Tournament overview – A Humble Tournament

Yes! There is a tournament again. This time organized by Corné from Humble Wargaming. It will be a 650 point single event, a point value which was a favorite of mine in the last edition. I’ll be excited to see how it holds up in this one. I’m praying that there will be no Eagles or Dale, since I’m already pretty tired of seeing them. But let’s talk about what I’ll be putting on the table!

I’ve been quite busy painting and I can finally field a full 650 points of Rivendell. I’m so excited to finally put this on the table at a tournament. Ever since the new edition came out I’ve been grinding this army list quite a bit. It’s a bit different from the previous edition because it has since been transformed from a boring battle-line army to a, slightly less, boring battle-line army with some tricks up it’s sleeve. And those who know me know that I like to play armies with a lot of tricks.

Let’s take a look at the army composition:

It’s a list I’ve grown quite accustomed to, as I’ve played it plenty and tried variations on it. You could drop some models for more knights, but mobility is not that big of a deal with most of the six scenario’s anyway. On top of that you have the liberty to sit back and shoot unless you are playing against something like Dale. Very few armies can stand up to ten S3 bow shots which hit on a 3+.

Lindir is also quite nice in this edition an could be worked into this list. The reason I did not is because I am expecting a lot of Balrogs at 650, and since I am not bringing one myself it’s best to have tools against it. As strange as it is to say, the most scary thing in this game for a Balrog is a rowdy hobbit from the Shire. Combined with Elrond’s Hadhafang which gives +1 to wound vs spirits and can be two-handed, it will give any Balrog pause.

You also have seven will on two characters to spend on Wrath of the Bruinen. Both Arwen and Elrond can also channel to guarantee the 6 on the cast. Very scary stuff if you absolutely have to knock something down or if you want to drain Will on, let’s say, a Witch-King. This also makes Rivendell a very scary army to march into. Overall, I’m confident that this army will do decent against most match-ups, it just feels very solid. If you want to have a more detailed breakdown of Rivendell check out my Rivendell army list review here.

Game 1 – To the Death vs The Eagles

What did I just say, I wanted to face no more flappy birds. That’s what I get for hoping too much I guess. Anyway, it is To the Death and I have a banner whereas my opponent has none. I will just need to bide my time and not lose too many models, so at least it’s not a straight auto-loss because of the scenario. The board that we are playing on also leans a lot into that, I actually get a lot of forest! So there’s my win-condition right there, camp in the forest like a scumbag. I feel like it’s justified against The Eagles though, so I have no bad consience whatsoever.

Deployment was fairly simple. I won the roll off and decided on the side with two forests rather than one, and deployed my models on, and close to, both of them. I did this to spread out my forces a bit so it’s not just a sitting duck in one of them. I wanted to make sure that I had some breathing room and could still maneuver freely after my opponent inevitably engaged. I did this to prevent myself from being boxed into just one place. You want to be able to swarm the Eagles on the off-turn in which they can’t charge.

Nice location right? If my opponent ever wants to do damage quick enough to break me, he will have to deploy right between my forces, ready to be sandwiched. This was exactly what happened in the next turn. My opponent needed to move first and deployed close and around the right side of the hobbit hole, charging two Eagles into the central forest. I charged some Eagles which had not charged in an effort to take some wounds off. I also moved Bilbo out in the open, with some models around, so he would be able to pop on the ring and charge next turn. The Eagles did a bit of damage this turn, I did some back, but nothing spectacular happened.

Next turn the Piercing Cry came down. I had expected this and positioned Arwen and a Rivendell knight outside of it. I called the move and my opponent did not decide to counter it. Unsurprisingly, I passed my courage check to charge and the Rivendell knight went straight into Gwahir. I could not move much else, but I just hoped to pin Gwahir in place so he would still be in charge range of Bilbo for next turn. Which is exactly what happened. Calling a heroic combat against a charging knight with a banner was scarry as we essentially had the same amount of dices for the duel roll. He also did not opt to barge and move somewhere else. This was due to the fact that he was kind of boxed in by his own Eagles and the hobbit hole and killing a Rivendell knight is difficult to pass on.

