Into the Under-Ekeren III tournament report

 As august kicks of the second part of the summer holidays, it was time for the third edition of Into the Under-Ekeren, the Warhammer Underworlds tournament organised by yours truly at the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp.

 

The first time it is ran with the second edition edition of the game, and the format was Nemesis.

 

But there was more, I requested, and received, a Golden Ticket from Games Workshop for the event, making it the very first official World Cup Qualifier to be ran in the club.

 

Of course, when the actual ticket to give to the winner arrived back in may, I took the liberty of posing with it, that way at least I could hold one of them in my hands for real... 

 

But apart from the Ticket, I obtained some additional price support.  First off, like for all the events I'm running this year (the Spearhead from the beginning of the year, and a Lord of the Rings tournament near the end), all participants received a TSA 2025 d6.  For the player that managed to get the lowest amount of Glory Points during the day, a token organiser was there for future better plans.  The winner obtained, apart from the Ticket, also a warband of the new edition,  the Gardeners, while the Best Painted winner gained a first edition Primal Lair terrain set for more painting pleasures.  The player with the least glorypoints took home a token organiser, while a raffle price along "those that didn't win anything" where some Grymwatch dice.

 

And just in case I needed to play, I opted to take along my Cyreni's Razors, the same band and deck which I played Mines of Alost II with, because it will be amongst the final times I get to play the Idoneth.  Because we all know what is coming!

 

In the end, I did need to join and we where with 10 players vying for the glory.  We had 3 Emberwatch, 1 Grymwatch, 1 Ylthari's Guardians, 1 Da Kunnin' Krew, 1 Borgitz's Beastgrabba's, 1 Grinkrank's Looncourt, 1 Daggok's Stab-Ladz and finally my Cyreni's Razors in the pool.  

 

I also want to thank Mike, Johan and Steven for additional pictures, because as I was playing myself, I didn't get the chance to take to many during the event unfortunatly, toggling between playing and paperwork. 

 

So how did I fare myself?  For the first round, I was paired against Johan and the dreaded Grymwatch.  I managed to ping his leader in his first activation powerstep, get a glory for taking a ghoul down, and give Desperate Rage to Cephanyr.  The squid thundered in and using it actually took down his leader immediatly in my second activation, and my life suddenly was a lot easier.  From then on I didn't come into any problems anymore, and scored a solid 16-22 win.

 

The second round saw me against Joep and the Emberwatch.  Like with Domitan in the days, the plan was to use round 1 to do some damage across his figures to get that Healing Potion out, then start picking his band apart.  I immediatly pinged one with a Hammertide... and then missed every attack.  So doing only a single point of damage over the whole round, I was steamrolled for the game and lost a heavy 22-9, it doesn't help that you can't score nearly anything in the end phases for 2 rounds...

 

Game three saw me face Vincent and Ylthari's Guardians, a warband I don't really fear and I went to my regular battleplan.  Ylthari almost immediatly bit the dust and from then on it was playing on control, trying to score while denying where we can and took along an 18-17 victory.  A bit to close for comfort, but the points where taken.

 

For the fourth round, I faced Maximillian and another band of Emberwatch, and this was bloody frustrating.  I actually managed to table his entire warband (the theory works) but because Wreckers showed up only in round 3 and my Cata counter on 3 by then, lost never the less with 20-18 due to this, otherwise it would have been a win on the tiebreaker.

 

And that brings us to round 5, and yes, more Emberwatch for me again.  Again I stuck to the plan, but as I now had Wreckers in the opening hand, I could quickly score it together with Stay Close in round 1, building a safe lead and take a 20-17 victory home.

 

So this saw me go 3-2 and 9 tournament points, but as the massive defeat from round 2 saw me end lowest of the group of 9 pointers (glory differential was the first ranking tiebreaker, then scored glory) for a 5th place overal.  

 

And that brought us to the various awards to be handed out.  Now as I said, I was busy as hell all day, so I forgot to take the traditional little video of the painted warbands, my appologies, and snatched the winner's warband of our Discord server from Warhammer Underworlds Belgium...  The system used let all players vote on the warbands, handing out 5, 3 and 1 point respectively for their top 3.  In case of ties, the times the 5 points where awarded was the decider, then how many times they received a vote.

 

1. Peter with Borgitz Beastgrabbaz, 25 points, 3 top votes, 7 votes received

 

 

2. Nico with Grinkrank's Looncourt, 24 points, 2 top votes, 8 votes received

3. Patrick with Da Kunnin' Krew, 17 points, 3 top votes, 5 votes received

4. Maximillian with The Emberwatch, 14 points, 1 top vote, 4 votes received

5. Tomsche with Cyreni's Razors, 7 points, 1 top vote, 3 votes received

6. Vincent with Ylthari's Guardians, 2 points, 0 top votes, 2 votes received

7. Johan with The Grymwatch, 1 point, 0 top votes, 1 vote received.

 

Next on the Order of Merit, it was time for the consolidation price of Least Glory Points obtained.  It was actually Peter again on this one, as he scored only a measly 71 glory during the day.  But unless you win the event and best painted, our houserules are no "double price" and as such the player with the second lowest glory amount received the organiser tray, being Vincent.

 

I also run a participation raffle, as I prefer this over sportmanship (if you are acting like an ass, we just throw you out, simple as that), which is also a system I often find silly when multiple players end with the perfect score.  So with the above "no double price" policy, and excluding myself as TO, that meant we had 6 people eligible for the set of Grymwatch dice.  An innocent hand tossed the dice, and it came out on Wouter, who took home the little gift.

 

But then we finally are at the most important of scores, the result of the tournament itself.  The Glory Differential was the first tiebreaker, then scored glory, so here is the result of the day!

 

1. Joep Nijssen - The Emberwatch: 15 points

2. Maximilian Bernhardt - The Emberwatch: 12 points

3. Johan De Ryck - The Grymwatch: 9 points

 

4. Nico van den Winckel - Grinkrank's Looncourt: 9 points

5. Tomsche Murrath - Cyreni's Razors: 9 points

6. Wouter Beckers - The Emberwatch: 6 points

7. Patrick Neven - Da Kunnin' Krew: 6 points

8. Peter Vanden Bossche - Borgitz Beastgrabbas: 5 points

9. Peter van den Broeck - Daggok's Stab-Ladz: 3 points

 

10. Vincent van der Meiren - Ylthari's Guardians: 0 points

 

And that is it, the dust settled on Into the Under-Ekeren III, the Golden Ticket was handed out and now it is time to sit back and relax with a good craft beer, unpack the deck and shelving my loved and great fun Idoneth warband, and prepare mentally for the arrival of the followers of Hashut.

 

Oh, and you know how I always try to couple my smaller game events to the fantasy battle day at our club?  Well this time round we had a "modest" game of 8th being run, so enjoy some eyecandy of that as well!

 

Thanks to all the people present, and until the next event!