Welcome to another of Dr Grant’s in-depth breakdowns of his highs and lows on the tournament scene. This was the 8th of 10 tournaments this year that count towards the Great British Hobbit League, if you don’t know what I’m banging on about then head over to the Facebook group and get involved!
http://www.facebook.com/groups/472128942815892/
As ever, this won’t be short as it’ll actually detail all 3 days of the tournament in Preston and 7 games of SBG. So close the curtains and lock that cold Winter air out, grab a cuppa, plant yourself in the cosiest armchair money can buy and read on...
So heading to Preston I wash third in the league with three tournaments left (of which I was attending two), I knew that if I was to have any chance of winning the league I’d need to place well here and ideally come above Tom Harrison, Ed Ball and Sam Jeffery who were all on similar points to me. I decided to take my trusty Ferals and debated for a long time about the exact list composition before coming up with the following:
Leader - Uruk Hai Captain, heavy armour, shield
Vrasku
8 Crossbowmen
Sharky & Worm
5 Feral Uruk Hai
2 Beserkers
Armoured shaman
7 Feral Uruk Hai
1 Beserker
500 points
27 models
7 Might
Break point - 14
The first thing to draw attention to is my somewhat odd choice of putting my leader on his own, this was a last minute decision made in the car to the tournament. The thinking was as follows, if he had warriors then my 15 Ferals/Beserkers were split into three warbands of 5. In practice games when we played Hold Ground and the custom scenario (that used Hold Ground deployment) that left me with 3 ‘weak’ warbands who could be ambushed if they rolled poorly (particularly considering the shaman and Sharky only had 1 Might each to affect the roll). This happened on a number of occasions and meant I had a severe uphill struggle to get back into the game. I decided that I was better splitting all my Ferals/Beserkers into 2 larger warbands so that if they rolled poorly they should be able to hold their own. The decision to leave the leader on his own was that he had 2 Might so could always get himself out of trouble on the deployment roll if needs be. I would also attempt to deploy him first so that wherever he turned up I should be able to support him with another warband. I would guarantee this by rolling for Vrasku last who, with his 3 Might, would be able to ensure my Leader wasn’t stranded. It wouldn’t put me at a strategic disadvantage in the other scenarios as deployment doesn’t matter as much. It was a strange strategy admittedly but ultimately one that I think made the most tactical sense.
I was really keen to see how Sharky got on in this tournament. I hadn’t used him too much before the lead up to this event and I’d found him to be really helpful at this points level. 500 points is too small to realistically put a wizard in so there wouldn’t be too much magic flying about (beyond the obligatory Ringwraiths) and I thought he could give me a real edge, 4 chances to Immobilise on a 2+ was very appealing and with most heroes at this points level only having 1 or 2 Will it would be very easy to wear them down - how effective would he be? We shall see!
So, on Friday 25th October, Sam (Southern Dunedain), Tom Harrison and myself filled up on pre-drive curry and began the long drive North. The journey was remarkably good and we made it to Tom’s parents (who were very kindly putting us up) in around 3 and a half hours at around 11:30pm. They had been kind enough to lay on a cheese board and tea which was sorely needed after the long drive and we headed off to bed refreshed and relaxed.
After a good night’s sleep the 7am start wasn’t too horrific and we all rose, filled up on an excellent breakfast spread and set off on the half hour drive to the venue, we picked up Mark (Knighty Knight) on route and got to the venue with time to spare. It was a little worrying at first, after passing the turning twice we realised it wasn’t a road as such, more of a winding dirt track surrounded by trees, upon following it we arrived at a deserted, beaten down scout hut, it looked like something out of the Hills Have Eyes and it wasn’t the best first impression. However, after a couple of minutes the TO rocked up and we all piled in, once the heating was up and running the venue was rather more welcoming and we all mucked in to help set up the tables and scenery.
The tournament worked on a major/minor win/loss system. You got 30 tournament points for a major win, 25 for a minor win, 10 for a draw, 5 for a minor loss and 1 for a major loss. To get a major win you needed to score more than twice the VPs of your opponent or have them score 0 VPs.
