Tournament overview – Seige of Zeist

Hey Reader!

Two weeks ago I attended my first ever siege tourney. I think it was a first for most people in the hobby, which made it a bit experimental. You never knew what to expect, that is from the scenario’s, boards, and your opponents. Most people, like myself, brought catered lists which we will get into later, and there was a variety of siege equipment used, though some were clearly more liked than others.

Every person had to bring two lists, a list which would defend and one which would attack. Attackers got a point advantage to compensate for the defensive position of well, the defender. It was 750 opposed to the 600 on the defenders side. I had no idea if this would be a fair compensation and neither did most people, which made it fun to figure out a list to best take advantage of it.

This is what I have cooked up for the defender side:

Yikes, 27 S3 bow shots which hits on a 3+ at 600pts seems brutal. Also Legolas is Megolas in this edition and Tauriel received a nice buff. I always wanted to try out the Mirkwood ranger legion, but they seem a bit lacking. However, I think this is a setting that suits them very well. I wasn’t the only one who was thinking this, obviously, since two other players also brought this army. Furthermore, most of the attacking lists brought something against shooting, be it high defense fast models or siege towers, Booo! Come on, let me have a go, I normally never play with shooting, how dare you use tactics…

Siege equipment is also quite beneficial to this army. It normally can’t take a banner, but with siege you are allowed to take a “Rally point”. Practically a banner that you can’t move. Your opponent can still destroy it though so be careful with that.

I also opted to take 2 barricades and 2 pile of rocks. I feel like I don’t need to explain the pile of rocks, they seem well worth it for 5pts. I do think I am the only person in this tourney who actually took barricades. I could have taken 2 more piles of rocks, but blocking the gate on both ways to give you an extra turn of shooting is not bad with this list. On top of that, there is not much strength 5 on a 25mm base in the game, so putting 2 barricades down in front of the gate which first need to be destroyed seems like a really annoying thing for monsters to deal with.

I’m sure you can do much more shenanigans with barricades, but we’ll have to wait and see until the actual event.

Depths of Moria! My trusty Balrog whom last edition performed like you would expect, with a 50/50 mentality. I thought it would only be appropriate to “whip” him out for the first real tourney of the new edition. We technically already had a tourney in the new edition yes, but this felt more like a tryout. Now everything feels a bit more settled in, at least for me. The much needed and long awaited Armies of Middle-Earth book could shake it up again, but let’s not get into that…

The Balrog has gotten some considerable and much needed buffs, he can now “fly” (hehe) across the board with his new move value of 8″ and received Dominant 10. Feels only appropriate for a demon of the ancient world. His legion also received some changes, though I would not really call them buffs outright, more like a trade-off. To keep it concise, you can no longer take anything else other than goblins, goblin captains, a cave-troll and the watcher in the water. You definitely miss the black shield shamans and prowlers in this list, I will say. What you won’t miss is the drum, because it is now permanently baked into your legion. This means that you won’t have to lay down 75 points for it, but it also does not count towards banner VP’s, which is fair. This does make it a bit difficult to get banner VP and eliminate your opponents banner because you have no shatter anymore, but overall not bad.

The watcher is an interesting addition to his list, but you can only ever justify him around and over 800pts, or if you’re playing a siege tourney that is. Being able to pluck models off of their nice and comfortable, well dug-in, defensive position just seems so convenient. On top of that, being able to spawn a dominant 6 model behind their fortifications feels kind of nasty. You do pay a heavy price for him though. 200pts equals to 24 goblins and 2 captains, but I believe him to be well worth it in this setting.

I also opted for the siege ladders instead of the tower. I feel like the siege tower has more benefit if you have a solid battle-line or heavy hitting 25mm foot hero that can punch through the enemy. Definitely not the case for goblins! Multiple points of attack to overwhelm and swarm the enemy seems much more like goblin philosophy.

There were some other changes to this legion this edition, but since I plan on making an army review for this army anyway, I will not dive too deep into it here. These were the major ones just to give you a quick summary. On to the games!

Game 1 – Fog of war – Rangers of Mirkwood vs Erebor reclaimed

Fog of war worked about the same in this format. One hero to kill, one to keep alive and a terrain piece to capture. Needless to say, I could only “choose” to protect Tauriel and the lowest defense hero in Liam’s army list was Ori, who was still D7, but since all other heroes were D8, I opted for Ori as my target.

