RushAss game reports from the 2012 Championship Tournament in Boston

[RushAss]

I'm going to post my battle reports from the 2012 Battleground Championship tournament here so the photo dump threads don't get to bloated.  I took pictures of my own games, but I'll borrow a few of Kevin's pics from his photo dumps to help fill out some empty spaces.  Especially the game against Ian, where I only took 1 pic for some reason.  Some of the pics where at odd angles and that is because the lighting caused a lot of glare on the slip covers for my camera.  The pics Kevin posted are of higher quality.  I'm going to try to crank out 1 report a day, so I'll conclude sometime next week and I hope my memory holds up reasonably well.

Let me start by saying this was an excellently run event.  Kevin ran a clean ship and he even had an assistant to help with photos, tallying army costs, and even sitting in to play games vs. opponents that would have had to sit out a round.  And from what I hear, she didn't play half bad.  Kevin was also very accessible for rulings and such.  I could tell he wasn't feeling well, but he soldiered on without a hitch and I commend him for it.  I would have had a blast at this tournament regardless of any prizes.  The fact that there was money on the line was just gravy.  All of my opponents where friendly and fun to play against.  There where no disputes or bad blood in any game I was involved in. 

I only finished 1-3 in the Championship Tournament and 1-2 in the Speed Swiss, which is pretty lame for an experienced player.  There are multiple reasons for this.

1 - Just about all of my opponents ranged from good to excellent in skill level.  Nobody played like a chump.
2 - There where 1 or 2 games where I brought questionable army builds.  They seemed reasonable at the time, but in hindsight I may have done better.
3 - Luck in this game has always been a determining factor.  That's part of the excitement of the game - that the unexpected does happen from time to time.  In this particular event, the unexpected occurred to me.  A lot.  Some games (see round 4) it was a case of a general malaise.  In others it was a case of a few "You have got to be kidding me!" events.  Now granted this kind of stuff happened all of the time to everybody, but even my opponents in a few of these games attested to the outrageousness of many of these events.  I'll let you be the judge as each report comes out.  And before you think that I'm only going to carp about my dice, there where a few horrible things that happened to my opponents as well.  Just take a look at Bohan's chronic courage failures early in my game against him, my extraordinary attack dice early in my game against Tim, or Mike's atrocious ranged attacks in our Speed Swiss game. 

While I love the Dwarves of Runegard and had a blast playing them last year, I am also a huger Ravenwood fan and I wanted to give them a run this year.  Interestingly enough, there where 3 other players entered as Ravenwood.  Niko and Chad where 2 of them!  I figured I'd be facing a civil war at some point, but that never materialized. 

All of my opponents are welcome to add their thoughts and any mistakes I make here as I’m sure there are many.  Now on with the show!

[RushAss]

Championship Game 1 vs Bohan (Zelc) playing Umenzi



For the first game of the tournament I drew the very challenging Bohan who was playing Umenzi.  This was Breaking Point on an open map. 

Set Up



Umenzi
Top to Bottom:
Possessed backed by Javelineers
Chosen
Spearmen backed by High Priests (also backing Chosen)
Javelineers
Spearmen
Chosen backed by High Priests (also backing Spearmen)
Possesed out in front with Atlatlmen in the back.
Note that most of his line is actually 2.5 from the front of his deployment zone

Ravenwood
Treant backed by Centaurs
5 Wolfkin
1 Stag Cavalry behind the final Wolfkin
Yes, this was the dreaded 5”+ MC army

I wanted to use Ravenwood’s chief advantage over the Umenzi here: Speed.  I also wanted to concentrate my firepower on 1 flank while delaying engagement on the other. 

Early Turns



Bohan had his units do a sidestep to their right before closing.  I was perfectly happy to see this because it meant that I would be guaranteed to engage with the left side of my line first.  Sure he would have an opportunity to do an extra round of Blessing/Hexing, but this didn’t bother me much.  1 of my Wolfkin took a point of damage from some Javelineers and another took a point from Atlatls.  No big deal.  He had Faith Armor on The Chosen facing my Treant and a few other line guys while I placed Spirit Guidance on both of my cavalry units.

