Doubles write up Part I

The doubles is a bit of fun and I really enjoyed it last year so relished at the opportunity to go this year.  Luke and I teamed up, myself using my usual pSevvy 35 point list, whilst Luke took a themed tier 4 eKruger list.  Our exact forces were as follows:

Kruger the Stormlord                +5        Grand Scrutator Severius          +6

*Pureblood Warpwolf                9        *Blessing of Vengeance              7

* Warpwolf Stalker                  10        *Vanquisher                               8

Tharn Ravagers (max)                 6        Avatar of Menoth                     11

*Tharn Ravagers Chieftain          2        Choir of Menoth (min)                2

Tharn Ravagers (max)                 6        Exemplar Errants (min)               5

Lord of the Feast                        4        *Exemplar Errants UA               2

Tharn Ravagers White Mane       3        Temple Flameguard (min)           4

                                                            Vassal of Menoth                       2

Reserves:

Shadowhorn Satyr                      7        Exemplar Vengers (min)              7

Some photographs of our doubles army:

Luke's stunning Circle army led by eKruger

eKruger and Pureblood Warpwolf

Nick's Menoth

Nick's Menoth army led by pSevvy

Our doubles list wasn’t particularly optimised to work cohesively together, something we were aware of, but decided that we’d rather just play what we enjoyed win or loose.  As the event approached and the various nasty combinations began to be unfolded over the internet forums we felt that perhaps we should have colluded more, but in all honesty just having a laugh was our main goal!

The tournament was played using the beta Steamroller 2012 scenarios and ‘Death-clock’ time limit set to 75mins per team, if time expires then you loose.  Win conditions were scenario victory and double caster kill.

Below is a series of battle reports for the first day with a few photos of our opponents armies:

Game 1

Opponents:       Phil and Gav (Gatormen - Barnabas and Skorne - Xerxis)

Mission:            A flag too far (flank scenario)

Photographs:

Phil's Bloody Barnabas

Phil's Gatormen and warbeasts

Gav's Xerxis and Caterphract bodyguard

Gav's Xerxis led Skorne army

We were informed of the missions and our first round opponents in advance and Luke and I decided that as Luke had the faster army his forces would ‘attack’ and basically try and score scenario points, whereas my slower forces would advance up and defend the enemy scoring flags, this was actually a decent strategy in hind sight.

We went second in this game, but chose a slightly more favourable board edge, the first turn was pretty much manoeuvring as usual.  However on the second turn things heated up, of note the Vanquisher set alight 5 Gatormen in a shallow water feature – yes highly bizarre, but fire doesn’t go out in the watery areas of the Iron Kingdoms!  We brought our reserves on and charged Gatormen killing most of Phils heavy infantry and all of the Skorne Nihilators.  We were hoping to secure a cheeky scenario point this round, but couldn’t get past all of the intervening Gatormen right on the flank.

During the third turn, there was a huge amount of carnage and death on both sides, of note and Ironback Spitter threw Molik Karn towards Kruger, then the Wrastler used its Rise animus to stand him back up, allowing Molik to kill one of Lukes beasts, but not quite reach Kruger - yikes!  We killed Molik for his insolence and both sides took huge casualties.

Turn four was faster given that lots of models had been removed from the previous turns death and destruction.  The enemy reserves came on this turn and by a whisker the Feralgheist managed to sneak a cheeky control point, by now Luke’s attacking force had met Xerxis and had been on the receiving end of the Skorne feat meaning most of the heavy infantry and all the beasts were dead along with my Vengers.  Without much hope of scoring any scenario points we tried to score more Battle Points and got stuck into the enemy forces.

We had a fifth turn each and basically just killed even more of each others forces, I think we scored 76BP’s and Phil/Gav scored 69 – an utter bloodbath and great game to boot.  In the end lunch was fast approaching and we called the game here as there wasn’t much point carrying on and all our stomachs were rumbling; so a narrow defeat for the first game, but one hell of a great start fun-wise!

