Lion Rampant At Shirecon

Yesterday was the annual Lion Rampant tournament at Shirecon, and a contingent from Wollongong headed up to the big city to take part. 

Actually we made up half of the ten players.

I took the Dwarf army I'd used a couple of weeks ago - 2 x Crossbows with Pavise and 2 x Elite Foot (including the leader, who had Strongbow and Vulnerable)

There were five tables and each one was set up with a particular scenario. The tournament was four games, so we'd each play four of the five scenarios. Once at a table the players diced for attacker/defender. Each scenario was lifted straight from the book, and the Glory scored counted for the player's total at the end of the day. However this year players could also select boasts, so even if you lost a scenario and scored no Glory there, you could pick up points for successful boasts. And, indeed, this could be worth more than the Glory for the scenario.

Obviously the good players would win a scenario and pick up more Glory through boasts as well, to get the really big points.

My first game was against new player Justin, assisted by his young son Aurelian. We played Meet The Neighbours, in which both sides are marching along a corner-to-corner road towards each other with the aim of getting off the table on the opposite corner to that which we entered. So the inevitable fight in the middle is really incidental; the aim is to get as much of your force past the enemy and exit the board before they do, as the scenario ends once one side has no troops left on the table.

Justin was using Arthur's Briton's, with three units of mounted troops. However a wide sweep with the mounted was tricky because of some cunningly positioned woods. That being the case, Justin still went for it.

My army was a slow one, so I knew I couldn't fight my way through his troops before the mounted went round the sides, so I settled down as a blocking force, accepting that I would just score points for boasts and not seriously attempt to get stuff off the board. All I then had to do was stop Justin getting anything off as well.

I got my crossbows into decent positions to cover as much of the board as possible, and shoot up any cavalry trying to escape. Arthur's elite cavalry came straight down the middle, and I pushed forward some of my elite foot to force him into an impetuous charge before he could choose to charge the crossbowmen.

They lost badly and retreated, but were able to charge the crossbowmen a turn or so later. But by then I'd had a chance to shoot them up, as well as the supporting heavy cavalry.

Arthur was soon on his own ...

... then charged and killed.

The Britons collapsed fairly steadily after that. But one cavalry unit did get around the other flank, and we ended the game in a race for the exit corners, as his cavalry had to pass through woods and I reasoned that I could get something off the board if he failed activations and I didn't. As it was his cavalry was his sole surviving unit and exited, ending the game.

Technically Justin won the scenario. But he lost the Glory for doing so because he failed both of his selected Boasts. Meanwhile I completed all of mine for 8 Glory. So it was an 8-0 win to me; the Britons won the battle but the bards sang of the Dwarves.

My second game was Sausages With Mustard, playing against Victor's Saxons (who had some Pictish chariots as allies). He was trying to burn four huts in the centre of the table. I was trying to stop him. The game would end when all four were burning or if the attacker suffered half casualties.

The defender is allowed to set up a low points unit near the huts at the start. I didn't have one, so would have to march in all of my force as reinforcements. And Victor's troops were a lot faster than mine.

I'd barely sighted the village before two of the huts were burning.

But the two closer to my forces would be harder as I quickly got my crossbows into position.

A horde of screaming Saxons tore through the woods on my right, aiming for the crossbow unit there. My leader brought his elite foot in to stop them, driving them back.

Saxon cavalry charged the crossbows, who held firm.

And my leader popped out of the woods and finished them off.

On the other flank the crossbows did very little; the elite foot did all of the work. They saw off the chariots, and then went after some skirmishers in the woods. The skirmishers failed to evade, lost the combat, retreated and failed their rally roll, running away. that took Victor down to half strength. My elite foot failed the post melee moral-check though, and went battered, which coast me a boast.

The second game was a draw. We both picked up 4 Glory for huts (two burning for Victor and two not burning for me), and very little for boasts as we both managed some but not others. I think the score was 5-4 to me.

So at lunchtime I'd had two wins, but I knew other players had much higher scores than I.

My third game was Defending The Indefensible and I was fighting against Caesar. In this scenario one side must defend a fragile immobile object in the middle of the table. The attacker simply has to contact it with a unit. As with the previous scenario the defender - which turned out to be me - got a unit in the middle of the table defending the objective and then had to march the rest of their force from their deployment area.

Caesar had decided to go big or go home with his army choice this year - he had a force of Vikings consisting of four groups of warrior foot in armour. That was it. It was any army that would simply charge and then fight until it fell apart. 

