’re interested) and I gnashed my teeth in frustration! However, by that point it was too little too late for Sam and with my army closing in on the Shade and Fimbul Sam’s force was reduced to 25% and I won the game 5-3. It was a match-up where I would always have been the favourite (My S4 2 attack models and S4 shooting just rip through the D4 Hunter orcs) but it was great fun and played in great spirits by Sam throughout, another top game and I marched into game 3 on 2 wins!
Game 3 was a custom scenario called Spawn of Ungoliant. A giant spider on a 60mm base was placed in the centre of the board, each turn it essentially became one of the player with priority’s models (so if you won priority you could move it but not charge it). You got 3VPS for killing it and the usual VPs for breaking the enemy and killing the leader, the deployment was done in the same way as Hold Ground. I was drawn against Owen Wright (Cereal_theif), a great player and a great friend so I was happy with the draw, I was less happy with Owen’s army, Owen had been playing with a Battle of Five Armies theme this year and turned up with Legolas leading 11 Mirkwood rangers and Alfrid leading 12 lake town Guard (or thereabouts). I was immediately worried as Owen’s 18 shots a turn would be able to make a pin-cushion of the spider. Alas, my fears were confirmed, deployment went well for both of us and our whole forces turned up together at opposite short edges of the board. Unfortunately, Owen then went on to win priority for 2 turns in a row, moving the spider towards his army, out of range of my crossbows and shooting it to death easily. I must admit at this point my heart sank, we were about 5 minutes in and as far as I could see Owen had won; to have any chance of winning I would have to kill Legolas and break Owen’s army whilst remaining unbroken myself and keeping Vrasku alive. To do this I would have to cover about 30 inches of board to get to him whilst he sent 18 shots per turn into my army. Hopefully you can see why I didn’t rate my chances. Anyway, with the mad courage of the doomed I marched my army straight towards Owen and braved the hail of arrows. Here I must admit my army planning really helped. Having a front line of D6 Beserkers meant that all the elf shooting needed 6s to wound and my channelled Fury was doing a good job of keeping my guys alive. Legolas had his eye on Vrasku and had been auto-hitting him with Deadly Shot and caused a wound so he was now cowering behind any piece of scenery he could find - If Owen killed Vrasku, the best I could possibly do was draw. So it was that after 4 or 5 turns of relentless advance our armies finally clashed and my Ferals and Beserkers really made their presence felt. As is so often the case, the 2 attacks countered the high fight value of the 1 attack elves and Owen’s Defence 3/4 models started dying in droves. After a few turns of vicious fighting I managed to break the elves, I’m genuinely not sure who was more shocked, Owen or me! As the next few turns ground on I was able to get more and more of a foot-hold in the game and the numbers swung massively in my favour. Finally, just as the time was running out, I managed to get 3 Beserkers onto Legolas and trap him, Owen didn’t roll the magic six he needed and Legolas was cut down. With that the game was over and had ended in a 6-4 victory to me. I genuinely couldn’t believe it, I felt like I’d stolen the game from Owen and to this day I really don’t know how I came through it. My army-building was solid as the D6 of the Beserkers allowed me to weather the majority of the elf shooting and, once I got into combat, my Ferals and Beserkers really showed their worth. I felt fairly awful for Owen in all honesty, it didn’t seem like the fair result but the sheer killing power of my 2 attack models had carried the day. It was a surprising victory but a victory none-the-less and so I marched into game 4 as one of 4 players who were undefeated.
