Guess who’s a bloody gryph-donkey*… it’s me! And not even just because I’ve been out of the word-vomiting (article writing) game for the last 6 months or so. I went to a tournament… was going to do a great article about my comeback to warhammering… and took a sum total of 4 photos.
To celebrate my grand return to “wanting to write an article enough to actually get off my arse to write an article”, I’m going to go ahead and give you a run down anyway… I can maybe give you bulletpoint vibes and some crappy powerpoint arrows on the battleplans. Let’s see how this all sort of drops out.
*If you can have a Gryphhound, I’m sure there are Gryphdonkeys too. Hmmm, I want to see farm animals from the Realms!
My List
We’re back to running an Ironclad which is fun for me. I was happy to reduce how many units I had on the table but… the points have come down twice over and I’m back to having quite a few bodies on the table. Those Salvagers at the points feel really good and if I had more of them… I’d probably play a 40 model Salvager list :D. As it is Arks and Riggers are really good and that one unit of Skywardens with the Artycle 15 pack a real punch!
Was it the best thought out list? No. Was I trying to squeeze in a unit of Riggers after the points drops? Yes. Should I change it to make it better? Fuck yes.
Game 1: Into the Fire against Jan with IDK
Am I digging the first battleplan? No… with my list, I generally want an impactful underdog to let myself go 4 odd points under in turn 1 and 2… using that to then push into a big enough win turns 3-5 with maybe a juicy double. I’ve also struggled a bit going into these side to side deployments because I can’t use my mobility to work around threats and can struggle to get around opponents and into the units I need to wipe out.
I’m ok with playing into this list… so long as I can get in enough damage before it gets enough damage onto me. Those Thralls with the Ironshell Barnacles (minus 1 from damage) are a pain in my arse though as I really want to clear them with shooting and they make that quite a lot harder. Do I really get Idoneth? Nah… but I’ve got a good track record into them anyway.
I made a misplay myself here in the deployment by giving my Ironclad better bombs instead of ignoring negative modifiers to hit when shooting with all the guns against something because most of this damn list flies. I’ve made this mistake before into IDK… I don’t know, they just don’t really look like they fly.
Gave him first after winning that first key roll-off
He just moved up and got his scoring going knowing I wouldn’t do much into him while the -1 to hit was in play
Got baited into moving onto the middle circle to try and wipe a unit and take the middle for the extra points
Spoiler alert: WAS NOT WORTH IT!
(look at me, here I managed to do the bullet point thing I mentioned in the intro, just wait for the rest of the article)
Copped a full send from IDK top of 2nd… wiped my two units of salvagers which is ok, still recoverable but a bit of a blow
I wasn’t set up poorly but in hindsight I was up too far forward for massed eels with run and charge
Did a really nice redeploy with an auto-endrin to block the base of the Idoneth Fighty Wave Dude (took me a bit to remember it’s called an Eidolon)
Played towards getting the double, even keeping myself to precisely 11 points under. Wiping the Eidolon by removing its ward, which although it felt good was really another mistake when the turtle was right there and on the middle objective.
Got the double! Cleaned up pretty well but failed to kill the wizard controlling the IDK Wet Incarnate by a single wound and got blocked by the tentacle to take the middle objective.
Then he put another tentacle blocking me and between the tentacles and the turtle I could never muscle him off the middle objective which cost me 12 points over 3 turns which is a delta of 24 points there alone. On top of that, I was bogged down and couldn’t get out to the back for Siege of Ashes.
Jan played bloody well, the full send turn 2 was his get out of jail card and I’d severely underestimated how deep into me he’d get with all the run and charges (plus being able to remove enough models in the shooting phase to start locking my ships in). The clincher really being how well he played on the middle objective to keep me off, I was equal control on turns 3 and 4 with the underdog benefit. He kept his eyes on his points and kept working towards keeping that lead.
We did struggle for time and I’d asked if he wanted to play with clock at the beginning but accepted that he’d prefer to play without. This put a lot of pressure on me in my turns to keep the game rolling quickly enough to get to the turns where I had a chance at a win. The clock lets me decide how I spend my time and that helps me to personally have more enjoyable games so I really need to get my clock out on the table more often.
This was overall a tough game and a real killer to start the day off with. There were a few times where if the rolls had gone a little differently the game could have been decided.
Game to the wet elves for 50 to 30
Game 2: Seesaw Objectives otherwise known as Treacherous Ground against Kruleboyz
Total opposite to round 1, this is a fucking fantastic battleplan for me. I’ve got the mobility to get from one side to the other whilst most opponents need to deal with trying to spread out.
Kruleboyz list with an interesting mix of infantry, war machines, monsters, and heroes. Unfortunately for the matchup, I’m really happy to see combos like this where I can shoot the war machines and monsters off before charging in to wipe infantry and foot heroes. The KB option to get strike first means I need to theoretically be more surgical and use my Frigate to avoid it removing my strike first… but realistically I’m always playing that way with this list. It’s a list which is really technically oriented with a plan to steal points with the potential 4 teleports per turn but with my movement and shooting, I’ve also got the option to play into the middle and still hit units on both sides.
Deployed hard on the left whereas he split his forces to be able to fight on each side and that pretty much gave me the game there.
He’d never played into KO before and is relatively new to AoS so I also focussed on making sure to explain some of his options and how some rules interact where he could use them to his advantage in future games. I also did explain some of what I was doing and where he could do things against it or could have done things differently. KO can be a rough army to go into the first time and I do what I can to help my opponents for their next games hoping that it won’t be me that they face.