I had weathered the storm quite well. The first turn he could only get two eagles to charge and on the Piercing Cry turn Gwahir was locked down. I also opted to shield in all combats this turn to limit the damage and this worked wonders. I managed to win two combats and had plenty of models around to lock down the eagles for the following turn. In this following turn, I won the heroic move roll off, popped the ring on Bilbo and charged Gwahir with as many models as I could, including Elrond and Arwen. Before charging Gwahir, Elrond and Arwen managed to get a Wrath of the Bruinen off on the remaining eagles. This was cooking up to be an amazing turn for me.

In the fight phase I called a heroic combat on Arwen, and spoiler alert, yes it went off. I managed to flash kill Gwahir, the wind lord. To be fair, he was charged by four two-handing warrior with 3 spear supports, Arwen, Bilbo, and a two-handing Elrond. I did need to spend Elrond’s last might in order to kill him, but worth it I would say. I piled into the remaining eagles and finished them off over two turns, tabling my opponent and finishing our round 30 minutes early.

What an amazing start to the tourney. Tabling my opponent and taking an 18-0 home in my first game against a list which, I’ll be honest, kinda hate at this point. I managed to keep my banner alive, break my opponent, and kill his general. The only reason why I didn’t get the 20-0 is because my opponent only had one hero to kill. Yeah, I think they should re-work that objective a little bit. Definitely not all lists have enough heroes to even make scoring the full three points possible.

Game 2 – Reconnoitre vs Ugluks scouts

After my first match I had immediately shot up to the top table! I was playing against Sjoerd and his horde of Uruk-hai. He’s a skilled opponent whom I have played against before at tourneys. Once against his Host of the Dragon Emperor and one time against his eagles. Yeah, he doesn’t take low/mid tier armies to the table, but what I am surprised about is that it is still always a good time. This really shows that he is a fun guy to play against, and he always makes it a challenge too.

I was quite dreading playing against 50 angry Uruk-hai and Orcs. He has the bodies to slip some past my line and still have enough to put up a good fight. Luckily, he did not have a drum. He argued that it only affects half his force anyway and he can pick up five orcs for the price of it. While this argument has some ground in most scenario’s it does not hold up in Recon. Having a squad which moves faster than cavalry catapulting over the board is a scary prospect. This was his list:

The board, again, was very much in my favor. It was populated by lots of big buildings and woods. The woods did not matter that much, but the buildings made a world of difference this game. I identified the chokepoints on the map and established that this was my win condition this game. Occupy the chokepoints before my opponent can get properly through and grind him out. While of course having some Elves ready on the flanks should some stragglers sneak around. I deployed wide, with little hit squads each running towards their “No step back” point, firing their bows on the way. My opponent decided to deploy all of his forces in one big ball on the middle-left side of the board (from my perspective). He did this so he could march turn one and have his entire force march with him. However, I think it would have been more beneficial to deploy wide evenly, then he would be much more of a threat. Because now I could mainly focus on his entire force and pick of stragglers which defending the flanks quite easily. I had no fear of one flank being overwhelmed as his entire force was very concentrated. A lone Uruk-hai archer made the first kill of the game, but this was quickly answered. My shooting was definitely above average as my archers raked up several kills and also chipped a wound of Ugluk. He failed his fate on a two and had to spend two additional might to not give up leader VP’s, yikes.

A few turns before the main army got there, Elrond and Arwen were already busy using the central building as a hiding point while they threw out Bruinens to slow the enemies advance. This helped as my opponent was reluctant to charge through the gap. It also did not help that I won literally EVERY prio of the game. Seriously when does this happen? Sure I had five foresight points to spent, but still, Sjoerd’s priority rolls were absolute garbage. He also lost two heroic move roll-offs which were quite important.

I was holding down the middle quite well. We basically had a Mexican stand-off until my battle-line arrived to clash against the forces of evil. In the mean time my archers were being more than consistent, taking another wound from Ugluk and killing about two-three Uruk-hai. Together with the damage from Wrath of the Bruinen and archery the model count was looking about even. I could afford to have a bit less models in the chokepoint above since I had Elrond and Arwen wreaking havoc in the following turns by “Wrathing” and charging the bigger part of this force. This allowed me to spread out even more with my models and make sure that none got through. I even managed to break through on the left flank in the last turn, but this didn’t end up mattering much.

