One of my mates asked for a report on how the Throne of Skulls went last weekend and I thought some of you out there might be interested in having a read as well. It isn’t brief, but it does hopefully give some flavour of what Warhammer World’s 2 day events are like.
The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game Throne of Skulls: February 2013We headed North on the M1 from London at about 3pm on Friday, and had a good journey until about J22 when we started seeing signs for severe delays. It had taken us 5 hours (should take 2) to get to the Doubles in June and I started sweating profusely fearing a repeat! We decided to gamble and made an executive decision to leave at J23 and head to Nottingham on the A60 through Loughborough, worked a treat and we dodged the traffic. That's 1-1 Nottingham!
We checked into our hotel and signed up to some awards scheme which got us a free drink at the bar - woot! Then popped round the corner to a fantastic curry house (we’d tried it at Doubles) before heading to a rather wonderfully timed 8:30 screening of the Hobbit. It was my fifth time and my mate’s second and it was great to catch it once more before it left cinemas. A quick night-cap back at the hotel and we headed to sleepy-land.
The 7am start was horrific but we headed to Warhammer World for a big fry-up in Bugman's and made contact with the other One Ringers who had come along, lovely guys all. It was great to put some faces to the screen names and then some real names to the faces.
I’d gone for a full infantry Isengard force, 2 Shamans, a D7 Captain as my leader, Lurtz, Mauhur, Vrasku and Ugluk and then about 8-12 of Feral Uruks, Crossbowmen, Marauder Scouts, warriors with shields and warriors with pikes + 2 banners. Ended up with 61 models. The main gambit each game was to channel Fury in the first turn with both shaman’s using 2 Will points. It’s the ultimate gamble as if you fail your shaman’s all but useless for the rest of the game but the 5+ save and auto-pass courage tests is well worth it. How would it go? Read on...
First game was Domination and I was drawn against Ed Ball. He'd brought his traditional singles army which won last year which was 6 of the named Ringwraiths all on fell beasts. My army just wasn't built to deal with it, I had a lot of good quality foot troops and a few decent combat captains but no big characters, spell casters, monsters etc. Ultimately he was just able to fly around picking out my characters with spells and knocking them all down with the fell beasts. I ended up being destroyed about 16-1 but it was a really great game, the 2 disputes we had we just rolled a dice for and I’d never played 6 Fell Beasts before so it was...an experience.
Twas then lunch, I entered my Theoden into the painting competition and got chatting to Adam Troke. He was a really nice guy and the overriding impression he gave was of a fan of the game who was genuinely trying to improve it and make it more exciting with the new rules. Thoroughly lovely man who was playing in the tournament with his Misty Mountains Goblin and 3 Trolls army.
There were an odd number of players and game 2 saw me drawn against Aaron, the staff member who was making up the numbers using a staff army. He was a lovely guy but he'd never used the army before that morning and it kinda showed. He was using Khand which was cool as I'd never played them. He had about 10 chariots, some cavalry, Khamul and a bunch of infantry and we rolled To the Death. It went well from the start as we started close together, I got priority and jumped on his chariots. I was able to systematically destroy most of them throughout the game by using heroic moves to get the jump on them. My freshly painted Feral Uruk Hai really proved their worth taking down the Khand troops with ease.
The highlight of the game was when he had a chariot in a good position for a charge, to neutralise it I charged in Lurtz and an Uruk Pikeman. He then used Khamul (his leader) to transfix Lurtz and charge him and the pikeman to free up the chariot. He then spent a will point to gain an extra attack to seal the deal before promptly fluffing his attacks with a 1 and a 3, the Pikeman won the Fight with a 6, wounded the Defence 8 Khamul on a 6 and then he failed both his Fate rolls, cue 1 dead leader, 3 victory points, an untransfixed Lurtz and no small amount of laughter, all with a move that HE made. Twas glorious. The game went on in much the same manner, my Leader and banners were never under threat and I was able to break him without getting near my break point. Think it finished 10-0. It was another great game though and he was a lovely bloke.
After a half hour break I played a regular tournament goer James Braund at Reconnoitre. He had a Moria army made up of Groblog, 3 shamans, about 20 spearmen, 20 blackshields and a few wargs, bats, spiders led by Druzhag. He’d then allied in the Witch King from Mordor and a Shade from Angmar. He managed to get some Wargs/Spiders off early by scooting them down the flank and then we had a big scrap in the middle. We had a great game and it swung back and forth a few times, the highlight was probably when my shaman (who was holding the army together with his 5+ fury) took 5 S5 hits from an enraged Bat Swarm in combat, he then saved 3 with Fury and 1 with his Fate and survived. It. Was. Brilliant. Sadly it was one of those games where I lost sight of the objective in the desire to kill his Shade and break him (which I did) and by the time I broke through his ranks there wasn't enough time to get anyone off the board. My Ferals had done an awesome job in defeating his Blackshields and I'd broken his army and clearly won the field but the 7 models he'd run off early carried it for him a and he won about 8-3. It was frustrating looking at the board and seeing that I was clearly in control but that's the way it goes and it was a great game, as it turns out we voted for each other in the Most Sporting opponent category.
