TSA Escalation League 2025

For Fish and Empress, may Sigmar protect her wet clam!

 

So, an Escalation League for the The Old World?  That sounds like a perfect venue to get those "correctly based" forces ready this year.

 

So I signed up last november when it was announced, and decided to go in there with my Empire.

The goal is to start small and even unpainted, slowly building up your forces as you go and giving them some more paint.  By the end of the League as such, one should have ideally a fully painted, full game points worth army.  The downside is, I will have to play with unpainted models at some point as social life and work don't allow for intense day long paint sessions.

  

Having nothing painted of the force, and doubting whether to take Empire or Wood Elves, I opened a poll in the TSA whatsapp group for the League and let the people decide, so it ended up as such with a Marienburger infantry heavy force.  That means, first items on the shopping list are Warlord Games Italian Wars landsknechts, as that is a nice and cheap way to bulk out the force core, carrying both halberds and handguns.  For the colour scheme, I'm going for yellow (beige) clothing with red and blue detailing, and of course at one point a tank will be inserted into the force.  Because just bloody cool!

The plan for cavalry was only light skirmishing cavalry though, like Pistoliers, as I can't see the merchant force having religious knightly orders.  Further variation will come in the form of some "off race" units to counts as, like Halflings, to give a more ragtag feel of an army bought for battle instead of trained.

So, let's look at the progress over the course of the League!

 

For the starting 500 points of the League, I went for mostly the bulk of the units I want to expand on initially.  This means just troops without command, whom will be added as soon as the extra points for the second round come in, namely at least 150 points for the month + any bonuses gained in january.  There is also some sort of points exchange system in the League, but I decided from the get go not to use this in order to keep playing with the core.  So making good use of Warlord Games Italian Wars range for cheap Landsknecht models, the bulk was build, as well as an old wizard model to lead for now.

 

And as pairings are made at the beginning of the League, to allow easier planning for having the battles played, I will be facing the following armies in sequence:

 

Round 1 - Jason - Empire of Man

Round 2 - Patrick - Orcs & Goblins Tribes

Round 3 - Dundie - Wolves of the Sea

Round 4 - Kristof A - Tomb Kings Royal Host

Round 5 - Ortwin - Kingdom of Bretonnia

Round 6 - Bart - Empire of Man

Round 7 - Steven - Beastmen Brayherds

Round 8 - Antonio - High Elf Realms

Round 1 - January

The army - 494 / 500 points

Remaining points: 6

 

The force as such started out with a level 2 Jade Wizard using the Elementalism school and carrying a Dispel Scroll, Wizard's Staff and Shroud of Iron.

For Core, there where three units: 2x State Missile Troops of 10 models each, one with crossbows and one with handguns.  These where joined by a small block of 12 halberd armed State Troops.

Rounding out the force from the Special section are 12 Greatswords.  And just for the fun of it, I took one of the Endless Spells from AoS I had in my bitzbox to create a vortex should I roll Summon Elemental Spirit on my spells.

 

 

Battle Result: Victory, granting 30 bonus points

Bonus Target Battle: 30 bonus points

100 % Painted: 30 bonus points 

Round 2 - February

The army - 740 / 740

Remaining points: 0

 

Using my fresh and bonus points, the first order of the day where command groups for both the Halberdiers and the Greatsword units.  Furthermore, I added a crazed naked Dwarf chick called Jinxie to the force in the form of a mercenary Doomseeker, who comes with Runic Tattoos of Wrath for an extra attack, making sure she has 3 and potentially 7!  

For the remaining points, I brought in a "true" general for the force, in the form of a Captain, using the classic (and excellent) Imperial Noble figure from Warhammer Quest, armed with a pistol, light armour, Biting Blade and Talisman of Protection.

Battle Result: Defeat, granting 10 bonus points

Bonus Target Battle: 30 bonus points

100 % Painted: 30 bonus points

Round 3 - March

The army - 960 / 960

Remaining points: 0

 

Bring in the cavalry, or at least the light riders of the Pistoliers to have some added mobility to the force with a unit of 6 of them.   A second unit of Handgunners also joins the ranks, while all three missile troop units now got light armour.

Battle Result: Win (forfaiting of my opponent), granting 30 bonus points

Bonus Target Battle: 30 bonus points

100 % Painted: 30 bonus points

 

Round 4 - April

 

The army - 1195 / 1200

Remaining points: 5

 

Roll out the guns!  As we are now over the 1000 points and can unlock the war machines, we duly did so.  The models are from the Highland Miniatures 3d print range, and adds some serious ranged threat to the force. The final points where spend on The Gleaming Pennant for the Greatswords. 

 

 

Battle Result: Loss (forced to forfeit), granting 0 bonus points

Bonus Target Battle: 0 bonus points

% Painted: 0 bonus points

 

Round 5 - May

 

The army: 1380 points

Remaining points:

 

Time for tanking, as with the points now available (and some magic items reshuffling due to a League rule) the Steam tank has joined the army.  The model, another Highland Miniatures figure, just breathes Marienburg with it's little landship look. Unfortunatly, due to having to forfeit the previous round, the pictured Pistoliers needed to go to war without command, the light armour came off the missile troops, and some tinkering needed to be done in the magic items department.

But unfortunatly I didn't get to play this round either, due to medical issues of a personal, family kind on which I'm not elaborating to much, I was forced to drop out.  One of the things with these Leagues is that you need to schedule your battles a few weeks in advance.  But due to the situation on the homefront, this just wouldn't be possible for a serious period of time.  It wouldn't be fair for my opponents, like with the previous round, to keep them "hostage", then not showing up at the last moment...

 

And so that is it for the Escalation League.  In the end I finished in 11th place, and with a fully painted Empire of Man army of 1380 points above, not to shabby at all!  With additional units already been painted up for round 6, and the options of magical items and banners, it would end around 1650 points in those few months, so indeed not to shabby at all.

 

Only a shame it never got to see any decent action on the battlefield on the level of my big war machines, to which I really looked forward using... maybe some left or right pick up game if all gets back on the rails again...