Over 9 months since my last post, I've really gotten lazy since I got out of college 😅
Hey everyone, been a long time away from writing here and honestly just hadn't been getting that motivation to make any content to quite the depth and quality that I wanted to put out for you guys. After my second team tournament though, I think I've found that spark again!
I have been to Xroads twice now in my KoW career and both times were incredibly fun. This year Corey Reynolds (the TO) decided he wanted to make it something fairly unique to the gt scene and run a 4 man team tournament. That posed a slight issue to me though, since my very small club in Richmond only has 2 travelling players including me and the other one couldn't go. So I cast a wide net, lit the beacons, and the call was answered by the South-East WKOW crew of Robert Brandon, Tim Smith, and the absolutely insane Shannon Shoemaker who drove about 13-14 hours from Chicago to Almira New York for this event.
So how the team tournaments score is it's an aggregate of the individual games. So a team that gets 3 15 pt wins and a 3 pt loss gets 48 points. It's fairly simple and can lead to some big gains if your team gets a full sweep. There's also matching up the team, which for Xroads was a pretty complicated affair. Each team had nominated a team captain, who would be in charge of choosing the matchup for 2 of the games, and the scenarios played for the other 2. Each scenario could only be played by 1 matchup, so if the first game is playing control no one else that round could play control. Captains were given roughly 5-6 scenarios each round that could be chosen and I could probably write 3 posts just on the strategy that can be made with this. The hardest part though was the matchups were done in pairs, so each team had to pick 2 of its players for the first matchups. There would then be a rolloff to determine who would pick either the matchups or scenarios for this first pairing, but its chosen before you know the players the other team nominated. This is probably hard to follow, but when one team has an elf matchup only 1 of your players is confident in, there's a huge gamble/psychology aspect in that.
With that explained I'll get into our teams lists and try to explain what we had going as a whole for the team. 2250 pts for Xroads this year
Joseph Greek- #Creepyarmy / Nightstalkers
2 Hordes of Butchers- 1 w/ Mace of Crushing, 1 w/ Chant of Hate
2 Regiments of Fiends
1 Horde of Fiends w/ Brew of Sharpness
2 Shadow Hulks
1 Planar Apparition
1 Horror w/ Bane Chant
1 Void Lurker w/ Dark Lords Onyx Ring
3 Dreadfiends- 1 w/ Blade of Slashing
Butchers Block Formation
13 drops, 20 US
This has been my main GT list all year post-masters, with different variations on points and monster selection. It's incredibly different from my Salamanders of last year, 0 shooting and 11 of my 13 drops are pretty capable combat machines. Every one of these units will put about 4 wounds at least on def 5, and you can play wide or narrow depending on matchup. This list's biggest strength is its ability to focus down key hordes and hammers while threatening flanks on the other pieces by putting a critical mass of small 50mm units into spots. The horde of fiends is essentially a glass rocket, and if protected early can one shot most sub 20 nerve units in the game, and I have taken out def 4 infantry hordes alone with it. So far its taken down the 2 team GT's I've attended, placed 5th and Vanguard and 4th at Keystone winning best general there. It's very strong, but also weak to shooting lists that can dance around with flying units. So Elves and Kin give this an extremely hard time, as Mindthirst doesn't work in those matchups and the stealthy isn't really as meaningful as most expect because of the lowered defense. It's not an unwinnable matchup, but hot nerve dice early can lose that game before you even get to turn 3. A boxcars on a 7 wound void lurker top of turn 1 has happened before, and is this lists biggest weakness imo.
Shannon Shoemaker- Goblins
2 Regiments of Rabble
2 Hordes of Rabble
3 Hordes of Fleabag Chariots
2 King on Chariots
3 Flaggits- 1 w/ Diadem of Dragon kind
3 Mincers
3 Giants
1 Goblin Mega Blaster
19 drops, 28 US
Our mass drops army, played by one of the best Goblin players around. This was also his first time ever playing this list, his norm being the classic triple wiz triple lobber setup. In the event he was normally being fed some form of infantry based list, with the hopes that he could out swarm them and grind out wins. The Goblin Mega Blaster actually tended to do pretty well, I know Shannon was usually getting a good spread of damage from it, and with the mincers he basically was rolling with 6 giants and could put some hurt down if his dice didn't betray him to the classic 1 hit giant rolls.
Shannon's Goblin Army
Tim Smith- Herd w/ Elf allies
1 Horde of Tribal Warriors w/ Brew of Haste
2 Regiments of Tribal Longhorns
2 Troops of Beast Pack
2 Stampedes- 1 w/ Chant of Hate, 1 w/ Wine of Elvenkind
1 Great Chieftan w/ Wings of Honeymaze
2 Shaman w/ Heal 5, 1 w/ Boots of Levitation, 1 w/ Kevinars Flying Hammer
3 Regiments of Forest Shamblers
1 BSB mounted
1 Noble War Chariot
15 drops, 21 US
This list was the real MVP of the event. Tim played lights out even when I stuck him with a bad matchup, twice vs abyssals he pulled a draw and even managed to sneak a game 5 win vs an absolutely brutal Elf list that secured our (Spoilers) event win! I can't really describe how it plays that well, other than the obvious it does a lot of vanguard shenanigans. But it has a strong amount of US in small bodies with the shamblers and can force draws vs lower unit strength lists or low drop lists that he can trade pieces with. This was our wildcard list for the matchups, we figured most wouldn't expect this type of build or know quite how to react to it early.
