Let me tell you two stories that happened last weekend during Warkraj – largest Polish tournament (Wartally link). I finished 8th with a 3-1 score. I will start with a story from my 3rd game, lets call it “Dwarfs shooting blanks”. The next one – “Bloodthirsty dwarfs” will follow it and at the end the differences and similarities between the two will be a great opportunity to learn from my mistakes as I think both stories accurately illustrate two mindsets that are very popular within our community.
Dwarfs shooting blanks
I feel that this tale should start with a bit of a backstory that will add some necessary context – The first time I played Warcry tournament (October 2022) was also the first time I played outside of my living room table. I finished 2nd that day with my only loss to a pre-nerf Chimera. Dice Gods were very generous and my Grave Guards had no problems quickly killing Kurnoths first game and a Megaboss in second. Apparantly I was great in the key Warcry skill – rolling sixes. Next year my dice were strong too and outside of Warkraj23 (the first Warkraj event, I went 2-2), where the mission draw was unlucky and the moment my opponent needed 18 dmg from 2 attack actions of an Orruk Brute (Boss or Gorechoppa – don’t remember exactly) to steal key treasure he obviously rolled it. Outside of Warkraj I played 5 other events were my dice were still hot, which led me to having positive winrate in all of them and even winning 14 players event – hard not to win with the number of rampages I rolled. My son was born next year and the dice gods decided its time for me to repay my debt – this year my dice rolls started to be a bit famous (partly because of me constantly complaining about them – but its hard to not complain when during the first 3 rounds of a game with much fights you only roll two sixes. Both in third round). First event of the year I went to was Warkraj24 (Wartally link, 38 players) were my dice rolls were already bad, but I somehow managed to end with 3-1 with my 2 titans with 4A S6 4/8 not being able to kill almost anything in the game I lost (my opponent big guys had no performance problems). Next event I also didn’t roll too well and ended up losing a game to Skaven where Kreep Kinwhisper rolled six 3+ to oneshot my Cyreni with max damage (18) triple before she had an option to activate. I managed to go 2-1 (Wartally link), but my rolls get worse and worse since then. I tried to fight back – tried different ways of throwing dice and bought new dice (with less rounded edges to get more random results) – which changed nothing. I wanted to play 2 other events that year, but bad luck struck again – this time in form of health problems in my family, which prevented me from attending both events. After this long introduction we finally reach 2025 and last weekend Warkraj. During tournament prep I started to think that the curse has gone and I started to see my old friend – the skull from first Warcry dice set more often.
Normally I tend to listbuild around the fact that my dice don’t have sixth side by playing chaff with 2/X damage profile like Grave Guards, Longbeards or old Ardboyz, but with my luck going back I decided to play Arkonauts. First two games went great and after the first half of the third game (where my opponent key fighter – Strength blessed Wilderfiend received 27 damage and was on only 8 wounds left) I started to believe that going undefeated is doable.
This was the moment that dice gods decided to punish me for going critfishing route without their blessing. Round 3 started with my opponent having initiative and killing last 2 dwarfs around Wielderfiend – 2 counters left him on 2 Wounds! I think the game is impossible to lose at this point, as I have 3 treasures, after killing the fiend 2 of them are impossible to lose and the third one is on Arkonaut that is surrounded by Fellrider and Master Moulder, but if my dwarf dies from second attack action of either one I have a full health Prosecutor ready to steal freshly dropped treasure. Even if the first attack action kills my Arkonaut and the treasure gets stolen by Fellrider or Master Moulder (which of course happened, screw you dice gods!) I can still charge the fourth treasure that is held by 10 wounds Marauder (hiding next to the Wielderfiend) with my Prosecutor Prime and be sure to kill it next round, as (what you can see below) the treasure scoring will happen next round.