Game 4 was Domination and I was part relieved and part dismayed to find myself drawn against my regular tournament opponent and good friend Tom Harrison. I should probably explain, I say dismayed because, as I mentioned at the start, Tom had a chance of winning the league today and, at present, he and Ed were also on 3 wins. If I beat Tom, it would all but destroy his hopes of winning the league and spell the end of a year’s worth of good results. We’d chatted about this before and obviously I’d hoped we wouldn’t play and so it would never potentially be down to me to ruin Tom’s chances. However, we both new the score, despite joking about it there was never any chance of me throwing the game for Tom, first things first, we were both trying to win this tournament, whatever effect that had on the league was secondary. Tom had brought a filthy cheese list to attempt to win the tournament, fair enough given what he had riding on this event, he had Legolas leading a warband of Wood Elf warriors with spears and bows, Beregond leading a warband of Guards of the Fountain Court and…Alfrid. It was a tough army and most of you will already see Tom’s general strategy: D7 front line with F5 Wood Elf spearmen and archers behind, Alfrid gives his Might to Legolas who can then auto-hit the enemy general with a near guarantee of success. We had played two practice games in the run-up to the event and honours were even at one apiece so we both had a chance. However, the scenario didn’t suit Tom, as mentioned above, his battle plan relied on him forming up in two ranks and staying together. In this game he would have to manoeuvre and split his force up making the weaker Wood Elves far more exposed, in fact at about 26:40 minutes in to the preview video I posted at the top of the article Tom actually says that it will be the hardest scenario for him to win. We deployed on the right hand side of the board within about an inch of each other and in turn one charged forward and clashed immediately. My army was arranged so the my crossbowmen were facing most of his GotFC and my Ferals and Beserkers were on the end of my line, this meant that, fairly early on, I was able to send my 2 attack models curling around the back of his line to where I could attack the squishy Wood Elves. Not only did this allow me to kill off his better troops, it also meant that the GotFC were on level turns with my crossbowmen as they no longer had the supporting models contributing an extra attack or the higher fight value. After a few turns of combat I was able to move into a commanding position in terms of numbers and Tom was broken. However, as any good player will tell you, Domination is not won by killing the enemy, it’s won by controlling the objectives and so we both began to scramble for VPs. Alfrid was sitting on one of Tom’s home objectives so I sent a couple of Uruks to deal with him, Tom sent Legolas and a few elves running for another objective and I tried to take the two objectives nearest my table edge. We then had an interesting few turns where Leggy tried to auto hit Vrasku on the run and snipe my uruks off the objectives to get some VPs whilst I tried to kill enough elves to end the game. Ultimately, the uruks were able to kill Alfrid and we all grabbed the objectives we were running for. I think I ended up winning 12-4 (3 objectives + breaking vs 1 objective and 1 contested objective) or something similar. It was a great, relaxed game against Tom as always but to be honest he was up against it from the very start the and scenario didn’t lend itself to a hugely competitive game. However, after the stress of the game against Owen I was just relieved to come through another game against a very good opponent. And so I marched into the final game on 4 wins to play Ed Ball to decide who would win the tournament!
The final game was another custom scenario called Shadow & Sorcery, it was essentially Lords of Battle rules and VPs but you got to bring along a free wizard to boost your army. If you had a Good army then you could take either Gandalf the Grey or Radagast the Brown (on foot) and if you you had an Evil army you could take either Saruman or the Witch King (3/20/3). You had to select your option before the tournament started and inform the TOs in advance so you couldn’t tailor your choice of wizard based on your opponent. Pondering this in advance I thought it was a pretty easy choice to go for The Witch King (even though Saruman was far fluffier - remember I was at this tourney to win!), primarily because I knew that in that scenario I’d be facing another Wizard and The Witch King’s Your Staff is Broken and Sap Will would be perfect for taking down the Istari. Even if I came up against another Witch King then a Channelled Sap Will would have more hope of shutting down a wraith than a wizard would. The plan was essentially to first break the opposing Wizard’s staff before then Sapping Will, I decided