Here's a very lonely group of Dwarven crossbows wondering if they can take out four enemy units in two turns.

The Vikings approach ...

Some shooting held off the lead units, and fortunately my reinforcements weren't far behind. My defenders had been attacked, though, and had fallen back around the objective.

However Caesar had boasts he wanted to fulfill, so held off on taking the objective. Obviously this mean that I had more time to break his force; I only had to take out two of his units and the scenario would end. My leader got stuck in to a Viking mob.

Most of Caesar's units had taken two or three casualties by now, so could possibly fall back given a morale test. So I challenged his leader to single combat.

I lost.

The cascading morale cause half of my force to retreat or run away instead.

Caesar rushed in to finish off as many of the survivors as he could and fulfill a couple of his boasts.

He then grabbed the objective. He got a lot of Glory - two or three boasts, plus the scenario victory points. I scored -3 Glory, having failed to achieve a single thing I said I would*.

My sole surviving unit - some crossbows who had sat and watched the rest of the warband get wiped out.

So that game crapped on my final total a fair bit. Still, there was one game to go and I could at least look to get double figures by the end of the day.

The fourth scenario was River Crossing, which is one lifted from The Pikeman's Lament. Both sides are trying to get all of their troops across to the enemy's side of a fordable river. The scenario ends when one player has no troops left on their side of the river, so there's some tactical niceties about how and when you might choose to end the game. I was playing Martin, whose force was similar to mine in that he had two elite foot. Instead of the crossbows he had two units of fast shooting veteran archers.

We both rushed towards the river. I decided to get a couple of units across as quickly as possible so that if there was a bloodbath elsewhere I stood a chance of having more troops on Martin's side than he did on mine.

Two units of  elite foot clashed at the ford in the middle, with my leader pushing the enemy back.

He retreated from a counter-attack, but the other group of elite foot got stuck in and took out the enemy unit.

Martin had a run of bad luck at this point, with a couple of failures when it came to activating his archers to shoot.

I kept his troops busy with my elite foot then stopped shooting with the crossbows and got them across the river as well. Or tried. The last unit failed two activations to move and make the final crossing, in which time Martin polished off my leader's unit and the other elite foot, then headed for the crossing himself.

But they got across in the end, putting all of my troops on Martin's side of the river and more points there than he had on mine.

We both picked up a couple of boasts, and I think the final score was something like 8-4.

Interestingly I'd declared in three games that I would score more casualties with shooting than I would in close combat, reasoning that the crossbows would do the heavy lifting and the elite foot the finishing off. As it was in two of those games I ended up in far more melee than I'd expected and failed the boast.

Anyway, I finished 5th in a field of ten, so I was at least in the top half. Stuart and Keegan picked up the top spots with Stuart's Arrows of Death proving the battle-winner we thought they'd be.

The tournament was great fun, with plenty of dramatic moments and excitement. As well as the scoring unpredictability provided by boasts we also played the core rules for activations, with the first failure ending a player's turn. Last year we played the option of allowing all units to try and activate and it made it far to easy for players to move their troops around. This year you really had to plan your priorities and keep your leader where he was needed to provide rerolls.

Thanks to Victor for his hard work in organising the tournament, and to all the players for a fun and friendly day out.

*I was not the only person to score -3 Glory in a game, so I didn't feel too bad. Indeed Caesar managed it in his next game ...

MOAB 2016 - The HOTT Tournament

Today was the annual HOTT tournament at MOAB. It was part of the international GBnU HOTT enterprise organised by Terry Webb, with a theme of historical armies. Most people went at least part of the way down that route. I didn't, fielding Cthulhu Rising, a mashup of my old 24AP Pendraken Fishmen with a few new elements to bulk it out to 36AP - including Cthulhu himself (or, at least, a smaller, designated representative).

The Army consisted of:

Cthulhu (Behemoth General)
6 x Spears
4 x Shooters
1 x Lurker
1 x Artillery
2 x Warband

So not a fast, mobile army, but one with a bit of firepower and staying power, and a few elements to allow for some punch. Here it is, ready for its first game.

And here's three of the boards, ready for the off.

In my first game I played against John, who was using a Welsh/Celtic army with lots of warbands, some riders a magician and some allied tree-people (behemoths and more warband).

He set up a board with a very sense wooded terrain, which messed up command and control for both sides, and left the battle being fought in the gaps between the trees. Here the Fishman line, supported by their general, advances on the tree-people.

On the other side of the field, a group of Welsh warband moved towards the Fishman shooters and their artillery.

