Introduction
Last Sunday I played 14 player 3 round tournament (BCP link: Gnarlwood Into The Unknown). The battlepack TO prepared was quite unusual with 12 victory conditions and 9 deployment maps (standard Hidden Agendas were also in play). I wasn’t the fan of 12 missions as I dislike missions like Cursed Relic and Hidden Vault, also I feel most comfortable with horde warbands and the chosen scenarios highly incentivised elites. Due to few missions similar to Hidden Vault (very low number of objectives scored “after” the game) I decided that its time to give You Messin’ a chance.
Based on the battlepack and preference of local players I predicted that I will meet very elite 6-7 body warbands with some SCE in the mix as few of our local players recently switched to Stormcast. Based on this I decided that I want a list that will have a bit more activations than my opponents, will have a spare Brute to make You Messin’ more likely and have a high Strength Hammers to deal with enemy elites and crack Stormcast armor. The list I ended with is the modification of the list I wrote for the blog (Ironjawz for Core Book ) with Shield on Ardboyz to make sure I keep my numbers for You Messin’ and to make almost all of my fighters T5. My list was:
Brute Boss (190)
Gutlord (280)
Brute (140)
Brewgit (70)
4x Ardboy with Shield (320)
First Game (FEC)
I played against FEC with 2x Varghulf Courtier, Askurgan Exemplar and 4 ghouls. My opponent took huge risk with this list as it almost auto-lose this mission (Only ghouls can be selected as Unhinged Fighters). The game was decided round two when I bodyblocked Varghulf Courtier that was deployed from the corner with my Gutlord (and failed to kill my opponent Unhinged Ghoul leaving him at 3 HP), so he couldn’t reach my Unhinged Ardboy. My opponent did a huge mistake (he was tilted from the start because of battleplan we played) and did not activated his unhinged ghoul. I punished this in my next activation with rampage on my unhinged Ardboy that managed to do 3 damage to finish that ghoul. It was the only moment this game where any ghoul was close enough to attack anyone. After retreating with everything and throwing the wounded at Varghulfs (with Ironjawz reaction) to minimize losses I managed to keep enough fighters for a major Victory. (That ghoul was my only kill this game, so I managed to score Major Victory in a kill mission with kill score of 55). My Hidden Agenda for this game was to kill half of my opponent warband and keep half of mine alive. I expected that killing ghouls will be easy as to score any Victory Points my opponent would have to put them into combat but he didn’t (which surprised me) so I didn’t finish my Agenda. Game result: 20-1
Second Game (Bonesplitters)
My opponent list was: Savage Big Boss, 2 Big Stabbas, 2 Totems, Mordboy and 2 “normals” with Spears. It wasn’t the most challenging game as my opponent was a beginner that only played few games prior to this tournament (I played 2 games with him before so I also knew his list well) and didn’t know how to defend versus Gutlord. He also let me use IJ reaction to “waste” his stronger attacks on targets not selected as hunted fighters (he didn’t finish his moves within 1″ range of his intended target and I used my reaction to put other fighters within 1″ forcing him to attack them instead). My opponent didn’t roll many crits against my T5 Orks and I ended up losing 1 Ardboy (that was 4″ from the edge in last round), so the funny kill point situation from previous game was kind of “reversed”. We both picked “be in every quarter” Agenda so last round when the game was decided we were peacefully jogging across the board with our remaining fighters. Game result: 21-1
Final Game (Beasts of Chaos)
I played against Great Bray Shaman, Bullgor with Great Axe, DragonOgor with Crusher, 2 dual wielding Gors, Chaos Spawn and Trueblood ally. This is the type of mission my warband was designed to win. My opponent had only two fighters that could be ignored by You Messin’ and I had one, but with me starting with one body advantage and T5 across the board it was going to be a tough nut to crack for my opponent. I think first activation of the game decided it. I have rampage and higher initiative and before my opponent could do anything my Gutlord lifted his Bullgor. To make things worse Chaos Spawn buffed by triple of fives or sixes failed to do significant damage against Toughness 5. The game went pretty quick with my oponent tilted from the start. He rolled poorly and didn’t manage to kill enough of my Ardboyz to prevent Major Loss. In the end the only fighter left was DragonOgor, but I only did one activation last round before we stopped playing, so full wipe possibility was there. The Hidden Agenda I picked was kill opposing leader and keep yours alive which I managed to do. Game result: 21-0 and as it was the last game, Victory in the tournament with almost perfect score (I missed one point for not achieving my hidden agenda first game)
Lessons Learned
During my quite limited preparation (as you can see in my “how to overprepare for” series of articles I usually do a lot of “overthinking” and analysis) that included reading the battleplans, counting deployment group arrival time and position and playing with my brand new warband 5 games (plus 3 during actual tournament) I came to few conclusions.
During first two test games with my list I realized that I’m way worse with elite warbands than I thought and that kill missions are way harder for me than objective missions (prior to this tournament I played a lot of rumble pack). Also before I never fully grasped the impact of rampage as I never played with the fighter as dangerous as Gutlord and I think this experience will change the way I deploy against such beasts. I also learned that Titans like Gutlord influence the game on levels that I wasn’t considering before (and that are obvious in hindsight), like for example the drastic change in initiative priority for my opponent.
I’m aware that luck played huge role in my games as first and last games were heavily favorable for my list but, the fact that I had so many “favorable” missions could also be attributed for picking the right list for the battlepack. Luck played also huge roll in Initiative rolls as I had quite a lot of triples that I improved to quads. The last thing and also the most important “lucky” incident happened outside of my games – the guy that finished 2nd with very Elite SCE list messed up some decisions in his first game in a situation very similar to my first game (he also was heavily favorable) and ended up with a draw. He then won all of his games but becaause of the draw I didn’t play him in final. During tournament preparation we played twice and I think that my list has small advantage in a context of battlepack we played but with the damage potential of Gutlord and Anihilator Prime the matchup is very swingy and dice rolls have tremendous impact.
The last thing I want to mention is that I need to recalibrate how I value survivability. Now after experiencing both sides of playing T5 wall of meat (2 games I lost with my Soulblight previous tournament were against T5 Orc lists and my inability to damage them was deciding factor) I must say that my precious Grave Guards lost in my eyes (not much, they are still great) and I will value Toughness way higher going forward.
Overthinking Warcry 