Warhammer The Old World tournament: Border Patrol at Ekeren

 Awright, so after all I do get an The Old World tournament in this year, and it is a fun little small force affair.

 

Border Patrol at Ekeren is a tournament for small 500 point forces, with some additional rules in the rulespack involving army building to prevent min / max builds a bit.

 

Characters and units may not exceed 150 points, only a single character with 25 points of magic items can be taken, 0-X units per 1000 points become 0-1 choices, you need two units minimum not counting swarms or war machines etc, max 2 Core of the same choice and 1 time for each special or rare unit... those are the biggest things in a nutshell.

 

And that required some serious puzzling, as the Chaos Dwarfs aren't cheap, and as such I could only bring small units of around 10 Dawi Zharr every time to remain within the points limit.   

 

The Army

 

 

Rothgar Obsidianbeard, Infernal Seneschal with  Darkforged Weapon, Heavy Armour, Shield and Hellshard 

 

11 Infernal Guards with Heavy Armour, Shield and full command group

 

10 Infernal Guards with Fireglaives, Heavy Armour

 

12 Hobgoblin Cutthroats with Shield, Champion and Standard Bearer

 

10 Sneaky Gitz

 

So that made up exactly 500 points, and got me 4 units, though limited rank bonusses due to well, expensive Dawi Zharr.  The plan will be to get the combat unit with the Seneschal up fast, supported by the Hobgoblins.  In the meantime the Gitz and the Fireglaives will need to harass and knock off hopefully one or two ranks from the opposing main combat unit before the warriors hit home... 

 

Now to see how the mighty Dawi Zharr would fare on this 4 round event!

 

Game 1 vs Dwarfs

 

We kicked off the tournament with a kin war against our misguided brethren, commanded by Novogord, who is actually one of my YouTube followers, how cool is that!  The battle went rather one sided due to an heroic result of my Hobgoblins, they where charged on the flank by his scouts, both sides missed all their attacks, and somehow he managed to fail his break test to leg it off the table, collapsing his flank.

 

This resulted in the Hobgoblins managing to flank his solid combat units that my warriors where tanking at the time, and the game ended in a 20-0 victory for the Chaos Dwarfs as the Dwarfs where eliminated and all objectives taken by the forces of Hashut. 

 

Game 2 vs Orcs and Goblins

 

For my second game, I faced Tsjagatai and his horde of Orcs and Goblins.  It was as one sided though as the first game, except it went in the other direction this time, my warriors and lord holding on to prevent being tabled myself this time.

 

 I missed most of my attacks, while he barely missed anything, and as my armour refused to help me, it quickly went downhill and a 2-18 defeat was my part. 

 

Game 3 vs Bretonnia

 

In the third game I stood across the plains to face TankyGabri and his Bretonnians.  I managed to "hold" his lance with my warriors after they charged over my Hobgoblins, my Sneaky Gitz and Fireglaives handling his infantry.  

 

 

When the Fireglaives then managed to charge his lance in the back arc, and a hefty -6 CR was his part destroying the last remnant of his army, the battle was won and a 19-1 victory was obtained. 

 

Game 4 vs Beastmen

 

Facing the TO in the last round, this was a bit of a special case battle.  We came in a situation that only got resolved hours later after flicking through rulebooks and all, and Steven was also the judge so he was called away at times.  

 

 

In the end, the battle ended in a draw as time just ran out.  We also decided to do some tinkering with this final scenario should it be included in smaller events again in the future after the feedback of the players.

 

The Result 

 

Well, incredibly, I somehow managed to end up in second place, in part due to the huge amount of points I raked in by tabling my opponents in my two wins.  This all put me on 2 / 1 / 1 with 66 points, including 15 bonus points for having the force painted, paid on time etc etc, ending only behind the Orcs and Goblin player that totally deleted me in round 2.

 

In third place came ChaosLord with his Chaos Warriors force, and so the trophies had all been handed out to the brave men, women and indistinguishable creatures brave enough to patrol the borders of Ekeren, in a very cosy and fun event.

 

Onwards to edition 2, these are good fun to get a feel in for some Old World (before the event, I had played a mighty 3 games, 2 of which where 500pts test games for the scenario's), as I wasn't by far the only one present that used this event to have a go at the rules and all.

 

Big thumbs up to Steven to organise this event, and until next edition!