My game plan here was focus hard up on the left flank turn 1 (or turn 2 if turn 1 didn’t present a good option), move into the middle turn 2 and be able to then control whichever objectives he as underdog would make stable. I can always leave a unit or 2 of salvagers behind to keep the left flank under control and block teleports. That’s pretty much how it went down, he kept trying to score some points but I know that it’s hard to keep the motivation up after you see a flank crumble.
We had a really funny moment where I’d moved all my army and then realised that he’d literally hidden his Swampcalla in the Obscuring terrain… I hadn’t seen it at all. I was lucky I’d moved my Endrinriggers right next to it and they could charge in and solve that little problem. From there it really was just a matter of playing it out and trying to work out where / how I could score while the last models teleported about.
Strong KO win for 70 to 35
Game 3: Escape the Coast against Troll Jan
Sorry second Jan of the day but you’ll forever be Troll Jan for me now.
I had not played on this battleplan before! I don’t know why, I guess just luck. But I took a quick look after having seen his list and knew this was going to be tough and that I’d really be relying on turn 4 and 5 to pull a win out here. It’s got a good underdog though here where you can remove the objectives on the left in the image below and using that I could see my escape plan (pun intended).
Fuck me… troll lists are a good counter to my list. I had the good luck to speak to a really good player before the match who really reminded me of what I’d need to do to be able to open up a win… by opening up the castle on the right turns.
I deployed hard on the right in this one… and actually here was a mistake because I deployed too hard on the right and I couldn’t get out of my corner quickly enough.
He took the chance to deploy a small block to tactics up and control that left flank which my 1 unit of salvagers obviously couldn’t handle. He then proceeded to get lucky with run rolls and keep taking the objectives off me too the little scamp!
I thought after turn 1 that I would head towards that left flank so that his trolls would get a bit banked up and I could deal with them bit by bit… but I was really a bit too slow and with a nice old charge roll he got the 2×6 and Big Trogg King guy into my Ironclad in the middle. I’d whittled one unit down to just 3 between shooting, covering fire, and some mortal wound bombs. I was seriously worried though that the Ironclad was about to go down but a bit of a rubbish combat phase later and the Ironclad had just taken 3 wounds.
Trogg King guy sitting there with no ward and this was my go turn… drove over him with both ships took the ward off the six Troggoths and started shooting into them too.
I was still just the underdog so at this point I got to remove the 3rd objective on the left flank and then just park on the middle objective for my big 10 turn 4 (and would have been turn 5 too if we’d still had the time).
Jan used a neat little trick to with his little wizard who’d moved down the left flank where I kept turning off the objectives, he made him the place where he could bring units back and used it to then control his hideout and score another tactic… I misplayed against it not really seeing the play where if I’d just shot that little shit off the table I’d have had no problem (I mean the wizard not Jan, he was a really nice chill opponent which is great for that 3rd round of an RTT).
Round 4 though I really got to start scoring properly, racked in my 20 and that put me ahead with a clear 5th turn which would have been another 20 for me too.
Had to call it due to time at turn 4 with 58 to 42 for me
How it went for me overall
2-0-1 and 5th place out of 22
Am I satisfied with my performance? I’m feeling like it was good enough but those two mistakes game 1 really changed my trajectory for the day. I recognise I should go easier on myself… learnt some good lessons going into armies I rarely play against and a couple of battleplans I haven’t played on much.
On the other hand, I definitely felt the hunger inside me for more Ws which has not gone away and right now I am inclined to feed it… at least a little and to hope that’s enough.
This is what my good mate Dirk refers to as the Killer Instinct. For sure, it’s largely very useful for giving me the drive to push for my wins but it’s also got the dark side of giving me the drive to push for more wins when I could be looking at making sure I enjoy the game. Ooh watch out… I might get philosophical or some shit up in here!
What have I got to work on?
- Practice rolling 3+s for my Salvagers
- Only kidding… but normally my Salvagers get all their 3+s and the Wardens not… but this time it was the other way around and I felt the difference
- Fixing my bloody list
- The regular Null-Khemist isn’t the right tool for this list
- Trying some new things to give myself more list options i.e. to be able to deal with the
- I’ve got my eye on some Regiments of Renown and looking at things like putting a gunhauler into the list
- Getting some more games in against some of those armies I struggle into
- Keeping my reps up!
- Already signed up for another league and will look for 1 TTS event to do in parallel
- Will try and squeeze one more tournament in before Christmas too
- Learn how to make indents in bullet point lists in WordPress
Close this one out, there’s enough rambling already in this article…
The tournament itself was real nice, I hadn’t been to Luneburg before and the bunch of people hitting the tournaments in the Gargoyle Games series (Hamburg, Lubeck, Luneburg) are just a fucking bunch of gems! It’s honestly a big motivation to turn up to these events because the atmosphere is really nice and I’m happy to see all the familiar faces and meet new ones. This was particularly cool for that aspect in Luneburg as I played 3 opponents who I’d never faced before!
I’m glad to be back with the energy to enjoy my AoS time and really feel good about being in the hobby. I’m glad I took a bit of a break when I needed it.
Now get out there and get your reps in for your next event… or not if you’re not feeling it. Take time for you and if you need to ease back or take some time off… bloody well go for it.