Review of LOTR in Da Grand Waaagh 2009

Last year, the gaming club I belong to, Da Waaagh Mob, decided to put on an Independent Grand Tournament in Alameda, CA on the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier that has been turned into a museum. Originally, we were planning on running just two systems, Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000. But a month ago, I was asked to add Lord of the Rings to the tournament. We’d originally thought to add it next year, but we had the space, so what the heck!

With such short notice, I knew we couldn’t get a huge turnout, but I did manage to scare up five players, which made for a very interesting tournament – every player would get to play each other. There was no Swiss system, but instead a pure round robin where the winner would be determined with almost no consideration to pairings or early/late placement. I also knew I’d be playing the ringer, since we had an odd number.

I also wanted to make sure that there was a variety of scenarios, and I wanted them to be different than other scenarios they had played. I took some inspiration from the Legions scenarios, changing them around to account for a time constrained environment and the army favoring characteristics of a few of the scenarios. I also hate random scenarios – I’ve lost games just because of a few bad rolls (the number of times I’ve failed to get a Major Victory in Domination because of that stupid “game ends!” roll…) and I know that just sucks. So I tried to limit the randomness. I’ll detail the scenarios in my battle reports.

One thing about being the ringer is that you’re there to provide a service only – make sure everyone gets to play every round. After all, that’s what the players are there for, to get in a game. The ringer isn’t supposed to be highly competitive, though they’re not supposed to be a pushover, either. I flatter myself in thinking that I’m a pretty good player, so I decided against going with one of my first string armies. After DundraCon last year with the “Oh, so it’s your turn to get beaten on by Gandalf” comment, I knew that the Errand wouldn’t fly, and I thought that even the Shadow list from Vegas would be pretty nasty. Of course, I haven’t painted a full army of anything else, so I used those armies for my basis.

To make things more enjoyable for the players, I decided to come up with multiple armies and let them choose the list they wanted as ringer. I also wanted to try playing with models that I normally wouldn’t consider using in a tournament. My first was pretty simple – I swapped Gandalf for Aragorn on a horse in the Errand, downgrading Ecthelion to a standard captain. The second list I came up with was a variant on the Shadow, where I dropped all of the Morannon Orcs and upgraded the wraith to Khamul the Easterling on an armored horse. I wanted one more option, and decided to go totally goofy. I called it “So Boromir picks a fight with a Balrog…” and took four models; Aragorn, Gandalf the Grey, Legolas, and Gimli. 600 points right there.



I arrived at the tournament in the early afternoon of Friday to set up. After my experience at the Necro, I wanted a really interesting skirmish game with LOTS of terrain, and there was a pretty good stash to raid. Only having three tables to fill made it easier. I set up three tables.

First was a small highland village, surrounded by small, steep hills. I wanted to use several buildings to get in the rules for fighting inside the fortress – doors, defended obstacles, stuff like that. The effect was that the center could be full of choke points if it was actually defended, otherwise it would be fairly easy to move through.



Next up was a pretty typical wooded area, lots of trees and areas of undergrowth with a few hills thrown on. The hills on both this table and the first one were slab sided – no slope at all. I made the call that it was WYSIWIG – lots of jump and climb checks were involved. It made it interesting for cavalry forces, that’s for sure.



The last table was inspired by the fact that several large pieces of fortress and the like were ignored by the other systems for being cumbersome and difficult to fit units onto. No units in this game! I tried to go for a kind of “ruined fortress” look with the four large pieces in the middle surrounded by a few large hills and individual trees.



So with that, I sat back to wait for check ins. As it turned out, we had something like three people actually play a game on the ship Friday night. A few other people checked in early, but apparently some of the ship security people turned some of our players away. That night cost us a lot of money for pretty much nothing. I doubt we’ll do that next year.

The next morning, I was raring to go. The five LOTR players showed up with plenty of time, and I presented the briefing and the options for the ringer army. A couple of people immediately said they didn’t want to see the all heroes army (if they drew that force on a couple of scenarios life would be very, very difficult), and the two people who voiced a preference chose Easterlings, so that was my force – Khamul and crew. The list was as follows:

Khamul the Easterling on armored horse (I think I forgot about paying the extra points for the armored horse during the games…)

Easterling Captain on armored horse with shield

6x Kataphracts
18x Warrior with shield
7x Warrior with shield and spear
12x Warrior with bow

Total Models: 45
Might: 4
Bow Armed Warriors: 12/43

I knew this was a suboptimal force when I took it. I particularly love Nazgul for their spell casting, and Khamul has the hardest time casting spells of any of the wraiths. With a Fell Beast, at least you have the chance of getting Will back to compensate for the extra dice you have to throw at spells. On a horse, the best you’re getting is usually staying at the same level of Will. I also knew there were no nutcrackers – D6 would be a major problem for me.

