I came, I saw...

2011 UK Doubles Photos

2011-07-31T08:32:00.001-07:00

Simon Montgomery Grant wants YOU to come to the next GT!

Catsrule & Sorandilun

Paul and Jamie (The Newbie)

Keithio the Green & his girlfriend

Team members of W Szczebrzeszynie Chrzaszcz Brzmi w Czcinie Hobbits (tricky to say, but also tricky to spell, as they made a mistake in the word before Hobbits :P )

Przemek "Hawk" Jastrzab

Referees... clearly on the side of forces of evil.

Round 1:

It took me all night to make this thing stand without breaking and falling apart... it also took James all night to paint the Arnorians above.

Ukrocky & Lotrchampion... not very satisfied how the game is going.

And Ukrocky being annoyed for having to play Lithorlorn (who in the past 3 singles GTs hasn't been outside of top 10!)

Catsrule & Sorandilum checking out our army lists...

Refs team

Hithero surrounded one of the markers in an effort to grab and secure the prize...

But he couldn't do anything about Blackmist rolling a 6 with his Fountain Guard and taking the prize himself...

That Fountain Guard got compelled 4 times in 5 turns from the moment of picking up the prize... truly controlled by the evil spirits.

Hithero working out another tactic which will become futile because of Blackmist's rolls...

Round 3:

Faramir in about 7 turns of combat against infantry: kills 3, burns all Might.

Gimli in about 7 turns of combat against infantry: kills 1, burns all Might, Fate and loses a Wound

Gothmog in the same time fighting cavalry: 8 kills, 1 Might used

Khamul at the same time fighting D7 infantry: 4 kills.

Round 4:

Posing for cinematic purposes...

Spider Queen got into combat with 1 wound remaining. Legolas with 0 Might failed twice to wound her. At the same time 2 Enrage Beasts from Druzhag failed to wound her. The 3rd Enrage beast managed to kill her... but when that happened Contest of Champions score was 11-0... oops :) Of course Druzhag, having attacked a supported elf with a few other goblins lost combat and died, losing our oath of killing D6 models with each hero (Druzhag had to kill 1!... he did kill the Spider Queen though O_o)

Playing a pro photographer with epic lighting on the evening of the first day...

BOISTEROUS MIRTH!

What models do these people represent?

Put a tail on Bill the Pony's cousin

BUILD THE MOST IMPRESSIVE TREE

The winning "Tree" would get offended if you called it a tree and would find no curse in the tongues of men, elves or dwarves to say its feelings... but it's still a tree according to the refs! ;)

DAY 2

For Frodo! - Mighty Pippin (our Oath is to kill Pippin) slaughters the Spider Queen, who in the previous 2 turns killed Boromir, Gimli, Legolas and Gandalf...

Where do we go now?

Never before seen in a top 10 GT appearance... the Necromancer used by the 2011 Doubles winners Tom & Harry.

Tell me that wasn't close...

BEST PAINTED ARMY NOMINEES:

Round 7 against the mighty Lithorlorn & Dan

Some action on table 1 in round 7:

Craig clearly pissed off after winning a game...

TLA Big Dog & his teammate (not sure which one's which?)

Where did Faramir come from?

Tom looks quite happy

Good luck in a married life Nick!

Best Painted Army nominees

Best Painted army winners

Shire Olympics Model Guessing Winners

Shire Olympics Eat-a-thon Winner(s)

Shire Olympics Pony Tail Winners

Shire Olympics Overall Winners!

Masters of Knowledge...

Oathkeeper Award (6 out of 8 Oaths secured)

Dark Lord Sauron Award

3rd Place (BlackMist & Hithero)

2nd Place (Przemyslaw & Konrad)

2011 Doubles Champions - Tom Moore & Harry (Hazer) Moore

Past GT Winning Army Lists, History Lesson :)

2011-03-10T04:01:00.000-08:00

I was asked if I have any links to the past GT rankings and armylists because there isn't really anything out there on the internet about it if you're wondering what GT winning armies look like. I've been keeping track of the 200+ points scoring players since 2008 GT and saved some of the top army lists over the years, so here's all the info I've gathered.

Note: Not all lists are entirely accurate, but it's roughly what they were. I've been updating my armylist file since about 2009 and got all lists I could get.

GTs started in 2003, the first was won by Mick Rood (UK), the next 5 by Vesa Nenye (Finland, 2004-2008), then Michal Molenda (Poland, 2009), Tom Moore (UK, 2010), Mikolaj Bakalarz (Poland, 2011). LoME was introduced to the tournaments in 2007. The oldest list I've had access to belongs to Vesa in the 2004 GT, the non-LoME era.

Doubles GTs started in 2008. The first was won by 2 people who I have no idea who they are and have never seen them since at any other GT... The 2009 was won by Wojciech Filipowicz (Poland) and Mikolaj Bakalarz (Poland), 2010 by Craig Johnson (UK) and James Braund (UK).

------------------------------------

2004 GT

Army composition: Player gets 1000 points to spend between 2 forces in whatever way they want, so having 550 and 450 forces is fine.

Scenarios:
Relief Force
Take and Hold
Cornered
Pitched Battle

---------------------------------------

Winning Good:
Legolas Armour
Haldir Armour, Elf Bow
1 Captain of Rohan, Heavy Armour, Horse, Shield
8 Haldir's Elves, Armour, Elf Bow, Elf Blade
5 Riders of Rohan, Throwing Spear
14 Warriors of Rohan, Shield

Total 30 models, 476 points (during the RotK edition some models had different point values. Now it would be 501)

Winning Evil:
Sharku Shield
Lurtz
Grishnakh Shield
9 Warg Riders, Throwing Spear, Shield (they cost just 12 pts back then! :))
4 Uruk Hai Berserkers
11 Uruk Hai with Crossbows (they cost 12 too...)
9 Orc Warriors with Spears

Total 36 models, 524 points (Now it would be 540)

Report by the winner (in Finnish language, the 2 pdf files under the link):
http://www.puolenkuunpelit.com/tieto/lukusali/gw_turnaus_lotr_gt.htm

Thanks to Valpas from One Ring for providing this information.

====================================

2005 GT:
At the moment unknown, but probably the same or similar as 2004. This GT still used the RotK edition because ORB came out in summer 2005 while GT was earlier that year.

====================================

2006 GT

600pts with 50 model limit
Scenarios from the main rulebook:
Relief Force
Take and Hold
Cornered
Pitched Battle

These aren't exact lists, but they are as accurate as I remember them, the file was on my old computer which is gone now.

Good:
Legolas, Elven Cloak
Haldir, Bow
Eowyn
Rohan Captain on Horse
2 Riders of Rohan with Throwing Spears
22 Warriors of Rohan with Throwing Spears and Shields (1 without)
12 Elves with Longbows and Spears

I remember that the force had something like 17 or 18 elven shots in it and Rohan was the main infantry.

Evil:
Sharku
Grishnakh
Lurtz
1/3 Crossbowmen
About 1/3 Warg Riders
1/3 Orcs with spears supporting the Crossbowmen

Again, numbers not accurate, but the general idea of the force is the same as the one that won the 2004 GT.

================================================================

2007 GT

The LoME Era begun in 2007. Points limit: 700 per army.
Scenarios:
Contest of Champions
Domination
Clash of Piquets
Meeting Engagement

--------------------------------------

The winning armies:
Good:
Gandalf the Grey
12 Dunedain with Spears
62 Hobbits (20 bowmen, rest of points spent on as many Sheriffs as possible and then Militia to fill up the model limit).

I remember losing to this force in round 7 of that GT, having been 2nd in points at that stage... won my last game and finished 7th overall though.

Evil:
3 Spider Queens
Sharku
Goblin Captain
12 Warg Riders
Goblins - as many as you can get, but to save points your front liners do not have shields

---------------------

2nd Place finisher had Gondor, and Mordor but I don't have exact armylists:

Good:
Legolas on Horse
Beregond on Horse
Faramir on Horse with Lance
5 Knights of MT
Rest filled with mainly Fountain Guard with shields and Citadel Guards with Longbow and Spear

Total about 45 models

Evil included Witch King on Fell Beast, some Warg Riders, Morannons and Orcs, don't have exact numbers.

------------------------

3rd Place had 2 all-hero armies:

Good:
Aragorn on Horse
Boromir Captain of the White Tower with Lance on Horse
Gandalf the Grey on Horse (or Shadowfax?)
Glorfindel Lord of the West on horse

If there are any unfilled points then there was some additional equipment to them, but those were the 4 models.

Evil:

Witch King on FB
Khamul on FB
2 Unnamed Wraiths on FB (at the time there were only 2 named ones)

==========================================================

2008 GT

In 2008 again the winner was Vesa, it was his 5th and last time. 700pts per army.

Scenarios:
Contest of Champions
Domination
High Ground
Meeting Engagement

Winning Armylist:
Exactly the same Shire list as in 2007

Evil:
5 Spider Queens
Goblin Captain
Rest filled with Goblins (again front line no shields)

------------------------------

2nd Place had 3 Spider Queens with Mordor. I don't have any data on 2nd and 3rd place armies otherwise.

Link to a Polish Language Tournament Report (Google Translate does miracles these days ;) by myself:
http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id40,Przybylem-Zobaczylem-i-nie-uwierzylem-wlasnym-kosciom.html

By my friend who finished 10th:
http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id33,Raport-bitewny-z-UK-GT.html

===========================================================

2008 Doubles

Doubles begun and has since used the 2x350pts per player of both Good and Evil, forming up two 700pts forces together.

Scenarios:
Take the middle, start in the corners
Evil take the centre, good defend it
Evil escape the board
Pitched Battle

-----------------------------

Winners had:
4x Spider Queens + 5 Orcs in one force
1x Spider Queen + lots of Orcs in the other

Good lists unknown.

-------------------------------

2nd Place had
Good:
Dwarves with Gimli in one force
Wood Elves with Legolas in the other

Evil:
Harad with Chieftain
Mordor with Mouth of Sauron

------------------------------

3rd Place:
Dwarves with Gimli
Wood Elves with Legolas

Harad
Mordor

Although I'm not entirely sure about the evil lists, I would have to ask Lithorlorn (TLA).

Link to a Polish Language Tournament Report by myself:
http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id111,Relacja-z-UK-Doubles-Grand-Tournament-.html

=======================================================================

2009 GT

After much debate and many emails to the events team, the Spider Queen has officially been counted as a Named Hero in this GT and ever since. Many other events around the world followed with that rulling.

Scenarios same as in 2008.

--------------------------------------------------------

1st Place:
Good:
Saruman the White
Gamling with Royal Standard
Beregond
20 Outriders on foot
2 Outriders mounted
10 Fountain Guards with Shields
6 Knights of MT with Shields (or without?)

Total 41 models. After this GT, again through emails from the players, the official rulling of the GT changed that Outriders could not benefit from Gamling's Banner's rule.

Evil:
Shadow Lord on Horse
Morannon Orc Catptain
Shade
6 Trackers on Wargs
14 Trackers on foot
21 Morannon Orcs
20 Orcs with Spears

Total 64 models.

-------------------------------------------

2nd Place:
Good:
Saruman the White
Dwarf Captain
14 Khazad Guards
7 Dwarves with Shields
4 Rangers of the North on Horses
16 Rangers of Arnor with Spears

Total 43 models.