This really became the main action, with the shooters and artillery cutting up the warband quite badly, whilst supporting elements skirmished in the woods on the flank. Cthulhu was obliged to come across in support.

The battle dragged on for a while, and we were close to timing out, so I threw my spears and magician in on the other flank, hoping to get some risky kills against the warband there. The warband were seriously down in terms of factors, but only needed a winning score in order to destroy my double-ranked spears. A single bad combat roll could have seen everything go wrong.

John decided to concede, rather than hold out for the draw, giving me a rather hollow victory.

I had another army in play as well; one player didn't have a suitable force, so borrowed my Elves (yes, also not historical). Apparently they behaved well, being a nice simple army to use; riders, spears and shooters mostly.

My second game saw me up against Peter's Greeks, masquerading at Alexander the Great's army, but with a trio of allied behemoth monsters.

This was a quick game. Alexander was a hero general, he got pushed up in the front line to within range of my magician, was ensorcelled and that was the battle over.

With lots of time in hand we carried on playing as a friendly, assuming Alexander hadn't been lost. On my left flank my shooters and artillery did good work keeping the disorganised Greeks off-balance, but my attack on the right, led by Cthulhu, stalled, and Cthulhu was routed off the edge of the world by Alexander's body-double.

This was Caesar's army. It started off as something conventionally medieval, with a bit of dragon action, but he ended up with a core of knights supported by two artillery and six beasts. This was a terribly bold choice, was lots of fun to play (apparently) and died horribly in pretty well all of its games.

Caesar did manage this glorious moment, though; a Welsh tree-man ally surrounded on four sides by dogs. Probably a wet, smelly end for the tree ...

My third game - Geoff. Geoff was using a medieval army of blades, knights and shooters, with a couple of riders and a protective paladin as the only fantasy concession.

A stalemate in the centre ensued, with me unwilling to shift my spears off a hill to face his blades in the open, and Geoff unwilling to commit to a frontal assault, since his flanks would be compromised.

After my shooters weren't up to the job of holding off Geoff's knights, Cthulhu had to step in and so the job himself, pretty much wiping them out.

Geoff brought his reserve across - the paladin and some riders, and created a strong line which I faced with spears, Cthulhu and my magician.

We fought. My magician died...

... and eventually the paladin rode down some spears to give Geoff a well-deserved win.

The final game. Mathematically it was impossible for me to get first place (I think), but a win could give me a solid second place.

I faced Martin - the Mighty Martin - who was using Ancient Egyptians with a whole load of stuff in them - blades, riders, a hero, shooters, behemoths (behemoths were very popular) and a magician.

We got stuck in fairly quickly, although with so many different elements in play there was a lot of line shuffling and blocking in order to sort out good match-ups and avoid bad ones.

I made my main attack on my left, where my warband were opposite the Egyptian's blade general. However I wasn't willing to throw them in for the instant kill until I had some support on the flanks, and try as I might I couldn't achieve that.

In fact I ended up in the position. On the right my shooters and artillery had pretty much eliminated the Egyptian missile troops, but Martin threw in chariot riders on both flanks, destroying some of my elements and turning both flanks.

I actually stabilised the situation, driving off the chariots on the right, allowing me to advance my shooters onto his flank. However I had taken quite a few losses, and my army was wavering and close to breaking (as was Martin's, it has to be said). I threw in my warband, hoping to get a kill on the enemy general, but rolled very, very badly and lost them. Along with another loss this but me on 17AP lost - 18AP would see the game lost. Victor called time, and I scraped a lucky draw.

With two wins, a loss and a draw I was, oddly enough, equal with Martin, but we had a strange, card-based tie-break system as well, and I won that, putting me in second place behind Geoff, whose no-nonsense medievals had carried the day to give him three wins and a draw.

Thanks to Victor for organising another great tournament.

And that's MOAB over for another year.

MOAB 2015 - The HOTT Tournament

Camelot!
(It's only a model)

I have returned from the final day of MOAB, having played in the HOTT tournament there. I bring pictures and accompanying wordage!

There were eight of us taking part, using 15mm armies built to 36AP. To compensate for the larger armies we used boards that were the correct width but which, at 80cm wide, were 25% wider than normal. We'd actually used normal 2' x 2' boards for our practice games, but other groups had found the battlefield width too restrictive. These boards certainly gave plenty of room for maneuver, as well as plenty of chances to move troops out of command.

I took my Sumerian mythological Spawn of Tiamat army, expanded to 36AP with a couple of ringers from Asag's stone allies (some rockman hordes), a new knight element, a couple more beasts and a behemoth.