Tim's Herd army, he put a lot of work getting the display board done for this
The backdrop is a great touch, and it's been spreading in the SE
Robert Brandon- Elves
2 Hordes of Elf Archers- 1 w/ Chant of Hate, 1 w/ Heart-Seeking Chant
1 Troop of Silverbreeze
2 Hordes of Drakon Riders- 1 w/ Brew of Sharpness, 1 w/ Brew of Strength
1 Horde of War Chariots
1 BSB mounted w/ Diadem of Dragon Kind
1 Elven Mage w/ Bane Chant and Black Iron Crown
2 Noble War Chariots
1 Drakon Rider Lord
The Windborne Silverbreeze
12 Drops, 18 US
Our bully list for the event. Typically Robert was the matchup most teams didn't want to deal with, as this elf list is powerful in almost every phase. 71 24" elite 4+ shots, the drakons to go over the top and pick up those trouble hammers. It even packs some windblast for scenario play and a respectable amount of US for 2250. Roberts been playing a variation of this since ATC, and hasn't lost a game yet over 3 gt's with it. He can be beaten in US scenarios if you play to the terrain though, and he honestly got a couple lucky breaks over the event that took a couple draws to wins.
Robert and Joey's army, I'm lazy and didn't have a display board so we just shared
Doing these matchups I honestly won't remember what exact scenarios everyone played each round, because we all played a different one. So I might be wrong or get something like occupy mixed up with pillage, just bear with me on that.
Our costumes for the event, left to right -
The Golden Boy, The Goat, The Road Warrior, and the Dean
Round 1 - Unplugged Radio
Team Members-
Jake Hutton - Abyssal Dwarves
Greg Persons - Night Stalkers
Mike Rossi - League of Rhodia
Jon Vanase - Abyssals
This was our challenge match, and one of the teams we were really excited to get to play. Jon was their team captain (as the kingly persona of manliness)
First pairings-
I won the roll off and chose matchups. My first 2 bids were Roberts elves and Shannons Goblins, Jon put out Rossi with high alpha Rhodia and Greg's super mobile night stalkers. I lined up Shannon with Rossi, hoping the drop count would work in his favor and Robert with Greg as the shooting should put a lot of hurt on the nightstalkers. (Aside, I should do a blog post on why shooting hurts nightstalkers so badly) I remember Robert getting Loot, and I think Shannon got Invade.
Second Pairings-
Since I chose matchups the first set, Jon got them the second set. I had myself and Tim's herd left, Jon had Jake's AD and his own Abyssals. Tim got slotted with Jon's pretty nasty double archfiend list, and I got the wonderful Jake Hutton triple Mortar special. Scenario wise I gave Tim control, hoping the lower US of Abyssals would play into his favor, and chose Pillage for my own mission, aiming to force jake to play spread out so I could pick better fights.
My game with Jake saw a pretty spread out pillage placement, which was what I hoped for letting my speed and nimble dreadfiends put in a lot of work. I had top of turn and rushed pretty hard across the entire board, dreadfiends working the table edges, butchers center right, fiends center left. Shadow hulk on each side of the fiends and butchers. His mortars turn one triple hit my shadow hulk on the left, doing 24 wounds and naturally one shotting him into oblivion. With that pressure added, I setup my charges on turn 2, deciding it was better not to rush the engagement for fear of bouncing and letting him get any turns of swinging at me. Turn 2 his mortars went after my Planar apparition, needing 6's and naturally got a hit, that did 8 wounds, and he rolled the 7 needed to kill that unit. So he's removed 2 of my better backline objective campers and 335 pts before I got to get into his lines. Then on turn 3 I hit him, hard and fast took off a regiment of decimators, his gargoyles, a horde of slave orcs, disordered another regiment of decimators and generally gave him limited options on his turn 3. He puts grotesques and a hindered regiment of half breeds that I didn't check was in 16" (you'll see this happen a couple times and I really need to double check my ranges at all times) He picked up that horde, and left me in a pretty rough position. I suicide chaffed my horror to hopefully stop the grotesques from hitting my butchers, or at least force a hindered overrun into them. Cleaned up the last decimator and took care of 2 of the mortars, as well as wavering basusu with a counter charging fiend regiment which was a delightful surprise. His turn 4 saw the grotesques butcher my poor horror, then roll a mighty 1 for the overrun. leaving him a sitting duck for my own butchers and dreadfiend in the rear. I threw everything into that unit, naturally rolling snake eyes on him, while chaffing his last horde with a dreadfiend. Also picked up the last mortar this turn with the void lurker, since its pillage I didn't need him getting a lucky string of 6's one shotting one of my units. His turn 5 he grabbed my 2nd horde of butchers with the grotesques, cleaned up the dreadfiend blocking the blacksouls horde, and picked up my fiend horde using basusu and a flying overmaster dude. My 6 saw me grab the grotesques, I believe I picked up the regiment of halfbreeds this turn but that might have been turn 5 with the shadow hulk. Hard to say but its dead at this point and I have 3 tokens with the dragon doubling 20 to land on one just to make sure nothing funky happens. He throws his interceptor individuals into a dreadfiend, getting a waver and the game ends on 6 with me up 3-0.
End of game with attrition I got a 16-4 win, and our team didn't suffer a loss as Shannon and Robert picked up wins, Roberts happening on a turn 6 box cars to kill a loot carrying unit and win the game. Tim picked up a tough draw against jon.
Rough Team Total- 54ish
Round 2- The Aristocrats
Members-
Mike Adkins - Abyssals
Mike Austin - Twilight Kin
Alex Chavez - Ratkin
Sean McCormally - Elves
The team featuring the one and only US Master, I play these guys pretty regularly as I only live an hour or 2 away from them and I can attribute almost all of my growth in the game to playing with this group.
First Pairings-
I believe I wont the roll again and picked matchups first again, hoping to get to pair off Robert with one of the elf lists. I put Robert and Shannon up first again, and they turned in Alex and Sean. I threw Shannon at Alex, with the idea being that I didn't think his goblin list would do that well vs elves and ratkin might be a reasonable matchup. Robert got the elf match I wanted to give him, since the mirror match is pretty miserable to the elf with less shooting in my experience with that. I don't remember which scenarios they played, I believe Robert had a dominate or pillage mission and I don't recall what Shannon had. (This is the round I started to drink a touch)
Second Pairings-
They had matchups and Mike Adkins all tortured souls and filler build got Tims herd, leaving me with Mike Austins Kin. Tim got control once again, for the exact same reason of he had 6-7 more unit strength and we hoped he could make it count. I picked ransack for myself, with the idea that I could maybe get him to come towards me some and help me out. Spoiler, it didn't.