Evil:
Suladan on Horse with a Bow
Shadow Lord on Horse
21 Haradrim with Bows
23 Haradrim with Spears
16 Corsairs with Shields
6 Serpent Riders

Total 68 models

---------------------------------------------

3rd Place:
Good:
Saruman the White
Forlong the fat on Horse
Beregond on Horse
2 Rangers of the North on Horses
8 Rangers of Arnor with Spears
9 Citadel Guards with Spears
18 Fountain Guards with Spears
1 Knight of MT

Total 41 models

Evil:

Dragon with Tough Hide and Fly
Haradrim Chieftain with Bow
15 Haradrim with Bow
32 Haradrim with Spears

(something along those lines, not 100% sure on the exact numbers)

------------------------------

Part 1 of the winner's report (again in Polish):
http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id245,Veni-Vidi-Vici-czyli-jak-zdobylismy-Anglie-raporty-z-UKGT-cz.-4.html
Part 2 of the winner's report:
http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id247,Veni-Vidi-Vici-czyli-jak-zdobylismy-Anglie-cz.-2-raporty-z-UKGT.html

==============================================================

2009 Doubles:

Scenarios were the same as in 2008, but in the 3rd one the Good side had to escape instead:

--------------------------------------------

Winners
Good:
Aragorn and Twins all on Horses

Gimli, Gandalf, Legolas

6 models, but 3 Major wins and 1 Minor win

Evil:
1st force:
Mouth of Sauron
20 Morannon Orcs with Shield
5 orcs with Spear
12 Orcs with Spear and Bow

2nd force:
Orc Captain on Warg
Shaman on Warg
Orc Drummer
12 Warg Riders with shield
1 Warg Rider with Throwing Weapon
2 Warg Riders with Shield and Throwing

Total 56 models, 4 Might. 1 Major win, 1 Minor win, 1 draw, 1 Major loss.

-----------------------------------------

2nd place:
Good:
Wood Elves with Legolas
Dwarves with Gimli

Evil:
Harad with Suladan
Mordor?

------------------------------------------

3rd place:
Good:
Ghan + Woses
Faramir, Beregond, Knights of MT and Citadel Guard with longbows mounted

The winners report, again in Polish, written by me:
http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id318,UK-Doubles-2009-Raport.html

======================================================

2010 GT:

Scenarios:
Cornered
Ill Met By Moonlight
To Kill a King
Domination

--------------------------------------------

1st Place:

Good:
Elladan and Elrohir+ Horses+Heavy armour+ Elf Bows.
15 Elf warriors+ Shield
4 Elf warriors + Elf Bow + spear
Legolas+ elven cloak
12 Wood elves+ spear.
5 Wood elves+ spear + throwing daggers.
8 Wood elves+ spear + Elf Bow
Ranger of the North.
1 Ranger of Arnor+ spear

49 models

Evil:
Black guard Captain. Shadow Lord +Fell beast.
Spider Queen

20 Morannon orcs +shield
19 Orcs Warriors +shield +spear
2 Orc Warriors + spear
10 Orc trackers
3 Orc Warriors+ Spear +Orc Bow
1 Orc Tracker+ Warg
1 Wild warg

59 models

--------------------------------------------

2nd Place:
Good:
Saruman
Ghan Buri Ghan
Eowyn
16 Rohan Warriors with Bows
16 Rohan Warriors with Shields and Throwing Spears
11 Rohan Warriors with Shield
5 Rohan Warriors
16 Woses Warriors

67 Models

Evil:
Saruman on Horse
Grima
Shadow Lord
17 Uruk Hai Crossbowmen
18 Orc spearmen
16 Orcs with nothing

54 models

----------------------------------------------

3rd Place

Good:

Legolas
Dwarf Captain + Shield
10 Elf Archers + spear
20 Wood Elves + spear (2 with daggers as well)
10 Khazad Guards
10 Dwarves + shield
10 Dwarf archers

61 models

Evil:
SL + FB
SQ
2 Goblin Captains (1 shield)
15 Prowlers
55 Goblins (23 bow, 7 shield, 25 spear)

74 models

------------------------------------------------------

Top 10 armies included:

1. Wood Elves + High Elves / Mordor+Nazgul (SL+FB) - 215
2. Rohan + Woses + Saruman / Isengard + Nazgul (SL) - 200
3. Wood Elves + Dwarves / Moria + Nazgul (SL+FB) - 200
4. Wood Elves / Harad + Corsair + Nazgul (SL +H) - 195
5. Wood Elves / Mordor (Black Num) + Nazgul (SL+FB/DM+FB) - 191
6. Gondor + Woses + Saruman + Legolas / Isengard + Nazgul (SL+H) - 191
7. Wood Elves / Mordor + Nazgul (SL/Und) - 191
8. Wood Elves / Mordor (Black Num) + Nazgul (KoU+FB/DM+FB) - 190
9. Woses + Rohan + Saruman / Corsairs + Nazgul (SL+FB) - 186
10. Woses + Gondor + Legolas / Mordor + Nazgul (SL+FB) + SQ - 181

Tournament Report (in Polish) by the 2nd place finisher:
http://www.mitril.pl/raporty-bitewne/id384,UKGT-2010-raport.html

=================================================

2010 Doubles:

1st place:

Good:
Aragorn and Twins all on Horses
Boromir, Faramir, Beregond and KoMT with Banner, all on horses

Evil:
Spider Queen with Dol Guldur
Moria with a ton of goblins

2nd place:
Good:
Aragorn and Twins all on Horses
Grey Company with RotN and RoA only

English Language report:

http://venivididouble1.blogspot.com/2010/09/2nd-at-2010-doubles-gt.html

====================================================

2011 GT:

Scenarios:
Contest of Champions
Ill Met By Daybreak (same set up as IMbM but play to 25% reduction, no vision rules)
Storm the Camp
Take and Hold

1st Place:

Good:
Saruman
Madril
Beregond
2 Rangers of the North
2 Outriders

18 Fountain Guard with Shield
2 Fountain Guard
10 Citadel Guard Spear Bow
8 Rangers of Arnor Spear

Total 45 models

Evil:
Shadow Lord Horse
Golden King
18 Corsairs with Shield
18 Harad Spearmen
10 Harad Bows
11 Harad Bows/Spears
6 Harad Riders Warspears

Total 65

-----------------------------------------

2nd Place:

Good:
Saruman
Twins on Horses, Heavy Armour, Bows
13 Elves, Heavy Armour, Shield
12 Elves, Bows, Spears
7 Elves, Shield, Spear
6 Elves, Shield
1 Elf, Bow

Total 42

Evil:

Shadow Lord, Horse
Nazgul 2/8/1, Horse
Spider Queen
Orc Taskmaster
17 Morannon Orcs, Shields
18 Orcs, Shield, Spear
8 Orc Trackers
7 Orcs with Bow and Spear

Total 54

------------------------------------------

3rd Place:

Good:
Legolas, Haldir, Wood Elves (exact list unknown)

Evil:
Mumak, Tusk Weapons, Gnarled Hide
Khamul on Fell Beast
Knight of Umbar on Fell Beast

------------------------------------------

Other top 10 included:

4th: Wood Elves, Grey Company / Moria, Spider Queen, SL horse
5th: Arnor, Malbeth, Twins, Glorfindel / Harad, Corsairs, SL, WK
6th: Wood Elves, Dwarves, Saruman / Mordor, SQ
7th: Galadhrim / Mordor
8th: Galadhrim / Moria, Cave Drake
9th: Gondor / Moria
10th: Wood Elves / Mordor

English Language Report:
http://venivididouble1.blogspot.com/2011/03/2011-lotr-grand-tournament-report.html

=============================================================================

2011 LotR Grand Tournament Report

2011-03-06T05:20:00.000-08:00

On 12-13 February I was back again in the Warhammer World for my 5th singles LotR GT and along with Doubles and WotR, my 9th UKGT event.

Good Army

Saruman (Leader)

Madril

Beregond

2x Ranger of the North

2x Rohan Outrider

18 Guards of the Fountain Court, Shields

2 Guards of the Fountain Court

10 Citadel Guards, Spears, Longbows

8 Rangers of Arnor, Spears

Total: 700 points, 45 models, 24 bows, 9 Might

(In the original Rangers of the North and Beregond were on horses, but two days before the tournament I realized that I forgot to do conversions, so I had to throw two foot Outriders in place of horses)

Evil Army:

Golden King (Leader)

Shadow Lord, Horse

18 Corsairs, Shields

18 Haradrim Warriors, Spears

11 Haradrim Warriors, Spears, Bows

10 Haradrim Warriors, Bows

6 Haradrim Riders, Warspears

Total 700 points, 65 models, 21 bows, 4 Might

(In the original, instead of the Serpent Riders were Haradrim, but you can not proxy, and I didn’t want to spend money on individuals who do not make any difference against the elves, I could have borrowed it, but I forgot)

Scenarios:

Contest of Champions

Ill Met By Daybreak (Modification of Ill Met By Moonlight)

Storm the Camp

Take and Hold

Oaths of Battle:

At the beginning of the tournament, each player is dealt eight cards, four for the army of good and evil 4 for the army. Each of them was a special mission to perform in battle (you can choose to start using that card in this battle.) If both players failed to perform their mission, or both have succeeded, then nothing happened. If one player has done, and the other didn’t, he would get a bonus of 5 points at the end of the tournament, so we had potential extra 40 points to score, making a total of 330 with a 10 point quiz.

1. Your selected character has to kill at least 2D6 models

2. Your general must survive

3. Your army can not be broken

4. You have to kill a chosen hero (you choose)

The Journey of Lord Voitek:

As some of you know, Voitek (TLA member) with whom I won the 2009 Doubles GT, has recently retired from competitive LotR due to personal reasons, but he gave me his models so that I could use them at the GT. My force included a Corsair Warrior that was a conversion of a Wildman of Dunland – that was Voitek himself represented in my forces. Throughout the tournament I closely followed his achievements and made a note of them in this report.

Round 1: Contest of Champions, Evil

In the first round landed on David's (TLA Lutra), whom previously I played only once - the 2010 GT in the 4th round I won with my Rohan against his Isengard. This time, David was using the High Elves with the support of Gil-galad and Isildur on horse (about 42 models.)

In selecting David Champion chose Isildur but since I was quite sleepy I misunderstood and I thought he said Gil-Galad. So, following the thought that the GG does not pass the test of courage on the break (Golden King will make sure that this happens), I decided to choose Oath to kill the Gil-galad. Still with half open eyes I was not aware that it makes no sense, because I’ll be trying to get rid of Isildur s for the main quest... oh well. David decided to use the Oath of killing Shadow Lord.

Due to the great advantage of bows and having SL, my strategy was to quickly break the enemy by shooting, and then remove the Champion Gil-galad test of courage. On the left side I set the cavalry, archers in the middle and rest of the army on the. After several turns of shooting I sent six riders to nthe left side on a few elven spearmen, hoping to divert Isildur from my army because I didn’t want him to jump on my troops and then get to Shadow Lord with a Heroic. Isildur retreated to kill the riders, and I then commented that David’s Champion is already approaching my army – only to hear from David that actually Isildur is his champion.

Suddenly I found myself in an unhappy situation, knowing that I will soon be 2-0 down. Luckily for me volley fire killed his horse, and he lost combat against 2 Riders, having charged them himself. Next turn he killed them but by that time my archers shot down my own riders of Harad in combat to deny him more kills.

After the break Golden King called a Heroic Move to come within 12” from Isildur and by using all 6 Will Points he removed him from the game. Now all I had to do is score 4 kills with GK (where I’m used to winning this scenario maybe 1-0 or 2-1 generally). To make sure that I kill every turn, Shadow Lord was Compelling enemies towards GK who was then charging them and surrounding with other models – Compell and Transfix were both used to reduce Elves Fight to 1, so that I don’t waste time on losing fights.

After a while I was winning 4-2 and with about 15 minutes to go I still had Gil-Galad to kill, but with Shadow Lord on 1 Will point I had to save him too, so I put him aside. After that Golden King and several other models were trying to charge him for a few turns and in the end it was GK who caused the killing hit (although before that suffering 3 wounds). I completed my Oath and opponent didn’t complete his.

