Warhammer Underworlds tournament report: Into the Under-Ekeren II

 Oh my, I actually organised a second Warhammer Underworlds tournament at the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp this year, taking place on saturday 23/11.

The reason?  Because on the one hand, it is great fun to run these small scale events, and it keeps it worth of running a premium account on T3.

On the other hand, I still had a lot of 2024 Underworlds participation tokens left from the june tournament, so instead of tossing them away when the year ran out, I could divide them some more.

Price support was less this time round (and as such, a very low entry fee of only 3 euro to cover my costs basically), due to last time I had a lot of stuff from a lot I bought and used that for the price support as well.  Maybe I should start looking for a store intrested in sponsoring possible 2025 events?  Anyways, the Best Painted force would take along some premium sleeves, while the winner received a sealed The Exiled Dead box. 

But of course, there is also the fact that Underworlds 2.0 is upon us, but I decided to keep the event still at the 1.0 version as a wave-off for a system that was great fun for about 7 years.  Take care Underworlds 1.0, let's see in the future what your successor brings!  

 

Also, thanks to both Peter's for the additional pictures to be used in this little battle report.

But all that being said, 5 players came to fight it out in 4 rounds of Warhammer Underworlds, and this time it was the Nemesis format.  I myself decided to wave out the edition with The Dread Pageant, coupled to the Rimewyrm's Bite deck.  And for this I am trying something new over on my YouTube channel btw, over the coming weeks I'm going to post FULL taped game reports compared to the usual slideshow reports.

 

Thanks also to my club, Tin Soldiers of Antwerp, to provide some additional price support trophies to go along The Exiled Dead for the winner and the Ironsoul sleeves for the Best Painted.

 

 

The participation list:

Peter 1: Lady Harrow's Mournflight with Malevolent Masks

Peter 2: Gnarlspirit Pack with Tooth and Claw

Nico: The Headsman's Curse with Tooth and Claw

Wouter: Xandire's Truthseekers with Daring Delvers

Tomsche: The Dread Pageant with Rimewyrm's Bite

 

That means that the full Belgian "top 3" over on Table Top Tournaments event tracker, or T3 for short, was present, the highest ending one of them in all probability ending the year on the top spot for 2024.

The funny thing is, no-one took one of the latests warbands in the game, and all the warbands where 4-member warbands, so deployment actually became a thing as at times (like me in the game against Xandire) you didn't really wanted to go first in deployment in order to be able to "counter place" your models.

 

Due to the rather low turn out (kind of expected though), I decided to run a League format, everyone playing everyone once, with me taking the last round on bye in order to start preparing the paperwork for the end results.

Round 1

 

In the first round, Nico took the bye, so we had the following match-ups.

 

Peter 2 took on Wouter, resulting in a 15-9 win for the Gnarlspirit Pack.

Peter 1 defeated Tomsche with 19-18, which happened due to the Lady's scoring their Dominion of Death first before I could score my end game objectives, grabbing Peter the win even though I managed to table the banshees.

 

 

Round 2

 

The bye was this time for Peter 2, so the others sat down for their games.

In the second round, Nico took on Peter 1, suffering an 8-20 defeat in a battle of the angry tablelinnen.

 

 

I myself "stole" the game against Wouter, winning 8-11 only after scoring a whopping 8 glory in the final round, not being able to kill something as I aimed for my inspire condition in the full first two rounds.  But a solid end phase of scoring 3 cards of 2 glory (I have 4.5 of them in the deck, one can become 2 glory if my Puncturing Ice Shards did the finishing damage).

 

 

 

Round 3

With Wouter sitting this one out, we first had our lunchbreak, grabbing some sandwiches.  Glass ones for some, but details, as Nico and Peter 1 tried a bit of Embergard.  

 

 

 

 

In the meantime I gathered three judges, people I know spend a lot of time in the hobby and painting.  One came from the The Old World group, one from the 8th Edition big game that was taking place, and one from the Kings of War group having their big battle, to cast their votes on their 1st and 2nd best painted warband.  I always left of course to not be able to influence any decisions or steer any questions as they sat by the models on a one by one basis to not be able to influence each other and cast their votes.

But back to the table, the two Peter's faced off, with Peter 1 taking a 19-10 victory.  Those banshees sure rake in the glory!

I faced Nico, and not to be outdone by Lady Harrow grabbed a 13-20 victory, actually managing to score my full objective deck.

 

 

Round 4

Peter 1 now sitting out the round, it was the round that might decide the whole tournament placing.

Nico and Wouter squared off, with Wouter taking a 16-13 win against the executioner.

 

In the other game, I defeated Peter 2 with 20-12, as my deck really kicked off in the first half of the game resulting in an unsurmountable lead for the spiritwalkers.

 

 

 

Round 5

So, I had the bye now in order to start doing the maths, but could say at the beginning it would have to be very strange for Peter 1 not to be victorious.  If he drew or win, he would be certain, but even if he lost, if he scored 12 glory he would take home victory from Into the Under-Ekeren II, as I stood on 69 glory after 4 games, and he had scored already 58 in three games.  But Wouter's band doesn't bleed glory easily...

Nico and Peter 2 played for the third place, as did Wouter in his game, as they could all end up at three points in the end and scored glory was the agreed decider beforehand for the event.  Nico defeated Peter 2 with 18-10, which would lift him over Peter for one in the ranking.

But how did the other game go?  Wouter was defeated by Peter 1, but as his Xandire's only scored 12 glory against the 16 of the bansees, he wouldn't be able to go over the above players, for which he would needed to have scored at least 18 glory this round.  

 

And the sad face of Peter 1, as he can longboard for the very last time...

And so the dust settled for the event, and it was time for the awards ceremony, the one thing I really hate doing at things that I run... 

First, the painting results:

In shared last place came Wouter and Peter 1, neither of them having received a vote from the jury.  Third place went to Peter 2, who received a single second best vote.  Nico took the silver, receiving a second best and a best of all vote from the judges.  But due to some strange disturbances in the Realms of Chaos, my Dread Pageant actually took the win, receiving 2 best of all and a single second best vote... da frakk???  After Elathain coming third on the Benelux Clash II, is my "Kevin Dallimore style" of heavily contrasting little lines making a resurgence after 20 odd years in a world of blending, airbrushing and non metallic metals?  

 

 

But then we got to the real deal, the result of the tournament itself of course.

In fifth place, Wouter ended with 3 points and 46 scored glory

In fourth place, Peter 2 ended with 3 points and 47 scored glory

Taking bronze, Nico also had 3 points, but his total amassed glory of 52 put him on the podium

Second place was mine, scoring 9 points and a total of, very Slaanesh approved, 69 glory

But the undisputed winner, with a streak of all of his 4 games won and a hefty 74 glory scored, was Peter 1 with his Lady Harrow's Mournflight!  Well done matey!

And so ends our little last huzzaaah for the Underworlds first edition, with a little cosy tournament and now we can start tinkering again for the second edition of the game.

Because in january 2025, it is already the first tournament for the new edition, as we will be gathering in Aalst for "The Mines of Alost", legacy bands allowed in the Rivals format.  And thanks to the votes of my loving community, I am going there with... Garrek's Reavers!