My game with Mike Austin can be summed up quickly by, he bent me over and quite unapologetically broke every part of my body. It was ugly, I deployed pretty heavy right side using a hill to cover most of my vulnerable units from his bow fire, as ideally that plus stealthy would make the damage minimal to nothing. Then I could push hard early and sweep across with hopefully enough alive to either delay his scoring units from reaching anywhere valuable or kill enough of them to force a draw or minor win. What wound up actually happening was I pushed hard right, got it all set up. Then he rolled his nerve checks, and hit 11's. a lot. and instead of sweeping across and at least taking out a respectable amount of units I left wounds on the table as my dragon got wavered from shooting, I lost 1 fiend regiment to shooting after suiciding the other to get the space to operate that flank as hard as I could. the dragon then immediately died when I couldn't really get it out of the way anywhere (It was gonna multi charge a chariot horde with a dreadfiend in the hopes of a cheeky us swap) and his nerves didn't really let up I just didn't have enough left to keep giving away and he took the game over pretty cleanly from there. One thing that was nice was my planar decided that heal 7 meant you fully heal whatever you target, which annoyed Mike a fair bit. But in the end I couldn't really keep enough stuff off the objectives after the rough opener and dropped a 1-19, one of the worst losses I've taken with this army.
That said, Mike is one of the best guys to play against and we have a history of him beating me to a bloody pulp, so tradition and all that. Our team saw Shannon lose to Alex, Robert pulled a nice win VS Sean, and Tim once again got the draw against Abyssals with herd.
Rough Team Total- 86ish?
Round 3 - Burger Kings
Team Members-
Ray Weiandt - Undead
Keith Conroy - Herd
Nick Scibetta - Varangur
Tony Chastenay - Salamanders
First Pairings-
I lost the roll for matchups this time, but they took scenario first instead so I actually got what I wanted anyways. Mixing up our initial pairings I submitted Robert and myself for this one, with Robert getting the Salamanders since I have a fair bit of experience telling me that's the single worst matchup salamanders have. I took Ray weiandt's undead, its the perfect matchup for me a slow ground pounding list that wants to walk up to me and sit there. Ray grabbed Invade for himself, and I don't remember what Robert played. Believe it was dominate but could be mistaken.
Second Pairings-
I had scenarios this go around, and Shannon got the Herd matchup while Tim got to deal with Varangur. Pretty ideal for us, tims list isn't awful at handling low drop elite armies using his stampedes and beast packs. I gave Tim eliminate I believe, and Shannon got stuck with Take and Hold. (Hear that Cyle Pool and Andrew Summers, I picked it) This was cause of his US advantage, figuring it would help him a lot in getting points early and building an insurmountable lead.
Ray is from the Hershey PA area, who's been to most MA events and I've only had the chance to play him once before this at 2018 mountaineer where I was using a double ogre legion build. That game was probably the single tightest and best played game I'd ever had and I was really excited to get to go at him again with my main army. I deployed in my usual super wide with a heavy dreadfiend-lurker flank, central fiends and butchers, and dreadfiend far flank. He put his soul reavers and wights towards my lurker side, and just put a regiment of mummies on the far dreadfiend flank. I won the roll for turn one, and immediately pushed that mummie side. I moved up my horde of fiends to threated them if they moved forward turn 1, and used my 3rd dreadfiend to assist him. the butchers pushed up to set the engagements on his side of the midline, helping ensure I was always in the lead for scenario. His 1 saw him push his army forward, with the mummies turning to face the far dreadfiend. And I quote "I don't think you'll suicide that dreadfiend, you'll just dance around me" he said. My turn, I suicided the dreadfiend. Charging all of his zombie regiments I picked up each one, and hopped my void lurker over his lines to force the soul reavers to begin the dance of your 300 pt cav unit isn't gonna charge anything without exposing itself. His 2 he had to suicide a liche king to prevent the fiend horde from getting a potential rear on his mummy regiment, and got a nifty surge flank into my shadowhulk, plus some counter charges into my lines. He then proceeded to whiff on every nerve roll except the hulks, which he killed. this left him with a lot of exposed flanks, and gave me the space to pick up a lot of his units in one go. He saw his horde of revenants one shot by butchers, the wight horde got boxed in by a dreadfiend and my butchers, preventing any escape, and his wraiths kinda danced around trying to find a decent surge target. From this point on it was pretty much us each trading a unit, except I had a lot more to trade and was constantly gaining position on him. I got the W, 18-2, in a nice bounce back from round 2. Ray is still easily one of the most fun guys to play and I'm eagerly waiting to see how he decides to approach our matchup next time
Team wise, we got the full 4-0 sweep, each of us getting our big win to vault us back into 1st place past the Aristocrats
Rough Team Score- 157ish
Round 4 - Kingsaholic Anonymous
Team Members-
Mike Szedlemeyer - Elves
Tom Szedlmeyer - FoN
John Medaglia - Dwarves
Cealin McMillen - Ratkin
I've butchered all of those names I bet.
First Pairings-
Wanna guess what I did this time? that's right, I won the roll and chose matchups. Switching it up again, I put Shannon and Tim out first, and assigned Shannon the Rats (it worked the first time right?) and Tim the Dwarves. Mostly for the same reasons as before, I felt Tim could handle the dwarves defense with speed and stampedes, while Shannon could counter the us game pretty strongly. Scenario wise Tim played Dominate, while Shannon got Eliminate.
