BLACK DRAGON 2 DAY TOURNAMENT
The Black Dragon 2 Dayer was a 6 game, 2,000 point KoW second edition tournament held in Hinckley. I decided to attend and give my Goblins a last taste of action under 2nd Ed rules.
I drove up on the Friday afternoon and stayed at a local hotel so that I was well rested for the event. I bumped into Rusty Shackleford, who was staying at the same hotel, at breakfast.
Off to Black Dragon games shop for the briefing and organisation for play. This was the first run out of my Goblins for a long time and so at the start I felt pretty rusty. Rusty asked me to stop, and also said that he did not appreciate being called pretty, and so I headed off ot my first game.
GAME 1, CONTROL, SAM’S ABYSSAL DWARVES
Sam hove into view with his Abyssal Dwarves including: 3 Angkor Mortars, 3 fast special characters and a Winged Halfbreed. Those mortars could be deadly!
My cause was not helped when I rolled 3 Double 1s early in the game but I fortunately managed to survive the mortar onslaught and killed much of Sam’s army, eventually controlling much of the board for the win.
GAME 2, DOMINATE, JOHN’S ELVES
My reward for an initial win was a meeting with John and his Elves, including a horde of archers and 3 bolt throwers. Take a moment to think about what would concern you in this match up in a game of Dominate. Now look at this photo of John’s side of the battlefield after deployment, just off centre. Do you see the horde of archers and bolt thrower? Can you see what they are standing on? Yes, it’s a hill in the deployment zone. I cried.
Here’s a wide shot of deployment.
One of the highlights of this game was getting a horde of Trolls into the Green Lady, bane chanting them, killing the Green Lady and over-running into the Dragon just behind her where I rolled a ton of wounds on top of its previous injuries. And rolled another Double 1. Argh.
In the final turn, John’s archers marched into the dominate zone where they cancelled out my Troll horde, the Chariots are just outside the dominate zone. A draw but with massive attrition on both sides.
GAME 3, PUSH, DAN’s DWARVES
The terrain played a major part in this battle with the large piece of blocking terrain on the right, just in front of my deployment zone being critical. With more drops than Dan, I was able to concentrate much of my combat power on the right where I could overpower his smaller force there.
Good plan? No.
Aiming to slow down one of the Brock hordes, I charged Blaine into one while I concentrated on the other. Several wounds took off their thunderous and I was sure that he could survive the non-thunderous counter charge. No he couldn’t. My strong right flank collapsed, not helped by the Troll horde with the Dwarven Ale failing their headstrong roll in 2 successive turns.
Dan destroyed my army and won the game.
GAME 4, KILL, IAN’S BROTHERHOOD
Ian fronted up with his Brotherhood including 2 hordes of Water Elementals, 2 knight regiments of Order of the Abyssal Hunt and a flying knight horde of Order of Forsaken.
I sat back and tried to whittle Ian’s force down with shooting but it was difficult to get through the De 5+ unit’s skin. When we did get into combat, I struggled to kill anything and Ian ran out the winner with about 400 more kill points than I had.
Another loss.
Things might have gone better if I had remembered that Order of the Abyssal Hunt is De 4+ and I had not spent my time in Bane Chanting my Crushing (2) Trolls.
GAME 5, PILLAGE, BOB’S BROCKS AND GLOCKS (DWARFS)
Sunday morning saw me facing Cuddly Boss Brock Bob.
Bob’s Dwarven army had 4 regiments of brocks and a lot of shooting. We placed the pillage tokens with 3 on my right and 2 on the left. I wanted to use the terrain to minimise Bob’s shooting lanes and decided to concentrate on the 3 tokens on the right.
I split my army with the Trolls providing combat power on the right and my shooters on the left to try to stop Bob from moving his units on my left to reinforce his right.
This was a very tactical game with much measuring of angles and checking of lines of sight. However, my plan worked for a change and I ran out as the winner, although Bob killed more of my army than I killed of his.
GAME 6, PLUNDER, JOHN AND HIS ELVES (AGAIN)
We deployed the plunder tokens and then chose the 2 on my left to be worth 2 points each (the red ones in the picture). The terrain suited me here as there was quite a lot of cover to protect me from the worse of John’s shooting. I decided to concentrate on capturing two 2 point counters, hence my strongly refused right flank.
After some careful manoeuvring, John went all in with a charge from his Dragon and Knights. Unfortunately, the Dragon failed to kill my Chariots, leaving it open to a flank charge from a horde of Trolls. The cavalry were also charged and killed by Trolls while Blaine charged the Archer horde to shut down its shooting. On the right, John’s regiment of Palace Guard captured 2 of the uncontested 1 point tokens and his bolt throwers amused themselves with target practise against a horde of Trolls in the wood. The Trolls in their turn enjoyed regenerating the wounds caused.
With the Dragon and Knights dead, there was not much close combat power left in the Elven army and My units ran riot killing everything they could get their hands on and I eventually ran out the winner.
CONCLUSION
With better results on Day 2, I managed to head back up the leader table and ended up in 4th place. Hurrah!
Thanks to Garry Sharp at Black Dragon for organising the tournie and to all my opponents.
See you in Edition 3.