After some more shooting Ugluk was down, after not even having been in combat and contributing nothing to the game at all, glorious. Grishnakh bit the bullet in the turn before and his army was starting to crumble as he was now broken. Not wanting the game to end I shielded on all of my warriors which kept him from quartering. I quickly made a dash for the table edge with Elrond and Arwen in order to get models, and also heroes, of the board edge. When my heroes were safely home I allowed his army to fully fall apart, only charging models which could theoretically still make it off the board.

This ended the game in a 19-0 victory for me. I am proud of my plays and performance, but to be fair, the dices were also very much in my favor this game. If Sjoerd picked up a priority or won a roll-off the game might have gone very differently.

Game 3 – Fog of War vs Rivendell

Two forces entered the battlefield flying the same colors. It was time for a civil war amongst the elves. And what a scenario to do so, the literal fog of war clouding Imladris and making them turn against each other. The lists are similar too making this quite weird. I am playing against Ronny, who I know to be a very experienced player. I am more used to him taking the Witch-King, but today he decided that a mirror match-up would be more fun. He did not take Bilbo in his list and went for one more knight and an elf.

The board was fairly balanced for this scenario and deployment went as expected. I won the first roll for priority and opted to give it to my opponent. He moved half with all his models, while I only went forward with those that could not shoot. I was thinking that, if I could get a few early kills with shooting, he would have to come to me. Since he moved and I didn’t, the odds were in my favor. But what are odds anyway, he immediately dropped three archers. In return I only killed a single one. This meant that the tables were turned and I would have to move into him, not an amazing prospect. I decided to not even try to defend any terrain pieces and go fully on the offensive. Keeping models behind would make my army even smaller and Ronny was quite consistent with shooting, taking out 1-3 models per turn.

I still had some tricks up my sleeve, which mainly consisted of a hobbit with a very special ring. I figured that if I could just get the lines to clash, I could sneak past a couple of models and get my objective. This worked wonders as he also wanted to contain me on one point and sent most of his force towards a chokepoint were the lines would inevitably clash. I tried to move back and forth with my wrath which did the absolute bare minimum. To be fair, I wasn’t expecting it to do much, I just wanted to put pressure on him and offer some incentive to draw him out a bit. This did not work and the kills I got from it were negligible.

The line clash, unsurprisingly, went more in his favor and he also got some Wraths off with my resist dices being pretty poor. Ultimately, this was not that important since we were never gonna break each other anymore. In the last turn he had moved Arwen around the flank in range of my own Arwen. We both called a channel, this is where the game would be decided. The way it was looking, the game would be a draw. I could move back safely with my Arwen putting her out of all harms way. What I could also do was move fully to be in range of only Arwen, being lonely on my left flank, and cast a channeled Wrath. Basically making the game a 50/50, since he would have three dices to resist and I would cast it automatically on a six. I knew that, if I pulled this off, I would get first place. Otherwise, I would get third/fourth place. I opted to take the route with more chest hair and charged Arwen forward. Only to be greeted by Ronny who once again rolled a six. He then threw me off Asfaloth with a Bruinen of his own and this ended the game.

Should I have done what I did? Maybe not that smartest play since I later learned that the table below us played a draw. Meaning I would a good chance of getting second place if I went for the draw. But I don’t regret my play at all, sometimes you just have to go for it. It makes the game more fun. I was also sure that Ronny used up all his sixes on his casting and shooting rolls, but apparently he had one more in his back pocket.

We both had captured our terrain piece, protected our chosen hero, but he had killed his target (Asfaloth) and I hadn’t killed mine (Asfaloth) ending the game on a 15-10. Truly his Rivendell was the real one and the pretender Alrond and Erwen were quickly expunged.

Conclusion

Very happy with this event overall. The venue was great with lots of space between the tables and they even had air-conditioning which was much appreciated since it was scorching hot. I also managed to win against eagles, not gonna lie, it felt really good to put the meta birds in the dirt. I think I played to a good standard in all three games, and am happy with my performance. I finished 7th place, but this could have easily been 2nd if I played for the draw. Definitely don’t regret making the play though, I don’t like playing for a draw, and sometimes you just have to go for it.

Shout out to Corné for organizing it, I know it takes a lot of time and effort so it’s much appreciated. Ronny ended up winning the event, which shoots him up in ranking in the DMEL, so congrats to him. Would love to come to another event like this in the future!

Gallary