This is the moment the dice gods decided to show me that regardless of the situation on the table they always have the last word and today its “fuck you”. Despite feeling that the game is impossible to lose (especially after my Annihilator Prime “oneshoted” the Warqueen leaving my opponent without any damage dealer for last round. At this point I treat 2 wounds Wilderfiend as already dead) I manage to only do 1 damage to Wilderfiend with next 7 attack actions (14 dice rolled), which also keeps the objective next to the fiend in my opponent hands. The round ends with my opponent winning 3-1 thanks to objective control. I didn’t positioned my Prosecutor next to the Marauder with treasure, as in case I lose Initiative the fiend can murder him and instead of stealing a treasure I would lose one. Instead Prosecutor was part of the crew trying (and failing) to shoot fiend to death. Next round I win initiative, manage to finally shoot down the Wielderfiend with an Arkonaut and basically the whole round is chaff fighting chaff (my shooting deals 0 damage to the Marauder with treasure) and moving on objectives. Thanks to finally removing the Wilderfiend and charging in with Prosecutor as my last action of the game I took control of objective, so objective scoring was 2-2 and as my last action in a game – I attacked the treasure carrier. I have 4A 4S 2/4 profile and doing 10 damage to T4 Marauder would prevent my opponent from scoring 3VP for treasure which would grant me the 9-8 win. I roll my dice. There is only 11,5% chance of success, but after the Wielderfiend situation I no longer believe in probability. A small prayer to dice gods “10 wounds and everything you did to me is forgiven”. I obviously roll a bunch of ones and lose the game 11-9. I scratch my head trying to figure out how I lost from almost “unlosable” situation. The 2 wounds fiend that survived, Arkonaut with treasure that died to first attack action, last prosecutor charge – with a little luck I could win the game from any of this situations, but its ultimately a dice game. There isn’t much time to reflect on the lose as next round pairings are up. Another thing I will remember from that game was that this whole game all of my shooting did less damage than 2 activations of Arkonauts that attacked the Wielderfiend in melee (and bravely died in the first activation of next turn). Lets end the story with the picture of my warband
Bloodthirsty dwarfs
Lets start with small backstory again. On the train before Warkraj another player asked me for tips for Harvest Moon, as he didn’t play this mission before. I only played it twice, but had some observations that I shared – controlling objectives in the round before they are scored is quite important as then you “win ties”. Shield (where most warbands had the most power) can deploy its biggest thing already on objective, so contesting that objective might be an uphill battle. Cultivating objective without following it with a Harvest might lead to a fast fighter jumping in and stealing a treasure with a Harvest action. You can also organize such steal even on a dormant objective with the help of Inspiring Presence or activation advantage. Finally delaying getting treasures might lead to opponent stealing “your” treasures or having to “waste” key actions on that later.
Other relevant topics from this conversation were that my playstyle greatly overprioritize scoring and undervalues board state (which makes me strong on objective and weak on kill missions) and the impact of energy drinks on being able to focus on a game (my friend suggested that energy drinks improve your ability to “focus” on everything around in a way that greatly distracts from your main task). Lack of sleep (my 1,5 year old son was sick) and remembering that lack of “mental stamina” was already my problem in the past I decided to ignore my friend advice and tried to get some wings (and counteract the energy drop after the lunch break) thanks to a can of Redbull before the third game of the event.
When the mission was drawn I was unhappy as “all of my eggs were in Shield basket”, but after knowing the matchup (low on numbers warband centered around strength blessed Wielderfiend paired with Master Moulder, both in Shield) I thought that gives me advantage as not only my chaff is slightly more durable and can harass from distance, but ultimately I have 3 chaff killers (Prosecutor, Endrinmaster and Annihilator), who all can carry treasure to only two of my opponent (fiend and Warqueen) including only 1 treasure carrier. Due to lack of bonus move actions on my opponent side if my treasure carrier dies from second action and drops the treasure I have the Prosecutor to pick it up anywhere on the board (due to flying, 10″ move and a teleport double) where I don’t have to worry about similar situations due to numbers advantage (which is my biggest advantage here) and bonus action after kill on Annihilator.