For the first game I was drawn against Owen (Cereal Thief) and his Hobbit Evil army at To the Death. This suited me down to the ground, Owen’s a great guy and I don’t get to play against Goblin town too often so it would be a nice change. He had The Goblin King, Grinnah, the Scribe, and about 36 goblins alongside Mounted Fimbul, 6 Hunter orcs and a Hunter Orc with warhorn (well bagpipes). Knowing what a beast the Goblin King was I immediately decided to ignore him and just try and break his force as quickly as possible and then hope the Goblin King legged it. Goblin Town goblins die in droves and I only needed to kill about 19 to break him. With that in mind I spent a couple of turns gunning down goblins with my crossbows, the scribe and the musician were hidden behind a rock miles away form my crossbows and safe for the game and the scribe was bringing on a few goblins every turn (the courage boost from the musician helping no end). This wasn’t as bad as it sounded as he often placed them in front of my crossbowmen to get in-the-way rolls for his more important troops and I was able to charge them and kill them quickly.
When the lines met I was able to charge him and fight a round of combat where Grinnah, the Goblin King and Fimbul weren’t involved. This obviously helped and I was able to cut down another swathe of goblins bringing Owen closer to his break point. Things were going really well for me at this point and I was perhaps a little lax with the placement of Sharky, my Shaman and my Leader. When Owen won priority he was able to use the Goblin King’s ‘move through goblins’ rule to charge my leader, pin all my ferals in place and charge my Shaman with Fimbul, things suddenly looked a lot less comfortable. I can’t quite remember what happened next but I’m pretty sure the Goblin King killed my leader. Suddenly my chances of a major win were looking ropey (the max VPs in To the Death is
and there was actually every chance Owen could now turn the game around. Fimbul next called a Heroic Combat, all the had to do was kill my shaman and he would be able to charge Sharky and almost certainly kill him too, things looked bad. Fortunately, Fimbul had a bad day at the office and despite knocking him onto the ground and having 6 S5 attacks he was unable to kill my shaman and so wasted the Heroic Combat. MASSIVE sigh of relief! Another highlight of this turn was one Feral Uruk Hai being charged and trapped by 3 Hunter orcs on wargs, knocked to the ground they had 12 S4 attacks against him and through a combination of abysmal dice rolling and saving 3 wounds with Fury he survived! Owen was not amused. The next turn things looked up for me, I won priority and Immobilised The Goblin King, Owen used both of his Will points to resist but still failed, taking the King out of the game for a turn, this helped no end and I was able to regain my combat edge and kill enough goblins to break Owen. The next turn things went from bad to worse for Owen, he rolled the Goblin King’s courage test and only managed a total of 8. Without his 2 Will points he couldn’t boost the score and Owen’s leader ran away. After that there was very little Owen could do, I tagged and killed his remaining heroes and most of his force ran, after a turn or two more he was reduced to 25% and the game ended with a major victory to me 8-3. It was a good fun game and I was pleased with the result, most of the army had performed as hoped, Sharky had potentially won me the game by immobilising the Goblin King and draining his Will but I’d need to be more careful with the placement of my characters from here on out. It was a good start to the tournament.The next game saw me drawn against Sam Jeffrey and his Goblin army. Sam had 2 warbands of 6 shielded Gundabads and 6 Moria spearmen led by Durburz and a captain, a Goblin Town captain with 12 Goblin Town Goblins and the Knight of Umbar on a Fell Beast. As worried as I was about the KOU sapping the Will from Sharky and my shaman I was at least relieved to see that Sam had left home without his beloved Shade this time. The scenario was Reconnoitre and we got drawn on the multi-levelled Goblin Town board and were immediately baffled as to what to do. We had a brief chat about how the scenery would work but the tactics were really interesting, should you go along the walkways or along the floor etc. we were both as baffled as each other! Recon was the scenario I was dreading and playing a goblin horde was the worst possible match-up, I really didn’t see how my thin, pink line could stop a numerically superior army from running off the edge, particularly when I would have to block 2 levels of scenery! I decided that I wouldn’t make any attempt to get off the board edge as I couldn’t spare the numbers, instead I’d just chuck everything I had into killing his leader and breaking his army and hope that the rest of the goblins legged it! Things started humourously enough with us getting all our models on in the first couple of turns and joking about rolling a dice to see which direction they’d all move! My crossbowmen gained a good vantage point and were able to prove their worth again cutting down