Tournament Report: Hammer and Swords V

 And so it came to pass, after years of renovations, corona, baby, toddler, career changes and generally a busy time, I finally returned to the wargame table during the final sunday of october.

And in one go by going out and play a 9th Age tournament, hosted by the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp (whose ranks, if life keeps going like this, I'll be rejoining in 2024 more frequently).

Now, not only is this my first T9A tournament I ever played, it is tout court the first time I played T9A, period.  So with zilch experience in the rules, I have to fall back on my decades of Warhammer Fantasy Battles experience, combined with historical rank and file gaming to try and avoid the last place in the ranking, or at the bare minimum not run into 3 losses of 20-0.

Taking the battle to the enemy, I brought Infernal Dwarves (because of course, what else?), with an army I started building in march due to a series of unforseen circumstances that could be read about on this blog a while back.  So Hashut has risen again, and now let's see how it went... as the tournament ended with 19 players registering and the club's reserve player bringing it to an even 20.

But first things first, here is my army list, clocking off exactly at 3500 points, the army I have been repainting those past months:

370 - Overlord, hand weapon (Hero's Heart), Infernal weapon (Onyx Core), Breath of the Brass Bull

360 - Prophet of Nezibkesh, Adept, Pyromancy, Sceptre of Power, Obsidian Rock

580 - 20 Citadel Guard, Champion, Standard Bearer, Musician, Flaming Standard

320 - 20 Infernal Warriors, Champion, Standard Bearer, Musician, Legion Standard

240 - 30 Vassal Levies, spear and shield, Champion, Standard Bearer, Musician, Their Master's Banner

200 - 20 Vassal Levies, bow

530 - 6 Kadim Incarnates, Champion

335 - 10 Taurukh Enforcers, great weapon

290 - Rocket Battery

275 - Titan Mortar

My first battle is against Kaj Geenen, currently ranked 24th out of 200+ players of T9A in Belgium on T3, and someone I knew from the distant pasts.  Bringing along his Vampire Covenant, including an almost 900 pts Strigoi monstrosity Vampire, this would be a serious "get back into it" challenge... oh well, you have people entering boxing contests having only watched some YouTube, guess I fall in this category as well now...

So off we went, and facing me was a fast Vampire Covenant force with a lot of swift moving ghosts and big beasties... okay, and a heap of aegis saves... oh boy...

 

 

I was taken aback from the go in that his Dire Wolves immediatly ended up in front of my battleline, blocking off the Kadim and the warriors.  Another problem for my force was his "cowboy" unit, a vampire riding a Terrorgheist, whose shriek made short work of my Taurukh Enforcers, but for some reason he needed to even bring in the cavalry to take care of the simple Levies who kept punching FAR above their weight, refusing to give ground.

His spectral cavalry charged the Citadel Guard, but these managed to keep him in check and destroyed the unit, as the other regiments got caught up near my baseline, and this in a scenario where you needed to get forces in your opponents deployment.  One by one this resulted in my forces being overwhelmed, the final points score being 2580 points vs 1710 points and with him scoring the secondary objective a 4-16 defeat was my part.

The second round put me against the Vermin Swarm of Cedric, someone I know for years from the club.  I soon found out that this are NOT Skaven, they don`t run away from battles, they attack with huge ranks... who cares if they are all resilience 2 if you just can't cause break tests... and those two fiendish monsters are disgustingly good, supported by units of warmachines in the jezzails... what the heck hit me here.

In the old days, I wouldn't fear the Skaven one bit as you could grind through them for minimal losses, while this time, with my units stubbornly underperforming on saves agreed compared to his very lucky saves on 6's (once, he rolled 6 out of 7 saves), I still didn't seem able to mince through them.

His monsters kept churning through my regiments for barely any loss, and in the end my Overlord was the only valiant one still standing against that horde, netting him 3230 points versus my measly 950 and as I had many more scoring units, the Capture the Flag secondary objective was his as well, resulting in a 1-19 defeat.

This put me on the bottom table against Heikki, another well known face, and his Empire of Sonnstahl.  With the Red Lantern on the line (and actually price support), we did decide though to play for it, my personal honour being at stake here.  And for once my units did what was required of them, my Titan Mortar blew a hole in his crossbows, causing them to leg it of the table dragging his wizard along.  

 

 

My severly underperforming Enforcers smashed into his knights with general, destroying the whole unit ad causing the general to run off the table... and this was by turn 2.  While the Enforcers where subsequently decimated by a Helblaster, they finally did their job, as my Kadim churned through a massive block of 30 flagellants.

His force totally shattered, my main three combat units just lingered around the central objective that needed to be controlled, gathering the tokens.  Only the Citadel Guard saw some action with a decimated knight unit (courtesy of the Mortar as well) together with a wounded chariot crashed into them, but at the loss of only two troops eliminated both units.

The result was that he got tabled, and 3693 points where mine versus his 1115 points, and with the secondary objective scored gained me an honour saving 20-0 victory.

So clocking off with 2 losses, luckily not with a tabled 0-20 result (albeit the second game came very close to that) and 1 tabled 20-0 win, I think I didn't do to bad for a debut in a game system.  I learned some valuable lessons though, like a big force is not needed, better to focus on some smaller, more elite ones, and always take a deamonsmith along for aiding the warmachines. 

 

This last result gave a serious boost though in my final result, going up from the 19th place I lingered in at the start of the final round, to an in the end respectable 13th out of 20 players with 25 points (out of the potential 60 to be scored).

But it was a fun day, and the result a bit down the line of expectations after all, can`t expect to gun for the top places seeing where I stood at the start of the day.  The event did get me ranked now in the T3 tables, entering the Belgium ranking this week at spot 63 with 3.80 points.

Finally, here is a short clip of the award ceremony, and below that Jasper's best painted winning Saurian Ancients army.

 

This tastes like more for sure!