Second pairings-
With Tim and Shannon gone, that left me and Robert, vs the Zed brothers. I was honestly very worried the Mike was gonna force the elf v stalker matchup, as that is not a great one for me but thankfully he decided to take the elf mirror match and gave me the fon matchup instead. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth, but that meant we got every matchup exactly how we wanted them. Scenario wise I picked up control for myself, it plays very neatly into how wide I play my list and would again force a list that normally wants to play pretty compact and abuse heal + surge into playing wider giving me more space to operate. Robert got pillage I believe, or ransack. One of those 2.
Tom had a fairly typical green lady + winged unicorn + SoS druid for a meaty heal 20 I believe, to go with the boulderguard formation and an extra greater earth elemental. It's a very rough grind list if you don't pack the cs3 tools that I added with the extra shadow hulk. I had actually decided to go second this game, mostly to try and get him to engage me towards the middle of the board with a forest so I could work the flanks abit better. He didn't approach that quick, and took some minimal shots into my void lurker and far left dreadfiend. Lurker full regen'd and the dreadfiend got a full heal from the planar, and I pushed up pretty hard on the right and abit more softly on the left as that's where his beast of nature and winged unicorn were. turn 2 when he saw exactly how fast I was gonna approach he held firm and redirected his shooting into my most aggressive dreadfiend, thankfully only doing a couple wounds and not rolling the waver. I then hit him hard with all my fiend regiments and dread fiends on the right side, parking my void lurker right behind all the fighting untis safe from harm but starting right down his elemental line and at his talonriders. Next turn saw him pull some surge flanks off but since greaters are 4+ monsters they didn't really get the damage quite there. He had also left me a flank charge by relocating a druid that was blocking it pretty well to be out of my mindthirst range, which did let him pick up a dreadfiend but also let me pick up a horde of earth elementals with the flanking lurker and hindered butcher charge to the front. I stuffed my entire line in the faces of his elementals since surge only can work if you have the room to make pivots, and that left him pretty much with nowhere to go. I had to play my last couple turns wary of his talon riders since they do hit on 4's, but he lost too much damage potential early when I cleaned up his EE hordes and GEE. Also kept my streak of always killing the green lady with this army, 3 for 3 now when I see her. Stalkers win, 15-5
As a team Robert and Tim pulled wins off, Shannon lost to a turn 6 overrun to take the middle token turning a draw into a loss.
Actual Team total- 210
Round 5- STG
Team Members-
Steve King- Dwarves
Tim O'Brian - Varangur
Chris Pelletier - Abyssals
Zess Williams - Elves
First Pairings -
At this point we were pretty worried, we had a 16 point lead on Aristocrats, and needed a full sweep to make sure we got the overall win. This team also held the Aristocrats to a 45ish point round, so we knew we were going into a rough fight. We had discussed over lunch how to approach this, and really hoped we could get an elf on elf mirror match as it was the only matchup we felt was even for that army. I wanted to get either the dwarves or varangur, Tim wanted the dwarves, and Shannon was kinda a he'll take anything that wasn't the elf matchup. Naturally, we didn't get that. My first submission was Shannon and Robert, and they put forward Chris's Abyssals and Steve's Dwarves. I won the matchups again, and put our elves into the abyssals as I knew that was almost an auto win for Roberts build. Shannon got the dwarves, with the hope that he can out grind with the giants and force a draw at worst. Scenario wise I believe Robert played loot and Shannon played dominate
Second Pairings -
With those two out of the way, that left myself and tim vs the elves and varangur and they had the matchups. They had the matchup selection here, and paired myself with the Varangur and tim with the Elves. While varangur was my ideal matchup, given the options I would've much rather had the elfs instead since I felt my list could better handle it over Tims. I gave myself Pillage, again forcing a naturally compact style hammer list to spread out and let me work angles, while Tim opted for Occupy. His strategy being to place his 2 pt objective near some terrain and just overload that side to hopefully outlast the elf shooting and bumrush the archer hordes.
This last game was one I almost gave away, with a mistake not measuring a charge distance. We had placed the majority of our 6 tokens in one corner of the deployment zone, huddled around a forest, one near the center point in the open, another in the forest by the center, and a last one on the opposite edge from the majority of the tokens. I won the roll for sides, and happily took the side with the clump of objectives, since my main anti-def 5 hammers had strider anyway, it meant I could setup big combo charges into his key hammer units while having the cover of hindered charges into me if he got there first. Deploying very heavily on that side, I had both shadow hulks, a regiment of fiends, my horde of fiends, a dreadfiend, a void lurker, and my planar all in that corner. In the middle I put my 2 butcher hordes, with the idea being to split them off to matchup with whatever he left in the middle/left. My left side was my 2 dreadfiends, one on the far left table edge, the other middle left to rush up to the objective forest and get easy flank angles. He deployed heavy right as well, with a horde of direfangs, a horde of fallen w/pathfinder, a cavern dweller, and a king on chimera all there. the middle saw some infantry in thralls, a couple magus conclaves, and his far left he put a tundra wolves troop and a second horde of fallen without an item. He got turn 1, and immediately did 3 wounds to a fiend regiment in the middle, needing 6s to hit, getting 2 hits, and rolling the box cars for the insta-kill. Kinda disappointing cause I wanted to use that unit to pickup a regiment of thralls just to strip some unit strength but I'm used to that happening. He advanced up on the right, and pushed more cautiously on the left. My first, I used my remaining regiment of fiends to block both of his hordes from hitting the rest of my units on the right, by putting a shadow hulk just behind them, and the right dreadfiend angled so he couldn't fit that charge without going over the board edge. I turned a butcher horde to go to the right since there wasn't much point staying in the middle vs thralls, and this is where I messed up cause I forgot to check his cavern dwellers range. This opened a multi charge of his king on chimera and the cavern dweller that I wasn't really expecting. On my left I turned the other butcher horde to go match with the fallen horde, and the far left dreadfiend rushed up into the tundra wolves charge range with the mid left one set up to flank it if he charged or get in for a double charge if it moved up too much. His turn 2 and 3 were the pivot turns, as I had no choice but to accept what he took and hope that he didn't spike any rolls. His far left tundra wolves didn't take the bait, but he moved them up into a flank charge of the mid-left dread fiend anyways so I won that regardless. In the middle without anything to really target he turned his thrall horde