MANTICA RISES AT BEACHHEAD 2020
Mantica rises was a 2 day KoW tournie held as part of the game show at Beachhead in Bournemouth. The gaming hall had players in many different game systems while the sales hall hosted a wide variety of traders.
The tournament was held at 2 different points levels, 3 games at 1800 points on Saturday and 2 games at 2500 points on Sunday.
I decided to give my Rhordians a second tournament run-out. Here’s a picture of my 2,500 point list.
Andy and I represented the Moonrakers while Paul took a leave of absence owing to sickness.
We arrived on Friday afternoon to assist TO Matt in setting up and we also provided some of the scenery.
Saturday saw me facing Nick’s Varangur in an invade scenario. Nick fronted up with:
Human Clansman Horde
Frostfang Cavalry Horde
Huscarl Regiment
Snow Troll Horde
Mounted Sons of Korgaan Regiment
2 Tundra Wolf Troops
Mounted Cursed Son
Lord on foot
I made a bad mistake early in the game on my left flank when I left my mounted Baron in charge range of Nick’s Mounted Sons. He took the charge, killed the Baron and then overran into my Duke on Aralez. This unhinged my left flank and I was never able to recover, the game ending with a win to Nick. Well played sir.
Game 2 saw me facing Neil in a dominate scenario. Neil deployed:
Mounted Captain
Mounted Hero
4 Regiments of Knights
Troop scouts – bows
Troop scouts - guns
Regiment of Rifles
Giant
Cannon
Siege Artillery
Neil tried to outflank me with Knights on my right while peppering me with artillery. I was able to shut down the artillery early in the game and slowed the flanking manoeuvre sufficiently to allow me to get my Infantry hordes into defensive positions in the dominate zone for the win.
Neil was very unlucky as he had a good plan but my army was always going to be a difficult match-up for him and his dice did him no favours.
For Game 3, I was up against tournament organiser Matt and his Northern Alliance. Matt was running:
Horde of Clansmen
Horde of Frostfangs
Horde of Snow Trolls
Regiment Tundra Wolves
Troop Pack Hunters
Hrimm
Lord on Frostfang
Thegn
Ice Queen
We were playing Plunder with the one point tokens in the centre and on the outsides and the 2 point tokens flanking the centre.
We both refused our left flanks and the game pirouetted around the centre. The highlight for me was charging a regiment of Halfling Knights with Fire Oil, off a hill into the regenerating Snow Trolls; crushing 3 without even having to resort to Bane Chant!
There were some strange dice rolls in this game. At one stage, I need to roll 4 on a nerve check and rolled a 3. Obviously feeling sorry for me, Matt then did exactly the same against one of my units. After much carnage, I ended up winning. This win might have been partly because Matt was distracted and had to visit the exhibition hall during the game to watch his 8 year old son collect the award for the under 16s painting competition. Well done Laurence.
During the day we had the chance to visit the exhibitors.
There were also some reenactors present.
And some display games.
Overnight we retired to the Brewhouse for a meal and drinks.
For Day 2, we moved to 2,500 point lists and slightly longer games.
Game 1 saw me pitted against Chris’s Goblins in a Smoke and Mirrors scenario. Chris had a war machine spam Goblin list, that is if you count one Sharpstick Thrower as spam. His list was:
Rabble Legion
2 Fleabag Rider Regiments
Rabble Horde
Sharpstick Horde
2 Fleabag Rider Sniff Troops
Giant
2 Mincers
Magwa & Jo’os
2 Wiz
Stinggit
Mounted King
Sharpstick Thrower
Chris stayed back on the centre and left while advancing on my right. This suckered me in and the red mist descended and I went all out to kill things, ignoring the scenario.
I over-committed in the centre where there was only a ‘1’ token, but did massacre the units there. On the right, Chris’s Rabble horde sat on a ‘2’ token and I could not shift it. The stand off on the left continued for some time, with Chris holding one token on his back filed and me on one in my half. Eventually, Chris came forward, killing a regiment of Halfling Knights but losing his Giant and Magwa to the Abyssal Despoilers , sorry to the Honour Guard. However, his Fleabag Riders snurgled round the side to contest that objective.
Chris was now sitting on a ‘1’ and a ‘2’, I held a ‘1’, and a ‘1’ was contested.
With time running out, I withdrew my fliers from the front lien and flew a Lord onto a ‘2’ and a Pegasus mounted wizard onto a ‘1’ to claim a narrow victory.
This had been a very tight game in which Chris had played the scenario much better than I had and could very easily have resulted in a win to him.
With 3 wins in a row, I now found myself in second place. The reward (or should that be punishment?) for this was a top table meeting with a player some people have heard of, Dan King (there’s a story behind this comment). The scenario was Pillage with 7 tokens. Dan was playing Undead with:
2 Regiments of Zombies
4 Troops of Wraiths
2 Hordes of Werewolves
2 Hordes of Wights
Vampire on Dragon
Necromancer
Flying Pharaoh
Mhorgoth
I will give you brief highlights of the game.
I lost the dice roll to deploy the first Pillage token.
I lost the dice roll to determine table sides.
I lost the game.
At one stage, I didn’t think that Dan was killing my army fast enough and so, to help him out, I rolled a Double 1 when attacking his heavily wounded Vampire Lord.
Congratulations to Dan who went through the tournament undefeated with 5 wins.
This was a catastrophic loss for me and I dropped from 2nd to 8th place.
In hindsight, I think there were just 2 things that could have made this a more successful game:
- More skill.
- A different opponent.
On to the awards ceremony. Dan came first with Matt James second. Moonraker Andy won the Most Bloodthirsty General award.
We then got onto the award that everyone was waiting for, the Moonraker Curiosity Award, with the winner selected by Moonraker Andy and me. The award is given for unusual or curious events during the tournament.
There were 3 contestants for this.
First up was Rusty Shackleford whose 2 Angkor Mortars in the first turn of a game hit with all 4 shots and deleted a Giant. This was pretty impressive with only a 1¼% chance of all 4 shots hitting in a turn. However, we then conducted some sophisticated statistical analysis considering the number of turns played across the 5 games, the chance of turn 7s, likely survival rate of the Mortars and opponents’ tactics (I won’t bore you with the complex maths as it involves the use of imaginary numbers like eleventy-one), and concluded that this was not that unusual an event.
The second contender was Matt James. We both really liked the theme and colour scheme of his army and the time he has spent becoming a display board w****r really paid off in displaying the army to good effect. I should explain that the unusual event here is not that Matt has a nicely painted army, it is that the Moonrakers have something nice to say about him. That really is a unique occurrence.
However, narrowly pipping Matt to the award was another Bristolian, acclaimed fantasy novelist Rich Massie. In Rich’s game against Moonraker Andy, Rich charged a regiment of Mummies into the flank of one of Andy’s units and did … no wounds.
Well done to Rich for winning the second Moonraker Curiosity Award.
Thanks to TO Matt for organising the tournie and to all of my opponents.
Some great looking armies on display during the event. Here is a selection (just what I manged to grab, non-inclusion of youyr army does not mean that I don’t like it).