a fair few goblins in the early turns. The first big twist came around turn 4 when Sam’s Fell Beast who was 15”away from my warband of ferals compelled one 3” towards him, the Fell Beast then charged the feral, clearly planning on either barging, hurling or calling a Heroic Combat. This is a classic Fell Beast trick and I panicked as soon as I saw it, it effectively gives a Fell Beast a 24” charge range! Knowing how destructive this could be I fired 4 crossbowmen into the combat and was able to kill my Feral! It was a dirty trick but it worked perfectly and left the Fell Beast stranded in front of my warband - I love evil armies! The next turn I was able to win the inevitable Heroic Move roll-off and trap the Fell Beast, unfortunately I had no heroes to Heroic Strike and Sam rolled a 6 and won the combat and in doing so killed 3 Ferals, things were looking bleak on that side of the board! In the following turn I was able to charge (but not trap) the Fell Beast again with 2 ferals and the shaman and this time Sharky had got in range and rolled to Immobilise the Fell Beast, he rolled a 1 - disaster! Not wanting to waste the Will I use Sharky’s single Might point to get a 2 and draw some Will from Sam. However, the KOU was down to about 7 Will by this point and Sam decided he wasn’t in too much danger this turn and that he’d need the Will for casting; whilst I can understand the reasoning I think I still would have thrown one dice at it as he only need a 2+. Still, we moved onto the Fight phase and with the Knight of Umbar now only tying for Fight value I was able to win the roll-off. I decided to throw all 5 attacks at the Ringwraith even though I’d need 6’s against him and only 5s against the Fell Beast, if i just got 1 6 there was the smallest chance Sam would fail both his Fate rolls and his leader would be dead. With nervous hands I rolled my 5 dice and jumped for joy as 3 6’s came up, the Knight of Umbar was dead, the Fell Beast ran away and both of us were utterly flabbergasted. From this point on things were obviously looking up for me but I still had an awful lot of goblins to stop escaping. Fortunately, my ferals were proving their worth and once my leader and Vrasku got amongst them the tide turned heavily towards me and I broke Sam. After this point it was just a case of tagging his heroes, use Sharky’s last 2 Will to Immobilise them and then wait for the goblins to run. A few turns later and the game had ended with another major victory to me 6-1 (I think). It was a really fun game and the scenery made a very interesting challenge, Sam’s a great opponent and made the game fun throughout, he’s a really good guy to play against. Again I was pleased with the army, there’s no doubt that I got lucky with the 6’s against the fell beast but the crossbows did a good job of thinning out his numbers, the ferals were great as always and Sharky arguably won me the game again!
After this we had lunch, despite the tournament happening in October the weather held long enough for us to BBQ loads of sausages and burgers and we were well fed. Also during this time Thermo started conducting loads of interviews with players about their armies, whilst most players were initially hesitant, Thermo’s infectious enthusiasm soon won us over and you may well have seen his efforts online already, if not check out the link below:
viewtopic.php?f=62&t=26636
Game 3 saw me draw against Louis and his dwarf (and 1 elf!) army at Domination. Louis had Dwalin leading 12 warriors of Erebor with spears and shields, Balin leading 12 Khazad Guard and Legolas on horse as his leader. I was worried about the army-wide D7 having been given a pasting by Sam Page’s D7 Erebor army in a practice game but only had one way to play this game. I made a wide thin net with crossbowmen on one end and forced him to walk into it, Louis had no missile troops so he had to come towards me through a hail of Crossbow bolts. Legolas’ shooting was largely nullified as he spent the first few turns swapping sides to avoid my crossbows before attacking the far end of my line. I was able to get a fair few cheap kills in the first few turns as he walked towards me reducing his numbers and taking all of Dwalin’s Fate. Sharky moved over to start Immobilisng Legolas, he proved a much toucher target thanks to his 2 Will, also, as he was attacking the far end of my line I didn’t have the models to trap him. However, Sharky was able to keep him pinned in place long enough for my leader to arrive and deliver the final killing blow. After that I was able to wrap around his lines and slowly overwhelm the dwarves. Dwalin and Balin were tanks as always and took a fair bit of killing but eventually I was able to break him and end up with a 13-3 Major win. Louis was a great player and a great guy and he had a tough army with some meaty characters, thankfully I was able to roll the 6’s to wound when I needed them and come through.
Having 3 Major victories after 3 games was far more than I was expecting and by this point I was starting to entertain those crazy thoughts about winning the tournament., at the very least it was looking like it was mine to lose...