I was able to pick a deployment color and selected blue, as it limited Wielderfiend’s access to East objective to only 2 chokepoints (where single dwarf stops the fiend and can then be replaced keeping the beast away from objective and denying “whip combo”) with massive chunk of dangerous terrain between them (green arrows on the picture above – its from my opponent POV, so the map is “upside down”). First turn I spread around blocking the chokepoints making sure my Endrinmaster will be the key fighter on West objective. I wanted to keep enemy Hammer (consisting of only chaff) out of options so they have to either die to Endrinmaster on East objective or die to 2 Stormcasts that will appear on North objective next round. I only left one dwarf on South objective to prevent my numbers melting from the Master Moulder giving bonus attack to Wielderfiend. Because of all that (and enemy Dagger aggressively approaching to the West objective thanks to Warqueen triple) I decided to spread my forces around the West objective expecting both the Wielderfiend and Warqueen to be in this area. I wanted to harass opposing chaff from nearby platforms (A and B on the picture, I managed to fit the whole Hammer on A while deploying) and trying to preserve my numbers for the late game where scoring happens. My opponent wanted to put pressure on me and Cultivated both North and West objectives expecting to hold at least one of the treasures from them. In general all that happened this round was Cultivating 2 objectives, few wait actions, a lot of movement and my shooting did some damage, but not much. All the action started next round.
Round 2 started with a bang – I won the Initiative and ended up with a double and a triple. My opponent had a high quad. I started the turn and in my first action used Annihilator prime to move on top of North objective to harvest it, than used Inspiring Presence to activate my angel next. Prosecutor then flew to the West objective, harvested it and teleported to North-East corner of the board (the place most distant from both Warqueen and Wielderfiend from where I can still throw jevelins thanks to 12″ range) at the Maraunders. While punishing my opponent mistake I also made an error – I placed my Prosecutor too far from the action (I should land few inches closer to the battlefield center, as I was planning on dropping the treasure later on and there were no dwarfs close plus big part of the objective was outside the “charge range”). First two treasures of the game (30% of all VP you can potentially score) were in my pocket and they were extremally secure. There was no time to enjoy the early advantage from my big play as opponents Wielderfiend was about to Rampage. While it might seem crazy (at least for me at that moment) he decided to do 2 moves climbing through the huge pile of dangerous terrain avoiding my bodyblocking, landing in the middle of the East objective in combat with 2 Arkonauts and the Endrinmaster. Dangerous Terrain did 9 damage! First swing did 16 damage to my dwarf hero (if I would accept my faith and countered I think the single point of damage from that would win me the game – sadly at this moment I was thinking that I will have to kill that beast to not lose the game as at this moment I had already activated my Stormcasts, West objective area was very close on numbers with Warqueen expected to “secure” it, I abandoned South, which was probably another gamelosing mistake and expected my single dwarf there to get attacked by Master Moulder and/or a Fellrider and suddenly every point of damage on Wielderfiend was precious and I decided that I can’t react, so in case of surviving the attack I can hit back hard) I countered the second attack dealing few points of damage back and removed my dwarf from the table. Huge swing in the game required an answer so in my next activation I extracted the treasure from Southern objective (which was another mistake as I could delay that to a later part of the turn hoping Master Moulder or a Fellrider could waste one action on cultivating objective which would prevent one attack action on my dwarf and lead to my dwarf dying one attack action later which as you might remember from my previous story would win me the game). There were some insignificant fights in different parts on the map (I think my Arkonaut died to Warqueen) and as I expected the horsie and Master Moulder joined the party in the South (my opponent wanted to park his Skaven outside of 1″ away and use the weaker attack, but I decided to comment on that which lead to my opponent listening to my “advice” and using stronger attack. Not biting my tongue there is probably another gamelosing mistake as it probably prevented me from stealing the treasure later on). Lets get back East – 2 dwarfs next to the Wielderfiend decided that if they are to be slain, they can at least became legends and both rolled more crits than I usually roll in a whole game. Combined with shooting attacks of one or two dwarfs they did around 15 damage leaving the beast on 8 wounds left. The situation looked bad, but suddenly with the help of dangerous terrain few of my small 55 points dwarves managed to do 27 damage to a biggest fighter in the whole event in only 1 turn. Going back to the train conversation – I didn’t follow my own advice to gain control of objectives early and I think (due to a lot of shooting and not enough moving) I controlled only the North objective, which was obviously another big mistake. Most of my mistakes can be treated as good plays/punishes by my opponent, but this one was on me – few of the dwarfs were not on objectives. The round ended with the game looking great for me.
