Tournament Report- The Grand Tournament (26/27th Feb)

The Tournament

The Grand Tournament is one of two/three Warhammer World events held annually (usually) alongside the Doubles Tournament and Throne of Skulls. It's a 700pt Good vs Evil event, where you play as one army then the other three times over. 

In a previous year, I had managed to win all three games on day 1 before being destroyed on day 2 with 3 defeats. Maybe I could surpass that record this time?

My Armies

Good- Garrison of Dale

King Brand (Leader)

9x Warriors of Dale w/ 1x Banner/Spear/Shield, 1x Warhorn/Spear/Shield, 3x Esgaroth bows, 1x Shield and 3x Spear/Shield

Bard II

9x Knights of Dale

Captain of Dale w/ Esgaroth Bow

8x Warriors of Dale w/ 3x Esgaroth Bows, 3x Shields and 2x Spear/Shields

Captain of Dale w/ Shield

9x Warriors of Dale w/ 2x Esgaroth Bows, 4x Shields and 3x Spear/Shields

35 men

Evil- Isengard

Lurtz (Leader)

Uruk-hai Drummer

Uruk-hai Berserker x2

Uruk-hai warriors x8 w/ 1x Banner, 2x Crossbows and 5x Pikes

Thrydan Wolfsbane w/ Horse

Crebain

Uruk-hai warriors x5 w/ 2x Crossbow and 3x Pikes

Uruk-hai Scouts x2 w/ Bow

Mordor orcs x4 w/ Spear

The Wildman Oathmaker

Wildmen of Dunland x12 w/ 6x 2h

Uruk-hai Shaman

Crebain

Mordor orcs x2 w/ Spear

Uruk-hai Scouts x3 w/ Bow

45 models

Game 1- Contest of Champions (Vs. Billy (Thranduil's Halls))

Opponent's Heroes- Thranduil, Legolas and Tauriel

Opponent's Warriors- Mirkwood warriors and Mirkwood Rangers

Seeing that my opponent's leader was Thranduil and the scenario was Contest, I felt that I had an uphill struggle ahead of me. I deployed Lurtz to the left of the Amon Hen piece, intending to use the chokepoint to prevent Thranduil getting to me. I had a couple of Wildmen charge him as Lurtz went for some Mirkwood warriors and slew one.

Billy had deployed Legolas and Tauriel's warbands in woodland to the back left and therefore isolated the leader, I decided that I should use this to overwhelm, but the warriors were rolling a lot of 6s and therefore I struggled to kill them, luckily for me, Thranduil failed to kill the wildmen he faced.

Thranduil had burned 2 might already so I threw Lurtz and several warriors at him and managed to take away all his fate. The turn after I repeated the attack and Lurtz only managed to wound before a berserker dealt the killing blow. 

At this point, Tauriel and Legolas were rushing across the field with some rangers towards my army. Tauriel threatened Lurtz, but his warriors managed to pull her away and Lurtz slew Legolas as the elf was surrounded. The wildmen finally broke cover and the surviving five were immediately shot dead by five shots from the rangers (Faramir escaping Osgiliath vibes).

The game ended just as Lurtz cut down a ranger for a third kill, while Thranduil had been bogged down and unable to get any himself. Lurtz had managed to wound him and we had both broken one another. So I had won 9-1.

Game 2- Destroy the Supplies (Vs. Simon (Isengard))

Opponent's Heroes- Lurtz, Mauhur and Gorulf Ironskin

Opponent's Warriors- Berserkers, Uruk-hai warriors, Uruk-hai Scouts, Mordor Orcs, Warg riders and Crebain

The next match was against an Isengard force with a good amount of manoeuvrability, so I decided that I'd do best sitting on my objectives and waiting for a chance to strike. My shooting didn't do very much damage as they approached but my bow captain did manage to score a cheeky wound on Mauhur. 

The evil lines hit mine hard to my left so I attempted to swing round and surround, but didn't do as much damage as I'd hoped, I also lost my bow captain in the fighting. 

Brand attempted to heroic combat and take out Gorulf, but lost the fight and had to use his fate to the Dunlending.

Bard saw an opportunity and rushed up the board with his knights and some warriors led by the shield captain. They hit the scouts hard and killed several quickly, with the prince slaying the Drummer. Over a few turns they killed the remainder of the scouts and Mauhur eventually was felled by Bard. The captain then led the charge into the Isengard deployment to dismantle supplies.

