Warhammer Underworlds Battle Report: The Hunt Begins!

 Time for the first weekly gathering post the Halle tournament, so that means a first outing for the warband I want to run at Into the Under-Ekeren should I be able to play there as the TO.

And that is the Kurnothi warband of Skaeth's Wild Hunt with their Rivals deck, opposed on their kick-off by

A first look at their deck and abilities already learned these are not all-out aggressive warriors like Elathain was (in part due to the Nemesis deck I'd build for those), but rather what I call semi-aggressive.  Surely they must hunt down the enemy, but this is not their only scoring Glory route.  Cry of the Wild for example scores is Karthaen survives and blew his horn, while Hunt's End either let's you take out a 4+ wounds opponent OR hold three objectives, so both the hornblower and the archer can score while being held at the back.

 

And I also realised this is my third aelfic warband in a row I'm fielding...

 

 

So setting out to the Outpost, we had 5 players this evening and I sat down for the first game against Wouter and his Grinkrak's Looncourt.  Having learned my lessons from previous games, I immediatly rushed Skolko and Pronk with their catapult, taking it out by combined attacks from Althaen and Sheoch.  First blood to the Kurnothi!

But Sheoth in turn was being overwhelmed and taken down by the little grot's in return.  I did learn already that the first part of their Inspire mechanic, being charge, is easy enough, but the the staying alive until the end of the activation phase on the other hand is more difficult.  And so round one ended with a 2-2 on the scoreboard.

The second round began with the now inspired Althaen being taken down by a charging Grib da Wonky Lance, soon followed by Lighaen.  This wasn't going well at all as my band was now down to two members and a lot of grot's opposed me still.  As a result, I was 8-5 behind in this second round.

Karthaen started to infiltrate the enemy's territory, taking one of the goblins out with his Vicious Darts equipped spell attack.  being retaliated, he saved himself by defending with two criticals against an attack that rolled two criticals itself, and this was what I needed to pull it off after all for this game.

Skaeth charged Grinkrak himself, and using his Slashing Shield one shotted the grot leader.  Karthean in the meantime had moved himself onto the sole objective in the grot's territory, allowing me to score the objective where I needed to grab all objectives in a territory, and netting me 2 glory points.

As a result, the comeback was a success, with the Wild Hunt winning their debut game with 14 to 9, something neither me nor onlookers expected after being down to two fighters so quickly.  I guess the chance to combine objective captures and enemy kills of Skaeth's deck proved his worth here.

For the second game, I faced Peter (we have two Peter's in the group, this is not the one I faced lately with Ephilim) whom I actually played for the first time.  He had brought the Sons of Velmorn to the table with the Paths of Profecy rivals deck.  This also means that King Velmorn, since the FAQ, would be constantly supporting the three Grave Guard.

Peter longboarded the battlefield, and as I knew neither how my opponent plays, nor what his warband or deck actually does bar vaguely, I set up rather to the back myself, which proved to be a mistake.  The first round as such didn't see any action bar an arrow charge from Althaen to inspire her, and some objective capture cards on both sides.  Never the less, the Wild Hunt led this turn with 3-2 for some reason.

The second round saw Sheoth charge and wound dir Jedran Falseborn, but he was struck down in return.  I get it, he is the Fuirann of this warband: charge and die.  Concentrating on the big guy, Althaen also wounded him, leaving him open for a strike by Skaeth, who received the +2 movement upgrade.

 

 

He charged in, but the big dead guy managed to defend succesfully and as a result  I now trailed 3 to 6, as I couldn't score a single card.  Had I taken down Falseborn, I would have score a heap of things, but alas, this is Underworlds.

The third turn began with Skaeth taking down Falseborn, but he himself was then taken down by the combined assaults of the Graveguard.  It was down to Karthaen, but he failed to cast his spells for some glory and recycling for fresh objectives, and I was out of hitting power and out of scoreable objectives, so my game ended there.   I could only hope to take down one or two Graveguard and pray for a tie.

When the first Graveguard healed himself back up, this plan went down the window as well, and Althaen failed to push King Velmorn of the objective to prevent him scoring another card I knew Peter had as he mistakingly tried to score it the first round, but it counted all surviving fighters.  had I pushed him off, he wouldn't be able to use it after my activation and it would be a void card.

Peter then scored some more objective related cards, and the final result was a 9-6 victory for the forces of Death.

So the non-aggressive deployment bit me, as I should have rushed in the first turn to score some glory, but more over to get some of them Inspired faster and maybe score some points left or right.  Lessons learned, as while this Rivals deck does allow for some non-aggro scoring compared to Morgwaith and Elathain before them, they still have a failry aggressive approach to them.  

Well, I still have time to get the hang of them after all... and 1 up 1 down out of the gates is an okay result.