towards the forest objective, and sat the regiment on the center objective. Far right, he whiffed pretty hard with his cavern dweller, and bounced off the butcher horde after only doing 10 wounds. He easily picked up the regiment of fiends, as he should and had to sit to take my counter punch. I healed the butchers some, but only down to 7 wounds, and went all into the fallen horde with a shadow hulk, hindered void lurker, and hindered dread fiend. I was unfortunate in my positioning, I wanted to ensure the dreadfiend was unhindered but barely clipped the forest with his back corner. I suicided the other hulk into the direfangs, just to throw some wounds there to make it easier to pickup turn 3. Butchers countered the king, and my horde of fiends had to deal with a troop of direwolves. Left side I continued to dance with the horde of fallen, and picked up the troop of wolves with the mid left dreadfiend. On the right I only did 7 wounds to the horde of fallen, and failed to roll the 7 plus brutal needed for a key waver (This was really unfortunate, as the cavern dweller alone should've done 5 and the dreadfiend and void lurker should've added another 5, so a 4 should've gotten the waver and a 7 would've picked them up). Turn 3 saw him double charge my brutal shadow hulk with both hordes on the right, he pushed up the fallen on the left, the king and dweller finished off the butcher horde, but importantly he went for a 4+ overrun on the king to dodge the fiends arc and rolled a 1. He also annoyingly did 4 wounds to my left butcher horde with the magus conclaves again needing 6's to hit. The big thing here is he didn't countercharge my void lurker, so I got a free flank on the direfangs since they couldn't move with my own shadowhulk in front of them. I put the dreadfiend into the fallen just to tie them down, and added the shadowhulk into the front so I make sure I was on snakes. The king got mowed down by the flanking fiends (In his defense, the fiends to the front with a bane chant would likely one shot him anyway with 5 wounds on him, so the overrun had a shot of him living) On the left I threw my butcher horde into his fallen just to get some value out of them, since they were probably gonna get killed regardless. Moved the left 2 dread fiends to setup flanks on my next turn vs the fallen. I think proceeded to kill the pathfinder fallen with a lone dreadfiend, doing just 2 wounds then rolling the 10 needed to pick them up, picked up the king, picked up the direfangs, and added 4 wounds to the fallen with the butchers. At this point, he was down to just 4 scoring units and 3 of them couldn't get to my cluster of 3 tokens and I still had 8 scoring units. The rest of the game saw me dance around the fallen and eventually waver them with flank and front charged from the dread fiends, the fiend horde went to the middle and picked up the thrall regiment, and my void lurker got into a magus conclave turn 6 and was setup to maybe pickup the thrall horde with the fiend horde turn 7. There was no turn 7, and I got the win 16-4.
And then the rest of the team, Shannon picked up his W, 15-5, and Robert got a strong win I believe tabling the abyssals. Only got 16 out of it, but it put us on the cusp on winning the event, and Tim "Balls of Steel" Smith managed to squeak the most clutch flank charge, 2 " backup on resolution onto a token on turn 7 to beat the elves with herd, and pick up a 14 point W. With that, we barely hung onto our lead, as Aristocrats swept the War King's of Cape Cod, getting a huge 72 point round I believe.
Overall we finished in 1st, with 271 points of battle and 34 of 40 points in paint!
Team Members-
Jake Hutton - Abyssal Dwarves
Greg Persons - Night Stalkers
Mike Rossi - League of Rhodia
Jon Vanase - Abyssals
This was our challenge match, and one of the teams we were really excited to get to play. Jon was their team captain (as the kingly persona of manliness)
First pairings-
I won the roll off and chose matchups. My first 2 bids were Roberts elves and Shannons Goblins, Jon put out Rossi with high alpha Rhodia and Greg's super mobile night stalkers. I lined up Shannon with Rossi, hoping the drop count would work in his favor and Robert with Greg as the shooting should put a lot of hurt on the nightstalkers. (Aside, I should do a blog post on why shooting hurts nightstalkers so badly) I remember Robert getting Loot, and I think Shannon got Invade.
Second Pairings-
Since I chose matchups the first set, Jon got them the second set. I had myself and Tim's herd left, Jon had Jake's AD and his own Abyssals. Tim got slotted with Jon's pretty nasty double archfiend list, and I got the wonderful Jake Hutton triple Mortar special. Scenario wise I gave Tim control, hoping the lower US of Abyssals would play into his favor, and chose Pillage for my own mission, aiming to force jake to play spread out so I could pick better fights.
My game with Jake saw a pretty spread out pillage placement, which was what I hoped for letting my speed and nimble dreadfiends put in a lot of work. I had top of turn and rushed pretty hard across the entire board, dreadfiends working the table edges, butchers center right, fiends center left. Shadow hulk on each side of the fiends and butchers. His mortars turn one triple hit my shadow hulk on the left, doing 24 wounds and naturally one shotting him into oblivion. With that pressure added, I setup my charges on turn 2, deciding it was better not to rush the engagement for fear of bouncing and letting him get any turns of swinging at me. Turn 2 his mortars went after my Planar apparition, needing 6's and naturally got a hit, that did 8 wounds, and he rolled the 7 needed to kill that unit. So he's removed 2 of my better backline objective campers and 335 pts before I got to get into his lines. Then on turn 3 I hit him, hard and fast took off a regiment of decimators, his gargoyles, a horde of slave orcs, disordered another regiment of decimators and generally gave him limited options on his turn 3. He puts grotesques and a hindered regiment of half breeds that I didn't check was in 16" (you'll see this happen a couple times and I really need to double check my ranges at all times) He picked up that horde, and left me in a pretty rough position. I suicide chaffed my horror to hopefully stop the grotesques from hitting my butchers, or at least force a hindered overrun into them. Cleaned up the last decimator and took care of 2 of the mortars, as well as wavering basusu with a counter charging fiend regiment which was a delightful surprise. His turn 4 saw the grotesques butcher my poor horror, then roll a mighty 1 for the overrun. leaving him a sitting duck for my own butchers and dreadfiend in the rear. I threw everything into that unit, naturally rolling snake eyes on him, while chaffing his last horde with a dreadfiend. Also picked up the last mortar this turn with the void lurker, since its pillage I didn't need him getting a lucky string of 6's one shotting one of my units. His turn 5 he grabbed my 2nd horde of butchers with the grotesques, cleaned up the dreadfiend blocking the blacksouls horde, and picked up my fiend horde using basusu and a flying overmaster dude. My 6 saw me grab the grotesques, I believe I picked up the regiment of halfbreeds this turn but that might have been turn 5 with the shadow hulk. Hard to say but its dead at this point and I have 3 tokens with the dragon doubling 20 to land on one just to make sure nothing funky happens. He throws his interceptor individuals into a dreadfiend, getting a waver and the game ends on 6 with me up 3-0.