Lord Voitek was killed in the first fight ... 0-1

Scenario score: 5-2

Game Score: 40 – 1

Round 2: Contest of Champions, Good, Table 1

In the 2nd round I was to play Chris, who’s army was made up of 75 models, including Shadow Lord, 6 Black Guards, Black Guard Captain (champion) and a bunch of Haradrim Warriors. My Oath was to kill 2d6 models (I rolled 9) while his was to not break.

From the beginning I knew that it’s pointless to shoot, so I decided to just run forward and start killing with Saruman.

To make the story short, Saruman won 18-0 and Chris’s army was broken :)

Game Score 40 – 1

Round 3: Ill Met By Daybreak, Good, Table 1

(The scenario has the same set up as Ill Met By Moonlight, but excludes the visibility/shooting rule and we play to 25% reduction).

In the third round I got to play Simon Grant (the rulespack writer for the last doubles and I believe for these singles too). My only previous encounter with Simon was in round 6 at the 2010 GT where Saruman managed to get rid of 2 Ringwraiths on Fell Beasts but still drew against a Black Numenorean Marshall in To Kill A King due to lack of time.

Simon’s army included a Mumak with Tough Hide and Tusk Weapons, and two Wraiths – Khamul and Knight of Umbar on Fell Beasts. His Oath was to kill Beregond (because as he exclaimed “that would cause the greatest blow to the armies of Gondor and Mordor would prevail”). My Oath was to kill Khamul.

My opponent first set up the Mumak in the middle and two Wraiths at the back. I had Saruman and all my Fountains at the front with Archers at the back. In the first turn already the Mumak’s rider was killed and Mumak wounded, what caused the beast to already start panicking – from then on every turn Mumak failed the test for not having anyone in the Howdah and first it chased the wraiths and then ran off the board.

The Wraiths killed Beregond with Black Darts but couldn’t do anything else since bodyguards had no trouble charging them.

Game Score 35 – 1

Round 4: Ill Met By Daybreak, Evil, Table 1.

Round 4 was the toughest of day one and at that moment I felt that the table 1 defense is truly about to begin. I got drawn against Joe (TLA Catsrule23) and his army of Elven Twins, Malbeth, 45 Warriors of Arnor and 22 Hobbit Archers, total of 70 or 71 models – 5 more than me! :
He chose his oath to kill 2d6 with one of the Twins (8) and I chose mine to protect my General (GK).

I had to set up first and expecting a Horde of Warriors of Arnor I decided to set next to the left board edge (so I don’t get double flanked) with almost all corsairs, supporters and the Golden King. Then to my surprise Joe deployed Hobbit Archers with Malbeth about 8 or 9” away instead of the Arnorians who could’ve charged me and had a slight combat advantage because of their D6.

I considered charging head on because I had a chance to kill a lot of hobbits with my throwing daggers and then a turn of combat where they would be fighting 1vs2, but in the end I decided to play the game safely because I remembered how stupid my forward charge was last year against Tom Moore – the game that cost me the chance of winning that GT and made me finish 2nd instead, therefore I moved back, ran SL forward to protect Corsairs from shooting and then got into range with my Harad Archers to shoot everything possible.

In the first turn of combat one of the Twins got Transfixed and in the 2nd turn killed by the Golden King. Soon after followed the death of the other Twin and all the time the archers were causing enormous damage. After combat started it looked very close but straight after Joe’s break the Golden King removed Malbeth from the game and the whole army crumbled due to not having a hero and being only C2 (they would’ve been C1 but Shadow Lord used his last Will point to Sap Will Malbeth and he succeeded).

Lord Voitek died without killing anyone... 0-2

Game score: 40 – 1

Round 5: Storm the Camp, Evil, Table 1

In the 5th round I got to play Dave (TLA Hithero), with whom I played 4 times at the last two Doubles GTs, winning twice and drawing twice. Dave had an army of Gimli, Madril, 20 Khazad Guard, 10 Dwarf Bowmen, 18 Warriors of MT with Spear and Shield and 9 Rangers of Gondor with Spears – total 59 models. My Oath was to stay unbroken while Dave’s was to kill 2d6 models with Gimli, which happened to be 7.

When I saw that front line I knew that any offensive play would turn into a massacre of my army, so using the fact that Dave had 2 separate volleys, first I removed 1 archer from each volley group and then under the cover of Shadow Lord I positioned my bowmen in range of enemy rangers and Dwarf bowmen to get as many kills as possible. Shooting at Khazads was pointless because the key in shooting is to reduce numbers and not to kill elites.

Again I played defensively and calmly, trying not to make any mistakes, because the first LotR SBG Singles GT triumph was slowly coming to my reach. I shot, shot, shot. Then my riders went to the left flank and put Dave in a sort of stall-mate situation where if he moved forward his flank would get overwhelmed by archers and riders, so his only option was to stand and hope that I don’t break through before time ends.

Just before breaking his force with mainly bowfire I decided to move forward, so after about an hour we finally begun close combat. Gimli killed a few archers, tried moving through but in the end was transfixed and killed by overwhelming numbers. On the right flank Golden King removed Madril straight after the break and the leaderless force crumbled.

Lord Voitek killed 1 model and died: 1-3

Game score: 40 – 1

Round 6, Storm the Camp, Evil, Table 1

My 6th opponent was Craig (TLA Ukrocky), the current UK LotR Doubles Champion (2010, winning by 1 point on the quiz tie-breaker against us!). I’ve been good friends with Craig for quite a long time now and we have had our share of encounters, famously whenever it really matters ending in a draw... (2 draws at doubles GTs, 1 draw at a Conflict North tournament and in terms of tournament non-draws I’ve been leading 2-1 since Heroes of Middle Earth II).

Craig came to the table and claimed that he wasn’t feeling very well after a long previous night, but he was still going to do his best. His force was an anti-Saruman/anti-elves army consisting of about 20 Corsairs with Shields, 20 Corsairs with Shields and Spears, 20 Haradrim Bowmen, Harad Chieftain, Shadow Lord and Witch King (don’t remember his exact stats, but I think it was something like 3/10/2 or similar). I chose my Oath to not break, because I knew that in Take and Hold I might have to break on purpose, so protecting Saruman there will be more useful. I don’t remember his Oath, but I believe it was killing 2d6 with Witch King.

We both started moving forward, although I was aware that I can’t outmanoeuvre his force, so I stayed closely together trying to defend my camp and moved only 3” per turn, while his Corsairs pushed 6” with Archers staying behind and volleying.

After a while we joined in combat close to the middle of the board. Saruman lied down after coming into Blasting range, due to the spotting roll / line of sight problems, so that neither WK nor SL would be able to hurt him or Sap his Will. Every turn he would then stand up, blast, lie down again.

You would’ve thought that less than 40 Corsairs with 2 Wraiths shouldn’t be a problem for about 18 Fountain Guards with spear support and winning Heroic Moves to charge, hence stopping throwing daggers almost every turn. Add to that Sorcerous Blasts... and my army was tabled in a few turns and his barely broken  It wasn’t just luck though, because since Saruman couldn’t be targeted Craig was using Black Darts on my Fountains and that killed a lot of them. In addition throwing daggers were killing my D5 and D4 supporters often after D7 frontline got removed, so my force was slowly munched.

In the end we ran out of time with me having about 7 models in my own camp and Craig just 2-3 turns away from getting to my camp with about 15 of his. What gave me the draw? The fact that Craig had to go to toilet at the start of the game and wasted a few minutes in this way, the few minutes that would’ve given him a win... quite literally Shit Happens :-D

Neither of us completed our Oaths

Game Score: 10 – 10

Best Painted Army Nominations:

Round 7, Take and Hold, Good, Table 1

My penultimate opponent at this GT was Jay (TLA Jay_Clare) who happened to be using Moria force in this game, that consisted of Cave Drake (counts as a Hero with 0/0/0 at the GT), Spider Queen, Durburz and about 16 Prowlers, 16 Blackshields, 16 Spearmen and 16 Bowmen (not entirely sure on that but something along those lines). Jay’s Oath was killing one of my Outriders, which unluckily happened to be deployed by Jay and swiftly killed. My last Good Oath was to protect Saruman.

I received Priority in the first turn and swiftly Madril, Saruman and about 10 other models moved on from the middle of my board edge. Most of my Fountain Guards were deployed by Jay in the top left corner, so subsequently I reinforced that unit by a few more warriors. Jay’s army came on in the bottom left corner by my choosing, so that after receiving Sorcerous Blast they would be slowed down for a few inches. His own selection of models (including Drake and SQ) entered the board in the middle of the East board edge.

We both started moving towards the centre. The unit of goblins on the left was hit by Blast and 10 of them ended on the ground with 1 killed. In the next few turns I commanded both the Spider Queen and the Cave Drake away from the centre because I didn’t want to have the trouble of moving those things the hard way.

I had to get to centre first, so when I was in range I called a Heroic Move with Madril and set up a defence in the middle, during this turn I also Commanded SQ so that it charged 2 of my Fountain Guards and subsequently charged it with 1 more FG to surround and 1 Ranger of the North, who’s purpose was a Heroic Combat in case Jay would kill my surrounding model first because of his priority. As we moved to combat SQ got quickly killed and I fortified myself in the centre of the board.

What followed was a slow and painful slaughter of the warriors of Gondor. Drake was once blasted away into 10 approaching Goblin Bowmen but barely caused any damage and came back safely to start munching through the Fountain Guards. Madril couldn’t kill anything, Rangers of the North weren’t doing great either, basically everything was getting crushed by the overwhelming numbers. At one point things looked so bad that even a lone Blackshield managed to walk through my lines and fight Saruman for 3 turns before finally getting killed - in case of Madril's death and the survival of that Goblin it would have been disastrous because I wouldn't have bodyguard and stand fast.

After my break we played 1 turn and luckily for me the game ended at the end of that turn with me having 18 models within 3” of the centre and Jay having about 5. 1 more turn and it would be probably about 12-12, 2 more turns and I would’ve lost... well played Jay, you surprised me with how good you performed, good luck in the next tourneys, Craig taught you well ;)

Both of us completed our Oaths, so again no bonus for anyone.

Game Score: 30 – 5

Game 8, Take and Hold, Evil, Table 1

Wow, 7th game on table 1, not sure if anyone’s ever done that before. Anyway, after 7 rounds the situation looked as follows:

- If Tom Moore wins his game and I draw or lose mine, he wins the GT for the 2nd time in a row... ouch, that really sucks, because essentially he’s so good that he gives me no margin for error (In all previous GTs the winner always had a margin of error for 1 loss... I guess I used that for the draw in the 6th round).

In the last round I got to play Stephan (TLA Ar-Pharazon), the 6th TLA member in 8 games, which is quite a result for our great community. Stephan’s army included I believe Legolas on Horse with Armour, Grimbold, 3 Rangers of the North on Horses, 12 Riders of Rohan, 24 Helmingas (half with throwing and shield, half with shield) and 12 Rangers of Arnor with Spears. Total of about 52 or so models and a really solid list, clearly built to win the last scenario and capable of destroying Corsairs because of Throwing Weapons and S4 all over the place. Stephan’s Oath was to protect Legolas and mine was to kill 7 models with the Golden King.

From the start I knew it was going to be tough (especially after hearing from Tom at the end of day 1 that Stephan is a good player... although you’d guess that by now, seeing him on table 1 in game 8). In addition to the good player and army composed to win this scenario I lost priority in the first turn and then had my glorious Double 1: both Golden King and Shadow Lord rolled 1 for deployment in turn 1.