Mid Turns



We have some fighting here!  The feature match up is my Hexed Treant engaging his Blessed Chosen.  I fail to do damage on the charge turn and he does 2, but then it slows down to a grind match.  Sure he is winning this one on points, but I’m expecting to make a breakthrough somewhere else.  I am able to maneuver my Centaurs through direct control to get a javelin throw on The Possessed while still being out of range of his Javelineers and I catch a lucky break when the throw puts them into the yellow and they vanish when they fail their courage check!  The Wolfkin facing the Javelineers in the middle got whacked and failed their courage check on his turn, but the same happened to the Umenzi Spearmen next to them who got killed by the return attack.  The Javenineers flanked that Wolfkin and finished them.  Bohan direct controlled his Possessed on his left flank to keep them away from my Stags.  I was feeling good about the game at this point.

Endgame



A lot happened between photos.  The High Priests on the right of Bohan’s line closed to 3.5” and did a Death Curse on my Centaurs.  I replied by charging them with the Centaurs and they paid for the curse with their lives.  This meant that the Centaurs would be flanked by the Javelineers, but there was no help for that as it would have been an eventual pinch otherwise and I was hopeful that the Centaurs would at least do some serious damage before falling.  The Spearmen next to the Chosen failed a courage check and reformed with 1 red box remaining, so I had the Wolfkin that where facing them pinch The Chosen.  The Chosen where able to hang in there for a couple of turns, but they eventually fell.  The Spearmen reformed in the process and killed the Wolfkin, but the Treant promptly flattened them on the following turn.  His other Chosen unit engaged a Wolfkin and I was defending them like crazy.  I direct-controlled my right-most Wolfkin to have it turn around to help out in the middle which also allowed my Stags to ram into the Atlatlmen, which blew up pretty quickly.  The High Priest Death Cursed the Stags and I backed them out to prevent them from being pinched.  The last 2 attack turns are where it all turned around for Bohan.  I was able to play an Aspect of Wolf card on the Wolfkin to get them to flank the Javelineers in the middle and put them well into the yellow.  I really needed to kill this unit, but I had 2 more turns where I failed to do damage except for peeling off Faith Armor that he had placed on it.  The other Javelineer unit was able to finish the Centaurs.  The Chosen finished off their Wolfkin opponent.  For some reason I was expecting the Chosen to final rush my last Wolfkin unit, but they final rushed by Stags instead.  While this is always a problem, the High Priests and Possessed also final rushed the Stags and the triple pinch eliminated them.  This is what Bohan needed to achieve the break and the game was his.

Final Thoughts 
This game was really close at the end.  For most of the game I felt I had the edge until the final 2 turns.  Bohan had some bad courage checks early on.  I still can’t recall if there was any way I could have gotten my Stags out of there in the end game.  I remember one turn calculating that just turning them around would still result in a final rush by somebody due to the -2 MC penalty.  In hindsight I should have charged them into the Possessed.  That way I just get flanked or Death Cursed by Shamans instead of triple pinched.

[RushAss]

Second installment!

Championship Game 2 vs Mike (Gull2112) playing Orcs



My second game was against our beloved Gull in a 1500 point Ticking Clock scenario with a giant freaking hill in the middle of the map.  We would also receive scenario points for holding the top of the hill and having one of our units finish the game in our opponent’s deployment zone.  As always, playing with Mike is a yuk-fest and always a ton of fun regardless of the outcome.

Set Up



Orcs
From left to right:
Orc Axemen (Apparently the only organisms to survive the apocalypse will be cockroaches and these guys)
Goblin Spearmen
Goblin Raiders (these guys where unbelievable)
2 x Orc Marauders
Goblin Spearmen

Since I had a Treant in my build, I was quite happy that there was no Bomb Chukker.

Ravenwood
From left to right:
Swordsmen backed by Stags
Swordsmen
Wolfkin
Treant
Wolfkin

Again, I wanted plenty of speed in my army.  Especially with that hill and taking Lash into consideration. 

Early Turns



I set the Treant to close to the bead right at the top of the hill since I wanted to hold that point at all costs.  All other units where set to generic close except for the Wolfkin to the right of the Treant, which I capped at 3.5” to keep them from engaging anybody too soon.  Like Marauders.  Upon initial approach it looked like I was going to get the match ups I wanted and that the Stags where going to be able to sweep across his entire line in no time flat.