I’d throw 2 or 3 dice at each spell to try and guarantee the cast and so, with my forces now boosted by the Witch King, I marched up to the top table to face the mighty Ed Ball. I knew from the outset that this wouldn’t be an easy game, Ed was trying to win the tournament to secure his league victory and he’d brought along his horde of Hobbits. Ed’s a fantastic player and I knew this was going to be far from easy, he’d had brought along Merry, Pippin, Fatty Bolger, Paladin, Brandobras, 10 Shiriffs, 2 Militia, 16 Hobbit bowmen and 20 Battling Brandybucks for a total of 53 models at 350 points compare dot my 20 models - terrifying! I had a fair bit of time to think tactics before the game as my game with Tom ended earlier than Ed’s previous game against Mik and his Warg Marauder force. I had 2 options, either I stand back and shoot at him and hope that my high defence and Fury would trump his Cast Blinding Light (he was bound to take Gandalf as his free wizard) or I could do what Isengard do best and charge forwards. Ultimately I decided that two armies taking ineffectual pot-shots at each other would make for an incredibly dull game and a rubbish end to the tournament so I decided to brave the hail of missiles and charge forward! I’ve heard a lot of people dismiss Hobbits as uncompetitive and all I can say is they clearly haven’t played them! Their strength lies not only in their ridiculously high numbers but also the amount of shots they can send your way. Ed had 16 archers and the other 37 models could all throw stones if they didn’t move! Even though they only had S1 that’s still 53 shots coming at you! I reasoned that I would have to brave this full assault for at least one turn (when I moved within 6” of the Hobbit line ready to charge in the following turn) but I just had to hope that everything being D5 or higher and 5+ Fury would carry the day for me. So, as the game started I deployed as far forward as I possibly could facing Ed’s bowmen. The other half of his army was deployed at a right angle to the bowmen, forming an L shape which I would have to walk into. I started as aggressively as I could, calling a Heroic March and sending my whole force surging towards his lines. In a bizarre switch in roles I was leading with my crossbowmen who were just as durable against the Hobbit missile fire and would be far less useful to me once the lines met. I calmly picked up my two dice to roll for Channelled Fury and was horrified to see snake eyes appear. For the first time in the tournament I had fluffed Fury, in surely the game where it mattered the most! In all honesty my heart sank at this point and I genuinely felt that would be that and Ed’s missile fire would rip me to shreds. However, things went pretty well in the next few turns, I charged forward towards the part of the L shape that was directly opposite me (the archers) and made sure that my line ended about 9” away from the other part of his line so that A) they were out of range for Throwing Stones and B) they were more than 2 turns away from combat with me. Things went well for me in the priority rolls and Heroic Move roll-offs and over the course of two turns I was able to break Gandalf’s staff and Channel Sap Will to turn him into a 1 attack old man as planned. Removing the magical threat was a huge deal and gave me a boost, in addition, Ed simply wasn’t able to get those magic 6s and only killed a couple of Beserkers/Ferals before I hit his lines. Suddenly, I found myself in a good position; I had a front line of 2 attack models with a higher Fight value tearing through the front line of the Hobbits whilst the second half of his army were three turns away from combat. I blocked the end of my line from the advance of the second half to the hobbit army with the crossbowmen that I cared less about whilst the Ferals and Beserkers got to work chopping through his lines. With Gandalf neutralised the Witch King started Black Darting the hobbit heroes with the plan of drawing their Fate points (worth VPs) as well as their wounds and this worked pretty well. Over the course of a few turns I was delighted to see myself move into a strong lead with the Hobbit kills racking up for relatively little loss - I was essentially able to wipe out half the army over the course of three turns whilst the other half walked towards me. With Lords of Battle every kill counts and, with about 10-15 minutes left on the clock I remember Ed looking at me and saying “you’re going to win”, I couldn’t quite believe it but he was right, I’d gained such a big lead that there was very little chance of the remaining Hobbits turning the tide. So that’s the way it played out, I notched up a few more kills in the last few turns and Ed was able to break me in the final turn but I was still ahead by a healthy lead. I can’t honestly recall the VP score (I’ve been so busy that I’m writing this report in June!) but I think it was about 28-13 or so.