Game 4 saw me drawn against TO Charles’ Harad army at High Ground and I was feeling pretty confident. Charles’ army didn’t have any major heroes and everything in his army was D4, with everything in my army being strength 4, on paper I should have this covered. Charles had 2 Corsair Captains and a Hasharin each leading about 4 Watchers of Karna, 2 Mounted Serpent Guard, 2 Abrakan Guard and 4 Haradrim Warrriors. There were an awful lot of bows but I was confident my crossbowmen could outshoot him. I deployed fairly far forward taking the hill and ready to take the fight to Charles. In the first couple of turns my crossbowmen decimated one of his three warbands significantly reducing his shooting abilities and swinging the numbers in my favour. Charles then seemingly pushed too far forward and I was able to jump on his front row of warriors and kill a fair few. About 3 turns in and things were looking great, I’d killed about 11 of his models for a loss of 2 myself. Then...something...happened. Charles was able to call a heroic combat with one of his captains and about 4 other guys, this then allowed him to launch an extra man into about 5 combats, trapping my guys and slaughtering them all, I lost about 6/7 Ferals in one turn. With one Heroic Combat the entire tide of the battle had turned and I was suddenly on the back foot. Over the next few turns Charles pushed forward and gained a larger and larger numerical advantage, the 2 attacks and F4 of his Watchers of Karna were going toe-to-toe with my ferals and then the Abrakhan Guard were cutting them down in swathes. Suddenly I found myself retreating against massive numbers and breaking, if the game had ended on the first turn I was broken I think I might have escaped with a minor loss but as it was it went on for another few turns, allowing Charles to mop up my remaining crossbowmen for something like an 18-2 major victory to Charles. Looking back on the game I couldn’t help but feeling frustrated as I was in such a good position and seemingly threw it away. Ultimately I think I got too cocky based on my strong start and pushed too far forwards too soon, I should have held back slightly and attacked in greater numbers after another few rounds of crossbow shooting. Charles had a very good army that look relatively innocuous on the table, it’s actually exactly the sort of army I like to use with my Isengard army. It’s more evidence that the best armies aren’t the ones with the biggest heroes, they’re the ones with the most high quality troops on the table. Having a large number of Watchers of Karna allowed Charles to win in the same way having a large number of Ferals normally works for me, he played really well and deserved the win. Ultimately I was happy to be ending the first day on 3 major wins and 1 major loss and was tied for first place with Owen although he was winning on the VP tie-breaker.
After the fourth game, 9 out of the 11 attendees all headed to the pub, we checked into our hotel which was conveniently located bang next door to the booze emporium and then headed into the bright lights. One of the best things about 2 day tournaments is the social aspect on the first evening and the Preston tourney was a great example. The 9 of us ate, drank, chatted and laughed for about 4 hours and discussed every aspect of the hobby like it was the most important thing in the world. Bets were placed on who would win, debriefs about games were discussed and countless ‘if only I’d rolled this’ anecdotes were told. We also discussed an interesting idea for a future tourney where you take a 500 point army along but you only use it for 1 of your 6 games, instead swapping armies with other players. It was a fun idea that would test generalship rather than army list meta and generated a lot of healthy discussion about which armies people would bring. You would, of course, want to bring an army that could win the game in which you used it but would be weak for when your opponents used it; there was much discussion of this new ‘bad meta’ and what would constitute the least competitive/most bizarre army. 6 Goblin Town captains and 72 goblins sounded fun, as did 5 Shades!
Ah well, it was something different that might be worth pursuing for a future tournament, most importantly it was a really fun evening that demonstrated the community aspect of the League and left everyone with a big smile on their face as they headed to bed. Before sleeping I rang my wife who seemed pleased with my progress, she gave me one piece of advice for day 2 ‘Don’t **** it up’Day two began with a hearty all you can eat fried Breakfast at the hotel (£29 for accommodation and breakfast? God love the North!) before heading back to the venue.
Game 5 saw me drawn against Ed and his 3 Fell Beasts. Damn. I knew I was likely to play Ed at some point over the weekend but it was always going to be tough. I’ve played Ed’s Fell Beast army twice before and suffered big defeats on both games. It’s incredibly tough to beat at any points value and 500 points was no exception. Ed had a standard Ringwraith, the Knight of Umbar and Khamul all mounted on Fell Beasts, one Fell Beast is hard to deal with but the more of them you put together the greater they become, once you have 3 the synergy between them becomes really powerful. I thought I might have a chance against them at Hold Ground where some poor deployment rolls from Ed would allow me to deal with them one at a time, unfortunately the scenario was Lords of Battle. My heart sank. Ed only had 18 points to give away at Lord of Battle and even if I managed to wipe out the Ringwraiths he was bound to kill more than 18 Uruks on the way. The only chance I had to win this was to ignore victory points and wipe him out.
