Crypts of Halle V Warhammer Underworlds tournament report

 Well, today I had to make a choice, as there where TWO Warhammer Underworlds events on the same day...

 

On the one hand, there was the Benelux Clash V in Den Haag, and then there was Crypts of Halle V in Halle.

  

Now, as the title tells, you can see what I picked to attend... but the reasons herefore where that I had my Golden Ticket anyways already and that the TO of Halle, Johan, is a rock in our flemish community and one I consider a friend.  Finally, Halle is 100km less of a drive.  Gas prices and stuff you know...

  

Now, this tournament is the first time organised at this venue, a basement of an actual church, and then it became a matter of which warband to take along.  My Shadeborn to do a throw to the crown?  Elathain for a sure bet at the price support?  Or something completely different?  No, I opted to finally start doing what I said I would do, burn down the Underworlds as I bring the Dawi'Zharr of The Blood of the Bull finally to the table.  Finished only two days before the event, and featured here a few days ago, they went out for the first time.  I took an "extreme" deck with me containing no less then 20 glory, Pillage and Plunder / Emberstone Sentinels with no ambition to go on the offensive and only do a single tippytoe into enemy territory.  The plan is to stay on my half and do my thing, hopefully outscoring others that way.  And it would be the first "get used to the warband" outing as I will take them to the Worlds, because the word of Hashut has to be spread where able after all!

 

What's even more, as a lover of narrative gaming, I donated a small price to be handed out to the highest classified faction Death warband in the final rankings.  Talking price support, there was a very lovely pool, sponsored by Top1Toys in Halle, as well as some free bases and a printed model from Signum Games, the latter to be handed out to the person unfortunatly to end in the last place, donated by Nico from WinckelWorks.

 

And so gathered in the crypt of the church, a very lovely and light venue, with a bar.  We where with 10 players in the end, and the pairings where drawn up to start the conquest of the churchgrounds, and desolate them for the Dark Father!

 

My first round paired me against Thibaud, who played the Looncourt with a deck combination of Emberstone Sentinels and Nexus of Power.  

 

The goblins immediatly took to the fore, but my armour kept me out of harm's way for the most part, and the Dawi'Zharr started to score passively.  While only a single point of difference within the first two rounds, as he had used up all his push and guard tech going into round 3, while I was saving those up, a landslide of glory came my way and the result was a 22-14 victory for the opener today.

 

This brough me to the second game against the Tournament Organiser and reserve player, Johan, with his Headsmen's Curse, running the Blazing Assault and Deadly Synergy deck combination, something that proved a strong showing in previous events this year so far.

 

But he flunked some attack rolls, my armour remained largely undented, and I could quickly take down the Headsman himself.  While Grisk was running havoc in his backlines after appearing there through Hidden Paths (the little bugger scored 6 glory on his own!) the rest kept the ghosts in check, I even only played 2 ploys and 2 upgrades over the whole game, grabbing a 25-6 victory.

 

It was time for lunchbreak then as Thai food was delivered, and the voting of the Best Painted warband.  The paint level this edition was immense, and I included a little video of it right here at the end to have a look for yourself.  I also want to thank the person who gave me that one point here...

 

But then it was time for round three, and I went up against the also undefeated Wim and his Kurnoth's Heralds, and lo and behold, there was Blazing Assault with Countdown to Cataclysm!

 

Now, after Maastricht I had a serious disliking for that combo, but also worked around it in my deck.  Truth to be told, while I lost the game 12 to 24 after being tabled in round 3, it wasn't that one-sided at all.  Wim got priority on all three rounds, and this saved him in round 2 and 3 from either losing the big axe guy, or his leader, as he could strike first with his to many dice 3 damage fighters, and i don't start those subsequent rounds with daemonforge dice.  Had I gained priority, he would have lost a fighter for certain, and the game would have swung the other way, so it was a nice and tense affair with some intresting positioning.

 

That as such brought us to the fourth game, and now I faced Wouter and the Sons of Velmorn, running Deadly Synergies and Hunting Grounds.  So if I kept mostly to my half of the board, his deck would be seriously hampered...

 

Which I did for the most part, and that paid dividends.  The Sons hit hard and have excellent defence, but for the most part I tried to avoid them to score my passive glory cards.  While I lost more models then him, I took away a fairly straightforward 20-11 victory in this round.

 

So somehow, I was still vaguely in the running for the top spot, standing at 3-1 just as Nico, my next opponent, while Wim was at 4-0 at that moment (he would win his final game as well, taking home the win).  But Nico had the one warband I really feared (had I not have my Chaos Dwarfs finished, I would have brought those as well) with The Exiled Dead, running Wrack and Ruin with Countdown to Cataclysm.