But hell with it, I wasn’t playing to win anyway! That doesn’t mean I’d try to make it easy for the people I would play…

Well, at least I had fun

I ran a tournament at DundraCon today, and I had a lot of fun running it. Unfortunately, I also didn't get very much painting done, which I had counted on actually getting a significant amount done. I did manage to tank brush the troops and wash them, but no more than that, and I got a few of the Guards of the Fountain Court base coats on their armor. Uh, and that was it. Alas, I had to play as the ringer for two of the three rounds and then help the new ringer out a bit in the third. So crunch time is rapidly approaching. Maybe tomorrow I can do another painting marathon in the morning.

I did manage to get a total of 6 players into the tournament, which is pretty well attended for LOTR tourneys in this area. I deliberately played against Wyn in the first round, which was a slightly modified To Kill A King where if the kings aren't killed then it goes to killing other heroes for Minor Win determination. We got some terrific houses that you could remove the roof from, and I managed to pop Gandalf (my king - it had to be the highest point model) into it supported by other troops. Wyn, who was playing Dol Guldur, pretty much wrote off cracking that nut, and instead ran a budget wraith up and Black Darted my other Hero, Damrod, out of existence. I went running after his now fleeing force, and managed to break his army but failed to cap any of his heroes (wraith and a Spider Queen). So the ringer army took a Minor Loss the first round despite losing three models the whole game.

The other two games were both wins for the Small Errand, with Gandalf making huge contributions to both wins and becoming a bit of a joke in the room - "Oh, it's your turn to get beat on by Gandalf?" to whoever was playing the ringer army. Hey, that's not fair - Gandalf almost got crushed by a dogpile of Uruk-Hai, including a captain, which laid three wounds on him in one round - the first three fate rolls all failed, but the rerolls saved two of the wounds.

Anyway, that's it for now. Bed time.

Tournament Report - GW Alamo

As I said earlier, there are a couple of problems with running a tournament in a GW store. First off, you can’t have people playing in the store when the store is closed. There isn’t a lot of flexibility in terms of hours, so the tournament ends when the store closes, period. Next, GW stores are chronically understaffed for the purposes of running events. The staff on hand have lots of other jobs to do, such as making sales, doing demos, and talking to customers. On this particular day, there was also an Academy being taught (their new hobbyist training program), plus as assessment center for new potential hires. Whee.

So as a result they didn’t have any staff member available to run the tournament. This is more common than you’d really like to know. The standard answer for GW is “get a hobby champion to run it!” aka find a customer who will run the event for you for free just because they love you so much. Well, to seriously run a tournament, you need to be prepared, you need to be focused, and you need to be neutral. You rarely get all of these things in a “hobby champion”. In this case, they found a guy who would run the event if he could play in it. Pretty much all three requirements out the window.

To be fair to the guy and the staff, the scenarios were already printed out and two of the players (myself and my carpool buddy, David) were very knowledgeable on the rules. The staff apparently did help out enough to judge painting (though I’m not sure when they did it – not that it would have been too hard with three bare armies and three painted armies), but for everything else we were on our own. I ended up keeping track of time myself.

Round 1 – To The Death (sort of)

I’ll give the staff credit – they did plan out some scenarios that were fairly quick, particularly when you had some inexperienced players in the tournament. Round 1 was a To the Death kind of scenario that required a forward deployment from the corners. There was an objective in the middle that gave the possessor 5 extra battle points if they controlled it at the end by having twice as many models as their opponent there. One other fun part of it was that all of the tables were split 6x4s, so the tables were actually 3x4s that we were playing on. This concentrated forces to an extreme degree.

I played a new player named Matt who was putting together his list while I was gluing my static grass on. Due to an extreme shortage of models, he ran with three fully tricked out Nazgul – the Witch King, Khamul, and a generic wraith. To this he added 18 Easterlings for a total model count of 21. I outnumbered him over 2 to 1.

The table was narrow, and I had a barrier and a hill that further concentrated forces. The battle would be fought in the open center. Matt deployed along the front edge of his deployment zone, and I deployed near the back edge in a shield wall/archery formation with Gandalf in the center and cavalry on the flanks.



There isn’t a lot to write about. I actually gave the fellow suggestions on how to more effectively use what he had throughout the game, but it didn’t do much good. I gunned down about a third of his force as he walked in between the archery and Gandalf. When he started to close, I surrounded his entire force and demolished the troops then set about playing piñata with the wraiths. I finally managed to kill Khamul, but I couldn’t manage to finish off the other two Nazgul. Time was called with me having lost six models to his nineteen and me in possession of the objective.