Mid Turns



Quite a bit has happened here.  I forgot how he achieved it, but Mike twos-companied my Treant with Marauders and Goblin Raiders.  I chose to have the Treant attack the Goblin Raiders and it did very little damage.  Much to my chagrin, the Raiders and Marauders where able to do steady damage despite needing 1s to wound after the charge turn (where I defended the Tree from the Marauders with some sort of blue card).  I wasn’t able to knock off those Raiders until they where twos companied by a Wolfkin unit that was involved in a pinch with Swordsmen that destroyed the Goblin Spearmen next to them.  While this was happening, Mike had his other Spearmen unit head towards my deployment zone and the other Marauders where able to engage and destroy the Wolfkin on the right of the Treant.  Meanwhile on the other side Mike did a masterful thing with his Axemen.  He Lashed them up the hill, then used a series of direct controls to keep them out of final rush range of my units that still had to go uphill. 

Endgame



The Treant went down shortly after the Goblin Raiders did and it was only able to do a single point to the Marauders that had hacked at it all game long.  I finally got the final rush on the Axemen with Wolfkin hitting one flank and the Stags hitting the other.  Surely this unit would die quickly, but the Axemen had other thoughts.  Now keep in mind that Mike played no defensive cards on these Axemen.  The Wolfkin needed 6s and 4s, but only inflicted 2 damage.  I played Force on the Stags, so they needed 5s and 6s with nets and an impact hit.  Would you believe I rolled 4 6s on the “to hit” roll with no nets?  I couldn’t believe it either.  This just barely put the Axemen into the yellow.  They return attacked against the Wolfkin, which put them into the yellow and they routed!  The free attack put them into the red and they failed the 2nd courage check, dying horribly.  I just stared blankly at the map for a minute and then said something like "how did that just happen?" over and over again.  It would take my Stags 2 more turns to kill the Axemen, which inflicted 2 wounds on the Stags in the process.  By then it was too late since I had 2 Swordsmen (1 in the yellow) and the Stags with 1 green hit box remaining facing 2 nearly full strength Marauders and a clean Goblin Spearmen unit that was now setting up shop in my deployment zone.  That didn’t matter anyways because time had expired.

Final Thoughts 

First off, Mike maneuvered those Axemen really well to avoid engagement for as long as possible and this was a determining factor of the game.  The other determining factors where A) the gross under performance of the Treant which only did 1-2 points of damage per turn on Goblin Raiders while taking a bit more than it should have throughout the engagement and B) The unbearably bad situation that occurred with the Axemen pinch.  1 other thing that hurt me was that a Swordsmen and Wolfkin unit engaged a turn later than they could have because about 1/10 of each unit was still on the lower portion of the hill.  This part was in the rear portion of each unit.  You’d think that they guys up front would just go ahead and engage while the guys in the very back showed up a minute later.  That’s 1 part of the terrain rules that I hate.  Regardless, Mike played a solid game and as fate would have it we got to meet again later…

[gull2112]

This game was a lot of fun for three reasons:
1. My intentions as well as my plans all worked as they were supposed to.
2. I won.
3. Marcus and I are always laughing so much its hard to remember we're trying to kill each other. His Scwarzenegger impressions are certainly one of the reasons his wife married him.

I often intend to do things like dance my orcs just out of fr range, but usually it doesn't work because I get impatient or have a "better" idea which I end up regretting. I'm usually most successful when my Marauders are able to out-perform my level of play.   Since the big money was on the line I always took at least 2 and 3 for the 2000 point games. Having watched my Goblin Bombchucker fail epically in the game against Chris, I traded them even up for Axeorcs and I was glad that I did.

If you look closely at my goblin spearmen you will see some sort of unreadable scratch in the command circle. I just put them on Hold and had them move straight ahead. Rather than put a token right in front of Marcus where it might get knocked around, I just drew an arrow pointing at the top of the card and explained what I was doing so that there would be no surprises. I bring this up to highlight the fact that it is always a good idea to clarify your intentions with your opponent to avoid hard feeling later. Last time I checked the purpose of playing Battleground was for fun and cameradrie.