My opponent deployed Legolas, some riders, Grimbold and some Helmingas in the middle of the west board edge. Several riders came in top left corner and the rest of the army got scattered around the edges. Around 14 of my models came on in the middle of Southern edge, then about 6 in the North-East corner and some randoms in the South-West. In the first turn I alost 2 Haradrim Riders to 3 Throwing Weapons in the bottom left and Legolas took off another warrior.

In the 2nd turn I got priority and Golden King again rolled a 1... I started considering what good it would be if I boosted it to a 3 and in the end decided that if GK gets deployed behind Legolas, then the Elf with some other warriors will have to be pulled back to kill him, proving me about 1 turn Legolas-free centre of the board, so I decided to boost my roll to 3. Then Stephan made one of the two biggest mistakes of the game – deployed GK on the other side of the board in complete safety... I couldn’t believe it. Next SL rolled a 2 for deployment and following GK’s example boosted it to 3 and got deployed in the North Eastern corner where he fled from enemies and next turn called a Heroic Move to ensure that he doesn’t get charged and stuck there. I had no Might left at the start of turn 3 while Stephan had full Legolas, Grimbold and 3 Rangers.

After a few turns we begun fighting in the middle of the board. SL Sapped Legolas’s Will, then kept Transfixing him every turn so that the elf doesn’t cause any casualties. 2 of the Rangers of the North died in combat because they got stuck between two of my infantry waves on the South and East when moving towards the centre. The third was killed soon after fighting a Corsair of Umbar in the North-West.

1 turn before breaking Stephan I counted the models and I was leading 15-9 with about 45 minutes to go on the clock and so I was quite calm that I could succeed in winning. However, in the turn at the end of which I broke his army he was leading 15-13. He wanted to roll for the game ending, but luckily the army counts as being broken at the START of the turn, so we had 1 more turn to go and that was when the Golden King won the GT:

- Legolas with C5 rolled 6 for Courage Test, boosted that with 2 Might to get a Score of 13, then got reduced to 9 and decided to run away with a lot of money

- Grimbold then, with C3 rolled a 7 with just 1 Will Left and boosted the score to 11 to be subsequently taken off by the remaining 2 points of Will of the King.

The whole army swiftly followed and at the end of the turn the model count was XX : 1. After finishing 7th, 20th, 18th and 2nd in the previous 4 singles LotR SBG GTs I finally achieved my dream to win this prestigious tournament.

Lord Voitek killed Legolas’s horse and survived! His final score was 2 kills and 3 deaths.

Game Score 30 – 5

Summary:

The tournament ran very smoothly and the organisers even managed to finish 30 minutes before the original scheduled time (although I asked them for that earlier during day 2 because I wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony due to my last train leaving few minutes after).

Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to play Tom who I would’ve loved to play and get my revenge on the last year’s loss. We couldn’t play in rounds 5 and 7 because I was constantly 1st and he was at those times either 3rd or 4th, so we didn’t get drawn against each other and we happened to draw the same armies in both of those rounds which resulted in the inability to face each other in rounds 6 and 8... shame really.

In terms of tournament points: Including Oaths of Battle – I achieved the highest GT score of all time (270 out of 330). Excluding Oaths of Battle (because they were only introduced at the last Doubles) the score of 245 battle points and 5 Quiz puts me 2nd after Vesa Nenye’s score from 2008, achieving 255 battle points and 3 on the Quiz. The 3rd place non-Oath belongs to the 2009 GT Champion Michal Molenda who scored 235 with I believe 10/12 on the quiz.

Final Results in the top 10 (points include total + in brackets Generalship/Oaths/Quiz. First Tie-breaker is Generalship, the 2nd is quiz)

1. Mikołaj Bakalarz, Gondor / Harad, 270 (245 + 20 + 5) points – TLA BlackMist

2. Tom Moore, High Elves / Mordor, 255 (225 + 25 + 5) points – TLA Tom_Moore

3. Simon Grant, Wood Elves / Mordor+Harad, 255 (212 + 35 + 8) points

4. Jamie Giblin, Wood Elves / Moria, 240 (215 + 20 + 5) points – TLA the_newbie

5. Craig Johnson, Arnor / Harad, 225 (195 + 25 + 5) points – TLA Ukrocky

6. Nick Jones, Wood Elves+Dwarves / Mordor, 218 (200 + 15 + 3) points - TLA Lithorlorn

7. Charles Sims, Galadhrim / Mordor, 205 (186 + 15 + 4) points

8. Jay Clare, Galadhrim / Moria, 204 (182 + 15 + 7) points – TLA Jay_Clare

9. Michael Tetley, Gondor / Moria, 203 (177 + 25 + 1) points – TLA Mickivo01

10. Chris Jones, Wood Elves / Mordor, 202 (177 + 20 + 5) points

Top 10 total:

Good:

3.5 Wood Elves, 2 Galadhrim, 2 Gondors, 1 High Elves, 1 Arnor, 0.5 Dwarves

Evil:

4.5 Mordors, 2.5 Harads, 3 Morias

Photos of winners:

Best Painted Army: James Braund (TLA LotRChampion)

Master of Knowledge: James Braund

Best Team: TLA_Old Skool (From left: Lithorlorn, BlackMist, Hithero, Keithio the Green)

Oathkeeper Award (for the person with most successful Oaths): Simon Grant & George Jones

3rd Place: Simon Grant

2nd Place: Tom Moore (TLA Tom Moore)

1st Place: Mikolaj Bakalarz (TLA BlackMist)

Cheers,

BlackMist

Misty Mountains Army

2011-01-25T03:43:00.000-08:00

Some people asked me for photos of my army and what I usually use in games.

1000 Points Armylist:

Durburz
Druzhag
6x Goblins Shields

6x Goblins Shields
6x Goblins Shields
4x Giant Spiders
4x Giant Spiders
4x Wild Wargs
5x Wild Wargs

Total 990, 7 Might.

Army variations:
(If Proxying allowed, swap as many Goblin companies to Blackshields)

1500 Points Variations:
- Add Dragon with Magic and 1 more company
- Add Mumak, Gothmog, Palantir, 1x Bat Swarm and 1x Bat Swarm, all for the Mumak/Overlord Combo
- Add Giant and Mumak
- Add Giant and 2 Ringwraiths
- Add 3 Ringwraiths and 1 extra formation of 6x Goblins (probably archers)

Photos:

WotR GT Report.

2011-01-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

(You're gonna have to click on the maps to get the full size of the pictures)

Note: My opponent's army lists are not exact in all cases because my memory has not served me so well this time. Maps are drawn approximately and there was no way I could remember all the terrain placement - most of it is visible on the videos. Game 4 video is missing because youtube decided to be stupid and say I have to 300 minutes for the upload which I really didn't feel like doing after uploading the other 4 videos already for almost 4 hours :)

I’ve written numerous tournament reviews in both English and Polish (stretching back to 2008 GT) but never in my career have I had a task that involved remembering details of battles which included complex situations in several places at the same time. WotR is such an enormous battle system compared to SBG that it is not easy to remember everything, especially without photographs (I had some technical problems, ie. I won’t ever again use the single-use cameras...). Luckily I have some video footage. In addition I included some drawings of the set ups.

I would’ve done this report earlier, but dissertation deadline of 6^th December forced it back a while. Then Christmas, New Year, we’re all lazy at that time :)

My Army:

Durburz (General)

Druzhag

Gothmog (Ally)

4x Giant Spiders

4x Wild Wargs

5x Wild Wargs

1x Bat Swarms

6x Gundabad Blackshields

1x Nameless Fear from the Depths of Moria (The Mumak of Moria) :P (ally)

Fate: Tainted Palantir on Gothmog

Total 199 models, 10 Formations, 11 Might Points

Reasons for choices:

- I never used a Mumak before, so I thought it would be cool. Plus the FAQ made a mistake of saying that Overlord can be used on a formation without Might, so it was about time someone exploited this rule and showed the designers that they might have to fix the FAQ slightly (it stands against the rules anyway).

- 1x Bat Swarms were taken because of the combo useage: Durburz Overlord’s a Swarm behind enemy formation, then Gothmog Overlord’s Mumak into that formation. Formation has to flee into the swarm and gets destroyed. It’s useful because the Swarm can fly, so there’s no problem with going behind the formation. They also proved useful for blocking flank charges and sacrificing themselves into enemy formations which could have done a big deal of damage on a countercharge into one of my other formations.

- I got convinced to take Palantir by some Polish gamers and gotta say it was a great choice due to priority requirements. Thanks to them.

Game 1: Field of Swords / Shieldwalls

Opponent: Elves (160 Galadhrim Warriors)

Don’t remember the list exactly but it was something like:

Galadriel

Both Twins

Haldir

Ent

4x Bowmen

4x Shieldmen

6x Shieldmen

3x Bowmen

Map:

Turn 1:

Mumak got Transfixed and couldn’t move.

All 3 formations of Goblins moved forward with at the double. Durburz’s centre formation needed a 9 to charge Galadhrim archers, so I rolled a 6 and used 1 might to boost it up, then with heroic combat I destroyed 3x Bowmen and charged the 4x bowmen, leaving 2 companies alive.

On the left Gothmog got engaged in a duel with a twin with ES and drew, I lost combat after his heroic (he got Epic Defence and a lot more dice, I got ED too but lost a few more models. After recharging me, he lost more models instead). At the end of the turn we were both left with 4 companies and 1 extra model in the 5^th.

On the right archers shot down 2 companies of spiders and forced them to move back out of charge range. Druzhag’s Broodlings flanked his 4x Shieldmen and along with Druzhag’s Goblins they charged. Druzhag was forced to a duel by a non-ES Twin so he could either call Epic Cowardice or Heroic Combat. I decided to do HC because even with calling EC I can get a Duel before managing to escape, therefore HC had more benefits because of another round of combat. As it happened I won the roll off to have Heroic Combat before the duel (according to the FAQ this is correct), won the fight and decided to charge again with both Goblins and Broodlings. Druzhag survived a Duel and Elves were wiped out.

At the end of turn 1 the situation was:

Left flank Galadriel and 1 Twin with 5 companies alive. In the middle 2 companies with Haldir alive.

On the right 3 companies of archers alive. I lost a total of 2 companies of Goblins and 2 companies of Spiders.

Turn 2:

Turn 2 led to clearance of the middle and right flank while the left combat still kept going. The Ent ambushed in the middle of the table unable to charge anywhere. For the next 4 turns Druzhag would hopelessly try to burn him with his fire magic but to no effect (3 times on the HtK table I rolled a 1).

Mumak was Transfixed again.

Turns 3-8:

Left flank Elves were killed after a rear charge from Durburz’s Goblins and Galadriel died in a Duel. The Ent suffered 5 wound counters with Mumak’s shooting and at the end of turn 8 was fighting the Mumak and put on 5 counters on it. Druzhag had almost no effect on the Ent and neither did Mumak in combat.

In total Mumak caused 0 casualties. Mumak’s crew caused 1 Elf to die and put 3 or 4 counters on the Ent. It was just a warm up for the beast.

Result: Victory, 3 points.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynuZ9fnAAmc

Game 2: Seize the Prize / Take the Pass

Opponent: Harad

Army: Something like:

Golden King (General) with his 4x Warriors

Khamul

Betrayer

Cave Drake (converted to be Golden King’s pet :) ).

2x Half Trolls with 2 handed weapons

2x Half Trolls

4x Haradrim Warriors

3x Riders/lances

3x Archers

First thing that occurred to me was that I couldn’t set up my army properly, so I had to leave one Goblin formation at the back for later.