Result – Major Victory plus bonus points (one note – due to an error in result sheets and an odd ruling by the judge/player, we counted Major Victories as Victories and Minor Victories as Draws. Go figure.)

My game ended up running the longest – David’s 73 goblin horde annihilated an all troll Mordor army, and the other game saw both forces broken, which resulted in a draw.

Round 2 – Storm the Camp (sort of)

This scenario was kind of like Storm the Camp, but you couldn’t win unless you also destroyed the opponent’s objective and you had to outnumber your opponent’s army by 2 to 1 in their deployment zone. I was matched up against David. Great. Can someone tell me how in the name of all that is holy I can outnumber (or even outmaneuver) a 73 model goblin horde list on a 3x4 table? To make matters even better, one of those models was a shade.

The terrain was fairly balanced with a hill on one side with lots of monument/ruins, and trees scattered about the field. We actually played on one of the new GW plastic gaming tables, and it was nice. I don’t know if it was $300 worth of nice, but it was nice. Apparently the things weigh 30 lbs with their carrying case.



I decided to try to hold a line between two groves of trees and send Eomer to do his worst to the goblin archers that I knew would be setting up on the other side. Silly me, David deploys and puts his objective inside a forest. Well, crap. There goes that idea. In the mean time, the goblins stretch from one end of the table to the other.



David rushes his goblins forward into fairly accurate bowfire. He takes one Rider down to volley fire, and I decide to try to run them up a flank anyway, but use the side with all the cover. I also try to send some foot models up the other flank. David ignores them other than shooting them when he gets a chance.

He slams into my force about a foot from my objective. The shade is just brutal. I manage to blast him back with Gandalf, but I don’t wound. I am managing to kill a few goblins, but he’s giving back at least as good due to the -1 I am rolling and the multiple attacks he’s getting from all of the spear goblins. He also shoots down a horse and Rider with volley fire. Damn! I finally just decide to play for the draw and send my flankers into his main force. Eomer starts doing bad things, but the other riders get killed once I start losing priority. I do manage to kill a shaman though, which makes me feel happy.



The game ends when my force hits a quarter of starting models but David still hasn’t destroyed the objective. He did get 5 bonus victory points for breaking my force. Really this should have been a Major Win for David.

Result – Draw, no bonus points

Round 3 – Contest of Champions (modified)

At this point, two of the other players have left and I’m put up against Nate (I think that was his name) with a quality Dwarf list. He has some 25 Iron Guard and Khazad Guard, a few warriors, 13 Rangers with dwarf longbows, a ballista, and a Dwarven Captain. Oh, and Malbeth the Seer thrown in for pure cheese factor. 42 models total.

This Contest of Champions scenario gives a major victory if your champion kills twice what your opponent does, a minor if you kill more but less than double, and a draw for a draw. You also get bonus points for breaking your opponent. I decide to go with Gandalf as my champion, because with the archery Nate’s got, he’ll gun Eomer off his horse in no time. I figure I’m better off with S5 blasts and Glamdring.

With only two games going, we all agree to go to full 4x4 tables. Ah, breathing room! We arrange the terrain – I try to limit the lines of sight for his ballista, but there isn’t a lot I can do. I deploy first into the standard castle type formation, hiding my cavalry behind a barricade. Nate puts his rangers on a hill in his center with the ballista on a lower spur. His main force is clustered around Malbeth with a few flankers to one side.





The game starts typically, with Gandalf firing off Blinding Light and volley firing for all. I now learn that my opponent must be very unwelcome in Vegas when he hits the legal gambling age, because he is insanely lucky. Despite Blinding Light, his ballista hits 3 of 6 rounds it can fire, including one direct hit on his target. He also gets enough volley hits to put a round on Gandalf each time, and manages to get three wounds in four rounds! To make matters worse, I fail two of my 75% chance Fate rolls!!!

OK, now I’m scared. I’ve got one wound and no fate left on Gandalf, it’s time to get him some kills. I abandon the volley firing and rush my force forward. Gandalf does manage to get some sweet Sorcerous Blasts off, taking a Fate off of Malbeth and killing two dwarves. Cool, things are starting to look up.

The lines clash and I send Eomer with several Riders into one Iron Guard, then slingshot them around to his rear via a Heroic Combat. The cavalry slams into Malbeth’s bodyguard and starts butchering them. I also Immobilize Nate’s captain to prevent him from getting any kills this round and throw Gandalf, spear supported with two other friends, into a fight with a lone Iron Guard. Cool, 4 to 2 attacks with the upper hand in Fight. No problem. I roll a 2 and three 1s. Iron Guard rolls a 5 and puts an axe into Gandalf’s head. Well, that just sucks.

