UK Games Expo Grand Clash 31.05.2019

I arrived bright and early for my first Grand Clash and was pleased to get in fairly quickly for registration to the event. Best Coast Pairings App was being used and once I had it up and running successfully it was really useful. 

The registration line was pretty grievous

There were 118 players at the event with some of the best players in the country attending. I was hoping to finish somewhere mid table and had brought my aggro Farstriders as I am really happy with how the deck is working at the moment into Cursebreakers and Mollog who I was expecting to see a lot... Naturally I played neither.

The boys in bone ready to roll

What a shocker of a photo - honestly we were keen to start playing!

My buddy Josh picking the brains of two of the games best players

Round one – Guardians 31-37 L

My second ever game against the guardians and I was keen to see what they could do but also felt like I had all the tools to take out their low wound fighters. Game one went very much as planned and I was able to take out Ylthari relatively early and remove the rest of the fighters without too many losses for a solid win.

Game number two was frustrating. My roll for boards was four crits… and it went downhill from there. I didn’t make a single successful attack roll until the second activation of the final round. Needless to say I lost pretty hard.

Game three I was back in the game and things were very even. At least up until my opponent rolled a double crit defence to save Ylthari and deny me two objectives and Tomb of Offerings meaning I missed out on five glory. His follow up attack on Farstrider – triple crit. Damn. I ended up losing this game by two glory and felt pretty salty to have lost the first round mainly due to dice. My opponent obviously felt a little bad but he played it well and took advantage of the luck to good effect.

 

This is either an amazing sight or a terrible one. The latter for me this time!

Round two – Chosen Axes 36-26 W

Into round two I was up against the Chosen Axes. I have played these guys a fair bit myself and felt like I had the tools to work around them but I really needed to stop Fjul before he could get going otherwise his damage four attack with cleave was going to spoil all my fun. In game one He went for an early hidden paths before inspiring Fjul and missed his attack. I went all in to kill him and it worked but I scored no objectives while he got escalation, calculated risk and alone in the darkness. Oh dear. To compound things I chose not to give a fighter an extra wound and they were then immediately killed with a crit from a shadeglass weapon. The bane of my game here ended up being inspired Maegrim with Light armour and Concealed Weapon rolling four dice with a reroll. He was more than capable of killing my fighters and prior to the upgrades I had been careless in my positioning around him. So I lost game one thanks to sloppy play.

Frustrated with my lack of playing for objectives I went into the second game determined to do better. I picked my positioning and saved my damage ploys for when they really mattered, using speed over brute strength to prevent Fjul rampaging through my Stormcast. This was more effective and netted me a solid win although I didn’t get Conquest due to a final power phase use of The Earth Shakes. Hopefully that two glory wouldn’t come back to bite me.

Going in to the last game I went for long boards as I had Spectral Wings and Swift Stride in hand. I made sure to keep out of charge range of the dwarves and cycled an objective before moving in to kill Teft and Vol and get some score immediately cards. My opponent managed to inspire Fjul at the end of turn two and I knew he wanted to get him in the fight. First activation of round three I got Eagle Eye into Fjul and using trap, a lethal hex and Shardgale was able to kill him. Maegrim took out Eagle Eye before dying to a Faneway charge. I got Conquest and Alone in the Darkness to win big in the final round. I am really glad I managed to pull myself back from dropping the first game and not get too tilted by losing to a warband I should have had an advantage into.

The scale of the Expo was awesome

Round three – Profiteers 17-34 L

In round three I was paired up with an Italian opponent who immediately told me his English wasn’t great. We still had an excellent set of games, making ourselves understood with a little help from Google and even managed a chat about Contrast Paints and Season Three when we were done! He was running Profiteers who I had played a few times but never in a competitive setting. I knew Thundrik was key and that if they got a run of objectives they could power up real fast. The ranged cleave and high damage of this warband made me very careful with positioning and deployment.

Game one started well with taking out Alenson and putting some damage onto Drakkskewer. I had Farstrider gradually being built up with his ranged accuracy and damaging upgrades when my opponent moved Thundrik in with Hidden Paths despite it being my activation next… I could see what was coming here. He upgraded him with Awakened Weapon, Ready for Action and dead Farstrider. Oh dear. I had Eagle Eye in range of Thundrik but I had charged earlier in the turn so I couldn’t deal with him. The following turn Thundrik shot Eagle Eye dead too. I just couldn’t deal with the powerful attacks coming my way and Score Immediately objectives were giving out glory and inspiration too fast for me to keep up. This game really shows how a high risk strategy with a couple of high powered cards can really change the game (and why Hidden Paths should be restricted, it’s in every deck going).

Round four – Guardians 32-18 W

Into the final round and I was paired with Carl, a friend of mine I hadn’t seen for years until a few weeks prior to the event. He was running some brilliantly airbrushed Guardians and after a bit of trash talk we kicked things off. 

Game one everything went my way and I killed Ylthari (and by extension Carl’s game plan) in the first activation of round two. Carl made a couple of attacks and then passed so as not to reveal his objectives. I scored most of mine but kept Conquest in hand to not give away my late game glory plan for the rest of the round. It ended at 14-3 in my favour.

The second game was much closer but getting Inspiration Strikes onto Farstrider in the first round really helped to start getting the damage on from outside of the Guardians’ non-charging threat range. Early in the first turn Carl charged Anslaine (spelling?!) through a lethal to score calculated risk which allowed me to shoot her down with Trap and get my scoring off to a good start. As the game went on we both scored well and lost a few fighters and the second game ended at 18-15 to me with Carl not expecting Conquest thanks to me not revealing it game one.

Final thoughts

I finished 60th out of 118 and got a lovely full set of alternate artwork keys which makes me want to use them in a more objective holding warband. It was a great day overall and the Expo itself was as much of a spectacle as ever with loads of cool models, boards and other bits and bobs available. The registration using Best Coast Pairings was a little clunky but now I know how to use it I think it will be handy and it certainly makes keeping track of scores for blog posts a damn site easier.

Until next time J