First match and I’m up against D8 dwarfs in a scenario where I need to kill one of them… I wasn’t thrilled but so was my opponent, needing to move into 30 bow shots per turn. Statistically, I would kill about two dwarfs per turn if they are in shield wall. My opponent, Liam, did a good job at keeping them all in shield wall and in the first turn not a single dwarf died under the barrage of arrows. The next turns faired better where I compensated by rolling a bit above the average. I played no mind games, since it was so obvious that my target would be Ori, and shot everything at the poor fellow. He went down a bit quicker than expected and the dwarfs beside him soon followed since most did not benefit from the shield wall rule anymore.

Liam did spend a lot of might marching up to the walls, which I don’t blame him for. The sooner he gets into combat the better. However, even with ladders on the wall and dwarfs on top, I could still opt to shield in all those 1vs1 combats, all the while shooting all the other dwarfs which could not find a hiding spot below the walls. His heroes did fare a lot better, Dain was making progress wounding my elves on 2+, yikes. Thorin also heroic combatted on to the wall and slew 3 elves in one turn. He did only have one might left on him and was standing right next to Legolas. On the following turn I won priority and could trap Thorin against the wall with leggy and two other rangers. He opted to strike after I called one, and proceeded to win the strike-off, but could not get to a 6 with the duel roll, even with his build in banner. I managed to get 2 wounds through with my 2 Mirkwood rangers which needed 6/4, which Liam was not happy about. I could not help smiling like an idiot. Leggy managed to finish him of with another wound, which I did need to spend a might for but I’m not complaining. So Thorin got flash-killed! Kind of an embarrassing display for the king under the mountain.

He did eventually break through the gate and in a shocking turn of events flash-killed Legolas with Gloin. He wounded me on 3+, so no surprises there, but winning the duel roll was quite a feat. I, once again, had 2 Mirkwood rangers and
Leggy in the fight who was striking. Gloin also struck, but since I had elven blades I was confident. Apparently that was misplaced as Leggy fluffed his strike roll and Gloin proceeded to roll sixes, managing to convert all 4 strikes into wounds, ouch! I then flubbed all of my fate rolls which left Legolas slain by his best friends father.

Might have been a mistake to throw Leggy into an angry Gloin, but it was the only way to stop the wall of dwarfs from marching straight on their chosen terrain piece. Therefore, I was willing to role those dice. Overall, I still managed to get the win even though Dain had outkilled Tauriel (again, no surprises). I had broken him, kept my hero alive, killed my target (Ori), and protected the terrain piece. Both our leaders lay dead with a look of utter surprise on their faces netting me the 13-6 win.

Game 2 – Take the walls – Rangers of Mirkwood vs Minas Morgul

This customized siege scenario is quite simple really. Have more models in or on the eastern wall, western wall, gatehouse, and within (behind) the walls. I was playing against Rick who brought a Witch-King on fell beast, Mordor troll, Siege tower, a spectre, 2 captain, a couple siege ladders, and still managed to find the points for around 35 Morannon and Mordor orcs. His list totaled to around 44 models which was impressive with the amount of toys he was bringing.

Going into this I was quite confident, I could get around 4 turns of shooting before he reached the walls. My tactic was to break him as quickly as possible by directing all my shots at his D5 orcs. At first, I wanted to see if he would put his Witch-King in an exposed position, but he smartly opted to keep him safely flying behind a siege tower.

To say my shooting was below average this game is an understatement. I managed to hit 2/3 of my shots but failed to wound on most of them. The first turn I killed 7 models, which is statistically correct, but in the following turns I struggled to even get 2 to 3 kills with shooting. With the WK and siege tower flying ever closer, I was starting to worry a bit.

My opponent opted to march for two turns with both his captains, much like my previous opponent. Dodging the oppressive shooting is never a bad idea, but after two heroic combats with the WK just to kill a few more Mirkwood rangers, he could not afford to spent any more might leaving me with full control over the game.

I finally managed to break him in the turn after and most of his stuff ran away after I called the heroic move to lock down his heroes. He was quartered at this point so we both moved on the respective “point-scoring” points and I finished the game on a 12-0 win. Seems rough for the amount of models that he had on the western wall and inside of the gates, I simply had more which denied him all points.