 

And the zombie horde did swarm me indeed, as I lost no less then three models in the first round, and it looked like a crushing deafeat was coming.  Yet somehow Imnidrin went above the call of duty. and refused to go down as the sole survivor, still scoring a nice amount of glory in the end.  As a result, I went down 13-18, but more then against the Kurnoth I never had the feeling I stood a real chance in this game.

 

That left me at 3-2 in the end, but the amount of scored glory was the first tiebreaker, and as such I went onto the podium with a 3rd placing.  Not to bad for a warband I never played before and a deck I never tried out, learning the flow of it on the spot during the event.  

 

The tournament ended with the following ranking as a result after a day of battling it out in the churchgrounds:

 

1. Wim - Kurnoth's Heralds: 5-0, 98 scored glory

 

2. Nico - The Exiled Dead: 4-1, 80 scored glory

3. Tomsche - Blood of the Bull: 3-2, 92 scored glory

 

4. Thibaud - Grinkrank's Looncourt: 3-2, 76 scored glory

5. Gert - The Crimson Court: 3-2, 67 scored glory

6. Nicolas - Ylthari's Guardians: 2-3, 72 scored glory

7. Johan - The Headsmen's Curse: 2-3, 68 scored glory

8. Wouter - Sons of Velmorn: 2-3, 65 scored glory

9. Peter - Thanatek's Tithe: 1-4, 66 scored glory

 

10. Lars - The Headsmen's Curse: 1-4, 54 scored glory

  

Best painted was won by Nico with his The Exiled Dead, but it was a very close affair, with no less then 4 warbands ending within a breath of each other as the level, as I said, was incredibly high.

 

But, the day closed down, and I stayed behind to help Johan clean-up and get the materials to his house afterwards, but nit before we took some "healthy" food to recuperate from the day.

 

Did I like the way the Blood of the Bull played?  Certainly, though there might be some minor tweaks I want to do to the deck, perhaps switching out one or two surges, as well as perhaps a single ploy, but I'm not entirely sure I would want to do it.  The problem is, if the cards come in a good flow like in game 2, these get me about 5 to 6 easy glory, but if they come to far apart they are dead cards in hand.  It's a thing I'll need to look in over time, first I'm going to try out some other combinations with them until I find a good middle ground I guess between passive and aggressive, as I like having multiple possible angles of play to keep my opponent on his toes.

 

But now, to go and find some models to add to the trophy ranks after this tournament, and the conquests of the Dawi'Zharr! 

 

 

The Burning of the Underworlds starts now!

 And finally they are done!

 

My Chaos Dwarfs are ready to burn all before them on the fields of Underworlds, like I announced in a small clip last year, but well, you need to paint them as well of course.

 

But as that horde has been taken, the warband that will be going with me to Barcelona for the World Championships is ready for action.  Which of course brought me to the deck I need for them.  My "feeling" on how everyone says you basically need to take Pillage and Plunder for them, is that you don't want them to go on the offensive per se, because of your stagger status.  

 

I brewed over half a dozen potential decks for them, and will be using the coming half year to try out as many of those as possible, on the look-out for something that "glues" perfectly and I enjoy playing (which typically is infiltration aggro).  At the moment I'm a bit torn between combinations, both requiring an aggressive play only on my half of the board.  Okat, it all depends a bit on the placing of the treasure tokens, but you get the idea.  

 

The reason for this is that way I don't really need to focus on the other half of the board, but just "be tanky", wether any intial aggro storms and hopefully outscore my opponent with doing my thing on my half of the board.  The risk in that however is a bad card draw for objectives that might cause a bit of a stalling in the scoring curve.

 

But now that they are ready, this will be the ONLY warband I will be playing for the remainder of the year, to get a perfect feel for piloting the band and warscroll itself, and then search for a good connected deck.

 

And of course, if we win games, a trophy will be added to my Chaos Dwarf slave unit, so Vinted shopping might be happening.  Frequently, if all goes well...

 

Hail Hashut! 

Spaceman

 The latest movie I have been watching, this is a science-fiction drama, produced by Netflix and based on the book Spaceman of Bohemia.

 

And Adam Sandler is actually doing a good "serious" performance in this film...

 

The story is about a czech astronaut who is investigating a strange spacecloud that has appeared behind Jupiter.  But isolation takes his toll, and soon he sees a strange spacespider that telepathically talks to him.  He misses his wife, who actually wants to leave him as he is to focussed on his career, but this information is withheld from him for his sanity by mission command.