Map:

Turn 1:

I started offensively, making at the double moves with both front Goblin formations. Druzhag summoned 3x Broodlings on the left flank which allowed both Warg and both Spider formations to hide behind safe from the Spiders. Nothing interesting otherwise

Turn 2:

Gothmog used Overlord to move Mumak 30-something inches and finish on the formation of Riders that were within an inch of the board edge, scoring himself his first 75 points of the tournament :)

At the same time, as I was moving first, Druzhag cast Bolt of Fire at the Drake (Druzhag was on a hill in the middle so he could see everything) and caused 2 rolls on the VHtK table. The first roll was a 6 which went down to 5, that then got boosted to a 6 with a Might point (one of the reasons I don’t think monsters other than EHtK are not useable in this game is because Might can be used on the table rolls, making them insanely vulnerable to heroes of all sorts).

In the centre both units of Half Trolls charged into Blackshields and with Epic Strikes they caused havoc in my formations, while not many of them were dying (especially thanks to Khamul).

On the left flank Broodlings got killed by magic.

Turn 3+

The game was over once one Half Trolls formation broke down and Mumak walked into the centre of my opponent’s army from behind the right flank. At the end I was holding 4 objectives, while my opponent had 1 in a Half Troll formation inside a defensible terrain on my right flank.

The Mumak killed a total of about 150 points.

Result: Victory, 3 points.

Video of the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1Tgr2FJE8c

Game 3: The High Ground / Maelstrom of Battle

Opponent: Misty Mountains

Durburz

Druzhag

Dragon with Magic

8x Blackshields with Captain, Shaman, Drum

6x Wargs with Chieftain

4x Giant Spiders

Fate: Unfair Fight (I only realised on my way back from the tournament that taking this Fate was illegal because the army did not contain a MM battlehost).

Given the nature of set up of Maelstrom and the fact that I don’t remember exactly which formation came on in which turn, it’s a bit complicated to describe exactly how everything turned out, so this is a rough estimation.

Due to the set up Im gonna use the north/south/east/west directions. South is my side.

Map:

Turn 1:

My opponent was forced to move first and out of his army I believe only Blackshields moved onto the board from the north side and Dragon flew on the east but as reinforcements can’t ‘At the Double’, he didn’t play any role in turn 1.

In my move Mumak came on the south edge on the left, Goblins with Gothmog came on next to it on the south edge. Goblins with Druzhag came on to the right flank of opponent’s Blackshields on the north end and Druzhag burned them a little with Exisicate (or whatever the stupid spelling of this spell is...)

Turn 2:

In the 2^nd turn Dragon, Shaman and Druzhag concentrated on destroying my Druzhag’s formation. I decided not to bother resisting spells because his formation was going to die anyway. Instead I used my Might to summon Broodlings on the flank of Blackshields (who had turned to face me, so their flank was facing the centre of the board). Subsequently Druzhag jumped to the Broodling formation and fled as far as he could, while burning a few more Goblins with magic.

Also my Goblins with Durburz came on the east edge and walked towards combat with the Dragon.

Turn 3:

Next turn Durburz had a dilemma because behind him from the south appeared a formation of 6x Wild Wargs with a chieftain, so Druzhag jumped back into that formation, the formation turned to face the Wargs and with a Heroic Charge later on destroyed them. At the same time Dragon had positioned itself to be in range of 2 formations (Spiders, Goblins) and burned both with magic to some extent. My initial Druzhag’s formation was almost dead by this time.

Turn 4+

In the previous turns Mumak was moving forward and at that moment had an estimated 27 or so inch gap between itself and the Dragon without actually pre-measuring the range to not let my opponent know my potential plan (I’m good at range guessing, played Empire with 3 cannons for 2 years :) ).

Gothmog called a Heroic move with the Mumak and Durburz called one with Spiders. Opponent did not counter. Spiders positioned themselves in a line between the Dragon and its nearest board edge (there was enough space for about 5 companies long formation) and the Mumak rolled its average to finish its move on top of the Dragon to make it flee off the board. My opponent got initially furious about it because he didn’t know a move like this could happen, but after calling a referee, both him and the ref had to agree with the correctness of this move in the light of the rules.

Also in this turn Gothmog’s formation moved forward to be almost in base contact with enemy Blackshields and block them from reaching the hill. In combat Gothmog died in a duel because of the Unfair Fight Fate which made the fight into a 19+d6 vs 10+d6 duel.

Mumak killed 475 points by kicking the Dragon off the table.

I initially felt really bad for killing the Dragon with a Mumak, but that’s part of the game and you have to learn to deal with situations like this. Paul was a very good player who was defeated by a loophole in the rules and hopefully game designers will look at it soon and realise that making FAQ against the actual rulebook ruling was a bad idea.

Game Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeUxaloElE8

Result: Victory, 3 Points

Game 4: Seize the Prize / Shieldwalls

Opponent’s Army: Isengard

Saruman

Lurtz

Khamul

2 Troll Captains

6x Uruk Hai Shields

2x Pikes

2x Crossbowmen

And something else which again I can’t remember exactly.

After the end of day 1 me and Ed Ball (TLA’s Death and Glory) both were sitting on 9 points and we were sure to play against each other on table 1 in game 4, but for some reason (something to do with players playing each other more than once and swapping tables down the line, I ended up on table 2 and Ed was playing on table 4 against Gondor’s Grey Company with Elendil/Aragorn/Galadriel/Dain combo... which Ed annihilated in 45 minutes so badly that the owner wanted to surrender... but Ed didn’t let him :). Anyway, onto the game:

Map:

Turn 1:

Both of us started moving forward, but through a mistake on my opponent’s side Saruman got killed in a duel with Durburz in turn 1.

The main combat against Khamul’s formation on the right took about 5 turns to kill off the big formation reflecting hits.

The game overall was quite uneventful, I just had a massive numerical and manoeuvrability advantages that other than Mumak eating both Trolls, nothing interesting happened.

At the end Mumak got another 300 points of kills.

Video: Unfortunately Youtube told me to wait 300 minutes to upload this one so no can do...

Game 5: The High Ground / Maelstrom of Battle

Opponent’s Army: Mordor

Winged Nazgul Battlehost:

Witch King

Dwimmerlaik

Betrayer

Tainted

Knight of Umbar

1 Company of Morannon Orcs

Fate: Doom and Despair (the courage autofail one)

I played Ed at Doubles GT 08, Singles GT 09 and now WotR GT 10, so yay, we play every year at a big event :)

Map:

Turn 1:

Ed’s Battlehost flew onto the board from his edge 12” towards the middle of the board and his orcs hid in a terrain piece on the left side.

My Mumak then moved onto the board about 18 inches away from the first Nazgul, Gothmog’s formation managed to get onto the board next to him (there was a 1/3 chance of Gothmog starting close to the Mumak’s position so I got lucky in this case), Durburz’s formation walked straight behind the 5 Nazgul, rest is on the picture.

Turn 2:

Gothmog called a Heroic move for the Mumak, who then rolled a 9 on 3d6, making it move exactly 27 inches forward and finishing its move on top of 3 fell beasts. These then fled off the board or into my Goblin formation. Mumak subsequently died from 4 spells...

Turns 3+:

The remaining 2 wraiths died in duels with ES Heroes (Gothmog/Durburz).

It proved to be a very one sided game, but nonetheless Ed agreed at the end that he misplayed it, because he could have called a Heroic Move with one of his Nazgul (preferably Witch King because of Might boosting magic and focus rolls) and then if he had won the Roll off, he would have moved closer to the Mumak, cast sunder spirit and then Transfix, which would mean that I would have been very unlikely to make the move and Mumak would have no effect on the game.

In total Mumak killed 825 points (2 Wraiths and WK) to make a grand total of around 1750 points killed, so a 500 point increase on his cost across 5 games (I mean over 5 games taking Mumak costs a total of 1250 points and if he kills more than that then he’s proving to be efficient).

There wasn’t any time for video and there wasn’t anything to be recorded other than 5 Fell Beasts walking onto the table. Game ended in 45 minutes.

Result: Victory, 3 points.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xayP52vMQ

Game 6

Map:

So after a short break we decided to have an unofficial rematch with Ed to see what would have happened if scenario was different (and because we had about an hour and a half till the end of the round). Set up Shieldwalls.

In turn 1 just for fun I decided to storm the Mumak forward at the Fell Beasts again, but after moving 39” he was still about 5” short (needed 15+ on 3d6 to do anything). The rest of the army moved forward. The Mumak insta-died from massed magic.

Then we had a few turns of Swoop Attacks and Multi-spellcasting, but each time a Nazgul got into combat, he’d be getting eaten by an Epic Strike or just the enormous amount of S4 attacks that Blackshields were making.

In the end Ed had 1 Wraith left and I had 2 half deplated formations of goblins and 1 formation of Spiders, with heroes with no Might and Druzhag already down. We decided to call it a draw, because we forgot to actually choose the scenario objective :D

In the end having 15 points from 5 games was enough to take the “Best Evil General” and “Overal Winner” awards. I had a video of awards ceremony, but due to lack of tripod and positioning on top of a phone and 2 coins, the film isn’t worth showing :)

Thoughts after the event:

- Overlord ruling in the FAQ is a bunch of nonsense and is opposite to what the rulebook says. By overusing it during the GT I think I’ve proven to everyone that it needs changing and going to what it was meant to be “May use Might instead of its own” is as clear as things get. No idea why FAQ states the opposite.

- Mass Magic can be effective, but isn’t necessarily the way to go. Mass formations on the other hand is something that works regardless of your luck with Focus rolls. Also I took as many separate formations as I could as a counter to 5-Nazgul multi-Pall-of-Night, which during playtesting seemed to be taking good care of fewer formations, but were unable to cope with 8+. Also, the Mumak takes away a turn of casting if the player wants to get rid of it, so it can be used as a shield against Magic (of course if you don’t neutralise the Mumak, it will eat your army, so you have to take care of it)

- I still believe that there should be a Magic level limit of about 1 level per 200-250 points.

- According to the rulespack (which it seems barely anybody reads these days!) the armies had to be made out of a single army list (ie. No alliances), but so many people had alliances that the refs allowed it and supposedly said next year there will be a restriction on no alliance.

Again sorry about the lack of photos – sh*t happens ;)

BlackMist

2010 Doubles GT

2010-09-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

19-20 June 2010.

The final score after 8 games with a 35-1, 30-5, 10-10 and +5 for Oaths looked as follows:

1st - Craig Johnson (UkRocky) & James Braund (LotRChampion), 225 battle points, 10/10 Quiz points
2nd - Mikolaj Bakalarz (BlackMist) & James Knight, 225 battle points, 9/10 Quiz points
3rd - Adam Troke & Ben Lambert with 206 battle points, 10/10 Quiz points

The Report:

I will beat you with my pole... ish friend!

Sorry if I don’t remember your name, it’s been a long time and my memory isn’t that good to remember every single player I played/talked with this weekend.

After winning last year’s title with an All-Hero good army I thought long and hard about taking a similar list this year but it looked like it was not going to work as well as it did last year (and as proven by this year’s winners who took an All-hero army, it only won 2 out of the 4 scenario), however a single all-hero force supported by a lot of models could and did prove to be a good choice:
Me:
Aragorn with Armour on Horse
Twins on Horses
James:
6 Rangers of the North with Spears
13 Rangers of Arnor
10 Rangers of Arnor with Spears
Total for the army: 32 models, 15+1 Might, 29 bows.

Evil:
Me:
Burhdur
Shade
11 Orcs with Spears
6 Orcs with Spears and Bows
1 Orc with Banner
James:
Durburz
Goblin Captain
15 Goblin Bows
15 Goblin Shields
15 Prowlers shields
Total for the army: 67 models, 21 bows, 8 Might.

