I return from Düsseldorf again, this time with tales of the German Masters 2022!
Held in the same venue as Eisenhammer (read my report here: https://lineofsightwargaming.com/2022/07/31/eisenhammer-report-from-guest-author-benoit/). We were going to go with a whole posse of Belgians (9 of us), however due to COVID, other illnesses that come with the having of children and having adult responsibilities only 6 of us were able to go.
Regardless, spirits were high as other than the WTC, for most of us this would be one of the last events before the advent of MKIV we could attend!
In addition, this would be some ideal practice time, as the Germans are no pushovers!
Links: https://www.longshanks.org/events/detail/?event=4861
https://www.tabletoptournaments.net/t3_tournament.php?tid=29496
As for lists, well I brought my WTC pair of course 😉
https://wmhwtc.wordpress.com/2022/09/03/lists/
You can also view other players’ lists (as well as my opponents’ lists) on Longshanks if you’re interested!
Check out team Belgium Billions of Bilious Blue Blistering Barnacles (say that five times fast). Tim and Wout were also performing, as well as Klaw, Niels and Stijn from the Yellow Bellied Sons ‘o Troglodytes’ team. Only Niels wasn’t rocking both of his WTC lists.
We arrived late Friday night as not all of us took a day off of work, but prep and trash talking was had in the car ride over (luckily only about 1h30 for me) and we started off bright ‘n early for round 1
I got matched up against a Mercenaries player (nick: Haareschwenker) who brought Ossrum in Hammer Strike and Thexus in Operating Theatre. We ended up playing Ossrum vs Xekaar on Invasion, with me getting handed the second turn.
Both of us moved up, with my buffs going out and all about to defend myself from his shooting (Sandstorm, Force Aura good yo). I didn’t mind the distance Forge Guard can travel under Desperate Pace though, and in the subsequent turn my opponent decided to shoot up one Brute that I put in range with a Sniped Avalancher, the Siege Crawler’s big guns, an Artillery gun and two Forge Guard.
One damage roll contained too many ones to finish the Brute off, but it was Staggered from the Siege Crawler shots and knocked down, so not having a good time on 2 boxes.
The rest of his turn was spent posturing and putting Forge Guard in the way of my Brutes and Wrastler.
It took some doing, but I was able to clear my frontlines off with a combination of Makeda0 Flashing Blading (though some low rolls means she’s on 0 with a knocked down dwarf next to her), Xekaar getting rid of 2 more but I blanked on getting within 10″ of a Driller I wanted to charge a Brute into so I just killed those to dwarves, feated and moved to the centre with Safeguard up and 2 camp.
I threw Rage onto a Brute, then had the Wrastler charge some Forgey bois in the way of said Brute to get on the earlier mentioned Driller. However, I forgot they’re ARM 20 base now, so it did less than half of the boxes on the machine unfortunately.
On the other side I Rushed the Hydra and it zoomed across the board and rolled hot fire on the charge, so I chanced putting sprays into the Artillery behind it and leaving one spray to clip a Forge Guard and Guvul Godor, again rolling fire and leaving him on acid on 1 box. The bought attacks mangled and destroyed the Siege Crawler I had charged.
When the dust settled I had 2 shield guards around Xekaar, 2 camp, a Hermit next to me, my feat up in the middle of the board, sunglasses on and my back to an explosion.
My opponent tried for a last ditch assassination by launching 2 heavies into me, but he never rolled to 14 on 3 dice or 12 on 2 dice to get a drill to stick, so we called it there.
Good start, let’s see if we can continue doing good in round 2!
I get handed appropriately nicknamed Zeus as he had at least one Storm Division in his pair (Haley2) but also Stryker1, who is a Storm Knight himself. Stryker decided to go the Morrowan route though and took with him Flame in the Darkness.
As this was Bunkers, I was expecting Haley2 initially, but the matchup turned into Xerxis1 vs Stryker1, with Zeus taking the first turn.
As you can see in the photo, I wanted none of that quicksand nonsense and promptly went for the other table edge.
Stryker moved up with Snipe on a Thamarite Archon and Arcane Shield on the Galleon.
I move up with all of my appropriate buffs: both Force Auras up, Celerity on the Cetrati to get them up further, Defender’s Ward on the cats and Tactical Supremacy on Tiberion for the additional distance. The Keltarii take cover in the open graves.
I had put Makeda B2B with a Cetratus, so he went for plan: kill the budding Archdomina with blast damage. 14 DEF for the Cetratus and 18 ARM for Makeda meant that only 2 of his 6 shots hit the mark , and all of the boosted blast damage rolls did not crack her demeanour (or armour).
The rest is mostly posturing. Crucially he put the left Thamarite Archon just outside of 11” of Tiberion, but afterwards he moved a Gobber mechanic within 11” of the big lug and within Overtake distance of the Archon…
I can’t let this opportunity pass so I load up Tiberion with Puppet Master, Enrage and a free charge and send him off on a journey with Energizer. Bop the mechanic, buy/boost on the Thamchon, burn through the Hermit’s Mad Visions and buy/boost to finally put it in the dirt, then overtake/repo back. Feelsgoodman.jpg
What doesn’t feel good is the extra fury I had laying around on Xerxis which served no purpose… more on that later.
I send in a Keltarus to contest his zone and the rest of my army blocks my zone from any potential model contesting.
On his turn he tries to take shots with the Thamchon and gets a 10 to hit my Keltarii in the trench and kills 2, but the other arrows fly wide.
The Galleon runs because he can’t get to Tiberion from where he is. My contesting model dies and he clocks over.
Remember that extra fury I had lying around? Well even with Threshold 10 and only 1 fury on Tibbers he frenzies into the poor mechanic next to him… with a Galeon right there.