After a spot of dinner we headed into the hall for the pub quiz and formed a team with a few fellow One Ringers and Adam Troke. The quiz was great and we all had a bit of a laugh discovering that Adam didn’t know how many Hobbit scenarios were in the Rulebook, leading him to cry “It was different when I wrote it" which quickly became our team name. At the end they had a crazy round where they put up 2 heroes on the screen with their stats and you had to bet on which would win with the least likely being worth more quiz points. For example they had Aragorn V Lurtz and if you picked Aragorn and he won you got one point but if you picked Lurtz and he won he'd be worth 5 points or so. We then gathered round the front and different people rolled giant fluffy dice to decide - it was bloody brilliant and a genuinely cool/unique idea, there's a video of it on the Warhammer World Facebook page. We ended up winning the quiz by one point, which I claimed was due to my knowledge of an obscure piece of Hobbit knowledge that no other team got right. It is of course possible that it was also due to the answers that all the other members of the team gave....
We were totally chuffed with the win and particularly with the knowledge that, whatever else happened, we'd be getting onto the stage on the Sunday!
We then headed into Bugman's and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours chatting with our quiz team about the hobby and the day's games etc. was really nice to be able to get away from the real world and go to a magical place where the only thing that matters is toy soldiers
We booked a cab around 11, had a night cap at the hotel, and then headed to bed, I was asleep before my head touched the pillow.
Another 7 am start on the Sunday, drove to Warhammer World and had another fry-up. Boom.
Game 4 was Hold Ground against a guy called Jeff and I felt pretty confident as I had a good army for this one and I'd played it a lot so knew my tactics. My opponent had 26 Army of the Dead, Aragorn, Isildur’s heir leading 12 rangers and 4 Rangers of the north (I think? The independent hero ones with 1M/1W/1F). It was a fairly intimidating army but not best suited to this scenario due to lack of numbers. I got quite lucky with the deployment getting to choose where all but 1 of my warbands came on so I came on in force from 2 sides. He rolled poorly for his independent rangers and I promptly placed 1 next to each of my warbands and ate them all in the first couple of turns. He got to place my crossbowmen and put them behind a wood in between his Aragorn warband and 1 of his AOTD warbands which was frustrating until he decided to all out attack them with both warbands. This meant that for a few turns he only had 12 Warriors of the Dead heading towards the centre whilst I was running in 50 uruks. I think he slightly forgot the objective in the tempting desire to destroy my crossbowmen and Vrasku. This allowed me to set up a strong defensive position around the centre and severely break down his one AOTD warband before the other 2 arrived. From that point out I was in a good position with about 50 models to his 30 and so was able to trap his models time and time again. The high defence of the AOTD is good but when they're trapped and you're rolling 6 dice to wound, you'll get that 6, this was exacerbated by, again, the presence of the Ferals with their 2 attacks being doubled to 4 against trapped models. Fury proved it's worth again as my Uruks didn’t have to take terror tests to charge the AOTD - very handy. By the time I'd broken him I'd nearly overplayed my hand by moving too many of my guys out from the centre to attack his troops but I was still able to take about a 14-0 victory and the game ended on the first roll. After another turn I imagine it would have been about 30-0 or so. Most importantly though it was another really fun game against a thoroughly nice chap.
Perhaps the highlight of this game though was when one of the staff tapped me on the shoulder to tell me I'd been nominated for best army! I was fairly staggered as I'd agonised over bringing my all mounted Rohirrim army which I thought might have a chance of a best army nomination but would be uncompetitive and my Uruks which wouldn't have any chance of a nod but would perform better. My Isengard army actually includes the very first LOTR models I painted about 2 years ago so I was fairly surprised. I think my Ferals, crossbowmen and some of my characters look pretty good so I think that carried it for me. Suffice to say that when I put them in the cabinet there was some very careful arrangement of models to highlight the good ones and hide the bad! I was totally made up just to be nominated though so that was awesome.