And hey, did you notice the bitchin' board we were using?

[RushAss]

And hey, did you notice the bitchin' board we were using?

Oh yes!  More of Mike's home made boards where brought and they where excellent!  Much sturdier than the other board of his I had for a while.

[RushAss]

Championship Game 3 vs Will playing Umenzi



My third game was against Will, who had a solid showing with the Umenzi at last year’s tournament.  This was played on an open map with hidden deployment and a special condition.  I think the special condition we had was “Well Prepared” or something like that.  Basically, each player got to fish through their deck and pick out 3 cards of their choice to have in their hand at the start of the game in addition to any cards they purchased.

Set Up



Umenzi
From Left to Right:
Worthy backed by Atlatlmen
Mumakil the Bringer of Death and Flatness (Core units for Will only)
Warriors
Horton the Hearer of Whos – Brother of Mumakil the Bringer of Death and Flatness
Warriors backed by Atlatlemen
Warriors

What?  An army build with no spell casters and only 1 leadership unit?  I was really happy to see this.  But still, there was that little matter of 2 Giant War Elephants that had to be dealt with.

Ravenwood
Left to right:
Swordsmen
Brownies backed by Brownies (AKA the Brownie Stack)
3 Spearmen with Archers behind them
Swordsmen
Swordsmen backed by Stag Cavalry

I have to admit that I had an advantage where the hidden deployment was concerned because I just KNEW that Will was going to field at least 1 Elephant and seeing 2 wouldn’t be too surprising.  After all, he had fielded at least 1 Elephant in every game in last year’s tournament and as I understood it he was doing so again this year.  So I figured that buying a bunch of Spearmen and putting them dead-center couldn’t be a bad idea and verily it came to pass that Will had indeed dumped 2 Elephants right in front of my Spears.  While this is all well and good, I was basically looking at potentially 1-2 additional points of damage as these poor, valiant bastards where trampled into a fine, Elven paste.

Early Turns



He would move first, so I had my Spearmen set to hold at locations indicated by the little beads on the map in front of them.  My Archers would be firing at the Warriors between the Elephants.  Everybody else was set to close except for the Brownies in the second rank, which I told to follow the Spearmen closest to them for obvious backup purposes.  Will’s orders where even simpler – everybody charge and Atlatlmen fire at the nearest available target.  The Elephants where capped at 3.5.  I had Spirit Guidance on my Archers and Will placed Faith Armor on a few of his Warriors.  I know for certain that he placed it on the Warriors between the Elephants.  My archery was OK and it peeled the Faith Armor off of those Warriors and did an additional 2 points on my first 2 volleys.  The Atlatlmen responded by putting a point on one of my Brownies while the other one did 2 points to a Swordsman unit.
Mid Turns



From left to right: Brownies engage Worthy on the front and last all of 2 turns, but that’s enough time for my Swordsmen to flank the Worthy.  Mumakil ploughed the Spearmen in a couple of turns and in move the Brownies!  However, the Warriors in the middle crumpled and my Spearmen that did them in moved in to pinch poor Mumakil.  Horton was getting stonewalled by my 3rd Spear unit, which was dishing out more damage than it had any business dishing out and probably should have taken more damage than it actually did.  While it failed it’s terror check, I was able to play one of the aspect cards on these guys and they still delivered 2 damage on the turn they where charged!  The other line units on the right (my left) locked up and the Stags did their thing by blowing the rightmost Warrior unit to Kingdom Come.

Endgame



Again from left to right: The Swordsmen continue to hack at the Worthy.  I didn’t think Will realized that the Atlatlmen would be better off pinching the Swordsmen and I eventually mentioned it to him.  It was only fair.  He complied and the Swordsmen perished.  Mumakil Squished the Brownies, so the pinch was broken.  But the persistent Spearmen eventually knocked him into the red and Mumakil fled!  He would reform with only 3 red boxes remaining.  Horton routed the Spearmen he was facing, but then got flanked by the Stags which finished him. 

