Sunday 15 May 2016

Tournament Report, Kings of Dave 4



I usually run my army (mostly old WHFB Empire models) as Kingdoms of Men, but for a tournament over the weekend I decided to run them as League with KoM allies. It was a 2500 point no comp 4-game swiss tournament in Canberra, Australia.
My List:

KoM Allies:

  • Horde Arquebusiers with Brew of Keen Eyeness
  • Troop Mounted Scouts with Mace of Crushing
  • Cannon
  • Hero, Mounted with Blade of Slashing
League:
  • Horde City Spear Militia
  • Regiment House Guard
  • Regiment City Militia
  • Regiment Household Knights with +pathfinder
  • Regiment Household Knights with +nimble
  • Halfling Iron Beast
  • Halfling Howitzer
  • Army Standard Bearer, mounted, with healing charm
  • Halfling Sorcerer with wings of honeymaze
  • Halfling sorcerer with inspiring talisman
  • Duke on Ancient Winged Aralez + ensorcelled armour
  • Duke on Ancient Winged Aralez + brew of haste

Like I said, I usually run KoM, but I wanted to try out three changes in particular.
I wanted to see if the Halfling Iron Beast was more useful than a KoM Beast of War.
I wanted to see how annoying two windblast (7) casters could be, over bane chant wizards.
I wanted to see if the Duke on Ancient Winged Alarez' were worth the extra points over the KoM General on a Winged Beast.

My opponents were:
Game1: A very punchy Orc army, with some goblin chaff and war machines allied in. (Kill, big Loss) I deployed in a pretty tight 'castle' formation, around my shooters on a hill. My shooting did ok, but he was into me by turn 3, and who knew that getting caught in melee with orcs was a bad idea? I should have deployed out wider I think. He used terrain and goblin chaff very well to protect his flanks, and once his morax regiments got stuck in it was all over. This was one game where I really wished my Halfling Iron Beast was a Beast of War. The Orcs chewed through it quickly anyway, and despite the high number of attacks, hitting on 5s just sucks.

Game 2: A very shooty elf army, with some FoN allied earth elementals (Kill & Pillage, Win). If my iron beast was a dud last match, he was the star of this one. My opponent had two sea-guard hordes, and they just could not get through my Iron Beast's armour in time. My heavy artillery took care of his earth elementals, and my 2 Dukes were able to keep his dragon lord contained.

Game 3: A pretty standard undead army. (Loot, Draw) This was a very cheeky draw for me. By the end of the game I had killed ~900 points of his, while he had killed ~2100 points of mine. I only had the regiment of House Guard and the Iron Beast left. Unfortunately for him my House Guard had one of the loot tokens, and my Iron Beast was screening the other one (if I had played my last 2 turns better I could have actually picked it up and snuck out with a win). Lesson here is to always play the objectives hey. Also shambling legions and hordes are slow af to pick up objectives hey.

Game 4: a ~very~ shooty Twilight Kin army. (Dominate, Loss) The most frustrating game by far. He managed to waver a bunch of my units through a combination of his bolt throwers and perfect nerve rolls. Any lower and I would have held steady, any higher and I would have got the inspiring re roll and almost certainly held steady. I managed to desperately cram a lot of stuff in the centre, and windblast his stuff out. If the game had ended turn 6 it would have been a draw, but it went to turn 7, and he was able to kill one of my Dukes in the scoring zone, and push his units deep into the zone (so I would have needed perfect rolls to blast them out again).

So, would I have been better running KoM over LoR? As you'd expect, some games yes, some games no. The windblast sorcerers were very terrain and scenario dependent. We played 2 kill scenarios in this 4 game tournament, but if we had played more objective type ones, they would have been more useful. I also played 2 games on a board that had no difficult terrain (to push things into), so I'm not sure I can draw a line under this experiment yet.

The Iron Beast was tough, and hung around for 3 out of 4 games. I was disappointing in combat, but at least it made it into combat hey. My Beast of War is usually shot off the table before it can get in. Iron Beast was excellent against low CS/Piercing opponents, the Beast of War would be much more useful against high CS opponents. So it depends on your local meta hey.

The Dukes were pretty cool. I only used their heal spells a couple of times over the 4 games, but the iron resolve was awesome. You pay 35 extra points (over a General on a Winged Beast) for 1 extra attack, TC 1, Heal (4), and Iron Resolve. I think that's a good deal, and it was handy having a couple of points dense units to help me score on dominate. But if you're playing in a comped system (disordered flyers lose fly, flyers score 50% on invade/dominate), I think the General on a Winged Beast would be better.

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