Boards and Swords Hobbies Tournament 30.06.2019

Another one-day event, this time at Boards and Sword in Derby which is a nice sized industrial estate based venue. The inclusive lunch was a Dominos pizza deliver which is pretty epic for a £15 event. Best Coast Pairings App was being used again and as a return user it was very smooth. There were 11 players which meant there was a bye each round which isn’t deal but hey ho. Having played my aggro Farstriders a great deal and having some really make or break moments due to dice rolls I had built a passive scoring and key based Gitz deck where no objectives required me to land attacks or make kills. I had only played the deck three times prior to the event but it had won each game fairly comfortably and tended to come back strong in the third end phase. It is worth mentioning that despite being a day after the release of Power Unbound the TO had decided not to allow it in the event. I took a ready built deck in the hopes of dropping a couple of new cards in but my buddy Nick had built his deck around the new cards and had a bit of a scramble borrowing some of my Farstriders cards to round his Cursebreaker deck out.

Round one

BYE – sigh

Ah well I took the win and had a browse of the shop and some Star Wars Legion that was being played.

Round two

Dan Jones’ Guardians

Dan had just beaten another Gitz deck in the first round and I was conscious of the huge threat ranges and ability to one hit many of my fighters that the Guardians possessed. They can also sit back and passively score very well when they need to and Dan is no slouch at the game so this was going to be a hard match. Shout out to Dan if he is reading for an awesome set of games, he is a great bloke to play against.

In the first game Dan took an early lead this game with Gallangan starting in melee with a Git and killing him instantly. He also managed to draw through his score immediately objectives nicely and despite killing Skaethel I was down going in to the third end phase. After scoring keys it was 14-13 to Dan. An epic struggle but I couldn’t quite pull the glory out after losing so many fighters.

The first couple of rounds of the second game were very back and forth. I managed to kill Gallangan after he ran through a lethal by pushing him back into it with a successful squig attack. The second round Dan got unlucky with discarding objectives and then drawing the necessary cards to be able to score them immediately afterwards. In the final round I could have gone for a dicey charge onto an objective in order to equip a key but decided to run a Git into a lethal to guarantee I scored Pure Carnage. After also getting Superior Tactician I managed to win this with a nail biting 15-14.

Going in to the final game we were in a dead draw and didn’t have much time left but it was lunch next so we decided to play it out to get a proper victor. As everyone else had finished we had a lot of spectators. No pressure then! I got some strong scores in the first round after ignoring Gallangan and getting both Mad Scurry and Well Guarded. The key point of this game was when a squig with concealed weapon nailed a crit against Ylthari and killed her in the first activation of the second round. It was still very tight and Dan’s dice deserted him a bit with Ahnslaine managing to constantly miss my fighters with her Nullstone Spear. This meant I had a good number of fighters available to be equipped with keys and managed to win it 17-3.

Round three

Derek Wheatley’s Cursebreakers (9-19, 16-11, 14-21)

In game one I really struggled to get going and after binning a starting hand of Superior Tactician, Pure Carnage and Keep Them Guessing my objective deck was down 8 glory. To top things off Derek’s score immediately objectives came out really nicely. He played it very well and harvested a lot of glory from killing the Gitz. Stormsire really came into his own this game with the upgrades he got out and was devastating to the high model count low wound warband. I lost 19-9.

When the dice smile on you this guy is just brilliant

Game two and I was determined to get back into things. Derek charged Ammis into Snirk early but I got a crit defence and was then able to do two damage with a squig and followed up with a double hammer scatter with Snirk to get the kill. I also manage to whittle Stormsire down to a single wound and got a Faneway charge with a bow Git onto an objective and kill Stormsire with a bow shot through his double block defence and Determined Defender! This was a bonus really as I only put him there to get another key out. I took this game 16-11.

Third game again! I had to chuck my power hand this game as I got five upgrades (including two keys!) then drew into four upgrades. Ah well I tried to make the best of it and scored a few of my passive objectives but I couldn’t get any mileage out of Snirk or Concealed Weapon. When I finally got some better score immediately objectives I wasn’t in a position to score them and ended up losing 21-14. The amount of damage Cursebreakers can dish out without any defence rolls is brutal and Power Unbound is only going to exacerbate that!

Round four

Nick Bayton’s Cursebreakers

Nick played super aggressively in the first game and threw Stormsire in with Hidden Paths in the first turn but then missed his attacks although did Shardgale to make all my fighters easy kills. I was able to trap Stormsire in the corner and use Prog with Concealed Weapon to kill him. Honestly, at this point I felt the game was in the bag and he wouldn’t be able to get his objectives off without the leader. How wrong I was… Rastus and Ammis chopped the Gitz up good and were still able to get a decent number of spells off as well as scoring Superior Tactician and Conquest so despite some glory from keys I lost the first game 18-15. If only I hadn’t had to bin Pure Carnage in the first turn I might have been able to snag the win.

Game number two Snirk was really useful in getting up into the Cursebreaker territory and making a nuisance of himself and also got branching fate from his three defence dice. Unfortunately, he went down to a three damage Fulmination after a poor defence roll. This distraction meant that I was able to pull off Keep Them Guessing and Well Guarded in the second turn. Frozen in Time and Transfixing Stare were both really important in this game and allowed me to control the tempo of the game enough to secure a win 16-14.

Another three game slog in the last round. This one was really close throughout with Nick making great use of damaging gambit spells and ploys until I saw an opportunity for a Hidden Paths attack with Zarbag who had Potion of Rage and Concealed Weapon into Rastus. Zarbag went in, drank his potion and swung with his five dice attack with Cleave… zero successes. Damn. I ended up losing the game by one glory (15-14) so if I’d have killed Rastus to draw it and I was sitting on two objectives to Nick’s none so would have got the win. Even just pushing Rastus back a hex would have stopped Nick from getting Conquest which would have been a win too. It just goes to show that even with a deck designed to remove bad dice from the game you can still be done over by a bad roll at a critical time.

Damn you Zarbag why can't you hit!?

I had a great day of games here and was pleased with how highly the deck scored into some really strong opposition. I just had to get better at giving away so much glory but I guess that’s what happens when you play Gitz!