The final army was: Magician General (Tiamat), Hero (Qingu, her consort), Dragon, Behemoth, 3 x Knights, 4 x Beasts, 6 x Hordes. The Dragon was a waste of time; n all of my practice games and all four tournament games I didn't deploy it once. Generally this army is too starved of PIPs to be able to squander a '6' on the Dragon.

My first game saw me up against Greg, who I'd played last year. He was using a beautiful Arthurian army - my choice for best army of the event - and defended.

He placed his paladin and some knights far out on one flank. I made them my primary target.

Arthur, Lancelot and Merlin were on the other flank. This made his command and control tricky.

The lines approached, with my behemoth tasked with engaging and destroying Sir Galahad.

The armies engaged all along the line. Slowly I ground the Knights of Camelot down.

In the centre my beasts - a varied crew - mauled Arthur's archers. At the other end of the combat, however, Qingu, my hero, found himself outflanked and surrounded by men at arms. Against the odds he held them off for several bounds, whilst the rest of Tiamat's army racked up the casualties. The battle finished when Lancelot strayed too close to Tiamat herself, and was magically seduced. That Lancelot is such a pushover. His loss was enough to break the army, and give me a win.

My second game saw me facing Geoff, who was also using a medieval army, although not one with a specific theme. I'd beaten this army on Thursday - twice - so was feeling confident.

I shouldn't have done. Geoff wiped me out pretty efficiently, killing both the behemoth and Qingu. Although I had a plan which could have seen me rack up a load of kills in the last bound or so I didn't get the PIPs to implement it, and Geoff polished off my army not long afterwards.

At the halfway mark I was sitting halfway down the table. Geoff and Caesar - the other Wollongong players - were riding high, with two wins each.

After lunch I faced a very nice Greek mythological army, commanded by Mark, who is experienced in DBA but new to HOTT.

Look at those lovely hoplites!

He pushed his cyclops behemoth forward to menace my beasts whilst they were still in the open. The cyclops was supported by his general, who looks like a spear element but was in fact a hero. I saw an opportunity. The behemoth had an open flank. I swung Tiamat through her own troops onto the behemoth's flank, then broke contact with the beast fighting it to the front. This forced it to turn to face and, when it lost the combat, its initial recoil took it over the hero general, squashng him. The first casualty of the game was the winner.

 My final game was against the front-runner, Caesar. If I beat him, it would leave us equal on points, but I would gain the tie-break advantage, and win on that basis. There was everything to play for.

Unfortunately Caesar's army wasn't one I was thrilled to face, consisting of a core of four - yes, four - behemoths.

He massed them on one flank, opposite my rather vulnerable knights.

I moved Quigu over from the centre to support them. For a couple of bounds I was surprised to survive the combats, although one of my knights seemed to be incapable of riding down some supporting warband either.

In the centre Caesar's warband faced my esoteric collection of beasts. Who would have won? We'll never know ...

... because the battle was won and lost back with the behemoths. Caesar's general was riding in his beautiful wooden horse. Qingu faced him directly and, in one lucky round, got an overlap on each flank. Caesar rolled a '1' in the combat. If I could roll a '5' or '6' in response then I would destroy him, and win the game.

Sometimes, when you need a good roll, you get it. A '6' saw the wooden horse destroyed, the Greek general killed and the rest of the army fleeing the battlefield in panic. It was the first casualty of the battle, again.

This gave me three wins, putting me equal with Caesar and Geoff. But I had the best of the tie-break, so took first place, with Caesar in second and Geoff in third. A clean sweep of the prizes by the Wollongong contingent. 

The event is part of the international 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' tournament as well. This is assessed on the first three rounds, so Caesar was our local winner there.

I can't deny that it's great to win MOAB for a second year in a row, but I feel a bit bad for Caesar losing on such an unlucky roll so early in the game. There's no doubt that in the normal run of things he would have defeated my army with little difficulty; I had no real advantage anywhere, and was very much on the back-foot. But that's how HOTT pans out sometimes. 

Here's a few pictures of some of the other armies. 

Another shot of Camelot.

Geoff and Greg finished their day with an almost historical looking medieval clash. Apparently victory was achieved when Geoff's paladin cut down Merlin (or, at least, forced him to flee into his cave for safety).

Here Victor's Carthaginians face a lovely undead army. I would have enjoyed facing both of these, just because they looked so nice. But you can't play against everyone, sadly.

Thanks to Victor and the other Southern Battlegamers for organising another great HOTT tournament, and another great MOAB generally.