Things started in a very cagey manner. Ed was clearly worried about my 8 crossbowmen and Vrasku who, with a bit of luck, could kill a Fell Beast and/or a Ringwraith with one round of shooting. For the first three games Ed manoeuvred around the board staying 24” away from me. When he finally attacked he did so with the traditional brute force of three Fell Beasts, charging, Immobilising, Sap-willing, Hurling, smashing, killing. 3 times per turn. We scrapped for a few turns allowing Ed to gain a lead of about 10-0 and then he retreated! I’d never seen him do this before but of course it was the right move, knowing I’d have to chase him he sent his 3 little cowards flapping away! It was nice to see that Ed at least recognised I had the tools to beat the Ringwraiths if things went my way but I had little choice but to go running after him. Of course by this point I didn’t have the numbers or the position to trap the Fell Beasts, my shaman had been Will-Sapped so I had no Fury meaning even my Ferals were failing to charge the Fell Beasts. Unfortunately, low numbers and being out of position against 3 Fell Beasts doesn’t often lead to great success and it didn’t take long for Ed to mop up my survivors for something like a 24-3 win. Looking back the result didn’t surprise me but it really is amazing how important a few rolls make when playing with/against an all hero army. There were 3 Heroic Move roll-offs throughout the game and this time around Ed won 2 out of the 3. The second one in particular was huge, if I’d have won it I could have charged all 3 Ringwraiths, trapped at least 2, prevented all 3 from casting, possibly called Heroic Strikes and very likely killed at least one if not two. That’s not to say I would have won the game but chasing down one Ringwraith is a hell of a lot easier than chasing down 3. It was a really fun game though, Ed played well and there were a lot of tense rolls, a few rolls here and there and it all could have been different - classic SBG!
I think my biggest annoyance about this game wasn’t that I lost to Ed’s Ringwraiths (I was banking on that at some point over the weekend) but that I lost to them at Lords of Battle. My army is pretty good at Lords of Battle and would have stood a good chance against most of the other armies there so not only did I lost again but I felt I’d ‘missed out’ on a scenario where I was likely to win - curses!
Games 6 saw me drawn against Sam Page’s (Southern Dunedain) Erebor army. This would be our first competitive game having dodged each other at about 4 tournaments in the past and I was really looking forward to it, slightly less so since he’d beaten me in a practice game but I was keen for revenge. However, there was no denying that Sam had a list almost designed to beat mine, he had Thorin, Dwalin and Balin each leading about 9 Erebor dwarves, half of whom had spears and 22 of whom were D7. This meant that by S4 crossbows and S4 ferals were all as useful as S3 models meaning I’d paid over the odds for a boost that gained me nothing, still I’d cracked the D7 dwarves open in the game against Louis so I might be ok.
The scenario was Hold Ground and I won priority, curses, it’s always better to see where your opponent deploys first in Hold Ground! I had reasonable rolls, I got my leader and the shaman’s warband on in the same place but Sharky and his boys were on the opposite side of the board, Vrasku was yet to turn up. Sam then rolled a 2 for Balin’s warband and the Red Mist hit me and I deployed them next to my leader’s warband ready to slaughter them. Thorin then rolled a 2 and I deployed him on the opposite side of the board. Dwalin then rolled a 6 and deployed on the other side of my leaders warband ready to crush them, my ambush had been ambushed....