OK, now I need to kill off his captain without my greatest anti-hero weapon before he can get two kills. I do make myself feel a little better the next turn when Eomer turns Malbeth into a quivering pile of hamburger. Long story short, I start losing ordinary troops to his captain, manage to pile Eomer into his captain through a Heroic Combat (blowing the last point of Might I have on the table in the process), but can’t kill him. He wins priority the next turn, and scores his third kill with the captain. Time is called, and both of our forces are broken.



Result – Draw Really, this should have been a Minor Victory for Nate.

We wrap up the tournament, and the hobby champion ends up winning the tournament (his last game was against David: Treebeard vs. Goblin Captain. You make the call), while David won Best General. I won Best Sportsman, and they didn’t announce Best Painted, apparently because they didn’t want any one person to win more than one award. OK, fair enough. I’m pretty confident I had the best painted army out there, though there was a case to be made for the hobby champion’s Minas Tirith/Grey Company/Treebeard list. However, I did manage to pull a box of Warriors of Minas Tirith out of the deal! Sweet! I now don’t have to do conversions to get my ideal force, though I will certainly do so if I have enough time.



I’m not really sure what lessons to take from this tournament. The force was a compromise, with deliberately lower numbers than I’d ordinarily have taken. With no model painting considerations, I would have mounted Ecthelion and given him a lance and three Knights of Minas Tirith with shields, dropping one warrior and adding some spears for 47 models. I don’t know how much of a difference it would have made, but the slightly higher numbers and higher defense would have been nice. I also might have been able to kill more Dwarves and maybe even the Captain with a lance armed Ecthelion. Clearly the way to kill Gandalf seems to be with volley fire (that was unbelievable) – I need to avoid getting into any kind of volley fire match-up. I need to advance full bore to direct fire range unless they don’t have any archers.

Well, next step I think is going to be getting the models I’ve painted so far up to the standard of the others – shading and highlighting plus light detailing. After that, I’ll finish the “must do” models and take a look at my next step. It will probably be converting Ecthelion followed by detailing the Citadel Guard.

Sense of urgency restored

Well, I found out on Thursday evening that there would be another tournament this weekend, but I put off doing almost anything about it until this morning. That's right, this morning, specifically around 5:30 am. At that time, my army looked like this:



To back up a bit, the tournament was being held at Games Workshop in Alamo, CA. Well, this is a good venue, but there are always limitations to playing in a GW store, which I am personally familiar with from having managed one and running many tournaments there. In particular, store hours is a big issue. In this case, the store was open from 12 noon to 6 pm. Also odd was the points level: 650. Upon prompting the manager, it turns out the rounds would be 1:45 long. Ooooo-kaaaaay. Grand Tournaments run 2:30 for 600 points, why would this be shorter rounds and more points? I made a quick decision that I wasn't going to paint any more models than I had planned on for the 500 point tournament, so I needed to crap some painted models. I decided on the following list:

Gandalf the Grey

Damrod

17 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
4 Citadel Guard with spears
4 Rangers of Gondor
7 Rangers of Gondor with spears

Eomer with horse and shield

5 Riders of Rohan (1 with bow, 1 with throwing weapon)

This made things easier because all of my Rohan are painted. Plus I didn't want to bulk out the army heavily so I could play it faster. And I already had my hands full painting the above models.

So back to 5:30 am. I knew my ride would be arriving around 10:30, so I had a total of 5 hours to crank out as much of this army as humanly possible. Oh, and get dressed and showered. Preferably not in that order. I figured I could get a passably painted army done in that time. Time to work on the Zen of the Tank Brush!

First step was an overbrush of Boltgun Metal on all of the armor. I love Boltgun Metal. It comes out nice and dark in a drybrush, but it's bright enough when block painted to look like steel. Twenty minutes later, my warriors looked like this:



This was a nice overbrush, achieved by putting a small amount on the tank brush then dragging it in circles on the palette until it could be seen through. By the way, I have found that a tile palette is a very, very useful tool. For a while I used a plastic one, but it was hard to clean and of limited use. But here's a look at what my palette looked like after loads of overbrushing.



One shortcut that I also decided upon was to just drybrush the shields metallic instead of going white. I can touch them up later if I really want to. Note the difference between the drybrushed shield and emblem and the overbrushed armor:



Next, I overbrushed the armor of the Citadel Guard with a smaller brush. This took me about five minutes.