End of game with attrition I got a 16-4 win, and our team didn't suffer a loss as Shannon and Robert picked up wins, Roberts happening on a turn 6 box cars to kill a loot carrying unit and win the game. Tim picked up a tough draw against jon.
Rough Team Total- 54ish
Round 2- The Aristocrats
Members-
Mike Adkins - Abyssals
Mike Austin - Twilight Kin
Alex Chavez - Ratkin
Sean McCormally - Elves
The team featuring the one and only US Master, I play these guys pretty regularly as I only live an hour or 2 away from them and I can attribute almost all of my growth in the game to playing with this group.
First Pairings-
I believe I wont the roll again and picked matchups first again, hoping to get to pair off Robert with one of the elf lists. I put Robert and Shannon up first again, and they turned in Alex and Sean. I threw Shannon at Alex, with the idea being that I didn't think his goblin list would do that well vs elves and ratkin might be a reasonable matchup. Robert got the elf match I wanted to give him, since the mirror match is pretty miserable to the elf with less shooting in my experience with that. I don't remember which scenarios they played, I believe Robert had a dominate or pillage mission and I don't recall what Shannon had. (This is the round I started to drink a touch)
Second Pairings-
They had matchups and Mike Adkins all tortured souls and filler build got Tims herd, leaving me with Mike Austins Kin. Tim got control once again, for the exact same reason of he had 6-7 more unit strength and we hoped he could make it count. I picked ransack for myself, with the idea that I could maybe get him to come towards me some and help me out. Spoiler, it didn't.
My game with Mike Austin can be summed up quickly by, he bent me over and quite unapologetically broke every part of my body. It was ugly, I deployed pretty heavy right side using a hill to cover most of my vulnerable units from his bow fire, as ideally that plus stealthy would make the damage minimal to nothing. Then I could push hard early and sweep across with hopefully enough alive to either delay his scoring units from reaching anywhere valuable or kill enough of them to force a draw or minor win. What wound up actually happening was I pushed hard right, got it all set up. Then he rolled his nerve checks, and hit 11's. a lot. and instead of sweeping across and at least taking out a respectable amount of units I left wounds on the table as my dragon got wavered from shooting, I lost 1 fiend regiment to shooting after suiciding the other to get the space to operate that flank as hard as I could. the dragon then immediately died when I couldn't really get it out of the way anywhere (It was gonna multi charge a chariot horde with a dreadfiend in the hopes of a cheeky us swap) and his nerves didn't really let up I just didn't have enough left to keep giving away and he took the game over pretty cleanly from there. One thing that was nice was my planar decided that heal 7 meant you fully heal whatever you target, which annoyed Mike a fair bit. But in the end I couldn't really keep enough stuff off the objectives after the rough opener and dropped a 1-19, one of the worst losses I've taken with this army.
That said, Mike is one of the best guys to play against and we have a history of him beating me to a bloody pulp, so tradition and all that. Our team saw Shannon lose to Alex, Robert pulled a nice win VS Sean, and Tim once again got the draw against Abyssals with herd.
Rough Team Total- 86ish?
Round 3 - Burger Kings
Team Members-
Ray Weiandt - Undead
Keith Conroy - Herd
Nick Scibetta - Varangur
Tony Chastenay - Salamanders
First Pairings-
I lost the roll for matchups this time, but they took scenario first instead so I actually got what I wanted anyways. Mixing up our initial pairings I submitted Robert and myself for this one, with Robert getting the Salamanders since I have a fair bit of experience telling me that's the single worst matchup salamanders have. I took Ray weiandt's undead, its the perfect matchup for me a slow ground pounding list that wants to walk up to me and sit there. Ray grabbed Invade for himself, and I don't remember what Robert played. Believe it was dominate but could be mistaken.
Second Pairings-
I had scenarios this go around, and Shannon got the Herd matchup while Tim got to deal with Varangur. Pretty ideal for us, tims list isn't awful at handling low drop elite armies using his stampedes and beast packs. I gave Tim eliminate I believe, and Shannon got stuck with Take and Hold. (Hear that Cyle Pool and Andrew Summers, I picked it) This was cause of his US advantage, figuring it would help him a lot in getting points early and building an insurmountable lead.