Well that’s not good. I try to rally and prepare for the oncoming feat turn. I do send off the Ferox to kill both Jakes and a Morrowchon. I did roll a little hot on the Morrowan Archon, but I think the trade was good.
Unfortunately, Stryker was able to feat, re-activate Gallant and mulch through my Ferox and Tiberion.
It’s at this point the game spiralled out of control for me. It went on until round 7, but it’s mostly me scrambling to contest, him shooting some of my Keltarii out of their hidey holes and scenario going my opponent’s way.
Now that the pressure’s off, time to submarine like a boss!
Round 3 I had versus N1C, bringing that Circle Orboros with Krueger2 (can’t remember the theme) and Baldur2 in the Wild Hunt
I once again lost the rolloff and had to go second on my personally most hated scenario King of the Hill.
He ran up full boar which is a little terrifying let me tell you, a Storm Raptor on the midline possibly being able to charge into your meat with potential +1 MAT, +3 STR and free charge?
I prepared as best I thought possible, offering him the choice of some Cetrati or Tiberion, but not both.
His followup turn was rather long, but just about perfectly executed. The Storm Raptor rolls were a bit on the tepid side, but he bricked up with Roots of the Earth and a Rock Wall very well, I couldn’t reach him properly.
So my following turn was again a preparation turn, in which I tried to check whether the Ferox could take something juicy (they couldn’t) and where I could contest properly-ish.
This was the turn he made his push: Wolves ambushed to take my objective and the Storm Raptor took my zone while the bunker in the centre zone held firm. As this included putting his support into Ferox range, this was also his feat turn, nailing everything to the ground with Roots of the Earth.
The Big Bird was in Tiberion-range, so this was a feat turn! I cleared off the contesting/intervening Wolves of Orboros and made a crucial mistake where I assigned the wrong battleplan to the wrong unit – I should have Pushed the Beast Handlers to the Limit so Tiberion could get a free charge, but I didn’t. With only the Tetsubo in range, this would prove to get dicey!
When I bought my last attack the Raptor was on 17hp, so I casually remarked while I rolled my dice “just need to roll triple sixes, it’ll be fine!” and ‘lo and behold, the dice showed 6, 6, 6. I felt bad for my opponent because Tiberion gave him hope the bird would survive this turn yet, as I couldn’t get anything else to the Storm Raptor…. Until the last attack that is.
The rest of my turn consisted of doing damage to various heavies, but not killing any.
On his turn he was trying to engineer ways to get an assassination on Xerxis, who was camping 1 I believe, but with a posse of Cetrati in front of him. The Feral Warpwolf needed to take a bunch of free strikes on the way in, and because Xerxis’ feat lasts a round, it died swiftly to stabbing spears and sweeping blade strikes. After this we called it.
For my last round I drew a fellow countryman, Klaw who is from the same region as me. A true gentleman (and a sexy one at that), we relished our game, even though we semi-regularly play at home too.
He brought his Feora3/Feora4 pairing on Recon II. For the first time this tournament I won the rolloff and promptly took the first turn after we revealed the caster choices: Xekaar vs Feora3.
I ran up, almost full bore because that list’s shooting scares me, even with all of my buffs.
He ran up, stayed outside of 12” of the Hydra and put some Idrians in the way of my Master Tormentor to charge into a clump of other Idrians.
Unfortunately, our resident Sexiest Man in Warmachine forgot that Xekaar can trigger Alpha Hunter with melee attacks as well… and his whips have Dispel on them…
So after doing some prep work (Rush on Hydra, Enrage all around, Harmonious Exaltation et al) I spanked an Idrian with Xekaar’s whips (dispelling Banishing Ward), Dead Weighted another one next to the Menite Archon (had to do it twice due to a low roll the first time) leaving me on 1 camp in the middle of the board with my feat up.
My Hydra chomp the Judicator to bits and Brutes either ran interference (engaging Redeemers) or ran for Shield Guard duty.
The Agonizer cried for Spiritual Affliction (living enemy models can’t cast spells within 8”) for the first time in what seems like forever and ran to be close to Feora so she couldn’t just Firestep to Xekaar.
This put my opponent on the back foot a bit. He hummed and hawed and went for plan: assassinate Xekaar. The Archon was able to vengeance closer to the Brute engaging Redeemers and put some hurt into him, however with the feat the damage was blunted a bit. Same for Tristan and Severius’ stabs/thwacks with their respective sticks. Ultimately he was able to clear off the Brute using one of the Redeemers’ melee attacks.
The other Redeemer got into a position to slam the Brute in front of Xekaar. Between Eye of Menoth and my feat he needed a 12 to hit the slam, but an empty Brute is a wily beast…
Intuition made sure the slam didn’t hit (though I had to do it three times :’D).
He searched for the assassination by other means but it just wasn’t there as the Idrians couldn’t clear the Agonizer through feat, Shield Guard and Hermit, so Feora tried for a glory kill on the Hydra but came up short. We called it there.
Ultimately I came in 4th (not counting Ronan the organiser who took the bye each round as we were even without him) and am pretty happy with the result.
I’m a bit miffed about my performance in the Cygnar matchup and I identified a few moments in other matchups where I could have done better, but overall I feel good about the weekend!
Always great seeing the German crew again in addition to some of the teammates/countrymen I don’t regularly see, they’re great people and organise events on the regular which we only too eagerly attend!
I had a game afterwards against one of my teammates practising a matchup, but I’ll leave our super secret tech out of the article before the WTC 😉
(protip: there is no secret tech, only Hoksune!)
See you next time fellow Tyrants!