 

The spider however is real, and called Hanus by him, the last of his species and who wishes to understand humanity.  When he learns how Jakub lived his life, he is disappointed and leaves, leaving Jakub distressed.  When he asks forgiveness from his wife, Hanus returns and tells him his entire species was wiped out by a parasitic infection, and he wants to go to the cloud to die as time exists simultaneously there.  In the cloud, Jakub concludes he just wants to live his life with his wife, before being rescued, as hanus passes away from his infection.

 

This was actually a really good movie.  Don't expect flashy space action, but a great story and good filmatographic experience on self-reflection.  Truly enjoying this movie, and as I said at the beginning a great toned down performance from Adam Sandler, makes it one of those films that gets you thinking and reflecting yourself.

 

Definitly one of the hidden gems Netflix produced over the years, so it is well worth to go and check it out! 

 

The Haul Report 437: it's not only cold in Felstad!

 Time for another pile of stuff that came in, and this time, it's a big overview!

 

Because I have been focussing on a couple of boxed sets, because living without insane painting deadlines is like not living the hobby life at all lol. 

 

 

The first thing I got this month are some spaceships from Etsy.  I wanted to see how they looked and scaled, as they will be used for my project of "Hashut in Space" that I'm going to start.  Basically Warfleets Dwarf Guilds in my Chaos Dwarf army colours, but I will be kitbashing a force for GrimDark as well based on that idea.

 

And of course, they would need flight stands, so I called my friend Ali and he send it Express to me... 

I also obtained more spaceships through various lots on Vinted, especially older X-Wing edition models for the most part, but also a bit of Armada vessels, again both to be used in Warfleets. 

 

 

On the Frostgrave level, more beasties for the Random Encounter Table fell in the mailbox, as well as the genie for the next session.  Now to all get them painted up in just a few weeks...

 

Something else in space also came up, as I finally got a copy of Settlers of Catan, the Star Trek edition.  Complete second hand, it costed only a fraction of finding a sealed copy these days.  And something else, just because I couldn't resist when I saw that on Vinted...

To round out this weeks haul, I finally obtained the last model needed for the Pit Beasts Regiment of Renown to go with my Chaos Dwarf force.

 

Talking my Chaos Dwarfs, they will be battling it out in the Underworlds in style... and in an arty way as I got my hands on the alternate cards from the OP kit. 

And that's the nice pile of stuff that arrived this period, now to jump in the car and get to a tournament, in the hopes of grabbing some price loot there!

 

A Couple of Cuckoos season 2

 As we keep watching, and catching up, on anime series, it was time for the second season of the romcom A Couple of Cuckoos.

 

Which compared to the 24 episodes of the first season now only numbered 12 though...

 

And to be honest, I liked the original series, but the second one, well, disappointed.  The thing is, in this season they all live together under one roof, and an additional girl comes to join them, set out on Nagi as he was a childhood friend.  Now this all gives just to much A Quitessential Quintuplets vibe (one of the best anime ever made, period!) but, not just up there, if you catch my drift.

 

What follows are various episodes of each of the girl's getting their spotlight moments with Nagi, who is still betrothed to Erika though he tends to go along with them.  In the meantime, it also tries to find out just what love is, as each of them struggles with it in a different way.  But still, the whole engaged boy dating everyone, even if it was sort of arranged, still feels off for this type of series.

 

But, in the end the pieces all fall on their place, as Nagi and Erika choose each other after being confronted with reality and each of the other girls offering their point of view on their relationship.  They realise it might still need to grow, but the opening is left open after all, and to add a bit more to the mix, his own crush also asks him to become her boyfriend...

 

So as I said, a serious Quintuplets vibe on this season, probably riding of the success that series had.  Yet, it just tackles it all a bit uncomfortably, and Nagi comes over as a player more then an innocent guy drawn into the situation.  

 

Not the best thing I've watched this year... 

 

 

Helsmiths of Hashut Tormentor Bombard

 Time to paint the first of (to?) many artillery pieces for my Helsmiths of Hashut force, the Tormentor Bombard.

 

And yes, I have 4 each already of both types, and I doubt I'll stop there...

 

 Because these are the type of war machines that I love, ever since the original Earthshaker cannon from 1994: a big, oversized bombard type cannon.  Surely, it is a lot more refined compared to the old original model, but it still keeps that same aesthetic and effect on the battlefield: the quake being more annoying to the enemy then the actual impact of the shell.  

 

The kit allows to build either this mortar or the missile launcher variant (coming soon as well!) and of course I painted it in the blue and gold colourscheme of my whole (in the process of being repainted) collection.  A process as long as a dwarf patience...

 

But I loved painting it, and it will be fun to add to them to make the Age of Sigmar "grand battery" I used to field in old Warhammer, as I continue to build to at least 5k of Helsmiths for the game.

 

Now to paint the next unit for a 2k tournament in november...