Ray is from the Hershey PA area, who's been to most MA events and I've only had the chance to play him once before this at 2018 mountaineer where I was using a double ogre legion build. That game was probably the single tightest and best played game I'd ever had and I was really excited to get to go at him again with my main army. I deployed in my usual super wide with a heavy dreadfiend-lurker flank, central fiends and butchers, and dreadfiend far flank. He put his soul reavers and wights towards my lurker side, and just put a regiment of mummies on the far dreadfiend flank. I won the roll for turn one, and immediately pushed that mummie side. I moved up my horde of fiends to threated them if they moved forward turn 1, and used my 3rd dreadfiend to assist him. the butchers pushed up to set the engagements on his side of the midline, helping ensure I was always in the lead for scenario. His 1 saw him push his army forward, with the mummies turning to face the far dreadfiend. And I quote "I don't think you'll suicide that dreadfiend, you'll just dance around me" he said. My turn, I suicided the dreadfiend. Charging all of his zombie regiments I picked up each one, and hopped my void lurker over his lines to force the soul reavers to begin the dance of your 300 pt cav unit isn't gonna charge anything without exposing itself. His 2 he had to suicide a liche king to prevent the fiend horde from getting a potential rear on his mummy regiment, and got a nifty surge flank into my shadowhulk, plus some counter charges into my lines. He then proceeded to whiff on every nerve roll except the hulks, which he killed. this left him with a lot of exposed flanks, and gave me the space to pick up a lot of his units in one go. He saw his horde of revenants one shot by butchers, the wight horde got boxed in by a dreadfiend and my butchers, preventing any escape, and his wraiths kinda danced around trying to find a decent surge target. From this point on it was pretty much us each trading a unit, except I had a lot more to trade and was constantly gaining position on him. I got the W, 18-2, in a nice bounce back from round 2. Ray is still easily one of the most fun guys to play and I'm eagerly waiting to see how he decides to approach our matchup next time
Team wise, we got the full 4-0 sweep, each of us getting our big win to vault us back into 1st place past the Aristocrats
Rough Team Score- 157ish
Round 4 - Kingsaholic Anonymous
Team Members-
Mike Szedlemeyer - Elves
Tom Szedlmeyer - FoN
John Medaglia - Dwarves
Cealin McMillen - Ratkin
I've butchered all of those names I bet.
First Pairings-
Wanna guess what I did this time? that's right, I won the roll and chose matchups. Switching it up again, I put Shannon and Tim out first, and assigned Shannon the Rats (it worked the first time right?) and Tim the Dwarves. Mostly for the same reasons as before, I felt Tim could handle the dwarves defense with speed and stampedes, while Shannon could counter the us game pretty strongly. Scenario wise Tim played Dominate, while Shannon got Eliminate.
Second pairings-
With Tim and Shannon gone, that left me and Robert, vs the Zed brothers. I was honestly very worried the Mike was gonna force the elf v stalker matchup, as that is not a great one for me but thankfully he decided to take the elf mirror match and gave me the fon matchup instead. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth, but that meant we got every matchup exactly how we wanted them. Scenario wise I picked up control for myself, it plays very neatly into how wide I play my list and would again force a list that normally wants to play pretty compact and abuse heal + surge into playing wider giving me more space to operate. Robert got pillage I believe, or ransack. One of those 2.
Tom had a fairly typical green lady + winged unicorn + SoS druid for a meaty heal 20 I believe, to go with the boulderguard formation and an extra greater earth elemental. It's a very rough grind list if you don't pack the cs3 tools that I added with the extra shadow hulk. I had actually decided to go second this game, mostly to try and get him to engage me towards the middle of the board with a forest so I could work the flanks abit better. He didn't approach that quick, and took some minimal shots into my void lurker and far left dreadfiend. Lurker full regen'd and the dreadfiend got a full heal from the planar, and I pushed up pretty hard on the right and abit more softly on the left as that's where his beast of nature and winged unicorn were. turn 2 when he saw exactly how fast I was gonna approach he held firm and redirected his shooting into my most aggressive dreadfiend, thankfully only doing a couple wounds and not rolling the waver. I then hit him hard with all my fiend regiments and dread fiends on the right side, parking my void lurker right behind all the fighting untis safe from harm but starting right down his elemental line and at his talonriders. Next turn saw him pull some surge flanks off but since greaters are 4+ monsters they didn't really get the damage quite there. He had also left me a flank charge by relocating a druid that was blocking it pretty well to be out of my mindthirst range, which did let him pick up a dreadfiend but also let me pick up a horde of earth elementals with the flanking lurker and hindered butcher charge to the front. I stuffed my entire line in the faces of his elementals since surge only can work if you have the room to make pivots, and that left him pretty much with nowhere to go. I had to play my last couple turns wary of his talon riders since they do hit on 4's, but he lost too much damage potential early when I cleaned up his EE hordes and GEE. Also kept my streak of always killing the green lady with this army, 3 for 3 now when I see her. Stalkers win, 15-5
As a team Robert and Tim pulled wins off, Shannon lost to a turn 6 overrun to take the middle token turning a draw into a loss.
Actual Team total- 210
Round 5- STG
Team Members-
Steve King- Dwarves
Tim O'Brian - Varangur
Chris Pelletier - Abyssals
Zess Williams - Elves
First Pairings -
At this point we were pretty worried, we had a 16 point lead on Aristocrats, and needed a full sweep to make sure we got the overall win. This team also held the Aristocrats to a 45ish point round, so we knew we were going into a rough fight. We had discussed over lunch how to approach this, and really hoped we could get an elf on elf mirror match as it was the only matchup we felt was even for that army. I wanted to get either the dwarves or varangur, Tim wanted the dwarves, and Shannon was kinda a he'll take anything that wasn't the elf matchup. Naturally, we didn't get that. My first submission was Shannon and Robert, and they put forward Chris's Abyssals and Steve's Dwarves. I won the matchups again, and put our elves into the abyssals as I knew that was almost an auto win for Roberts build. Shannon got the dwarves, with the hope that he can out grind with the giants and force a draw at worst. Scenario wise I believe Robert played loot and Shannon played dominate
Second Pairings -
With those two out of the way, that left myself and tim vs the elves and varangur and they had the matchups. They had the matchup selection here, and paired myself with the Varangur and tim with the Elves. While varangur was my ideal matchup, given the options I would've much rather had the elfs instead since I felt my list could better handle it over Tims. I gave myself Pillage, again forcing a naturally compact style hammer list to spread out and let me work angles, while Tim opted for Occupy. His strategy being to place his 2 pt objective near some terrain and just overload that side to hopefully outlast the elf shooting and bumrush the archer hordes.