But Brand and his surviving warriors needed to kill one more to break the enemy and proceeded to lose most fights. Brand attempted to lead by example, winning against many foes but failed to land a wound, even with his reroll. The following turn, he was slain by the hordes and a Crebain flew over to destroy my last supply.

As I was a single turn away from the last supply in the evil side and also in charge range from the hordes, time was called and Simon had triumphed 12-4, but I was happy with the heroic fight Dale had put up.

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Game 3- Breakthrough (Vs. Rob (Minas Tirith/Fiefdoms))

Opponent's Heroes- Prince Imrahil and Boromir, Captain of the White Tower

Opponent's Warriors- Guard of the Fountain Court, Warriors of Minas Tirith, Knights of Dol Amroth, Blackroot Vale Archers and Axeman of Lossanarch 

I could see off the bat that I was going to struggle in this game, high defence, high fight value army with two banners and two big heroes. My best chance would be to take out a hero quickly.

I quickly threw Thrydan at Imrahil and managed to dismount the Prince but failed to wound. The following turn, he took some fate off of Imrahil. Meanwhile, across the board, Boromir's men of Minas Tirith were cutting down the Wildmen with ease. The Oathmaker stepped in to try and lend some support but was immediately lanced by Boromir. 

The Crebain flew into the central field and managed to kill a couple of Fountain Court guards before flying to the rear objective. Some Uruks followed over the walls and engaged with some Blackroot Vale Archers but struggled to kill them.

Before long, Boromir had cleared his objective and the Wildmen were all dead, Thrydan had abandoned his attempts on Imrahil and went after the Swan Knights, but was slain after a couple of combats gone wrong. Lurtz, meanwhile, went after the Prince and managed to land a wound that stuck. 

My army was broken as time was ending, the Crebain both fled, leaving the far objective unclaimed, the right one, Rob owned but I had contested, the left he solely owned and the near, he was just shy of claiming. I had managed to wound his leader and he had returned the favour, leading to a 7-1 defeat.

Game 4- Fog of War (Vs. Dan (Azog's Legion/Azog's Hunters))

Opponent's Heroes- Bolg, Narzug and Fimbul

Opponent's Warriors- Gundabad Berserkers, War Bats and Hunter Orcs

For this game, I chose to capture the field to the left, defend my bow captain and slay Fimbul (figuring that Narzug could be hard to pin down).

Seeing that Dan had a low defence and aggressive army, I decided to hole up and thin out his ranks before making a dash when the opportunity presented itself (because it had worked so well in Game 2). 

I formed a line of warriors in the ruins to the left, a wall of knights between the buildings in the centre (just shy of the door to prevent being flanked). A handful of archers and my bow captain were in the field to the right.

As the forces of Gundabad approached, I peppered them with shots, killing Bolg's warg and a small handful of hunter orcs. The berserkers charged into the warriors and were counter charged by the knights, as Bard led a small sortie round the side of the ruin into a crowd of hunter orcs and berserkers, preventing the flank attack. The bows shot a few more hunter orcs in the far ruins. Dan's bats flew into the spear supports at the rear.

Brand swung into the ruin and counter charged the bats, failing a heroic combat to attempt to kill both quickly. Bolg was held up in the corner by a small crowd of warriors. 

The bow captain ran across to the central ruin and joined Bard's attack (intention being that he could help Bard call heroic combats and March across to the objective), but in a shocking display, rolled snake eyes, took two wounds and then rolled a 1 for his fate and died. I decided to throw out a red herring and sent Bard after Narzug, managing to slay the orc over several combats, hoping it'd make Dan be more reckless with Fimbul. 

But sadly, the damage was done and Brand managed to slay the Hunter orc banner but had already lost most of his army. And the game ended before I could harm Fimbul, get Bard to the objective or break the enemy, leading to a 10-0 loss (Dan was targetting my Shield Captain, defending Fimbul and taking the ruins, which were contested).

Game 5- Hold Ground (Vs. Jack (Isengard))

Opponent's Heroes- Lurtz, Gorulf Ironskin and Vrasku

Opponent's Warriors- Berserkers, Uruk-hai Warriors, Warg riders and Mordor Orcs

Jack got the initial priority and Vrasku arrived, while Gorulf rolled a 2 and used a might to get down to a 1 and Lurtz chose not to arrive, while I had Brand, Bard and my shield captain all arrive right behind Vrasku. My bow captain arrived on the board edge alongside.