Oaths of battle (each awarded 5 points for completing and one must be used per game per army):
- Your main leader has to kill more models than your opponent’s main leader
- Your banner must be alive at the end of the game
- Your combined army must not break
- You must kill a chosen hero in your opponent’s army

Game 1, Field of Glory, Good.
Objective: To control the centre of the board (have more models within 3” than opponents)
A doubles All-hero force considers 3 things to be ‘bad match-ups’: 1+ Mordor Trolls, 1+ Ringwraiths or Mouth of Sauron, 1 Shade. Unfortunately for us in the first game we came up against double Mordor force with Troll Chieftain, Mordor Troll, Mouth of Sauron and 50-something Orcs/Morannon Orcs. It was a nightmare match-up, but you gotta live with it when playing tournaments. We were almost drawn to play against Tom and Harry Moore at the start due to lack of opponents on the bottom tables, but since we played several times before and it has always been a top table showdown (GT2010 Tom was 1st I was 2nd, Doubles09 I was 1st Tom was 3rd), it didn’t seem right to play with them in game 1, so the referee found us different opponents. I don’t remember the first opponents’ names.
Both armies swiftly moved towards the centre, Grey Company didn’t fire a single time because it needed its movement to get to the centre. In around turn 3 Aragorn charged an Orc, heroic combated into Mount of Sauron and took him down too, in the same time both Twins charged a Mordor Troll (I had no other choice, it’s either this or we lose the game), lost combat, one Twin suffered 2 wounds, but saved both with fate (he was also the target model to kill by our opponent’s Oath of Battle). Next turn Aragorn charged another 2 orcs while Twins charged the Troll again, this time winning combat. First Twin struck with his 4 attacks and rolled 6,6,6,1 which was enough to take him out.
Our opponents could easily have gotten the centre of the board after they almost managed to block the path of the Grey Company to the middle, but a correct positioning and a timed heroic move allowed us to slip through a small gap and secure the objective. With Twins and Aragorn killing a lot of models, soon one force broke, the game ended and the score in the middle was 13-8 in our favour for a minor win. Oath failed – we didn’t have a banner.
30 – 5

Game 2, Evil:
Opponents were Paul Hanscombe and Andrew Wiggins, or “Shenanigans Too”, with armies of Dwarves with Gimli and Tower of Ecthelion with Faramir and all infantry. Shade got to the middle of the board first and once combats started being under both Shade’s and Banner’s ranges, there was no way the centre would have been conquered by our opponents. They did however manage to have exactly 1 model around 2.9” away from the centre when the game ended and that gave them 5 points (although it was an arguable decision whether we should measure 3” from the actual centre or 3” from the Marker, which was 1” wide. Either way we didn’t argue and gave them the 5 points). Oath, don’t remember what it was, but it was completed.

35 – 10

Game 3, Take the Head, Slay the Body. Evil:
Objective: Kill [b]both[/b] enemy leaders to win.
This time we came up against double Gondor forces, led by Boromir and Faramir, both mounted and combat ready. We took a defensive strategy at the start, hoping that our opponents make a mistake and come to us with their heroes and cavalry – they did, but because of the overwhelming terrain and bad positioning, there was nothing we could have done to actually surround their heroes and kill them. The game overall was quite boring and not much happened – it is partially our fault because we played it safely, but some of the blame has to go on victory conditions – you can rarely kill leaders before reducing the army below 25% if your opponents play well. Both teams kept their oaths.
15 – 15

Game 4, Good:
The best game of the tournament by far. We came up against double Isengard – one with about 12 or 15 berserkers, captain, some crossbows and some orcs; and the other with lots of Feral Uruks. Opponents set all of the combat troops on the left flank and started marching towards Grey Company, while Vrashku and some 5 crossbowmen and 5 Shields set in the top right corner of the board, just making sure that Vrahsku doesn’t get hurt.
Plan from the start was to shoot the Legions of the White Hand half (not the Raiders list) and hopefully make the Uruk Captain flee, while the 3 heroes would pursue after Vrahsku to the top right corner. Everything was going as planned, except a turn before heroes got to Vrashku, he decided to use his General’s Stand Fast Doubles Special Rule to take a courage test for the models nearby (all of which belonged to the other player). The test was failed on a double 1 and he was gone due to having used one of his Might before. At the same time the other army leader passed his courage test every single time until the end of the game.
A chase across the board begun, with the 3 heroes running over 50” to get to the enemy captain, in the same time trying to kill as few models as possible, just so that our opponents would not get reduced to 25% (game would then end as a draw). At some point the Captain was behind a forest, one Twin went to one side (where he couldn’t be charged by other models) while the other went the other way and dismounted (to be able to catch the captain in the forest in case he went in there and at the same time to be able to shield and NOT kill any warriors). At the end of the great chase we had a combat where Aragorn charged the captain on his own, caused 2 wounds, one of them was saved. Next turn Twin called heroic with his last might (opponent tried to counter but we won the roll-off), Aragorn charged again and killed.
If we had killed one more model other than the Captain, the game would have ended as a draw, that’s how close it was. ONE MODEL. Oath was secured (Aragorn Outkilling our opponents’ leader)
40 – 1

And we were on our way to play Craig (Ukrocky) and James (LotRChampion) in the 5th game on table 1 (where in my personal opinion we would have really big chances to beat them in scenario 3), but surprisingly the team who lost to Tom and Harry in game 1 managed to gain 115 points from the 3 other games and finished the day on 121, with Craig/James on 125 and us on 120, having to face Dave (Hithero) and Andrew (Hengest) on table 2.

Peter Jackson's Hobbit Model:

Day 2, Game 5, Evil:
Objective: Good: To move hobbits off the enemy board edge. Evil: To kill the hobbits.
I have played Dave an Andrew twice at the 2009 doubles, getting a minor win in round 2 and a draw in round 8 (they finished 2nd at that tournament, just 11 points behind Voitek and me) and as always they weren’t going to give away this game. The match was quite uneventful. First James and I decided to shoot as much at the Dwarves/Elves as possible, killing off any D3 models we could see, then with superior numbers we planned to outfight our opponents, but they saw that and went for a defensive formation and played for a draw which they easily got. Scenario doesn’t really allow the evil army any good chance if the good side decides to play for a draw so after uneventful 100 minutes we gave up and agreed to a draw. Our oath wasn’t kept, but theirs was.

10 – 15

Game 6, Good:
After losing to James and Craig, our opponents Chris and Andy used an army of Spider Queen with Giant Spiders and Morgul Knights, Stalkers with mounted Black Marshall. Our good army was built to win this scenario in a manner of first destroying everything our opponent had and then moving the hobbits off the board. However, our plan was demolished by the House Rules which I only saw the day before the event in Warhammer World – killing all enemy models means the game ends in a draw. On Friday before the event I thought we were doomed in this one because of that change, but then on Saturday we realised that the Twins can use shielding if they dismount and here’s what happened:
Enemies moved towards us, we shot, shot, fought and without any problems killed most of the models (the total numbers were similar on both good and evil sides and we had a bow and hero advantage, so it wasn’t hard to kill everything). Then, in the turn when the last enemy model was left on the table, Elrohir dismounted, charged it and shielded, allowing hobbits to move 4”. We then declared that he is going to do this every turn until the hobbits leave and this is regardless of Priority because Aragorn will be calling a free heroic move every turn to ensure this happens. After few seconds our opponents conceded.

40 – 1

Game 7, Evil:
Objective: Reduce enemy army to 25% of starting numbers
The victory in game 6 combined with the tournament leaders’ loss in the same game put us on the same points total on 1st position. During lunch before the game we discussed the possible outcomes of the game with our opponents and agreed that if we get to play Evil, they will have a very hard time and it is almost impossible for them to win because of the Shade. If we played Good, it would most likely be a very close game (their evil army being Spider Queen, Orcs and lots of Goblins). The deciding dice roll was thrown across the gaming hall, watched by a group of people (it seemed like a very important event back then...) and we got to play evil.
60 something vs 7 seems easy enough, but having won the doubles previous year with 6 models and beaten armies of anything between 50 and 70 I knew it wasn’t going to be an auto-win. We rolled for the Shade force to set in the middle and fight against Boromir CotWT, Faramir, Beregond and Banner Bearer led by James. From turn 1 we won heroic move roll-off, charged, killed Faramir and Banner, surrounded Boromir and killed him in turn 3. At the same time Aragorn and Twins killed around 10 goblins and were running around not quite sure what to do. For the remainder of the game our army was chasing Craig’s force and James was having a lone drink in Bugman’s Bar. Both teams completed their oaths, though I don’t remember which ones they were.
15 – 15

Game 8, Good.
We came up against Dave and Andrew again (Hithero and Hengest if you forgot). This was the 4th time in two doubles tournaments that I had to play these. Opponents set up first with Harad in the centre of the board and Mordor, including Mordor Troll Chieftain (the anti-hero weapon) coming in from the edges. My Aragorn and Twins were drawn to set up in the middle against the Harad force and Grey Company was to walk onto the table.
Within the first few turns, Aragorn and Twins annihilated the Haradrim force in the middle, although one of the Twins suffered his first ever tournament death and Aragorn fought Suladan for I believe 3 turns before managing to finally cause the killing blow. Over the course of the battle, Rangers got broken but their captains’ high courage helped to save them before opponents’ total was reduced to 25%.
The highlight of the game was a move which I like to call ‘Heroic Death’ - Ranger of the North was fighting a Mordor Troll Chieftain and the Chieftain decided to call a Heroic Combat to kill the RotN and move onto the other models, but I declared that the RotN is going to call a Heroic Combat himself. Dave and Andrew looked confused as to what we are doing – clearly we’ve lost our minds, the RotN has no chance of killing a Troll on 3 wounds with just 1 attack. But here’s the catch – if the roll-off goes to our favour, then our Heroic Combat goes first, our RotN most likely dies, but then when the time comes for the Troll’s Heroic, there isn’t anyone in combat with him, so the Heroic cannot legally take place, so it is cancelled. After explaining this to our opponents, we allowed them to cancel their move because it seemed sporting to me due to them not knowing that such a play could still be done after so many years of experience with the game – on the other hand, I secretly wanted them to cancel it because I’d rather have 100% that there’s no Heroic than a 50/50 :). (I gotta admit, ever since I posted this story on TLA, Craig Johnson already managed to pull it off on me during another tournament and I wasn’t too happy about it :) )

Result: 40 – 1 (or 40 – 6, not sure if they got the oath, I remember that we did)

Final standings:
1 – Craig Johnson (Ukrocky) & James Braund (LotRChampion), 225 points, 10 on the Quiz
2 – Mikolaj Bakalarz (BlackMist) & James Knight, 225 points, 9 on the Quiz
3 – Adam Troke & Ben Lambert, 206 points, 10 on the Quiz

The Fellowship Award for the group of teams to "3 Brits, 1 Pole" (1st and 2nd place finishers are friends).

As always, the doubles and singles GTs are excellent events, nothing bad to say about this one. I hope to see same or greater number of great people again next year and as long as I attend these tournaments. 104 people attended this event.

This is my 3rd UK GT/Doubles podium in a row (2009 2v2 - 1st, 2010 1v1 - 2nd, 2010 2v2 - 2nd).

BlackMist

Mitril Wars, 24-25 April 2010, Warsaw, Poland

2010-05-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

Update: Additional photos can be found on the official Polish site who organised the event: http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id410,Relacja-z-Mitril-Wars.html

Again this year I went to Poland in April to see family and friends and was hoping to play in the EEGT event, but that got cancelled earlier. Fortunately the time around March/April/May is the end of the ‘season’ for the Polish LotR National League and it’s full of scheduled events that I could attend (including a doubles masters event 27-28 March and the singles 550 masters tournament 17-18^th April – the latter one I was looking forward to play at, especially given the 50+ registered players and high status/level of the event, but due to the plane tragedy it was moved to May, as the country fell into a week mourning :( ).