I must admit that when time was called I was absolutely ecstatic, I let out what can only be described as a guttural roar upon realising I’d finally got a win against Ed! Ed had beaten me in all 4 of our previous tournament meetings (twice at doubles, twice at singles) and he’s a very tough opponent to get past, beating him in the final of a tournament was a very proud wargaming moment for me so I was pretty damn chuffed. It was a great game as well, Ed played well and it was really fun throughout, bizarrely, I think failing Fury may have helped me as I just threw everything forward thinking I had nothing to lose and thankfully my Beserkers and Ferals once again proved their worth and did what they had to do - cracking stuff!
So that was that, the final results were handed in and I had won the tournament! This was a brilliant boost for my 2014 campaign as I would get the full 100 points towards the league (following two slightly disappointing mid-table results of 50 in my first two events of the year), it also meant I had finished above Sam Jeffery so would finish 4th - HUZAAH! So we all gathered round for the awards ceremony and I was delighted to be awarded the key to the Mirkwood Gaol as my first prize along with my certificate - it was a lovely WETA replica with an engraved plaque and made a really nice trophy - big thanks to the organisers! Chris and Other Damian had also arranged for another 13 awards and everyone who got one was allowed to pick a Barrel out of Bond model to go with their certificate which was a really nice touch. As the winner of the event I was lucky enough to get the Bilbo on a barrel model which was a lovely bonus.
All in all I was really pleased with the army’s performance across the day, the Beserkers were definitely the right choice over the Ferals at this event and there’s no doubt that they were the reason I won the games against Owen and Ed. I got a lot of luck in the game against Owen but I’ve always said that to win a tournament you need a bit of luck. There are so many great players out there at the moment that you need to be fortunate enough to draw the right opponent at the right scenario 5 times in a row and, thankfully, at Shadow and Sorcery it all just fell right for me. I was also very pleased to have come through against 5 Top 10 GBHL players - I’d certainly not had an easy draw which always makes the success feel bigger. The event was brilliant as usual for a Titans event and Chris and Other Damian ensured that it was as well organised and fun as always - the prize haul was incredibly generous too.
And so we came to the final part of the day, the league awards! After a year of competition it had all come down to this but there was still time for an upset! Jamie hadn’t had the best day and had, entirely unexpectedly, finished 6th - 5 places below me! This was exactly where I’d needed him to place and so there was a chance that I might have stolen third place in the league from him! We all held our breath as Mik announced the winners and third place went to….ME! I couldn’t believe it, I’ve mentioned above how everything needs to fall right for you to win an event but when you add to that the chance of Jamie finishing in 6th place and the odds were just insane! Still, I was incredibly chuffed to get to walk up and accept the third place trophy - it was a good day (even if I did feel bad for Jamie!). To give you an idea of how close it was, the best you could score for the year was 500 points by winning 5 events - I took 3rd place with 453.9 points whereas Jamie scored 451.3, a difference of only 2.6 points! Genuinely amazingly close! And to decide the winner…..drum roll…..Ed had finished in 4th place and Tom had finished in……….7th place! Yep, Ed had finished higher so became the inaugural winner of the Great british Hobbit League - big congrats to him and much deserved for an outstanding year of results.
So that was that, we all headed home after another cracking day of gaming at Titans to tell our partners about our exploits and show them our haul. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my wife was properly impressed with the various trophies and the Mirkwood Gaol key was even allowed to go up in the lounge! Charles (the organiser of the Preston tournament in October) had also brought along my long-delayed mug for winning best army at that event so all in all I had a rather spectacular haul from the day! I was really chuffed to get a podium place for the 2013 season and it was also good to get my 2014 season up and running properly. Indeed, getting a 100 on the league board allowed me to look towards the Desolation of Stockport in April with slightly different eyes….
Until next time dear friends!
My haul from the day (+£20 in cold, hard, Alfrid cash!)
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You should have just borrowed the GBHL camera 