How did the Stags get there you say?  Let’s go back a couple of turns.  The Warriors that the Stags killed had a really hot turn and they managed to kill the Swordsmen facing them on the same turn they got pinched by the Stags.  The Swordsmen next to them routed away from the Warriors they where facing, but Will reformed them so that the Stags would have to charge them head-on.  I used a turn to direct control the Stags to slide them towards the Atlatlmen’s flank instead and then charged them the next turn which routed and killed them.  Remember, Will had no leadership units on that side of the battle so his unit’s courage was horrible.  The Warriors had to turn back around to face my reformed and re-orderd Swordsmen and now they also had to deal with my bowfire.  While my Swordsmen died quickly, the combination of their last final rush and some fine shooting brought them to an end.  And now we are caught back up to the fall of Horace.  IIRC, Horace did finish off those Spearmen before he fell.  Will actually surrendered by turn 7 since he only had an Atlatlmen unit, a Worthy in the red, and Mumakil with 3 red boxes remaining. 

Final Thoughts 

The lack of Spell Casters in Will’s army really hurt him since the courage of most of his line units was a base 10, not to mention the inability to hex, bless, or heal anybody.  I also benefited from knowing that Will had a thing for Elephants and was able to plan accordingly.  Despite the poor courage, his 2 Warrior units on the right performed really well.  Conversely, the Spearmen I had facing Horton where simply amazing.  They literally went point-for-point with a GWE for 3 or 4 turns without batting an eyelash.  While I lavished a ton of command cards on them, that’s still impressive.

[RushAss]

Championship Game 4 vs Ian playing Men of Hawkshold

My fourth game was against Ian who had reportedly just learned how to play Battleground the previous week.  While I certainly didn’t underestimate him based on that (Pandemonium Books and Games is just crawling with gaming naturals), I was still surprised at how well he played.  This would be a ticking clock scenario with terrain and as you can see, what terrain it was!  We had a large hill, a large forest, and hedges ringing half of each deployment zone.  I was pretty zonked by this point, so I only managed to get 1 pic off.  Thanks to Rachael and Kevin for taking so many pics of this game.

Set Up



Men of Hawkshold
From Left to Right:
2 Spearmen
Light Cavalry backed by Peasant Mob
Knights
Light Cavalry backed by Peasant Mob
Bowmen backed by more Bowmen
Longbowmen

This army is 2171 points and I didn’t realize it until I started putting this report together.  It turns out that Ian accidentally counted his Light Cavalry as Scouts.  It was an honest mistake on his part and I didn’t catch it myself until days after the fact.  In his defense, Hawk Scouts look an awful lot like Light Cavalry on the top-down view of the card.  He made a brave choice to place his Cavalry in the center of his line and this would pay off for him.

Ravenwood
From Left to right:
Brownies backed by more Brownies
Brownies backed by Archers
Spearmen backed by Bowmasters
Brownies backed by Archers
Brownies backed by Bowmasters
Archers

Looking at the terrain offered me, I figured that 1 of 4 things could happen:
1 - If  he also chose to stand and shoot that my S&S army would be better than his.
2 - If I chose a close and hose army and he did S&S, the terrain would work against me. 
3 – If we both chose to close and hose it would be anybody’s game
4 – If I chose to S&S and he chose close and hose, I could shred him on the way in and I’d get help from the hedges.

Based upon this, I chose to Stand and Shoot.  Now if you are going to stand and shoot, STAND AND SHOOT!  I tried to maximize my shootiness with nearly 1400 points worth of units being ranged guys.  This is a pretty cowardly army, but this is the only game in the entire weekend that I played anything like this so I don’t feel too bad about it.  Ian pointed out that all of his previous opponents had behaved the same and we had a chuckle over it.  Interestingly enough, I fielded a total of 7 ranged units all weekend long and this army featured 5 of them.

Early Turns



I had a Bowmaster and Archer targeting the Longbowmen while the rest of my archery was targeting his Knights.  The dice on the hill are the objectives of his ranged units with the Longbowmen set to take the very top of the hill.  He had his Spearmen on hold at the beginning, but soon after changed their standing orders to close and the one farthest to the left was assigned to take an objective in the center of the forest.

