Moonrakers Tree Thugging in Bristol

MOONRAKERS TREE THUGGING IN BRISTOL

The end of February saw the Tree Thugging tournament in Bristol, a one day, 3 game, 2,300point event organised by Eddie Bar. Twenty players were due to attend in a strong field including 7 Masters’ players.

Two Moonrakers attended. Andy took his Kingdoms of Men. I tried out a new Goblin list with:

2 Troll Hordes
2 Mincer Regiments
2 Fleabag Regiments plus another 2 in the Bangstiks Formation
2 allied Butcher Regiments
(can you see a theme here?)

For heroes I took:
Mounted Wiz
Flaggit
Three Kings:
. The mounted Pale Monarch, aka The Wan King
. King on foot, aka The War King
. Groany Snark, aka Fu’King Disaster

For obvious reasons, I called this the Three-King List. Other players seemed to have a problem with basic mathematics as a surprising number of people called this a Four-King awful list.

GAME 1 – MAX POWER

Game 1 was a Loot scenario and I had to face Max and his Ogres with:

2 Hordes Siege Breakers
4 Regiments Warriors
The Big Deal
Sergeant on Chariot
Kuzlo
3 Warlocks
Crocodog Wrangler
Allied Drakon Riders and Drakon Rider Lord

No photographs from this battle I’m afraid.

The battlefield was split into 2 with one Loot token on my eft and the other 2 centre and right. I unfortunately lost the roll to determine sides and had the slightly worse terrain to negotiate.

On my left, 2 regiments fleabags, Fu’King Disaster and the Wan King faced off against the allied Drakon force and the Crocodog. Everything else contested the centre/right.

This was a game of 2 halves. Initially it looked good for me. On the left, I took out the Drakon Lord. On the right, fortune smiled on me as a Siege Breaker horde and Warrior regiment charged a Butcher regiment and bounced. That allowed me to get a Fleagbag regiment into the flank of the Siege Breakers and delete them. A Troll horde also killed the Sergeant on Chariot and the Warlocks were misfiring.

But, just as soon as Lady Luck was smiling on me, she turned and gave me a good kicking.

On the left, I simply could not kill the Drakon horde. In the centre, I plugged away at the remaining Siege Breaker horde and got it heavily damaged and then one Warlock cast Drain Life 7, got all 7 to hit and caused 7 damage. This not only weakened my own units but healed 7 wounds off the horde getting me back to square one. My demise was hastened when I mis-remembered that the Mincer regiments had nerve 16 rather than the 15 that I thought; I lost a regiment when Max exactly equalled 15. Ouch.

In the end, Max had all 3 tokens and had decimated my army for a 8:24 loss. All I had left was the Wiz and War King in the centre and Wan King in the bushes.

GAME 2 – RICH PICKINGS

For game 2, I faced acclaimed fantasy author Rich Massie in Salt the Earth. Rich has recently published his latest book, The Cube (available from Amazon), and he presented me with a copy, including a nice dedication.

Rich ran a Defence 6 rock avalanche with:

5 hordes Earth Elementals
2 Greater Earth Elementals
2 Tree Herders
2 Druids

I again lost the roll for table sides, which was pretty disastrous on this table as 2 closely aligned pieces of blocking terrain split my deployment zone in half. There was just about space for a regiment of Fleabags to fit between the terrain pieces but it would be tricky.

The 7 tokens were deployed with 3 on my left and 4 on the right. I placed a regiment of fleabags early on the left, hoping to get onto a token and burn it, while pacing my main force on the right. Rich deployed quite heavily on my left.

Almost inevitably, Rich won first turn and advanced as fast as his shambling allowed. This put all the tokens on the left in his charge/surge range and I debated whether to sacrifice a Fleabag regiment to burn one. In the end, I decided not to, which in hindsight was a mistake.

Rich got onto all 3 tokens on the left, but this meant that a lot of his combat power was tied up away from the main action on the right. I took full advantage and mullered his army. There is great satisfaction when a Fleabag regiment takes out a Tree Herder! It was all looking good until a horde of Earth Elementals in their death throes burnt a token on the right, leaving us with 3 each. As my turn 6 rolled round it looked like I would need a turn 7 to get near the tokens, but then I realised that Rich had made a mistake and left one horde sitting on top of a token. With a Fleabag regiment in range I was able to charge into contact and end up within 3” of the token, meaning that neither of us controlled it. And so, I claimed a narrow victory by 21:7. I hope to never again have to play on a table with terrain like this – unless I get to choose sides, in which case it’s fine.

GAME 3 – END GAME

Game 3 was Invade and I was to face Andrew and his Halflings.

2 Hordes Spearspikes
Horde Stalwarts with Hammer of Measured Force
2 Hordes Rifles
Troop Wild Lancers
Troop Wild Runners
4 Regiments Aeronauts
3 Volley Guns
Sergeant
Sauceror

I was worried about 3 things:
. The amount of shooting. I wanted to close this down early.
. The Hammer of Measured Force. I wanted to avoid this with my Mincers.
. The Aeronauts. Because they are sick and broken.

Andrew deployed with his combat forces heavily on my left, clearly aiming to make a bee line for my territory, and with his shooters centre and right with their flank protected by the cavalry.

I deployed a one Mincer Regiment on my left to back up in face of the foe and try to stop them redeploying into the centre. My main combat force headed towards the gun line, led by the Butchers while all 4 Fleabag regiments went far out on my right flank.

Andrew’s shooting was rather disappointing, from his perspective and I quickly routed the Rifles and cavalry. Fu’King Disaster routed one Volley Gun and then sacrificed himself to delay an Aeronaut regiment while Trolls finished off the other 2 Guns.

Andrew turned his combat forces to face my oncoming units, but luck was with me as I managed to mangle his army while also scoring maximum tournament points for a 24:8 win.

THE RECKONING

After my initial disaster, I managed to turn it round and ended up in 6th place.

Andy with his Kingdoms of Men enjoyed 3 wins and ended up with a magnificent 3rd place.

There are 2 possible interpretations of this result:

  1. Kingdoms of Men are over-powered and should be nerfed.
  2. Andy is a good player who gets the best out of an under-powered faction.

The international view seems to be that Kingdoms of Men is not over-powered which means that the second interpretation must be correct.

Thanks to Ed for running the event and to all of pour opponents.

ARMY PICTURES










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