The next turn, Gorulf arrived sandwiching Bard's warband and Lurtz did the same to Brand. In response, Brand and Bard both led the charge into Vrasku's unit and both heroic combatted into the Uruk, who triumphed and pushed them back. In the shoot phase, the bow captain led a volley that wounded Lurtz.

Over the next few turns, savage fighting occurs beside the board edge, but the Uruk-hai are edging the kill tally, Dale is not helped by Vrasku's stubborn refusal to die despite Bard's relentless assault on him. 

The bow captain sits on the centre as Brand pulls back to join with the troops he can retrieve. But as the Uruks pursue, they are forced to reengage and Bard eventually falls to the hordes.

The men of Dale fight hard hoping to edge a victory. Brand faces Lurtz and is slain himself desperately trying to hold the line as most of his remaining men are cut down, leaving only a few scattered as the game ends.

Jack had managed to kill enough in the centre to have triple my numbers there, had slain Brand, while my bows had wounded Lurtz and we had broken one another, leaving us with a 10-2 defeat to me.

Game 6- Divide and Conquer (Vs. Matt (Garrison of Dale))

Opponent's Heroes- King Brand, Bard II and Captain of Dale

Opponent's Warriors- Knights of Dale and Warriors of Dale

I deployed Lurtz and my Shaman in one corner and Thrydan and the Oathmaker in the other. The latter pair rushed towards the closest objective and began a fight with the Dale Captain's warband, Thrydan managing to get hold of him and slay him as the men were then killed by the Uruk-hai.

On the other side of the board, Lurtz set up a large line against the army of Dale before the central objective, with Dale archers shooting into their back. 

They lost several of their numbers and Lurtz won a heroic move off, using the chance to pull back and reform the line, anchoring his flank against the field. This was pretty effective and allowed them to kill several of the men of Dale.

The game was coming to a close so Lurtz went for a last ditch effort and lunged at Brand, he lost the fight and narrowly avoided taking a wound, his warriors fought hard but fell just short of breaking their opponents and had failed to have the majority in the centre. We had both claimed an objective on either side and Matt had broken me, leaving my final game as a 6-2 defeat.

By the end of the event, I had a single win and five defeats. Although this wasn't a great result, I still had fun games throughout and several were closely fought and this was the GT so it was going to be hard competition.

Upcoming Tournaments that I'll attend

5th March- Gillingham event 250pts (No named heroes)

12th March- Heroes of Legend 850pts (Heroes/monsters only, 10 max)

23rd April- At Dawn, Look to the East 550pts

Clearing the Backlog (Feb '22)

Hey all

This is a few days later than intended but such is life. Continuing on from where I finished in January, I was halfway through my good Grand Tournament army and things were very tight in getting ready on time.

The first models that I went for were the remaining 8 Knights of Dale. These guys had so much detail that it took me ~10 days to finish them off around work and baby duties. But once they were done, I was very pleased with them, all done to match the previous one's paint scheme of pale leather and white cloaks.

With them done, it made sense to then do the leader of their warband, Prince Bard. Although I preferred the sculpt of his father, this one grew on me as I painted him up. And by the time he was done, I loved it.

This now left me with just one hero and four Dale warriors left with ~10 days until the tournament, to some that may sound fine but I am a SLOW painter.

I wanted the King to stand out from the crowd, so decided to wander from the typical red colours shown on the display models and wanted to give him a nice regal colour, and a shade that I hadn't used before. So I settled on Phoenician Purple alongside white underclothes.

After the King was finished, I was inside the last week before D-Day. I hurriedly painted away late into nights and was finished with them by the Tuesday night, having to leave on the Friday morning. I then made a frantic effort to quickly base ~45 models and was done by about 9pm Thursday. 

So that was another last minute finish of tournament prep but it was achieved without compromising any models.

By the end of February, I had managed to paint up 14 more models and got the year's total to 28, with my grey mountain now at 397 as I had picked up the two new Easterling Heroes, Rutabi and Brorgir at the GT (hopefully they'll be in one of these posts this year).