Early on his ranged guys started trudging up the hill and as soon as the Longbowmen hit the top I let them have it with some Spirit Guidance assisted bowfire.  I was able to put them into the red in 2 turns of firing and cutting the attack of the Longbowmen down to (2) 6/6 certainly pleased me.  His archery was largely ineffective early on due to move-and-shoot penalties and the soft cover bonus I received by having the nearest available targets right behind the hedges.  I wasn’t having as much luck against the Knights, only doing about a point of damage per turn with 3 ranged units (some with Spirit Guidance!)  Yeah, the rolls where that bad.   

Mid Turns



One of the Hawk Bowmen units placed itself in front of the Longbowmen, so I no longer had a line of sight to the Logbowmen.  I had my Archer farthest to the right (my left) fire at them while I shifted the Bowmasters formally targeting the Longbowmen to fire at the Light Cavalry nearest to them.  The rest of my archery continues to grossly underachieve and the Knights had only 3 points of damage to show for 3 turns of ranged fire, so I had my Spearmen break ranks and charge them on the flank right before they crashed into the Brownies directly in front of them.  The Knights where put into the red, but their courage held and Ian had Bravery on them anyways.  I moved out my Brownies on the left (my right) to threaten a pinch on his Light Cavalry that was about to smash into the Brownies next to them, so Ian had the Light Cavalry charge those guys instead.  If they hang on for the turn, I could get a pinch on that Light Cavalry, but these Brownies where one-shotted as they failed their courage check after the initial charge.  So no pinch.  The Brownies that had been saved by this then charged the flank of the Light Cavalry. 



The pic above is blurry, but you can see what’s going on well enough.  The Light Cavalry on the right has made it’s way through the hedge and has engaged the Brownies lurking over there.  The Knights have fallen after the Brownies in front of them moved in to pinch, but those same Brownies have been killed by a combination of the Knights’ dying swing and some archery on yonder hill.  My Archers on the far right (my left) have also fallen to Hawk bow fire.  I had 2 of my ranged units fire at the Light Cavalry in the hedges, but they where tough to hit due to the soft cover and the cavalry bonus.  I had one of the Bowmasters focus on a Peasant Mob that was about to pinch my Spearmen while I had another Archer fire on the Light Cavalry to the left.  This Light Cavalry unit was really pissing me off.  I could have a second opportunity to pinch them as long as the Brownies on their flank survived 1 round of combat with 5 boxes remaining.  Ian played a surge to victory, so they needed 4s to hit and 5s to damage.  All 5 attacks struck home for both rolls, so those Brownies die and still no pinch    The Spearmen continue their crawl across the map. 

Endgame



The Light Cavalry on the right has killed the Brownies behind the hedges and then moved on to kill the Bowmasters that where behind them.  1 of the Peasant Mobs in the middle of the map where wiped out by a combination of Ravenwood Spears (comically the best infantry unit in this game!) and archery.  The other Peasant Mob hung on and actually routed the Spearmen, who where also now getting peppered by Hawk bow fire.  The other Light Cavalry was finally put to rest by concentrated bow fire as they finished off their 3rd unit of Brownies.  Bowmasters and 1 of the Archers started firing at the Spearmen in front of them.  At this point the 8th turn was done and the game was Ian’s.

Final Thoughts 

Well, the Light Cavalry NOT being Scouts certainly changed things because Scouts would not have done nearly as much damage as the Light Cavalry wound up doing.  In fact, both Light Cavalry units where stellar this game.  On the flip side, my archery was pretty miserable.  Granted I was shooting at cavalry for a good part of the game, but I had turns where I would do like a total of 2-3 damage from nearly 1400 points worth of ranged units, and that was with a generous helping of Spirit Guidance!  The Brownie fiasco on the right of my line certainly didn’t help my cause either.  Despite the points disparity and poor fortune on my part, Ian still played pretty well.  The fact that he had only learned the game the previous week made his play here pretty impressive.

In hindsight, I should have just played a mixed army and claimed the forest to help with scenario points.  By standing and shooting I gave up the initiative in the hopes of shooting his army to shreds.  I think my decision to go stand and shoot was also influenced by the fact that I had been sitting on this army build for quite some time and I thought this terrain offered me a good opportunity to try out what I thought to be the ultimate Ravenwood stand and shoot army.

