Benelux Clash III Warhammer Underworlds tournament

 So past weekend we found ourselves back in the outskirts of Rotterdam, Alblasserdam, for the third edition of the Benelux Clash.

 

 And this time there was an actual Golden Ticket on the line.  Not something I worry about of winning, but one never knows...

 

Okay, so entry fee was once again pretty steep for a niche game, my only personal gripe being they use a ticketing service website which forces you to pay even extra just for using it, totalling 36.00 euro with lucnh.  But compared to last year, the Belgian player in the organisation said the price support would be upped, so let's see if it is worth it... 

So, let's pick a warband and a deck, and I opted for my Thorns of the Briar Queen, together with the "Passive Aggressive" deck I brewed for them, and which was featured here on Critical Focus Channel.

I did make two minor changes though, the first being Mats's suggestion of changing Rumblings for Damned if you Do, because I *need* to attack a full one time in the game for Bruised, and I have the Warscroll ability to re-roll the whole attack if needed.  The second I chenged out was replacing Ploymaster, which can be unreliable, for Alone in the Dark, for reasons afterwards I don't get why I did that.

 

Luckily, the recent update didn't really influence my deck nor my warband, so I can definilty live with that, as I didn't have time to give the deck a go for it's money and will have to cope "on the fly" and learn to play it during the tournament itself.

 

The first game immediatly saw me paired against two times Top-8 finisher at the World Championships Jan-Willem with Zarbag's Gitz (who as reserve player alternated with Valentin who played the Knives of the Crone), so this was going to be a slaughter from the get go.  Yet the dice gods smiled on me, making every save and almost every Overrun, resulting in a suprise 19-16 victory with this band of tablecloths I never played before, and an untried deck... wot???

 

For the second game I faced my feared "red match up" to use team tournament terminology, with the Grymwatch in the hands of Joep.  There isn't much I can do against the warband, as they have the same numbers but they do come back, and a logical 19-10 defeat was on the boards.

 

It was then time for lunch, with hamburgers and fries.  It did seem they took my only point of critique to heart though from last year, and now there where ample fries.  To many actually, but a Belgian and his fries...

 

We also got to vote for the best painted warbands, and here is a short overview of the warbands (or at least most of them). 

 

In the third game I faced the eventual winner of the event, Kevin and his Emberwatch.  I made a serious play mistake in the end of the second round, forgetting to pull Varclav one back with Weary Thread which would have scored me Alone in the Dark, and might have made all the difference as I went under 13-10.  I also learned for myself that if I play a warband that isn't "my army" I tend to have just that little more investment mentally in them, and that slight slip of focus led to the playmistake as I wasn't paying that much attention to which ghost could do what and when.  Lessons learned, I'll just stick to Idoneth and Slaanesh warbands I guess for events...

 

Still angry with myself for the mistake, I faced Peter and his Grandfather's Gardeners in the fourth round, another pair up I didn't really fancy with his many bodies and regeneration.  I was still a bit "out of my focus" due to the events of the previous game, and went down 14-12 against the followers of Nurgle.

 

The cut was made then for the top-4, which as a result with only a single win and three losses didn't make by far, lingering in 7th place.  Unfortunatly the two polish players needed to leave at this point, which was a pity as I would have loved playing them, and the new pairing meant the previous rounds where "wiped clean".

 

Now back in focus and out to score wins in at least my two remaining games, I faced Peter again and a rematch against the Gardeners was on the board, this time ending in a 16-13 victory for the Thorns.

  

That brought us to the final game against the german player Maximilian (who won Best Sportsmanship) and his Gorechosen of Dromm.  My defence rolls went totally south, and every strike took down a ghost, but I managed to pull off a very close win in the end thanks to Alone in the Dark (it tried to redeem itself for earlier I guess) and took me to a 12-11 win.

 

So, that meant in the end I came out in 5th place, leading the "second bracket" with 3-3 and a Glory Difference of -8, the placing decider if Best Coast Pairings is used, yielding me another set of the promotional art cards and the raise / universal acryclic tokens, the latter always handy for certain.

 

The event was eventually won by Kevin and the Emberwatch, who beat Valentin in the final, and grabbed the Golden Ticket, well done!  

 

For myself, the above conclusion is taken back home to the brewing pot to consider in future deck builds, but expect on events to see the Razors come out again to play.  It is just something with infiltrating Aelves that rocks my boat in a good way I guess.

 

It was a fun day, and 6 more games I managed to play this year is always a fun thing, so onwards to the next edition of Benelux Clash next year I'd say!  And compared to last year, where I played 5 out of the 6 games against my regular group, now at least I faced 4 opponents from "across the borders"...