I intend next month to get some Minas Tirith warriors painted as well as some dwarves and finish the last three Dale warriors. I may also skip the March update and combine it with April for reasons that will be clearer then, so in April I'll hopefully rebase my half of the Seven Stones army, build a display board for it and as a guess I'll probably paint Helm Hammerhand for a tournament late in the month. In the same vein I have some Rohan models that need repairs.

Clearing the Backlog - Part 2

 New Year's Resolutions are a bit like Finecast miniatures – they’re not very popular, pretty flimsy and so of course, it doesn't take much effort to break them. 

This year however, Sam and I decided we needed to stick to our resolutions, so we decided to motivate ourselves with a little friendly competition to see how much we could battle our way through our respective piles of shame.

My unpainted model count is probably approaching 500+ models, so I decided to see if I could go a full year without buying any new models. I've limited myself to two exceptions, these being Made to Order or Event Exclusive Miniatures.

Getting back to our little competition, tournaments are great motivators for getting through piles of shame – as you'll have seen in Sam's update last month (here's a link if you've not read it already: https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2022/01/clearing-backlog-jan-22.html), he's been working on King Brand, Bard II and the Knights of Dale to take to the Middle Earth Grand Tournament at the end of February. 

For my armies, I decided to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of The Fellowship of the Ring film by painting up two new armies out of my existing collection of unpainted miniatures – the men and elves of the Last Alliance for my good army, and the Dark Lord Sauron and his orcs from Barad-Dur for evil: 

Good:

Elendil

18 Numenorean Warriors (12 shields, 6 spears and 6 bows)

Gil-Galad

17 High Elf Warriors (6 spear and shields, 6 elf bows)

Evil:

The Dark Lord Sauron

8 Black Numenoreans

10 Orc Warriors (4 shields, 4 spears, 2 two-handed weapons)

6 Warg Riders (4 shields, 2 throwing spears, 2 bows)

Orc Tracker

7 Orc Warriors (3 shields, 3 two-handed weapons, 1 spear)

With my armies chosen, I grabbed my paints and set to work! The Numenoreans were pretty easy to paint, as they have a limited colour scheme – I sprayed everything with Abaddon Black and then highlighted all the black cloth with Corvus Black and Eshin Grey. The silver areas were based with Iron Hands Steel, washed with Nuln Oil and then drybrushed with Necron Compound (which has lately become my go-to method for painting metal). The bone coloured cloth was basecoated with Zandri Dust, before being given a Seraphim Sepia wash and then layered with Karak Stone and Ushabti Bone. The end result came out looking great, a very simple but effective look. 

For the elves, I wanted to try to recreate their look from the films. Studying stills from the file, their armour and clothing appears to have a distinct greenish tinge, so I tried several schemes to recreate this. Eventually, I cracked it – Retributor Armour basecoat, washed with Athonian Camoshade, then layered with Retributor Armour, Liberator Gold, Stormhost Silver and then given a glaze of Waywatcher Green – not perfectly matched to the films, but I'm very happy with how this came out. The cloaks were also tricky, but I followed the same method as above, but using silver paints instead of gold – in this case, Leadbelcher, Ironbreaker and Runefang Steel. Again, not perfect, but definitely pleasing.

By the end of January, I had painted most of the warriors for my Good Army – a grand total of 31 models painted for the month, and a nice start made to getting through the backlog!

For February, I started by finishing off some High Elf Spearmen, Gil-Galad and Elendil, to finish off my Good Army. I also painted up an elf captain at the same time, adding some extra models to the painted pile!

Now, I could start on my Evil Army. Orcs are not the easiest to paint, mostly because they need to look like individual models whilst being tied together as a single army. However, thanks to keeping the bases the same and sticking to a limited palate, I was pretty pleased with the results! 

Sauron and the Black Numenoreans had already been painted, so I simply re-based them to match the rest of the army – I won’t be counting these towards the overall model count.

With the remaining Last Alliance models, orcs and warg riders painted (I'm counting mounted models as a single model, not two – I don't want Gimli chasing after me!), my models painted count for the first two months of 2022 stands at an impressive 75 models, putting me well ahead in our competition – you've got some catching up to do Samwise!

Stay tuned to see how we get on both in our efforts to get through our backlogs, and see how our armies perform at the GT. Keep an eye out too for something special in the not too distant future – we won’t say any more for now, but let's just say the EAHC isn’t the only MESBG group participating!