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...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Empire of Man Marienburg army: The Lady's Strong Rods

As I told about in a post a short while ago, I had to forfeit the Escalation league this year for reasons of a private matter.

 

Nothing club related, but planning to far ahead just isn't feasible at the moment for friday evenings.

 

None the less, I will be continuing to paint on the Empire Marienburg army, and the first "next" unit to be completed are these Spearmen.  A small unit, but with full command, their main job is to guard the artillery pieces at the back of the field.

 

Nothing to fancy, the unit is converted from the long pike carrying warlord troops from their Pike and Shotte range, but shortening their poles to a more spearsized length.

 

Now to paint something in totally different colours first, before returning to this army!

TSA Escalation League 2025: The Clambustier

 In a world dominated by magic and monsters, bring a tank!

 

 

For the 5th round of the Escalation League, which will put me against the Bretonnians, I painted up the next war machine for the force: a Steam Tank!

 

The model, a 3D printed design by Highland Miniatures in their Sunland line, is a great little resemblance of the famed Marienburg Landship by Forge World back in the day.  With the mast and such, it fitted perfectly in my portcity army.

 

The idea is to use it as the armoured counterpuncher to my opponents attacks, because well, Steam Tanks are "tanky", no pun intended, with their high toughness and wounds.  This will hopefully allow me for my infantry to move around it and go get any objectives required to be taken.

 

BTW, the name is not a reference to the Montgolfier, but to the fact that on the hand hand 17th century french had Filibustier troops, and the Clam refering to my tongue-in-cheek reference to the Lady Margaritta of Marienburg.

 

Now to start preparing for the next round, which will be far less flashy troop choices though...

TSA Escalation League 2025: The Golden Flute

 The second war machine to finally join the line-up has been completed!

 

Now that we broke the 1000 points barrier in the Escalation League, I finally can take big guns, and after the Mortar I showed earlier, a Great Cannon is added as well to the line.

 

 

The model is a 3D print from the Highland Miniatures Sunland line, and comes with those nicely thematic fishes on top of the barrel as well.  

 

 

I painted it up in the same colour as my Marienburg uniforms for that nice solid, unified look of the army.  Or at least a very colourfull bunch on the tabletop now.

 

 

It will be making it's debut in the battle against the Tomb Kings for the 4th round of the League coming friday, hopefully smashing some of the bigger thingies up instead of blowing itself to high heaven...

 

Now to get started on the round 5 entries...

TSA Escalation League 2025: The Lady's Wide Hole

 Round 4 and finally we are going above the 1000 points mark, meaning war machines come into play for the Empire of Man army of Marienburg.

 

Which of course I duly added for this month, starting with this lovely bloke.

 

 

From the Sunland range by Highland Miniatures, the Mortar is a personal favorite of mine ever since the days of Warhammer Fantasy Battles 4th edition, aka back when I started playing in 1994.

 

Making use of the large blast template, and albeit a low strength "not under the hole", this still can wreak terrible havoc against the now guaranteed units of 20+ that are starting to be formed.  Just one lucky lobbed shell can turn the entire tide of battle as a result, providing the thing doesn't blow itself up on the first round of course.

 

 

Next to add, more big guns, so check back soon! 

 

 

TSA Escalation League 2025: Whiteplumes Handgunner regiment

 The second 10 man regiment of Hangunners have joined the roster, as this will be a fresh unit for my League force.

While the first was dubbed the blackplumes, because, well, black plumes on their hats, I did do this second regiment with white plumes instead.

That way, they are easier to distinguish from each other on the battlefield.  Even though it would be rare at the moment to deploy them side by side, counting on them to anchor both my flanks with some gunpowder deterrent, they will become detachments in the future.  And then it might be they get in the same combat as their parent units engage, so having a visual difference prevents discussions of which model belongs to which unit for combat results and break tests.

So that brings the number of missile troops up some more, and a solid pew-pew core to now start building the rest of the forces around!

TSA Escalation League 2025: Pistoliers

 Time for some much needed mobility to the budding army of Marienburg, in the form of a unit of Pistoliers.

 

Fast and agile on the battlefield, they harass enemy flanks while firing their pistols at them. 

Like most of the Empire army I'm building for the Escalation League, they are Warlord Games models, hailing from their Pike and Shotte range, the Cavalry box in this case.  The box contained 12 models so I started with an initial 6 for the round, maybe expanding on them in the campaign's future.

 

Staying true with the Yellow / blue / red Marienburg scheme, I did build the standard as well, even though in this iteration of the game they can only take a champion and a musician, but it just looks better.  Rule of cool you know.

 

 

And so that is another 110 points added to the force, and one of two units that will be expanding the force.  The others that came for that round was a second unit of Handgunners, who will be featured in their own post soon.

 

 

Now to start building the cannons...

TSA Escalation League 2025: Round 3 - Raiders of the Lost at Sea

 Being a port city, Marienburg is often the target of enemy raiders.

Giacommo stood on the beach, together with his trusted wizard advisor. Intelligence reports had learned that a small raiding party of Marauders was under way to the shores of Marienburg, ready to pillage and plunder.  But the army stood ready in an effort to repel the attack... and stood... and waited.  They waited for days, but the raiding party never came, seemingly having diverted their intrests to another port.  A big crab scuttled by on the sandy beach, as Giacommo gave the order to return to the city walls... and for his personal cook to fire up the pot for some good crab-soup.

 

 

And in this third round of the campaign, I faced Dundie and his Wolves of the Sea.