Round 3 started with my opponent having initiative and killing my 2 heroic dwarfs with Wielderfiend. Counters left the beast on only 2 wounds. Later that round my outnumbered dwarf on the South objective died (from first attack action, so I couldn’t steal the treasure – decisions I made previous turn made it less likely) and I lost his treasure.
It was a very stressful (but also fun) game, we both managed to surprise each other, the tactical situation was quite complex and time pressure of a chess clock only added to the tension which led to many mistakes. Hopefully not all blunders were on my side – my opponent forgot that Annihilator had 2″ attack range and thinking that he needs to kill me faster with his Warqueen decided to move-attack the Arkonaut in base contact with my big Stormcast. Not only he failed to inflict serious damage on my dwarf, but then lost Warqueen to a huge hammer of my Annihilator.
I then started to shoot the fiend, with miss after miss. When I started shooting my mindset was – quickly shoot down the beast and start entering the East objective if possible engaging the Marauder with a treasure. I know that if there is a series of absurdly bad rolls that can screw me in a funny way then it usually happens and I told my opponent to not worry – the fiend on 2 wounds is immortal now (jokes aside – my dice are really cursed, it happens regularly) The absurdity of this situation combined with mental fatigue (probably improved by lack of sleep and allegedly distracting influence of energy drink) made me forgot all the plans, scoring and basically everything. After few misses the only thing that mattered was to kill that stupid thing. In the most unusual to me fashion (I usually overprioritize objective scoring to the point where despite finishing events near the top of the standings I usually have one of the worst kill scores) I tunnel vision on the only thing that can lose me the game – standing outside objective and shooting the fiend (simply engaging the fiend and charging the treasure carrier would most likely win the game). Sunken cost fallacy kicked in hard and I eventually lost the game there. I had a small chance (11,5%) to still win next round charging the treasure carrier with Prosecutor, but the dice refused to cooperate again.
The reason I described this situation twice and the moral of the story is – even if dice are not going your way there are always decisions that could improve the chance of winning and this is the lens through which the game should be viewed. Focusing on the dice rolls hides the critical decision making moments and makes it almost impossible to identify mistakes you can learn from. In the game above the bad luck was spectacular (but followed a crazy good rolls of my Arkonauts – so it most likely evens out in the end), but if I made better decisions I would win regardless. My opponent (best wishes Alex) had a very difficult matchup and correctly identified the narrow path to victory. We both made mistakes, but I believe that there was way more mistakes on my part so the loss is absolutely deserved as not only my mistakes were properly punished, I honestly don’t think I would be able to win that game playing as Darkoath. Losing that game was heartbreaking, especially because I lost focus on scoring, which is very unusual to me, but also because I felt that the combination of lists and pack made it relatively possible (I believe my read of the pack, while different to most players was giving me a big edge here) to hope for 4-0. Mental stamina and ability to stay focused proved once again to be a key aspect of a tournament success. Hopefully next time I will have more sleep before the event and you can be sure I’m not drinking any energy drinks during events.
As always thanks for sticking to the end, I hope the read was entertaining, inspiring and educational. Initially it was supposed to be “how to overprepare to” article, but I think text like this is better for the community at the moment. By watching my mistakes (some of which were massive blunders) I hope to make some people feel finally ready to attend a tournament themselves (Thinking something like “I can’t be worse than this underthinking clown”, “how the hell can you forget Annihilator range” or “if both of them can go 3-1 on one of the most competitive events in Europe I should be fine on a local event”). With the #deadgame comments all around we (mostly our lovely TO – love you guys!) managed to have one of the biggest events in the game history where I could travel 350km to play someone from the other side of the continent (1700km for Alex). It was also a mind-blowing experience to meet someone from a far away who knew who I was :). Due to a fact that players I consider stronger than me (and other content creators) had very different read on the pack I’m still considering whether I should finish the “how to overprepare to” article, as my approach might be wrong. If you want to support OverthinkingWarcry.com and improve my motivation to write you can do this by becoming my first Patreon.
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