Game 2

Opponents:       Lewis and Moak (Cygnar - pNemo and Circle - pKruger)

Mission:            Gauntlet with Kill Box (centre scenario)

Photographs:

Moak's pKruger

Moak's Megalith

Lewis' pNemo

Lewis' Stormclad

Lewis and Moak are both seasoned tournament players and had a good combination of models which synergised well and both casters had a strong lightning theme and would be zapping our infantry with several Chain Lightning spells a turn.

We went first and manoeuvred up the field, as did Lewis and Moak.  On the second turn the Thorn Ravagers suffered all the Chain Lightning that the enemy could muster and many were dead or almost, though we had pressed hard on our scoring zone.

At this point we checked scenario conditions and both pNemo and pKruger were outside of the Kill Box which meant that Luke and I won on a double caster kill, Luke and I felt really bad as it seemed like a really crap way to win and offered Lewis and Moak the option to continue and forget about the Kill Box complication.  We did this in the spirit of the whole reason we went to the tournament, which was to have fun and as such we continued.

So our next turn saw Kruger feat and push back several enemy Circle and Cygnar forces allowing us to score a valuable control point as well as nibble out a few bits and pieces, but nothing too substantial.  The following turn Lewis and Moak realised they had to stop us scoring another point and flooded the control zone with heavies.

We attempted to clear the zone using Krugers movement spells as well as a long range charge from the Avatar using a cheeky Telekinesis spell to move the Menoth walking cathedral into range.  The bottom line was that there was just too much to kill and we failed to score again, we’d also left some of our heavies prone to counter attack in their turn.  As predicted we suffered heavy losses, all of the Menite jacks and offensive infantry died, as did the Circle forces.  I think Kruger might have also died at this point too.

I can remember that the final turn of the game saw Sevvy get angry, very angry…  He was the last man standing after Lewis and Moak had literally killed everything else – he dropped his upkeep spells, sent a devastating Ashes to Ashes into some bunched infantry, killing them and a solo scoring some valuable Battle Points, then charged a light beast (Gorax) and proceeded to beat it to death.  This last act saw a 12 point swing, which was pretty amazing for a MAT 4 Sevvy!!

All in all a great game and although we won after about 20 minutes, I’d rather loose like we did in an epic battle to the end, than win via our opponents daft mistake – Lewis and Moak said we’d definitely get their ‘most sporting’ vote!  So two losses, but a good stack of Battle Points and a CTRL point as well.

Game 3

Opponents:       Gary and Rob (Menoth - pKreoss and Legion - eLylyth)

Mission:            Incursion (dual scenario)

Photographs:     [None available]

Luke and I won the roll off for this scenario and opted to go second, choosing the more favourable board edge.  Gary deployed on our left and Rob on our right, I took on Gary and Luke; Rob with our set-up.

The first turn was all about positioning as per usual and the flag on our left between Gary and myself disappeared meaning Luke and Rob would have more pressure to win via scenario.  The game saw both Menoth forces taking pot shots at one another, my jacks protected from Kreoss’ Reckoners with the anti-shooting Choir hymn.  Gary had run the Zealots up with their mini-feat and anti-spells prayer meaning that scenario scoring was out of the question, however I did double shot this infantry with the Vanquisher to set them on fire as the mini-feat would not protect from that in the following Maintenance Phase.

Whilst Gary and I played cat and mouse, Luke and Rob got stuck into the action, Tharn were hairing across the table at full pelt and eLylyth used her feat to send out a tremendous amount of shooting, the Eyeless Sight ability of the Ravagore’s, slong with the Snipe ability on the feat turn meant poor eKruger died and sadly before he could feat and score a couple of scenario points – darn!

The following turns were mainly attrition as the Menoth forces collided and battled over the central objective, we knew with the loss of Kruger and his battlegroup the diminishing Tharn infantry couldn’t hold out long so we tried to score as many points as possible and finish off units where able to do so.  The game ended with a loss on scenario as we predicted, but at least we scored some points, hopefully enough not to be the bottom team!!

After day one we had lost three, but scored quite a few Battle Points as all of our games had gone the distance, however the primary separator for the tournament was CTRL points so our aim for day two would be to a) win a game, b) score more CTRL points which would hopefully mean we wouldn’t come last!!!

Part II will follow shortly with the exploits of day two as well as more army photos, so watch this space!