TTS Tournament Battle Report

City States vs. 100 Kingdoms on Echelon

Okay okay, bear with me. I know some people read TTS and immediately wanna bounce out. But this was a fantastic game with a fantastic opponent definitely worth reading about. Very technical game with some great decision making on both sides.

TTS runs frequent tournaments and they’re always a great time, you get to play with people from literally all over the world, and it is such a great balance of high skill but laid back. Never had a sour game in any of the tournaments I’ve played in. This is round 2 of the tournament as I won round one by default due to my opponent having a life event come up (Thankfully nothing bad)

So here’s what my list tries to do…Make the polemarch and sacred band do cool stuff. And everything else is trying to survive the game until that happens!

My opponent has a great well rounded theist/feudal list. I have dabbled into some 100K before, and I actually owned them for about…3 months a few major updates ago. But they didn’t click with me playstyle wise. So I’m decently familiar with them. I knew that the household guard brick was nigh unto unkillable for my list. So pregame I was thinking about how to just…score points and avoid them.

Early Game

As you can clearly see. Reinforcement rolls are going GREAT for me. This is fine. Getting one out of seven mediums was a bit painful I knew I was faster than my opponent, even though he had a much more powerful attrition game.

Mid Game

Not much happened round 3, I played it very cagey and took a few wounds from longbowmen onto my flogobollongo and crucially, my haspists survived INEXPLICABLY the household knights charge. I only took 6 wounds total after resolve which is wild.

Round 4 I have now primed BOTH center objectives with two wounds thanks to the power of Chariots. My opponent has done a wound to the upper right but with only one heavy it’s impossible for him to get any of those objectives.

I didn’t ever think it was possible, but I killed both center objectives in Echelon. My opponent and I laughed so hard about this because both of us pregame were talking about how weird it is that the bonus points exist cause we have never seen it. My companion cavalry did something very clever here, they killed the objective and then backed up onto the right zone. They died but Instead of just trying to get a few chip points of damage into the sicarii through the supremacy turn. It blocked off any attempt for his units on the right to get onto the zone because they would’ve just died to the sacred band and forced a LOT of activations to clear them.

So begins the dance of death. Okay. I think I completely misplayed my sacred band here. I tried to be WAY too cute with them. I scooched them over from my floggingbolly to get some cheeky side charges the next round with my supremacy.

Flogobollo starts chipping at some sicarii and the promethean oracle (Proxied by the hephestian) tiptoes the right zone so that any march charging would result in zero points for him and a big attrition loss.

Now for the less fun stuff. It was supremacy turn for the theists and they used the power of SPEED BOOST to just completely gum up my left side. I could absolutely see the writing on the wall. I had ZERO chance when it comes to the left side attrition battle. There was nothing to be done there. So I just began the process of stall out my death as long as possible, chariots charged one at a time into the side of the HHG to turn off support and I just had to hold onto my 8 point lead. nothing has died yet except my haspists and comp cav/ipparchos but that changes, VERY quickly.

Late Game

The slap fight of companion cavalry and mounted squires was LEGENDARY. I was just sending bodies into the HHG mulch machine and holding off any sort of way for my opponent to close the point differential.

As expected the left flank collapses entirely but I am able to weaken the mounted squires to the point that the mercenary crossbowmen have to come finish the objective or there’s a real chance it won’t die before the game ends. In a true tale of thrillin heroics, the promethean oracle breaks the crusaders in front of it (So I get to score the zone), and then does 12 damage or something insane to an archangel in one attack and completely changes the course of the game. My sacred band, FINALLY get to do something. You’ll notice they didn’t make the 4″ charge into the side of the crusaders (Like I said, I played too cute with them) and then, AND THEN! the next round I pop my supremacy and go for (now) 2″ charge into the crusaders and fail it with double 1’s. I was hertberken. They finally have to settle for a sad reform charge, which they barely pass.

At this point, I win the next supremacy roll and kill the archangel, then I kill the crusaders, and for the final nail in the coffin the HHG charge into the oracle and it doesn’t die. At that point the attrition is too far off the rails and nothing is ever going to kill the sacred band block. We talk out the last round and call it there with the final score being 24-19 for the city states.

Recap

This was an awesome game. There was a lot of really tight positional play that felt like a ton of fun cause my opponent was great at the game and a solid gent. I was super dumb with my 500 point sacred band block. I need to just like…get value out of that. The whole list is built around getting that unit to do cool stuff! Next game for sure. My opponent and I chatted about his gameplan and we felt there were maybe a few different actions he could’ve taken throughout the game but in reality it was just an excellent game of conquest and things landed how they did.

What I learned – Use your deathstar to do stuff. Fun fact. My sacred band did not attack this game until round 9 where they killed TWO whole stands of crusaders.

What I did well – I was much better at analyzing the first few rounds for key questions such as “Can I win attrition” “can I win scenario” “what can I do”. Seeing the opportunity for the double objective kill and taking it literally was the only thing that won me the game.

What my opponent did well – I really liked how well my opponent played around his speed buffs from that one…rule…thing that theists have? (Editors note: It’s called divine purpose) he set up crazy good angles and charges that were impossible for me, but possible for him with the buff up.

Anyway! It was a fantastic game. As always feel free to reach out to me with any questions, concerns, gossip, or to just talk shop. I love conquest and can talk about it all day. Will have to see who I play next week but I’ll be sure to do a write up. You can find me on Reddit as Iamarrest7, discord as Arrest, and Instagram as Arrest_Paints.