Battlefield Hobbies Tournament 06.01.19

This is going to be a long one! I had a great time at this event and it was nice to see a little slice of the meta, what is popular and what surprises new opponents. The warbands the players chose were heavily tilted towards Nightvault releases with three Cursebreakers, two Thorns, one Magore’s Fiends, one Steelheart’s Champions and one Sepulchral Guard. So eight players but only five different warbands and lots of tanky fighters to deal with. I used Cursebreakers and thankfully had crammed my deck with damage boosting gambits in an effort to ensure I could take out four wound fighters and achieve my score immediately kill objectives. The day was a series of best of three matches with total glory being used as the first tiebreaker and we had a clear winner by three rounds.

Round one – Jimmy, Magore’s Fiends

Jimmy told me that he had been really into Underworlds when it first came out and had all of the Shadespire warbands but hadn’t played much since the release of Nightvault. His time out showed a little in the first turn but he really upped his game quickly and got back into the swing of things.

Game one of this round I really got lucky with my objective and upgrades coming out to complement each other. I spent round one inspiring my fighters while he tried a few charges and moves into my territory. In the second round I got strong start and measured strike for killing Gartok and sorcerous scouring for killing Zarkus. Drawing three more objectives and putting on some upgrades I scored escalation, shining example and girded for battle in the end phase. In the final round Rastus was slain so I swapped out heavily armed and scored my remaining objectives for a 16-3 win

Game two Jimmy went first moving up aggressively again. I used spoils of war to give eye of the storm to Stormsire and then cast cry of thunder to do one damage each to Magore and Riptooth who were adjacent to each other. Jimmy continued to move up while I killed Gartok to score strong start and by the end of the turn also got alone in the darkness after knocking back Riptooth. Jimmy started round two by attacking with the now one health Riptooth and inspiring him. I the used earthquake pushing Riptooth into a lethal hex and killing him. I put some upgrades on scoring girded for battle and heavily armed while Jimmy scored escalation. I get first activation in round three and kill Magore to score precise use of force and Jimmy manages to kill both Rastus and Ammis with inspired Zarkus. Stormsire eventually kills Zarkus and I score magical supremacy for a 10-7 win.

Round two – Nick, Steelheart’s Champions

A friendly face! Nick is one of my regular opponents and we had come along to the event together. We also had some good rivalry going about who would finish higher up the rankings. He was using his favourite aggro Steelheart’s which he beat my dwarves with a couple of days before so I was out for vengeance.

The rival stormcast warbands face off

Game one saw some atrocious card luck for Nick with him binning a full hand of upgrades only to draw another one! The first round was a lot of positioning (I had set up out of charge range) which ended in Nick scoring consecrated area and me scoring alone in the darkness for a 2-1 lead. In the second round inspired Amiss killed both Steelheart and Oberyn scoring me measured strike. The final round saw Nick trying to attack with Angharad and either failing or being blocked by good defence rolls. I hit her with cry of thunder and fulmination to kill her and equipped the slumbering key, finishing my turn by scoring escalation, magical supremacy and heavily armed while Nick got denial for an 11-5 win to me.

Game two and all of Nick’s bad luck with card draw last time was reversed with him getting a brutal starting hand. As before I set up out of threat range and after I went first and failed to inspire Ammis, Nick used sidestep to get Steelheart into range of Stormsire... we can all see where this is going. He then charged, missed, used a ploy to reroll and got two crits followed by twist the knife to kill Stormsire before he ever activated. I’m no defeatist but I couldn’t really see how I could get back into the game after that. Still I managed to finish the turn out with an upgrade on Rastus and ready for action to get him next to Steelheart who he attacked and used trap before using earthquake to push him into a lethal hex to get him down to a single wound. In the final round Rastus killed Steelheart before being charged by Angarahad who missed and was then hit and pushed into a lethal to kill her. Despite this Nick scored denial and conquest to win 10-6.

Game three and it was all to play for with a slight glory advantage to me. This game my note taking was pretty poor to be honest but I will do my best. Nick distracts one of my fighters into range and I respond with spoils of war to put great fortitude onto Rastus and then ready for action to move forward into range but Nick dodges me with a well-played sidestep! Later in the round Nick uses his own spoils of war to put total offense onto Steelheart and uses ready for action to move in (such a copier!) and attacks. I end the first turn scoring heavily armed, girded for battle and alone in the darkness with Nick scoring no glory. Nick charges with Oberyn and misses and is then killed by Ammis to score me precise use of force. I cast sphere of Ulgu with Stormsire to make Nick’s counter attack less accurate and with one less dice Angharad misses her attack. I cycle some power cards and get slumbering key on Rastus and Nick cycles some objectives. I end the round scoring escalation, magical supremacy and undefeated for a 14-7 win. This one felt pretty good I’m not going to lie!

Round three – Ed Stormsire’s Cursebreakers

At this point only Ed and myself had both won two games so we knew this round would be a big factor in what decided the winner of the event. This was a really tough match both in terms of the mirror and that Ed had way more experience with the warband than me. I also made a huge mistake in the one of the games which is very frustrating and shows what happens when you get blinkered into something and don’t do the basics.

Game one saw us employ similar tactics with Ed getting lucky with his dice and cards round one to empower both Rastus and Ammis, score harness the storm, upgrade Stormsire with gloryseeker and score master of war. Meanwhile I failed every single roll and scored no objectives. Ed kills my Rastus with a fulmination and scores change of tactics, measured strike and what armour with his Rastus as he kills my Stormsire. In the final round I kill his Stormsire but Rastus plus Shardgale does for Ammis. Ed wins this one 11-5.

Game two was pretty dull as I was just trying hard not to let him get rolling like he did last time. The game revolved around some blocked hexes and Ed using deathly fortitude on his Stormsire which removed his mobility while making him functionally unkillable. Ed tried to hidden paths his way around the blocked hexes but fails to accomplish a lot. The game ended 5-5 with us both equal on starting hexes and objectives. A true draw.

So I went in to game three knowing I had to win by 6 to take this round. No pressure then! I forget a lot of what happened here as this is where I really messed up. I had some great starting cards and moved up Stormsire, using spoils of war to put gloryseeker on him and ready for action to attack his Stormsire, doing two damage and inspiring. He responds by charging my Stormsire with his and missing. I STUPIDLY activate another fighter and then realise that I hadn’t charged with Stormsire last turn at all. All that careful play for nothing as Ed promptly kills my Stormsire denying me sorcerous scouring and shining example. I carry on mentally kicking myself for the rest of the game and score alone in the darkness and escalation at some point but end up losing 9-7. I’ll never make that mistake again!

In the end

As I have already said I had a great day. All my opponents were great sports and Jimmy and Dan from Battlefield ran a very enjoyable first Underworlds event. Everyone got some nice promo cards and I bagged some Cursebreaker's activation tokens from someone who already had a set. Ed won the event and Nick pipped me to third place by 20 glory (all his rounds had gone to three games where as my first one was two) and also got best painted! Bragging rights to him then! I have another event at the weekend at Vault 14 so I will post something about that too. I think I will keep the deck largely the same with a slight tweak to objectives so that I can score a little more third end phase glory.

Thanks for reading!