So the end of April before had the EEGT, but this time in the lack of it, www.mitril.pl in association with GW organised the first big War of the Ring tournament in Poland (13 teams might not be astonishing, but it’s great given that WotR is a new system). My goal for this tournament was purely recreational, I wasn’t hoping to win anything especially since I had taken armies that filled the free leftover gaps in my case after it was filled with models for the 550pt LotR event. Therefore along with my best friend Damian we made two fun, cool looking lists:

Evil:

Winged Nazgul – The Knight of Umbar (General)

Winged Nazgul – The Tainted

2 Warg Riders

1 Warg Riders

1 Wild Wargs

3 Mordor Troll Chieftains

1 Stone Giant

Fate: There Will Be No Dawn

Reasons: KoU as General because he’s a safe choice for duels with his Fight stealing (though if I had read the rules more properly I would know that I can’t steal Epic Stike and this is a bad choice). In addition he’ll often have F7 or 8 given the amount of big named heroes running around in WotR.

Tainted because he stops units from using heroes’ Courage and all important models cause Terror. Combine him with There Will Be No Dawn and it could be very powerful.

3 Chieftains because of the At the Double possibility and the fact that I don’t have Shelob and couldn’t borrow it from anybody (I’d have her instead of 1 then)

Stone Giant... because he’s big :)

Good:

Eomer (General)

Theoden

Theodred

Erkenbrand

Boromir

5 Riders of Rohan

5 Royal Knights

6 Royal Knights

6 Knights of Minas Tirith + Horn Blower

Fortune: Counterspell

Then with the other best friend Szymon we went to Warsaw with a team name “The Three Hunters” (he didn’t play, just came for company and sight-seeing).

The initial motto for Damian’s army was “For Death” – he didn’t say “... and Glory” because he didn’t expect it :P While for me it was simply “Big is Beautiful”.

During some test games with this army I realised a few things which I was going to rely on during the event to win whatever matches there could be won kill whatever enemies there were possible to kill:

1. Don’t move your Winged Nazgul forward when you’ve got priority because they [b]will[/b] die

2. This I knew before but just to reinforce – it is better in 99% of the situation to move 2^nd

3. Don’t forget that Giant and Trolls have S9 and S8 Throwing weapons because they will make a difference!

4. The Tainted + ‘There Will Be No Dawn’ Fate combo combined with a co-ordinated charge by several Terror causing models could potentially be a game winner.

5. Councellor is likely the most broken ability GW has ever invented – the concept is good but I have no idea who came up with such a ridiculously overpowered rule that generates sick amount of Might within 1-2 turns. Talk about Outriders/Gamling being broken, they are nothing compared to this. Seems like GW always has to mess something up that completely ruins the game...

Let the “Mass Battles” begin!

Additionally to the scenario Victory Points, player could score 3 more points if they manage to break (reduce below 25% of all companies) their opponent.

Game 1, The High Ground vs Elves controlled by Haba

Objective: For controlling the centre piece of terrain you gain 10VPs.

It begun with my opponent getting priority, standing still and me moving back out of his range in the first turn. Later the two wraiths flew over to the right flank, tried outmanoeuvring the hosts of elves, but through a one simple mistake one was lost – I forgot about Thranduil’s Epic Shot and moved into his range, paradoxically saying at the same time that it doesn’t matter if I move further...

After the death of one of the Nazgul, the other followed soon through heavy magic, then the Trolls died through Magic and 8 Might points of the Three Hunters. Giant fought till the end, but didn’t manage to do much anyway.

At the same time my teammate Damian was fighting Isengard with Saruman, Nazgul and heavy infantry. He lost too and after game one we had 0 out of 26 possible points.

Game 2, Field of Swords vs Elves by Isilheru

Objective: For each company killed 1 point, for each 3 additional 1, for each hero 2pts, for general 4 pts, max difference = 10 points.

First time I came up against the councellors in a tournament environment – normally friends never tried to exploit it in friendly games at the time I played more WotR (ie. About 9 months ago). Scenario was Field of Swords with set up on the short edges.

By the time my Trolls got anywhere near combat, Gandalf and Galadriel were already on 10 might each with Haldir on 8 – ridiculous rule :/. I lost one Nazgul to magic quite fast, but then destroyed Gil-Galad’s Elven 4-strong Elven Cohort in one turn (killed about 2/3 really, then he rolled a 1 for break test with no Might left, using it all to kill off the Giant).

Game 3: Seize the Prize vs Gondor by Ismaril

Objective: To control 5 prizes, each worth 2 VP

With a defeat in 1^st game and draw in the 2^nd we were moved to the last table to play a fun game against Ismaril and Gico. I was lucky enough to play against the best painted Gondor army (respect here to my opponent, it was beautiful).

Once we deployed objectives, Ismaril chose a side with two of the markers and gave me the corner with three of those. It started with me moving forward at full speed, while my opponent preparing a defence to take on the incoming Monsters. During the first 2 turns I lost one company of Wargs to shooting, but otherwise was unaffected by it. The Giant made an extended move by entering a big piece of defensible terrain and leaving it next turn, making up about 7 or 8 extra inches with protection. The only big threats my opponent had were Gandalf and Aragorn – the first one was killed in a duel against a Troll Chieftain (he probably miscalculated my movement and charge ranges, because otherwise I would have expected him to jump with Gandalf to another formation). The Grey Company formation was then slaughtered by two Trolls. The two Winged Nazgul, using almost only Swoop Attacks throughout the entire game, and casting Strength from Corruption and Black Darts, completely outmanoeuvred and confused my opponent.

At the end of the game my opponent said he was considering using the Epic Journey with Aragorn to move into my deployment Zone and capture the objectives – which would easily count for 2 or 4 points for his team, but luckily for me he concentrated too much on killing my army. In the end I had lost one company of Wild Wargs and my opponent surrendered with his last formation of WoMT surrounded by Giant, 3 Trolls and 2 Fell Beasts.

In the same time the mighty Rohirrim slaughtered forces of Mordor for a 10-0 objective win and a 3-0 army break points. Total score 26-0 to us.

u

The Best Painted Army Choosing:

Day 2:

Tournament scene in Poland is known for having events organised in schools with players staying overnight in classrooms and doing a lot of random stuff... but unfortunately having slept only 2 hours the previous night I was too tired to engage in anything.

Game 4: The Field of Swords vs Dwarves by Gymly

By far the best game of the tournament. At the start when I saw Khazad Guards, 2 Ballistas, 2 formations of Archers, the Three Hunters (these guys are insane at killing Monsters, 8 Might rocks) and to top it all: 2 Councellors (Dain and Gandalf), I thought the game was about to be over as soon as I set up.

But it wasn’t meant to be that way... it begun with Gymly choosing the side and setting up his Ballistas on a hill, so naturally my only way of avoiding being killed in turn 1 was to have everything except the Nazgul as far away from them as possible (the reduced 36” range of Dwarf Ballista helped me enormously in this case) – the Nazgul didn’t care about the distance at the start.

In turn one opponent shuffled around a bit and ended the move phase. In my move phase the following happened: Nazgul number 1 flew next to one Ballista, killed it with Strength From Corruption, then cast Black Dart at the Three Hunters, which was resisted. Nazgul number 2 flew over as well and killed the 2^nd Ballista to allow a safe field for the Trolls and Giant to run through. Turn 2 my opponent called two Epic Challenges, one of which I passed, the other failed and I won priority and chose to move first due to enemy magic and because I wanted to cast my spells first before potential death. The next thing that happened was Strength From Corruption unresisted (rolled a 1) which caused 3 hits, taking out one of them, then Black Dart needed to be resisted as well, leaving my opponent with I believe 1 Might point left. The other Nazgul then killed off the Hunters with his own SfC – by the end of my movement phase I was already up 1 point (3 companies) up on my opponent and about to lose 1 Nazgul.

As the game progressed I lost both Nazgul but got into combat with Trolls and Giant with a plan to kill as many companies as I possibly could to score some points for the team. Once they started fighting with the main formation, Dain failed to kill Troll chieftain on two occasions and Galadriel had to flee. Then the funniest thing happened: 3 companies of Wargs, 2 Trolls and Giant charged the main formation. Given the order of strikes, enough models were killed that the wargs couldn’t strike anymore and I had Troll Chieftain left to strike who needed to kill 7 Khazad Guard to remove opponent’s formation from the game. The Troll had 8 attacks after charging and was killing on 4+... It’s enough to say that the formation was removed having been wounded on all 8 dice :P

After a very close and enjoyable game we counted the score and it ended 13-11 in objectives, hence a 2-0 score for my team but in addition I broke my enemy, so I scored 5-0 (my last company of Wargs survived and saved me from being broken). Interesting note on my dice rolls in this game: what are the chances of Wild Wargs with Courage 0 with -2 dice modifier passing a courage test for Visions of Woe? Normally I would say 50/50 – it either happens or it doesn’t... but this time I gotta say 100% :P

At the same time my teammate was playing against Mordor with Morgul Knights, Castellans, Gulavhar (shot dead from a Rohan formation in a single turn :P). The highlight of that game was the charge of the Winged Hussars (see Wikipedia for more info on the world's greatest ever cavalry formation, seen between the 16-18^th century in Europe). My friend needed 6 to charge one formation, got it, then got an earthshaking charge on a 6 and then required a 6 to charge another formation which he obviously rolled again, making it a half table, half army smashing charge... WotR is fun! :)

Total score 15-0

Game 5: Domination vs Elves by Isilheru

The game was a bit uneventful, but ended with my Troll failing needing to kill 7 on 8 dice to draw the game, while he killed only the average 4 and lost the game. Nothing special, though I didn’t make as many mistakes against Epic Shot and councellors as I did in the previous games and I think I played the best I could have done against that particular army.

Score 0-11 in my game and 11-2 in friend’s game, for a total of 11-13 defeat.

Summary:

I was gonna start with model analysis, but honestly I don’t have enough experience and 5 tournament games in a not too competitive environment is certainly not enough to state the uses of the models.

In total I won 2 games, my teammate won 4, so with 6 out of 10 games won we still ended up 9^th out of 13 teams :D If I had taken something more competitive we might’ve been even on the podium, but who cares?

Councellors proved to be a really powerful rule, but unlike what I felt at the start, they are not that broken really. If we use a normal army full of normal models, all that Might will not be able to bring down overwhelming numbers. They are indeed overpowered when facing Monsters, but against infantry they wouldn’t be that good (and hence the podium finishes didn’t have any in 1^st and 2^nd place, not sure about the 3^rd). They are also one of the very few counters for heavy Evil Magic.

Magic level... there’s been a lot of talk about this, but I believe that 1 level per 200 points is just about perfect (I would do 1 per 250 personally with exception of allowing level 8+ formations to be used in 2000pt games)

Epic Strike and Duel – I was heavily against it before, but now I believe it should be played that you are allowed to use Epic Strike in a Duel. Reason why is that otherwise the likes of Gil-Galad are impossible to beat and will always wreak havoc as long as they can call a duel (and with 6 Might they’ll always will be able to do it). Ringwraiths with Epic Strike are still at a disadvantage after being called to a duel by someone else with ES because that someone will have F10 too and +1 dice modifier and Might, so even then RWs will often fall. The combination of the rules allows for equal playing field between good and evil forces.

Different list that would have probably worked much better, Defensive Monsters:

2 Winged Nazgul

1 Giant

6 Siege Bows (2 form of 3 comp)

3 Mordor Trolls

10 companies of unarmed Orcs.