[RushAss]

Speed Swiss Game 1 vs Mike (Gull2112) playing Monsters and Mercenaries



This was round 1 of the Speed Swiss round and I would be facing Mike again.  I chose to stick with Ravenwood because I was still having fun with them.  Mike wanted to switch things up, so he decided to take Monsters and Mercenaries.  He told me he had never played the faction before and he had to borrow my M&M deck!  Not to worry for Mike, he could still deploy Half-Orcs if he really wanted to!  Round 1 featured a "Ticking Clock Coin Game," where 4 coins were placed in a symmetrical pattern on an open map.  These coins counted as terrain pieces for scoring purposes, but otherwise had no effect on game play.

Set Up


Taken at the end of turn 1

Monsters and Mercs
From left to right:
Ogres (Apparently immune to pinches)
Wildmen Swordsmen backed by Wildmen Swordsmen (offset)
2 Wildmen Swordsmen with Elementalist (apparently blind-drunk) in rear
Ogres (We hate you Bears!)
Wildmen Horse Archers backed by more Horse Archers

Ravenwood
From left to right:
Spearmen backed by Wolfkin
Brownies backed by more Brownies (The Brownie Batch)
Swordsmen
Bearkin
Spearmen
Bear Pack (We hate you Ogres!)
Treant (Because everybody loves a tree)

After my stand and shoot debacle Saturday night, I decided to go for a beefy pure infantry approach. 

Standing Orders where interesting.  I set my Spearmen on the far left to a hold location (blue bead) while Mike did the same for the Ogres opposite them (clear bead).  The rest of my units where set to generic close, but Mike had some more oddities up his sleeve.  The blue bead in the center of the map is actually the close objective of his other Ogre units and the green bead in the lower right hand corner of the map is the hold objective of both Horse Archers.  His Elementalist where set to target the largest thing on the battlefield – The Treant!

Early Turns



I placed Spirit Guidance on both Spearmen and the Bearkin.  The Elementalist commenced missing the Treant with lightening bolts but at least the Horse Archers put a point on it on the way in.  Speaking of the Horse Archers, Mike changed one of their standing orders to close and the other to hold.  He also direct controlled the Ogres in the middle to peel them back from the line a bit to avoid getting them pinched by the Spearmen there and the Bear Pack.  The Brownie batch marched forward to clash with Wildmen Swordsmen in a battle of the weenies while the Spearmen and Ogres on the far side stopped and stared at each other which was just fine by me.


Mid Turns


Taken by Racheal from a different angle right before attack dice where rolled for this turn

Let’s start from the top, shall we?  I changed the standing order of the Treant to charge the non-holding Horse Archer so that Mike would have to burn a command action to get the other one to pinch the Tree.  He did this and got the pinch, but I played an Aspect of Wolverine card on the Treant to prevent a rout check and the extra attacks proved fatal to the Horse Archers in front of the Tree as they where put into the red and they routed.  After a careful look at the Ogres, we determined that only 1 of my 2 units eligible to final rush them could actually do so (damn you Mike, you did it again!).  I chose the Bear Pack while the Spearmen noodled around looking for something to do.  The mid-line units engaged as expected and something funny occurred when my Brownies and one of his Wildmen both routed from each other.  Oh the shame of it all!  My Wolfkin where able to flank the Ogres on the fringe, but only inflicted 1 sad point of damage on the Ogres while getting pinched in the process by more Wildmen.  They held.  These Wolfkin, along with those Ogres would prove to be the most stubborn sons of bitches on the map as you are about to see.  The Elementalist continued to be useless.



Back to my crappy camera angle!