On reflection deploying Balin’s warband near mine when Sam still had 2 warbands to deploy was utterly moronic, unfortunately I just wasn’t thinking straight. As it was on turn two my leader’s warband was ambushed about 2 to one. Thankfully the 2 attacks of the ferals kept most of them alive and Vrasku’s warband then turned up to support them evening up the numbers. These 4 warbands then scrapped away on the edge of the board whilst Thorin’s and Sharky’s warbands did a strange crab-like sideways shuffle about 8 inches apart towards the centre of the board. Sadly, unlike against Louis, I simply couldn’t roll the 6s I needed and despite winning loads of the fights I just couldn’t kill the damn dwarves! Without Sharky to Immobilise him, Dwalin was also making a mess of my warriors and the numbers were beginning to turn against me. I also realised I didn’t have the numbers in Sharky’s warband to take on Thorin’s so there was very little I could do about them. Ultimately, Sam broke me and I realised I need to get stuck into Thorin’s warband and hope for the best. I was able to take down a couple and actually get lucky against Thorin, wounding him and drawing all his fate with a lucky double 6. However, it was all too little too late and Dwalin was now leading about 6 of his victorious dwarves towards the centre whilst Balin and a few rearguard mopped up the last couple of my uruks. Like in the game against Charles, my blushes weren’t spared by the game ending early with a minor loss, instead, I had to endure another few turns before the game finally ended with 1 Feral left alive and around a 18-2 win to Sam. Oh dear. Looking back it was so frustrating knowing that I’d led so much to my own defeat. I clearly should have set up Balin miles away and tried to get cheap kills with my crossbows like I did against Louis; as it was my crossbows didn’t fire a shot in the whole game as they were brought on as combat reinforcements. In fact, I think once Dwalin and Balin had trapped my leader’s warband I should have just let them have it. Vrasku should have deployed up near Sharky and started volleying into Thorin’s warband, hopefully taking them down (all the squishy D6 warriors were with Thorin) and killing his leader whilst Dwalin and Balin mopped up my leader’s warriors. After that I would have had a strong position in the centre and been able to volley more crossbow shots into Dwalin and Balin as they approached the centre. Ah well, the path not taken! On the plus side it was another fun game against Southy who’s a top bloke, don’t think I’ve ever seen that much fighting AWAY from the objective on Hold Ground though! So, from being on 3 major wins I was now sitting on 3 major wins and 3 major losses. Quite the comedown...
For the final game you could play someone you’d played before and so it was that I got drawn against Louis’ dwarves (and elf) again! 3 games out of 7 against D7 dwarves, that couldn’t have gone much worse! The final scenario was the custom scenario for the tournament. Essentially 5 goblin objectives were placed in the same way as domination but could be moved by the player with priority, to pick one up you had to win a fight against it, if you lost they could roll to wound you, then at the end of every turn, there was a 1 in 6 chance that the goblins would escape. The scenario had Hold Ground deployment. I rolled well for deployment and was able to bring all my force on relatively close together along two sides close to two objectives. He then rolled a 2 for Balin’s warband but, however tempting it was, I learnt from the last game and deployed them a long way away in a corner. Dwalin then came on alongside Balin forming a formidable battle line. Then Louis rolled for Legolas and got a 2. After thinking about it for a short while he allowed me to deploy Legolas, in my opinion that was a massive error. Having played a lot of Hold Ground and this scenario recently I’ve come to realise that it’s well worth burning Might to get good deployment rather than risking being trapped and slaughtered and I absolutely would have used 2 of Legolas’ Might to deploy alongside the dwarves. As it was, I placed Legolas between Vrasku’s crossbowmen and Sharky’s Ferals. In the next turn we both called a Heroic Move and I won the roll-off, at this point I was only able to charge Legolas with two Ferals and he resisted Sharky’s Immobilise. The next turn however was a different story, I was able to charge Leggy with 5 Ferals/Beserkers and Sharky Immobilised him, 20 dice later and I’d killed his leader in turn 2 - great start! I’d also managed to get control of 2 of the objectives and his dwarf line was having to walk towards mine to get near the other objectives and do some damage. My crossbowmen showed how much of a difference they could have made against Sam and were able to cut down about 5 or 6 of the dwarves as they approached. This meant that when our lines clashed the numbers were clearly on my side, not helped by the fact that by grabbing 3 of the objectives he was now effectively another 3 dwarves down. Things were looking really good at this point and the dwarves were looking really low on numbers, unfortunately, my tournament nemesis Dwalin wasn’t giving up just yet. He called a Heroic Combat, killed a Feral and went charging into combat with my leader, nearly killing him and reducing him to 1 wound. Upon winning priority in the following turn he charged Sharky and so prevented him Immobilising anyone, I was able to do some damage control by fighting off Dwalin (if not killing him) and breaking Louis’ force. However, I then realised that in classic SBG fashion things could unravel quickly, the goblin objectives were worth 2 VPs each and Louis currently had 3 to my 2, this meant if he killed my leader the VPs were only 10-9 in my favour, the game was much closer than it might have looked. In addition, this was a scenario that ended when one force reached 25% and I was dangerously close to killing Louis too quickly and ending the game, if one of my goblins escaped he would win! Fortunately luck was on my side and in the first turn after he broke 2 of his goblin-holding dwarves fled the battlefield and the third was caught and killed by a feral. The game ended the following turn with a 10-1 victory to me with only 4 or 5 dwarves left alive, although this bizarre game was perhaps a lot closer than that makes it sound and my leader was cowering on 1 wound about 4 inches away from Balin and Dwalin! It was another fun game against Louis and a good game to end the tournament on, I was pleased with how the army performed but there’s no doubt Louis’ mistake with Leggy’s deployment made a big difference to the result, allowing Sharky to claim his 4th Leader kill-assist of the tournament!