This last game was one I almost gave away, with a mistake not measuring a charge distance. We had placed the majority of our 6 tokens in one corner of the deployment zone, huddled around a forest, one near the center point in the open, another in the forest by the center, and a last one on the opposite edge from the majority of the tokens. I won the roll for sides, and happily took the side with the clump of objectives, since my main anti-def 5 hammers had strider anyway, it meant I could setup big combo charges into his key hammer units while having the cover of hindered charges into me if he got there first. Deploying very heavily on that side, I had both shadow hulks, a regiment of fiends, my horde of fiends, a dreadfiend, a void lurker, and my planar all in that corner. In the middle I put my 2 butcher hordes, with the idea being to split them off to matchup with whatever he left in the middle/left. My left side was my 2 dreadfiends, one on the far left table edge, the other middle left to rush up to the objective forest and get easy flank angles. He deployed heavy right as well, with a horde of direfangs, a horde of fallen w/pathfinder, a cavern dweller, and a king on chimera all there. the middle saw some infantry in thralls, a couple magus conclaves, and his far left he put a tundra wolves troop and a second horde of fallen without an item. He got turn 1, and immediately did 3 wounds to a fiend regiment in the middle, needing 6s to hit, getting 2 hits, and rolling the box cars for the insta-kill. Kinda disappointing cause I wanted to use that unit to pickup a regiment of thralls just to strip some unit strength but I'm used to that happening. He advanced up on the right, and pushed more cautiously on the left. My first, I used my remaining regiment of fiends to block both of his hordes from hitting the rest of my units on the right, by putting a shadow hulk just behind them, and the right dreadfiend angled so he couldn't fit that charge without going over the board edge. I turned a butcher horde to go to the right since there wasn't much point staying in the middle vs thralls, and this is where I messed up cause I forgot to check his cavern dwellers range. This opened a multi charge of his king on chimera and the cavern dweller that I wasn't really expecting. On my left I turned the other butcher horde to go match with the fallen horde, and the far left dreadfiend rushed up into the tundra wolves charge range with the mid left one set up to flank it if he charged or get in for a double charge if it moved up too much. His turn 2 and 3 were the pivot turns, as I had no choice but to accept what he took and hope that he didn't spike any rolls. His far left tundra wolves didn't take the bait, but he moved them up into a flank charge of the mid-left dread fiend anyways so I won that regardless. In the middle without anything to really target he turned his thrall horde towards the forest objective, and sat the regiment on the center objective. Far right, he whiffed pretty hard with his cavern dweller, and bounced off the butcher horde after only doing 10 wounds. He easily picked up the regiment of fiends, as he should and had to sit to take my counter punch. I healed the butchers some, but only down to 7 wounds, and went all into the fallen horde with a shadow hulk, hindered void lurker, and hindered dread fiend. I was unfortunate in my positioning, I wanted to ensure the dreadfiend was unhindered but barely clipped the forest with his back corner. I suicided the other hulk into the direfangs, just to throw some wounds there to make it easier to pickup turn 3. Butchers countered the king, and my horde of fiends had to deal with a troop of direwolves. Left side I continued to dance with the horde of fallen, and picked up the troop of wolves with the mid left dreadfiend. On the right I only did 7 wounds to the horde of fallen, and failed to roll the 7 plus brutal needed for a key waver (This was really unfortunate, as the cavern dweller alone should've done 5 and the dreadfiend and void lurker should've added another 5, so a 4 should've gotten the waver and a 7 would've picked them up). Turn 3 saw him double charge my brutal shadow hulk with both hordes on the right, he pushed up the fallen on the left, the king and dweller finished off the butcher horde, but importantly he went for a 4+ overrun on the king to dodge the fiends arc and rolled a 1. He also annoyingly did 4 wounds to my left butcher horde with the magus conclaves again needing 6's to hit. The big thing here is he didn't countercharge my void lurker, so I got a free flank on the direfangs since they couldn't move with my own shadowhulk in front of them. I put the dreadfiend into the fallen just to tie them down, and added the shadowhulk into the front so I make sure I was on snakes. The king got mowed down by the flanking fiends (In his defense, the fiends to the front with a bane chant would likely one shot him anyway with 5 wounds on him, so the overrun had a shot of him living) On the left I threw my butcher horde into his fallen just to get some value out of them, since they were probably gonna get killed regardless. Moved the left 2 dread fiends to setup flanks on my next turn vs the fallen. I think proceeded to kill the pathfinder fallen with a lone dreadfiend, doing just 2 wounds then rolling the 10 needed to pick them up, picked up the king, picked up the direfangs, and added 4 wounds to the fallen with the butchers. At this point, he was down to just 4 scoring units and 3 of them couldn't get to my cluster of 3 tokens and I still had 8 scoring units. The rest of the game saw me dance around the fallen and eventually waver them with flank and front charged from the dread fiends, the fiend horde went to the middle and picked up the thrall regiment, and my void lurker got into a magus conclave turn 6 and was setup to maybe pickup the thrall horde with the fiend horde turn 7. There was no turn 7, and I got the win 16-4.
And then the rest of the team, Shannon picked up his W, 15-5, and Robert got a strong win I believe tabling the abyssals. Only got 16 out of it, but it put us on the cusp on winning the event, and Tim "Balls of Steel" Smith managed to squeak the most clutch flank charge, 2 " backup on resolution onto a token on turn 7 to beat the elves with herd, and pick up a 14 point W. With that, we barely hung onto our lead, as Aristocrats swept the War King's of Cape Cod, getting a huge 72 point round I believe.
Overall we finished in 1st, with 271 points of battle and 34 of 40 points in paint!
Warkings - Best Paint Winners
Unplugged Radio - Best Team Spirit
Kingsaholics Anonymous - 3rd Place
Team Aristocrats - 2nd Place
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - 1st Place
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