Total 1500.

In every game opponents would be forced to move towards me, so there wouldn’t be any need for At The Double from the Trolls. In the same time 3 Siege bows average 5-6 kills per turn, so 6 would be averaging almost 2 companies – with most of my opponents having about 12-15 companies in total that could potentially be very powerful. It still outfights everything just like the other list did.

Just to conclude: WotR is an amazing game with a massive potential. It has a far greater range of tactical possibilities than LotR or Warhammer Fantasy (I play both of these too) and relies heavily on combo-play, ie. The ability to combine certain units to certain effects and countering your opponent’s effects... it’s a bit like Magic the Gathering I could even say. The simplicity of the LotR rules is still kept inside WotR, especially when it comes to movement – none of that wheeling and turning nonsense that Fantasy suffers. The beauty of the game is that you can do anything and no single move or model can ever win you the game on its own.

Feel free to comment if you agree or disagree with something or you think I should’ve played my games differently, we’re all noobs in WotR at this moment.

Thanks for reading,

Cheers,

BlackMist

PS. Sorry, I would've included more pictures, but blogger only allows upload of 5 at a time and it takes ages to upload any significant number :/

PS2. Once there's a report on www.mitril.pl I will include a link in this post to all the photos on that site.

Singles UKGT 2010

2010-03-09T03:40:00.000-08:00

24-25th January another UKGT, this time my personal individual best with 2nd place

Armies:
Saruman
Leonidas (Eowyn ;) )
Ghan-Buri-Ghan
16 Warriors of Sparta (Rohan) + Shield + Throwing Spear
16 Warriors of Sparta + Bow
11 Warriors of Sparta + Shield
5 Warriors of Sparta
16 Woses Warriors
Total 67 with 8 Might

Evil:

Mounted Saruman
Grima
Shadow Lord
17 Uruk-hai + Crossbow
16 Orc
18 Orc + Spear
Total 54 with 5 Might

For all photographs visit: http://www.mitril.pl/raporty-bitewne/id384,UKGT-2010-raport.html

1st at the UK Doubles GT 2009

2009-08-27T04:03:00.000-07:00

On the 12th July Voitek and I were crowned the LotR UK Doubles Champions. I was gonna write a report, but I guess that's not gonna happen any time soon. A Polish Version with all the photos is available here: http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id318,UK-Doubles-2009-Raport.html

War of the Ring - well, I am disappointed now. At the beginning it seemed like a great system, everybody wanted to play it, all I did for 3 months prior to Doubles GT was playing WotR but then... for a month I haven't had a single game and nobody seems to care about this game anymore. The amount of loopholes is overwhelming and people just refuse to play it anymore. GW did a good job with an idea, but complete lack of support for the game for so long is awful. I only hope they fix all the bugs as soon as possible to make make it a playable game.

Added Images from EEGT09

2009-05-23T02:19:00.000-07:00

More Images and reports in the following links:

http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id280,Eastern-Europe-Grand-Tournament-krotka-fotorelacja.html

http://www.mitril.pl/relacje-turnieje/id291,Najwiekszy-lokal-w-Polsce-czyli-o-mojej-bytnosci-na-EEGT.html

Eastern Europe GT report

2009-05-01T10:20:00.001-07:00

No pics, as I didn't intend to write a report, but just scribbled some of my memories now.
Armies:
Good:
Faramir on Horse with Lance
14 Fountain Guard with Shields
12 Citadel Guard on horses with Longbows
5 Warriors of MT with spears
5 Warriors of MT with spears and shields
BlackMist (captain of Dol Amroth) on horse with Lance
6 Men at Arms
Madril

45 models, 8 Might, 12 bows

Evil:
Orc Captain on Warg with shield
Orc Drummer
Shadow Lord on horse
32 Morannons with shields
20 Orcs with spears
5 Warg Riders
3 Warg Riders with shields

63 models, 4 Might

Report:

Game 1, Storm the Camp, Evil:

Against wood elves with Legolas, Haldir and Galadriel. My opponent decided to defend his camp, so I run towards him as fast as I could, then manoeuvred (never thought this word has this spelling...) Warg Riders around one flank and got a single Rider inside his camp, while all his Elves were defending at about 18” away from his corner. Nothing too complicated happened during the game.

35-1

Game 2, Storm the Camp, Good:

Played against 7 Spider Queens and Shadow Lord on Fell Beast. Probably the most boring and one-sided game I ever played. Whatever I would do, I could not succeed.

1-35

Game 3, Contest of Champions, Good:

Dragon and 2 Fell Beasts... next

1-35

Game 4, Contest of Champions, Evil:

Now this was the best game I played at this event. My champion, an Orc Captain on a Warg with support of Shadow Lord went against Faramir on foot with Bow supported by Saruman the White. From the start I marched towards my opponent, who’s first line were Osgiliath Veterans, 2nd line Rangers of Gondor and 3rd line Warriors of MT with spears. About 55 models in total. Faramir had a lucky shot and killed one of the Morannons before combat was reached.
Then my Captain was being Transfixed every turn and I was lost because I didn’t know whether to stop Saruman Transfixing my Captain or to stop Faramir from scoring kills, so I tried both, but in the end it turned out to be not too good of an idea, because every time Saruman resisted, he would Transfix my captain and Faramir would score a kill.
2 turns before the end I got priority and the score was 4-1 to Faramir. I decided to compel him out of his lines and surrounded with 2 Warg Riders and 2 supported Morannons, while captain with last Might point charged a single veteran on my left flank. In that turn my opponent made a mistake which cost him the game: he decided to Transfix one of the Warg Riders fighting Faramir so that I would get less dice to win combat / hurt his champion. By doing that he let my captain call heroic combat, killing his initial victim and getting through his lines to charge and kill another 2 vets. It was 4-4 at that time and Faramir got killed in the very next fight. Next turn I got priority again and charged terrifying Saruman with a lone orc who managed to get through the enemy lines in the previous turn, while my captain charged a lone veteran and got a support of 2 other morannons to ensure winning the fight. I rolled a 5 on 5 dice, he rolled a 4 on 2 dice and I won and killed him for a 5-4 score J
The worst part of the game was the fact that sun was shining at me so strongly and it was so hot, I had to drink every time I finished moving.

30-5

Game 5, Take and Hold, Evil:

Played against a guy with Legolas, Saruman, Beregond and a lot of fountain guard with 7 KoMT and WoMT support. In total 39 models against my 63, so I had an advantage already from the start. With priority in the first turn I already had more models on the board than his total and already moved 6-10” towards the centre. Take and Hold, being my favourite LoME scenario was the one I felt most confident with and with the massive numerical advantage I just pushed everything to the centre as fast as I could, looking at my phone every once in a while just to ensure 2 hours are enough for me to finish.
There’s not much to talk about this one, except that Legolas got killed by 2 Morannons and WR after being Transfixed and surrounded. At the very end, my opponent had a lone Guardsman within 3” of the centre whom I surrounded with heroic move to ensure a kill, but then Saruman blasted into combat and knocked everybody down (Im not sure if that means the fight is still on with everyone on the ground or if the fight breaks away, but we played that the fight broke). Luckily, I still had some unengaged models who didn’t take part in the heroic to charge and kill the lone FG. After that, the game ended and the centre was clear of enemy models.

35-1

End of Day 1. Evil scores 100/105 points and Good scores a massive 2/70 points... Good army in 2 games killed 2 models which cost a total of 0 points – 2 broodlings. One from a volley and the other through Faramir’s heroic combat...

Position after day one: 18, loss to the leader: 73 points.

Day 2: Game 6, Take and Hold, Good:

This was the game I was looking forward to playing because I wanted to see how well Madril’s ability does in this scenario. And it was amazing. After the first turn I had 39 out of 45 models on the board instead of the average 30 I would normally have (with Madril the average is 36 in this case), while my opponent, who started with about 10 more, had pretty much the same number. His army was based around Shadow Lord, Mahud King, Haradrim King and a mix of Mahud Warriors, Camels and Harad Warriors for around 55 models.
This was also the game where I used all my sixes for the remainder of the tournament. I felt sorry at the end of the game having broken my opponent and losing only 7 models. Mounted cavalry showed how good it can be, moving 5” at a time and taking out Camels and Mahud from all over the board. Faramir killed Shadow Lord in a single Heroic Fight and BlackMist managed several kills which led to one of my opponent’s units to disappear. At the end the nearest model to the centre my enemy had was about 10” away, so it was a clear victory.
We both enjoyed the game and my opponent was especially very sporting.

35-1

Game 7, Meeting Engagement, Good:

My good army went against the most common tournament army seen over the past year – Mordor on SL, Drum and MO with Orcs. This time the variant of the army included 2 Spider Queens instead of the usual ‘more Orcs’ or ‘Orc Trackers’.
I defended as I fired my 12 bows, I did what any good player would do here – defend, hopefully with my higher Fight I would come out on top. But that wasn’t the case, I somehow kept losing more fights than winning and I lost my Guardsmen at an incredible pace. Then I had to deal with 2 SQ on one of my flanks which were killing 4 models per turn until one of them died. My own heroic duo of Faramir and BlackMist did some damage but had to use all its Might to win the heroic combats. My plan with these two was to charge when lost priority, call HC each, kill 2 each, proceed to killing another 2 each. What happened instead was: lost priority, called HC each, won combats with each by using all their remaining Might, killed 2 each and proceeded to lose the next 2 fights...
I ran out of 6s in the previous game, so here I was just watching my men die with nothing to be done. Once my army broke and Faramir died I surrendered – I knew I wouldn’t kill all heroes for a minor defeat and a victory was no longer realistically possible.

1-35

Game 8, Meeting Engagement, Evil:

I went up against a very themed army of Numenor with mounted Elendil, Legolas and Haldir. Battle was fought on a board looking like ruins of some old Gondorian city, especially themed with the statue of Isildur near one of the corners J
Drums of Mordor led my army towards the enemy suffering some minor losses. My opponent wanted to make a semi circle between a tower and some ruins, so that I go inside and get surrounded by his men, but I didn’t let him by riding Wargs around one flank and sending some Orcs on the other flank. Once combat was reached, Legolas got compelled and eaten by dogs, then Elendil killed around 6 models and stayed Transfixed to the end of the game. Each Combat phase was excruciating, as we rolled so terribly that it was just wrong... he kept winning 2v2 fights rolling 3s and 4s as his highest results and then when needing 6s he rolled 5s. In one of the turns my enemy won almost every combat, killed none and the other two combats which I won, I killed in both.
But the power of The Ring could not be undone and the minions of Mordor ate what was theirs to eat – manflesh ;)

35-1

Total for Good: 38 points out of 140 available
Total for Evil: 135 points out of 140 available

Final standing: 10th out of 51

End comments:
I am happy that a very themed Rohan army won the tournament.
I still think that multiple Spider Queens are just wrong and boring, but Im happy there wasn't any mass Outrider armies, because they're just wrong and boring too.
I am disappointed in my Good force, it is time to retire the Guard which fought for me the past 3 years.
The organisation was very good and I enjoyed all my games, looking forward to the next year.

BlackMist

Welcome!

2009-04-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Good Day,
Welcome to my wargaming blog. The main focus of this blog will be tournament reports of Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game and its expansion War of the Ring made by Games Workshop. I will also provide links to my online articles already available and when I have some spare time I will try to translate everything to English and possibly some of them to Polish.

Additionally, you will often get a chance to read my bragging about the dreaded double ones which often lost games and even destroyed my chances of winning entire tournaments.

My forum nickname is BlackMist and I can be found posting at www.thelastalliance.com and www.mitril.pl frequently. Started playing in August 2004.

Cheers for visiting.