Warhammer Underworlds II @ Dragons Gaming Club

 Tournament report!

So, I went to Halle, near Brussels, to play in the second edition of the local gaming groups event, hosted at Mishra's Playground.

The store has a nice cellar gaming room, and this is where the magic, or the bloodshed depending your type of warband, would be taking place.  Players duly went to inspect the tables to check if all screws where still in place.

 

 

And here the brave gladiators that stepped into the ring today, as 8 warbands (no duplicates, that is great!) went to look for treasure and fame in the Underworlds.

The format was Nemesis, and I took the Elathain's Soulraid mixed with Force of Frost band and deck to the tournament.  Having met (and defeated muahahaha) Johan, the TO, a few weeks ago, I looked forward to this tournament, as it promised to be a fun atmosphere.  Registration went through T3, and we ended up with 8 seats filled out of the 12 available.  And apart from the new non-ranked players, 2 in total, I was the lowest T3 ranked player present with my 25th place (still owing to an event from 2020).  And my goals where simple, end preferably somewhere in the soft belly of the ranking at the end, and add some points to my ever-dwindling T3 total.

My first round paired me against Johan and his Tricefold Discord, so that will be a rematch of his visit to Outpost a few weeks ago.  Please do note, as this is a tournament with a playtime clock, I didn't interrupt the games for mass picture takings as with the casual outings.  The Soulraid started slowly as usual, taking a 3-2 lead, but a strong second turn from Johan brought the Discord to 6-9.  A final offensive though and the Doom and Gloom (how I love that end game objective) netted a 12-9 victory in the end though.

Second round brought me up against Philip and his Blackpowder Buccaneers.  Now with all his little 2 wound critters, I didn't fear this warband to much to be honest, as my aggressive deck and gameplay would be able to mince through them.  This duly happened, round one putting me at 6-2, then going into 9-5 for the second round and clocking a 17-9 after the final round.

Third round, and as we where just back from lunch, was against Ostap and his Domitan's Stormcoven, who shared first place with me at that moment oddly enough.  Oddly as I was there, not so for Ostap who is a solid competitive player.  I don't know what exactly happened during this game, but soon he had lost one of his wizards and Domitan himself, the Soulraid rushing over him like a tidal wave and scoring a 16-8 win, leaving me alone in the lead after a game where while I started with a 3-2 lead becoming a 6-7 behind in round two, the floodgates in points was opened in that last round, cycling through cards to score as much as possible as all his warriors where killed off by the beginning of round 3.  Being focussed on this rather intense game, I did forget to take an in-game picture though, sorry.

So yeah, that led to the inevitable, Ephilim's Pandemonium played by Peter (and so, together with Philip, I had played our full car that came from Antwerp).  The "only" thing I needed to do was not lose, but he started out like a rocket quickly wounding my warband gravely and taking some out resulting in a 3-8 lead for him after round 1.  But in the second round, it happened: with a roll of 3 crits (!!!!) on 3 dice, Elathain took down Ephilim, and while still behind on glory points, the race was on in turn 3 as the Soulraid was now 10-13 behind.  And how close a race that became, as he scored left and right, while I could toss out my big points gatherers, and a 18-18 draw was at the scoreboard in the end!  TO, please take notice we used the participation gifts well in this game!

That meant that although Ostap scored two more glory points in the end then myself, my undefeated track-record in tournament points hauled in the win with 3 victories and a draw. As I could get the first pick as such in the price support pool of 3 Age of Sigmar character blisters, I fittingly took the Tidecaster!

 

 

Now Elathain will retire and the next warband will be brought out to play until the next event I participate in, and my conclusion for the band?  The fish is GOOD, period, it scores on average 5 glory a game without being able to do anything bar just "being there".  I also build a deck and played them hyper aggressively, hence why I took the oldschool starter set board, as this allows to set up really close to the enemy.  The Soulraid for some reason tends to get actually behind in points during their second turn, when they are inspired, but do enough damage to start scoring big in the final turn, and often table their opponent.  This happened in this tournament as well, two times totally wiping the opponent (the Buccaneers and the Stormcoven), while leaving only a sole survivor in the other two matches.

 

Now, there was of course also a best painted segment, and here are all the warbands, including one by a non-participant as Simon, who made the participation tokens, couldn't play due to family affairs. 

So here are all the warbands + 1 that joined in for the painting fun, in no particular order, bar the top 3, who are below.

Simon won the painting competition, before Tim and Victor.

Victor also runs a YouTube channel, which you can check out HERE.

Now to go for a totally different playstyle with the next warband, and switch out some boards probably as I won't need the hyper aggrive ones for that, but that is for the next casual game report!