The defensive equipment came in big for me in this game. I had 2 barricades set up in front of the gate which he first needed to break through if he wanted to use his battering ram on the gate. Under the heavy archery fire he barely got through the second barricade with his Morannons before they fled the battlefield. If they had broken through the game could have looked very different.

Game 3 – Fall back to the keep – Men of the west vs Depths of Moria

I really hoped I would get this scenario playing my attacking list. A lot of the VP’s in this scenario revolve around keeping the enemy general outside of the gates or killing them. With most defensive armies not opting to take a horse, it would not seem like too much of a hassle to just tentacle and whip the leader back as far as possible. However, this is Ellesar we are talking about.

I was up against Kevin, who I know is a Minas Tirith player and quite experienced with Elessar. Also, Elessar seems quite strong in this edition, so although this did seem like a good scenario for me I knew it would be a hard game still.

The game started with me giving priority to my opponent and then spawning the Watcher in the water just outside of 6″ of my opponents forces. This practically guaranteed that Elessar, even with his free heroic march, could not escape the tentacles. Over the following turns I proceeded to whip him back with the watcher, but failed to win a fight or do any real damage to him. The watcher’s job was to keep him back and him losing was to be expected, but one fluffed roll from Ellesar and he would get eaten. Nevertheless, the Balrog was moving closer but failed his whip as soon as he got in range, classic.

Then something happened which was a beginner mistake of me, protect your captains! My goblin captain was quite confidently sticking with the Balrog ready to call heroic moves for him. The 6 archers and Legolas up on the walls thought otherwise and turned him into a pin-cushion. Yes I could have prevented this and yes it was my fault, but it was also incredibly lucky to just outright flash kill him like that. This was a very impactful mistake in my opinion since this was my only might in the army at this point and basically guaranteed that Elessar could march his way to the gate unopposed.

The watcher and the Balrog did see one combat together with Elessar. I once again tentacled Elessar back, put some goblins around to trap him but left a gap for the Balrog to heroic combat into. Elessar proceeded to call a “for Frodo” and a strike which is the right play I think. This did mean that if he fluffed his strike I would be able to eat him up in one turn. He did not though, I did the fluffing with my duel roll and could not even get a 6 on 10 dices… Balrog deluxe gameplay right there. He rolled a 5 high and mighted to a 6 and spent his last might to get a wound through on the watcher finally putting him to peace.

In the following turns, I did manage to set Elessar on fire and hurl into him, but this failed to do any damage to him. Eventually I did manage to break down the gate with the Balrog and break him in around the same turn. The breaking was nice, but his army bonus gave him fearless, quite insane, which guaranteed that his guys stuck around and crucially defended the walls. My goblins who were trying to scale the wall with ladders did remarkably well for goblins. To be fair it was mostly one on one fights, and a map wide banner is amazing (who would have guessed), but they did manage to kill quite a bit of models and break through on some points had the priority rolls been more in my favor.

In the last turn the Balrog stormed through the gates, securing me some VP’s and gave me a chance to whip his banner. This would have netted me 3 VP’s and would have won me the game so the Balrog felt the importance of this roll and managed to get a whopping 1 to hit his whip once again. I should not even be surprised at this point, the Balrog just can’t handle pressure.

It was a nail biting game which ended on a 9-8 for my opponent. I had plenty of chances to win during this game and if one play had landed my way, the game would have ended differently, but that’s something you should not get mad about if you bring a Balrog. In the important moments you just don’t have the resources to make plays happen. Nevertheless, it was an intensive chess-like game so I had tones of fun and was overall happy with the outcome.

I managed to finish 3rd which I’m quite happy about. Overall, I had a very fun day with 3 great opponents who put up with my shenanigans. Cheers!

Thoughts on the format:

It was my first time playing a siege event, new stuff is always exciting. I don’t know if I would want to play it again in a competitive setting though. I noticed, and heard from other attendees, that most of the games felt extremely match-up dependent. The biggest example that I saw of this was Rangers of Mirkwood playing against The Eagles in the Fall back to the keep scenario. There’s no running away from a 12″ flying army when your foot general spawns in the middle of the board. So this format seems more fitting for narrative and non-competitive events, since the outcome of a game is not always determined by factors which the player can control. It is true that this also happens in matched play games, but in this event in particular it felt like it was apparent in most games which were played.

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