Once you get yourselves re-oriented, we’ll go from right to left since I started with the Treant in the last paragraph.  We see the Horse Archers have put a hurting on the Treant.  The Bear Pack played it tough and routed the Ogres in the middle.  The 2 Wildmen Swordsmen in the middle of the map are actually representing themselves quite well, getting the best of the Bear Kin and Swordsmen respectively.  I’m thinking that Mike needed to burn command actions elsewhere, so the Wildmen that routed from the Brownies stayed put.  I changed the standing order of my Spearmen on the left from hold to close so that they could engage the Ogres and pinch them.  Since the Ogres themselves where not charging, there was no Fear Check or outreaching.  So the Spearmen get 5 dice hitting on 5s and 4s plus the Wolfkin on the flank who now had 1 red hit box remaining (sans pinching bonus due to being pinched themselves) and had 3 dice needing 4s and 2s with no defensive cards played by Mike.  Surely you’d expect grievous harm… except everything missed and the Ogres where unscathed!  I kicked myself later for not at least using Spirit Guidance.  However, the outrageousness was (nearly) exchanged when the Wildmen on the flank of the Wolfkin failed to do a single point of damage to them!  The Elementalist may have finally inflicted a single point of damage on the Treant, but this was still horribly bad for them.

Endgame



Starting from the right.  The Treant finally failed a courage check and off he ran.  The Spearmen in the middle are itching find somebody… ANYBODY to fight.  The Bear Pack has charged the re-formed Ogres in the middle and they resume serious hostilities.  The Elementalist finally gave up on trying to zap the Treant and are now hurling fireballs at the Bear Pack.  Their first attack yields only 1 sad point of damage.  The Bearkin woke up and broke their Wildmen opponents, so are now able to pinch the Wildmen engaged with the Swordsmen next to them which evaporate.  The first of the Brownies re-engaged with Wildmen are vanquished, so the backup rule is invoked and Brownie unit #2 moves in as this area grinds on.  The Wolfkin finally give up the ghost as the Ogres and Spearmen continue to mix it up.  On the turn after the photo was taken I charged my Treant back into the Horse archers which routed and died and IIRC this is where Mike surrendered.  He still had some firepower left on the table, but Ravenwood was well on it’s way to ridding the land of the sell-swords.

Final Thoughts 

First of all, the Elementalist was a total letdown for Mike.  They inflicted 2 damage the entire game, which is horrid.  Mike had to use a lot of command actions to change standing orders and I feel this hurt him this game because he really could have used spoils on some of his units and I usually had command card superiority.  There must be something about Mike’s heavy infantry units fighting to his right in that region of the map because like the Orc Axemen in Saturday’s game, the Ogres stood up to incredible punishment and still hung in there longer than they should have.  Keep in mind that this is the exact same map that we played on Saturday!  My Wolkin hanging in there for a turn longer than they should have (not to mention passing 3 of their courage checks) made me feel better about this.  Over all another wild and tightly contested game with Mike that was a blast to participate in.

To date Mike and I have an overall 2-2 record against each other.  Fitting!

[Kevin]

By the way, thanks for doing all these write-ups.  Other than the final games, the entire tournament is a blur for me, so it's awesome to get the detailed experience of one player. 

[RushAss]

No problem Kev, thanks so much for giving me an opportunity to write them up!

2 more to go.  Thankfully, they are both smaller games so my already flagging memory won't be taxed too much        

[gull2112]

Yes, Thanks Marcus! I'm just as on pins and needles as everyone else is regarding the outcome of our contest as I really don't remember anything distinctly. It all seems right. Actually, I do rememer some things, and I certainly recall the impression that it was a lot of fun and each game was a real butt clencher!

[BubblePig]

Dammit, you have way too many great pics in here. I guess I am going to have to bring a camera to Co5N.

[Kevin]

Yeah.  And it looks like about half his pics were taken by Rachel, who won't be there [1] at Co5N.

[1] Unless the game bug bit her and she shows up as a player, but I'd give that 10% at best.

[gull2112]

One thing that I should have done, and this is always the advice I give other players, which shows how valid it is and how often I rarely take my own medicine  , is that the elementalist should have been targeted on the weaker units where it would have been sure to have an effect rather than firing into the leafy green black hole that was the Treant. This is the equivalent of the T-rex being led around by the caetrati, but in this case I was the collossal stupid creature rendered impotent by the castratti (Treant).

[RushAss]

Kevin's right, at least 1/3 of all the pics I used where taken either by him or Racheal.

Mike - you are right about the Elementalist, but targeting it on the Treant still wasn't that bad of a play IMO.  You still should have at least gotten a couple more points of damage on it and that could have turned things around on that end of the map since it was already tightly contested.  And don't think I didn't notice your mention of but clenching...