With my force now standing at 960 points, two more regiments have joined the ranks.  A unit of 6 Pistoliers with full command, and an additional unit of Handgunners bulk out the numbers and add some mobility to the force.  In addition, all three missile units now have light armour, a bit of a useless investment but it will allow me to "exchange" those points in future games for something totally different that has been planned...

 

 

The Raiders had won their first two games, and had a 5 point bonus compared to my Empire force, so that was as good as equal terms.  But then, a few days before the battle, my opponent needed to forfait the game and I scored the maximum possible points as a result.

 

As such, nothing much to show bar the two units that joined the ranks, and mark a victory with maximum points as well as a 100% painted score on the excel table for the League.

The result is that for the next month, I have 1200 points at my disposal, and now the options for war machines have become available as I am over that 1000 point barrier.  So for next round, the guns will be rolled out!

 

Now just to choose which ones...

Arcane Journal: Empire of Man

 Arcane Journal's are like smaller scale army books for The Old World, as they supplement the relevant army list book for your force.

 

 

So inside you won't find the full army list, as the Grand Army or "general" rules are in Forces of Fantasy / Ravening Hordes relevantly, but fluff out your army of choice instead with extra rules.

 

The Journal comes as a 48-page soft cover book, following the line of high quality publications with gorgeous art and pictures as usual from Games Workshop.  You can say a lot about their craze to sell books, but the products ARE top notch in design.

 

 

The first part of the book contains all the lore for the era of the The Old World, with the Empire still fractioned after the times of the Three Emperors, and it's Elector Counts still vying for dominance.  Yet it also shows how the nation comes together as one against a common enemy like a waaagh or a Chaos invasion.  This also shows with a historical scenario right before we get the lovely picture pages.

 

The second part of the book is the "juicy stuff", first with two specialised Armies of Infamy: The City-State of Nuln list which is all about blackpowder weapons, and the Knightly Orders which center around (malleable) knightly forces of heavy armed knights.

 

 

Following these two army lists, we get the new special characters, including the Grandmaster of the Knights Panther inspired in the early 90s artwork by John Blanche, the new units to use in your army like Road Wardens, and the list of Empire of Man specific magical items.

 

So a nice little addition to your forces of the Empire, and while non of the Infamy lists are really overpowered, they add a good flavour to a thematic army, especially to try out in some casual plays.

TSA Escalation League 2025: Round 2 - The Oldest of Enemies

 Time for the second round of the campaign, and my Marienburg army faced their oldest of enemies, the Orcs and Goblins Tribes.

As Patrick had lost his first game, this meant I had a very slight points bonus compared to the Greenskins, and my "mighty" force of 740 points now had been reinforced with a new general, commands for the rank and file units, and a crazed Doomseeker joining the fray.

Opposing me, the greenskins brought the following horde to the battle, and I had a 35 points bonus as my opponent Patrick had drawn on bonus objectives in the first round, so numbered only 705 points.  The green horde at the other side of the table contained a General on Boar and his righthand, a level 3 Goblin Shaman.  A big block of Night Goblins harbouring 3 Fanatics, a block of Orc Archers, 5 Boar Riders and 5 Black Orcs made up the ranks of the army.

 

 

The scenario was a Flank Attack, with the League secondary objective being Hold the Ground, for getting scoring units near the statue on the hill in the middle of the field.

 

  The Empire force deployed on one flank around a forest, with the Halberdiers and Doomseeker making use of the flanking deployment.  The Greenskins all remained together though...

 

 

The first casualties fell to some shooting in the first round, with two Black Orcs falling to crossbowbolts, while one handgunner was taken down by the Archers.

 

 

 But in the second turn the lines started to close, as I moved the Halberdiers near the objective in the hopes they would survive the initial charge and score a point for the secondary target.  

 

 

The Boars where hit by the Summon Elemental Spirit, taking two of the slavering beastriders down.

 

 

 But with the Doomseeker unable to charge due to a Hex, the remaining boars crashed into the Halberdier unit.  The Champion challenged the Boar rider champion, but fell to the savage warrior, but somehow the unit held on for dear life.

 

 

As the small Black Orc unit was shot down by the Empire missile troops, the Halberdiers went above and beyond, actually taking down two more boar riders.

 

 

 But then the fickle Spirit moved through the combat, thinning the ranks but also taking down the last boar rider, while wounding the Doomseeker who still was wandering around aimlessly.  

The general then crashed into the weakened Halberdiers unit, who somehow still managed to bravely remain, after the beast had ran first into the Doomseeker and taking her down.  Yeah, she was pretty useless...

But with the Halberdiers holding on, and the Greatswords and General getting near the objective, the secondary would certainly be mine this game, as he only had his general left as a scoring unit.   

The Night Goblins joined the melee, and now the Halberdiers where finally taken down, breaking from the fight and allowing the opponent to pursue.

 

 

 This left the general ready to charge the crossbows in my turn, and from within stand and shoot range, so this looked grim for the missile troops.

 

 

 As he crashed in, the somehow still surviving, but battered archers thundered into the flank of the Greatswords.  I totally fumbled almost all attacks, then fled a full 3 inch.  So exit the general and the elite warriors, as well as any possible chance of grabbing a victory, certainly after the three fanatics had crashed through the unit as well.

 

 

The crossbowmen held on though,  and after retreating the general decided to go for a squishier target with the Wizard.  Yet the old man somehow avoided injury, even though he couldn't take down the orc either.  

But the battle was fought, and the savage orcs stood victorious over the ranks of Marienburg.  The total end result was 685 versus 321, but I did obtain the bonus points for the secondary objective.  That means the force will see some expanding to 960 points for the next round, and the last one without my beloved cannons...

 

But the reality is, Marienburg is being invaded from all sides!