And so that was that, 7 intense games of SBG and the tournament was over, we all helped pack the gear away whilst the final results were calculated. I was thrilled to discover I’d won my first ever Best Army award which was pretty awesome as I’m very happy with the way my Isengard army looks on the table. In the final reckoning I had managed to come fourth behind Charles, Ed and Tom Harrison who managed to win the event becoming the first player in the league to win 2 tournaments this year - well done him! It was also interesting to notice that Tom won the tournament with 4 wins and a draw which is quite surprising, you would expect the winner to win 5 games and maybe even 6. I think it showed both the quality of the competition and the well balanced nature of SBG, there was no army that dominated the tourney, no-one won more than 4 games and I think there was somewhere between 5 and 7 players who won 4 games (the same as the winner) any one of whom would have won the tournament if they had won one more game - exciting stuff!
After saying our goodbyes we began the long drive South back to reality with heavy hearts after a great weekend. During the journey we reflected on all our matches and swapped war-stories, comparing the highs and lows of our campaigns. As always with these tournaments, it was a great weekend with some great people and tons of fun, twas good fun to get away from the real world and just play with toy soldiers for a few days.
As for the result I couldn’t help but feel a little frustrated with myself - 5 wins out of 7 would have won the tournament and I had 3 wins with 4 games left to play, talk about throwing it away! Suffice to say I was severely chastised by my wife upon my return for not taking her advice from Saturday night!
Still, on the plus side I was able to move up to a season high of #2 in the GBHL which was a pretty decent result.I’d said to a bunch of people that after this year’s ‘campaign’ I would be retiring my Feral based Isengard for the near future, with the intention of playing all next year’s tournaments with some fluffy Hobbit themed Good armies. The only caveat I made to that decision was that if I could still win the league then I might take my Ferals to the final tournament of the season (Titans in March) to really fight for the title. However, as you may have noticed, the Preston tournament actually took place nearly 2 months ago, I wrote up most of this soon after returning but didn’t get around to neatening it up until the last few days. As a result of this the penultimate tournament of the season (in Stirling last month) has now happened and looking at the results I can’t now win the league - I’ll be heading to Titans in March with a possibility of a top 3 finish.
So, as promised, I’m now retiring my Feral based army from the tourney scene, at least for the considerable future. I set out to prove a point around March this year - that Feral Uruk Hai are the best troops in the game and that you can win competitive games with themed, non-meta armies from one army-list if you take a lot of good quality troops and not monster/hero/cheese spam - and I feel like I’ve done pretty well; I’ve entered 4 tournaments with a Feral based army and have come 1st, 2nd, 4th and 4th which is pretty good going. What I’ve found most satisfying is that a lot of my opponents have said how well themed the army is, no-one seems to think it’s cheesy or anything which is a nice bonus. I think that the army performs best at 750 points where you can essentially have Saruman, two thirds ferals and a third crossbowmen, at that points level the army becomes very hard to beat and that’s where I had my best luck (my 1st and 2nd position wins were at 750 points - winning 10 out of 11 games in the process). I really think the Ferals' 2 attacks combined with Fight 4 and Strength 4 make them the ultimate combat troops, it’s a lot of fun to play with too.
However, the time has come for a change, I tried my hand with the Ferals and I see no point in just turning up to the same tournaments with the same army next year, for me there’s simply no challenge or appeal in that. I’ve been painting up Thorin’s Company recently and am about to get started on all the new Desolation of Smaug Hobbit figures to build a Good army for use on the tourney circuit next year. The schedule’s already looking packed for the first half of next year and I can’t wait to start attending all the events (looks like about 1 a month!) with some shiny new toys. It’s all building up towards a fluffy master-plan that I hope to have painted up for the 1000 point tournament in Mansfield at the start of May - what is the master-plan? You’ll just have to keep your eyes on my WIP thread to find out!
Until next time, Merry Christmas all and I hope to see you at a GBHL event in the very near future.