Totengräber's Workpläce

This past Saturday I participated in a Warhammer Fantasy Battles tournament at Games To Die For in Avon, Indiana. The tournament was being run by the same guy who is running the Warhammer Fantasy League, which has been running for a few months now. Most of the people who had signed up for the tournament were members of the league.

Two days prior to the tournament, I kinda had a thought that my only real option for coming out of the tournament with any real kind of recognition was to have a fully-painted army (since I play Ogres and would be playing against some tournament-level players), so I began painting my Butcher. I finished painting him the morning of the tournament. I think he came out pretty well.

In either case, the tournament was set to start at 11:30am, but we started at about 12 or 12:30pm since some people were supposed to be showing up.

Here is the army list I ran:

• Bruiser (Sword Gnoblar, Luck Gnoblar, Gnoblar Thiefstones x2, Great Weapon, Heavy Armor)
• Butcher (Bangstick, Dispel Scroll, Tooth Gnoblar x2)
• Bulls x3 (Additional Hand Weapon, Bellower)
• Bulls x3 (Additional Hand Weapon, Bellower)
• Ironguts x3 (Bellower)
• Ironguts x3 (Bellower)
• Gnoblar Trappers x8

997 points

The first round, I was paired versus Bill Favorite and his Orcs & Goblins. First turn saw my Bruiser + Ironguts unit shot at by bolt throwers, causing a Panic check, which they failed on an 11. One of his spell casters had a miscast and died as a result. My first turn, the Ironguts + Bruiser unit failed to rally and ran off the table. The game was not starting off well for me and I do admit to being a pretty bad sport about it. The rest of the game was my Ogres trying to make it across the table to engage his units. My second Ironguts unit was charged by Night Goblins three times and in most combats, my Ogres killed one or two in each round. Finally, the Ironguts + Butcher failed a Break test, ran, and were caught by the Goblins. In the end, he killed every model I had on the table while I managed to remove a bolt thrower or two and a Snotling Pump Wagon. Normally, I don’t like to blame losses on terrible die rolling, but in this case, it seemed the dice wanted to “put me in my place”.

Second round I got the “bye” and played Sean with his Tomb Kings. My luck had totally turned around for me in this game. The benefit of having his shooting being mostly nullified by my high-enough toughness and the fact that I felt like I was playing more tactically saw me wipe his whole army in the end. He spent several turns trying to kill off my Gnoblar Trappers with a full unit of 10 archers, but only managed to kill one or two a turn. The Chariots tried charging a unit of Bulls a few times, where I remembered that I have the option to flee. A flank charge from the Ironguts + Bruiser wiped them out. I ended up getting a pretty decent victory out of that one.

Third round, I played against one of the other players’ sister, Sarah. She was also playing Tomb Kings. I got the feeling from having watched the end of one of her games that she was a pretty new player, so I tried to make sure to be as open as possible about how the Ogres worked before we started playing. The main highlights of this game was her chariots charging some Ironguts + Butcher and having Righteous Smiting do no damage whatsoever as well as having their impact hits do very little. In the end, the Ironguts + Bitcher managed to remove the chariot from beneath the Tomb Prince, but the chariots ended up winning combat later anyway. The Bruiser + Ironguts moved down the flank along with some Bulls to wipe the unit of archers, Carrion and eventually the Screaming Skull Catapult. Another unit of Bulls wiped the second unit of archers and tried to catch the other two characters, but only managed to kill one of them.

After that, results were announced and I came in 6th place. Pretty respectable for the ol’ Ogres. I did end up winning for best painted and had 15 “points” to spend.

A very well-run and enjoyable tournament. Most everyone I played against was very friendly and I had fun playing them. I big thanks goes out to Sean for running the tournament and Games To Die For for hosting it.

The awesome thing was that Jim had shown up that morning to play 40K, which is what usually happens on Saturdays at the store. He saw we were setting up for a Warhammer Fantasy tournament and he decided to throw his Daemons in the mix. I believe he came in 8th.