After another spot of lunch it was time for game 5 and we played Lords of Battle. I was playing against a High Elf army (another first) with about 40 elves, Arwen, the twins, Elrond and Gil-Galad. It was certainly an intimidating group of heroes but his low warrior count meant he only had 12 archers and I was confident my 9 crossbowmen with Vrasku could go toe-to-toe with them. Deployment favoured me and, in a interesting twist, I was able to back away and form a defensive position in one corner and force the elves to come to me (with a -1 to shooting in the new rules for moving). I was able to get some early bonuses by taking Gil-Galad's fate and 1 wound and all of Elrond's Fate (thanks to some appalling re-rolls for his ring) and 2 wounds with my crossbowmen. My crossbows were standing behind a line of uruks who had a shaman with channelled Fury behind them so if the elves wanted to shoot at my crossbows they had in the way tests and a 5+ save to contend with. I had a plan in mind to deal with the big heroes and when my chance came I took it and Ugluk and 3 Ferals were able to charge Gil-Galad and trap him. Ugluk then called a heroic strike which managed to Tie the Fight values at 9 each. However, he rolled a 6 and I only managed a 4 meaning I'd have to blow Ugluk's last 2 Might points to tie the Fight and risk a 50/50 roll - I ultimately decided I wouldn't get the chance again and so risked it, I then won the roll off and spanked the High King of the Noldor into the ground - HUZAAH! In Lords of Battle if you kill an enemy hero in a Fight, any of your heroes in the same fight gets a Might point back so Ugluk went back up to 1. By this point I was in a commanding position and was starting to think I had it in the bag, at which point Arwen and Elrond both cast Nature's Wrath in the same turn and knocked over almost every fighting model in my army. They then pounced. I weathered the storm as best I could but, even with Fury, it was a slaughter and I lost 10-15 uruks in a single turn. That had a huge effect on the game and in the next turn I was struggling as A) the victory points were looking decidedly more even and B) I'd lost my huge numerical superiority. However, he was now out of Might so when he won priority I was able to call a heroic move without challenge and stand everyone up, I promptly charged Arwen to prevent her casting again and charged Elrond with Ugluk and 3 ferals
Ugluk then used his new Might point to call a Heroic Strike, beat Elrond’s Fight value and then 16 strikes later there was another dead elf and Ugluk had another Might point back. With Elrond dead and no Elf Might on the table I was gradually able to regain control, always calling a heroic move if he won priority to prevent Arwen knocking me down again and gradually bringing my numbers to bear. At the other end of the battle line I patiently waited for my moment and then trapped the two twins in successive turns with a combination of Mauhur, Lurtz and Ferals and heroic striked my way to victory, once again restoring my Might points. It was probably my most satisfying victory of the tournament as I had a plan and despite many chances to deviate, stuck to it, took my time and then struck at his heroes when the time was right (ie they had no Might to counter me). We failed to roll a 1-2 to end the game for 4 turns meaning it went the 2 and a half hour distance. It was a genuinely exhausting game and an absolute bloodbath, by the end there were 5 elves left against about 20 uruks, my ferals had once again shone but it was my heroes that really carried the game for me this time: my shamans' Fury saving countless Uruks and making sure that no-one fled once I was broken, and my captains going toe-to-toe with some of the best heroes in the game and coming out on top. And I didn't use a single Fate point! The final score was something like 48-39 to me, absolutely cracking game though.
So that was that, we headed into Bugman's while they set up the hall and I collapsed into a chair, I was absolutely dead on my feet by this point, presumably a combination of the booze, the early starts, late nights and that bloody knackering last game (it really is mentally exhausting trying to concentrate hard for 2 and a half hours against a good player). A bunch of us discussed our latest games and swapped stories before heading into the hall for the ceremony.
Alas, my Theoden didn't win the painting competition and I got my certificate for Best Army nomination but didn't win (quite rightly I should say, some of the armies on display were gorgeous). We were then given our award for winning the quiz and then quite unexpectedly I also won the award for Best Fallen Realms player! In a Throne of Skulls there's no ranking/tiered tables etc. You're simply in competition against the other players using your Sourcebook and my 3 wins/2 losses was the best of the 5 Fallen Realms armies so that was pretty cool.
However, after the tournament it turned out that a few of the results had been entered incorrectly and I’d actually tied in tournament points with One Ring’s own Muppetslayer and he got 1 more favourite game votes than me so he won the fallen Realms category, ah well, at least we kept it in the forum!
All told, 3 wins and 2 certificates was far better than I’d hoped to do, thoroughly chuffed.
Troop of the tournament goes to my Ferals who were absolutely awesome in every game I played, won't be taking to the field without them anytime soon.
All in all the tournament was tons of fun and I loved the whole weekend, it was great to meet people from the forum and spend a whole weekend living and breathing Lord of the Rings, if anyone out there is considering going to a Warhammer World event I really couldn’t recommend it enough!
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anyway it sounded like a great time! Hope you had a great time!!!!
