Sorcerer Kings (Court of Air) Vs. Nords (Half Bloods)

After a 48 hour work weekend, my friend Mike took pity on me and let me come over and play a game of Conquest, I was going to do a double header but my bloodline is weak and I needed “sleep” and “rest”. Shameful.

Mike is one of the better players in the local region so it’s always a great time to play against him. We always have a great back and forth and the post game “how should we improve” is always extremely beneficial. I brought the Court of Air and he brought…just a WHOLE buncha dogs, pigs, and giants. Just all them feral hogs.

The main thing I changed was swapping around Jadoo Kavach for the Vizier of the Morning Star. It came up OFTEN this game and I am really impressed by the relic if you are running single court lists. I think it got value in 3-4 rounds with at least one regiment using it.

Insane pressure the list. Speed incarnate. Dangerous Bacon. Somethings I noticed from the get go.

1 – Everything has flank. Like…his whole list gets to come on without dice. (Except one heavy but whatever, that’s less exciting of a headline)

2 – Everything in his list will kill a regiment of mine with even a decent roll. I need to play cagey and safe.

3 – I have the advantage in range and I have more “throw away regiments”

4 – I don’t have anything that really trades into the giants, I need to be ahead on attrition so I can put lots of pieces into them

We roll up the Echelon scenario and get ready to rumble

Early Game

Round One –

I get both my Ghols for a Ghol’s Night Out. I posture pretty aggressively for the first objective and make a crucial mistake. Forgetting about Dancing Scimitar. I’ll explain later when the picture can help me, but I needed to screen with the right side Ghols. Werewargs and Stalkers mirror me on the other side.

Round Two – Remember that big mistake from last round? It’s now staring me in the face. Man, the doggos are FAST. Mike just sends the Werewargs up 28″ with double march each round and due to the amount of cards he has in his stack he is able to know exactly where to send those puppies to do the most damage. At this point he is staring at my non-warlord Sorcerer with a guaranteed auto-charge next round. And because this is a Sorcerer Kings army. He WILL have advantage next round.

Here’s my big error. The Disciples + Dancing Scimitar could’ve killed that objective on the left and the second unit of Ghols could’ve and SHOULD HAVE been screening my important Sorcerer/Disciples block near the middle of the table. Mike takes that trade all day. Imagine if the horizontal Ghols in front of the archers, I will trade that ANY day. As is, if Mike wins the roll I lose a key ranged threat and a spellcaster

Mid Game

Round Three – This game is a display of supreme violence as the two glass cannon armies CLASH into each other. Mike wins the roll but I do need to note. Mike made EVERY SINGLE REINFORCEMENT ROLL THIS GAME (It was only one. Everything had flank except one heavy. But how else can I clickbait you?)

You may be wondering dear reading where is my Trinvarta? I was feeling caged in and didn’t want to give Mike turn after turn of dictating the tempo of the game. I felt reasonably sure that the birb could kill the stalkers, absorb one turn of damage from the mountain Jotnar and then do a solid amount of damage back and delay that flank a little bit.

What happened was Big Bird failed like…98% of his Evasion 3 saves and my heart was crushed as the Mountain Jotnar killed it in one activation. It was a low odds play by me though and I should’ve chosen differently. Big bird could’ve held back and held the zone.

We do some chip damage on the left side but nothing too major at this point.

Round Four – Mike had some wildly poor charge rolls from both his trolls and his non Vargyr Lord Piggles. Forcing him to take the Werewarg and Vargyr lord into the zone instead into my guns. I posture my Raj Steelhearts defensively.

Late Game

Round Five – Sadly it is desperation time for the good guys (The Sorcerer Kings). This is the round where Mike flips ahead by 4 points in the scenario and attrition is now at a really bad spot for me. I make my second key mistake of the game. Moving my Windborne in front of the chaff in the middle. Mike has reformed his Oracle so that it is both touching the zone and the forest meaning my shooting is halved. The Sea Jotnar is weak, only 3 health left! I know that I need a bit of a miracle to win so I set up my Steelhearts for a guaranteed charge. Mountain Jotnar only has 4 wounds left. If I can go first I can still probably squeak out a win!

Round Six – I did not go first. SK needs to plan on going second. I don’t hate my plays with the Raj/Steelhearts but I also don’t love it. I need to remember to look at the round timer. I had 5 rounds of play left. Those Steelhearts were about the only thing with a prayer of killing the Oracle. At this point sadly the writing is on the wall. I am staring down a full health Oracle and I have no more tools to kill it. Oracle will take the next four rounds to do it but it’ll kill my army. We will still have a score differential of 4-8 points depending on exact distances and what not. But Mike gets an epic victory for the Nords!

Ending Thoughts

Man, I love these games. It felt VERY winnable. Very close and some good plays on both sides. I made some silly mistakes that I will graciously give myself some allowance for. Playing a game after 50 hours of work in 3 days is hard, but sometimes that’s the only time you can get a game in!

Things I did well – I played well after early game mistakes. Didn’t go on tilt after some weird dice, but also didn’t go on tilt after making dumb choices. Go me!

Things I want to do better – Take a breath on the objective zones. Set up my screens. Don’t throw away things especially in these very tight matches where the opponents list has a lot of advantages. Also just cause it’s round five and it feels late doesn’t mean the game is done. Keep poking, keep chipping, be safe with key melee pieces. It’s very important for the Court of Air to keep those key melee threats safe until they can go do work without anything hitting them back.

Things Mike Did Well – I feel that his deployments were very well done. He rarely had to reform or wheel. He was able to predict and place his units right where they needed to be so no movement was wasted and he could jail me. Hats off to him for a great game!

As always thanks again for reading this far! I am going to play a bit more of Air but then I want to take some time with the Court of Fire and maybe a dual Fire/Air list. After that…Weavers? Spires? The skies the limit. I have Old Dominion but I would like to see something done with the Theokrator/Sephulcher before I dive back into them. Feel free to reach out with list suggestions for Weavers and Spires! They’re weird armies to build lists for now! As always feel free to reach out and talk to me on Discord or Reddit or Instagram.