By the way, I did take pictures with a couple different light arrangements. You can see all the pictures if you really want to at my Photobucket account.

A couple minutes later, I had the Guards armor washed with Badab Black, and by 6:40 I had all of my models washed black, including some on the rangers for emphasis of the textures.





Next, I did the overbrush of the two extra rangers, and tried to do a tank brush overbrush on them without using the tankbrush. This didn't work so well. Instead it left big swaths of Bestial Brown over the model. Hopefully I can shade that out later. After that, I block painted Boltgun Metal onto everyone's weapons. Here was the status as of around 7:20:




At this point, I took a break to shower, get breakfast, and type up my list. This also let the washes thoroughly dry.

I was back at the grind around 8:00. I did a heavy drybrush of Chainmail over the entire warriors armor, and this came out very nicely. Unlike the overbrushes, I removed some of the paint via a paper towel this time. I liked it so much I just decided to do the exact same thing with the Citadel Guard. Here is a shot of two of them, the left after the Chainmail drybrush and the right with washed Boltgun overbrush.



I also gave the shields of all the warriors a nice drybrush of the Chainmail to highlight their trees. Here was my army around 8:30:



I next threw a light drybrush of Mithril Silver onto the symbol detail, particularly the trees and gull wings on the helmets. I also did some onto the upper shoulders and raised arms. This is as of 8:45:



At this point, the messiest parts are done. In order to really make these guys look done, I needed to get their bases looking good. A couple of things about basing: First, you need to choose a base that complements the model but doesn't distract. With a pretty light model, I prefer a darker base. With a dark model, I'll go for a lighter base. In this case, I'm doing Scorched Brown bascoat, Graveyard Earth midtone, and Bleached Bone highlight. This step was the biggest pain. I'd already done the basecoats, but I have a really hard time doing good mids and highlights. The best ones are controlled overbrushes which leaves plenty of paint up higher and the darker color beneath showing. I always either seem to smear tons of paint over the bae or dust the base so lightly it's almost invisible. I finally managed to get something decent around 9:15:



Next step, skin. I'm starting to feel the crunch now, and I'm also sitting around in my bathrobe still. I just decide to get some Tallarn Flesh on now, and if I can shade it later then great. I whip out one of my kolinsky sable brushes and apply the flesh to my models. Around 9:30 I had this:



Now I took a brief break to pack up everything I needed (other than the models I was working on) and get some clothes on.

One note about my brushes. You may have noticed from my painting station that I have two sets of brushes in it. On the right on standard GW brushes, and on the left are some brown handled brushes. These are Vallejo brand kolinsky sable brushes. A couple of years ago I wouldn't really have been good enough to use these guys. They are incredibly precise – in fact sometimes it's hard to get everything you want covered if you're not very careful about it. For this reason I use my GW brushes when I want good general coverage, since they tend to slide down into crevices and flow around the model, while I use the kolinsky brushes for all of my detail work.

I sit back down around 9:45 and get to work on the cloth of the warriors. About ten minutes later, I had:



I decided against shadowing or washing – I just didn't have enough time to do a good job. Much more important was covering appropriate areas with black paint, such as the Citadel Guards' cloaks and the warriors shields. This took some time – I used the GW Large Brush for the cloaks (coverage), and the Vallejo #1 brush for the shields (control). With minutes until 10:30, I grabbed the Iyanden Yellow from my paint rack and put it onto the trims of the Citadel Guards. At almost 10:30 exactly, I had this:



I packed up and went to the tournament. I brought along some washes and my static grass in order to get some more work done with the models. Once we got there, I did manage to get static grass onto all of the models, and here they are, along with their Rohan buddies, on the first table:



Whew! From black models to gaming quality in 5 hours. I was quite pleased with myself. Over the next few days, I'll improve them, adding shading and highlights, plus making the details better. I'll write a report on the tournament itself in a little while.

A small errand

Well, I had almost forgotten about another tournament I'd wanted to go to, an event being put on by the Powers of the North in Cotati, CA. A friend of mine is running it, and my parents live about a half hour from there, so I figured it would be a good trip. Well, it's next weekend, and I really, REALLY want to have a fully painted army for it.

Fortunately for me, this is only a 500 point tournament. So less to paint, right? Well, kind of. The tournament gives a bonus to people with fully painted armies, but there won't be the tough standards one would expect at a GT. So that will be easier. However, I had a much bigger problem.

For the army to be Legions legal, I have to have both a hero from every list and no more than 1/3 of the warriors armed with bows in the army. Well, six of my painted models are rangers, with bows. So I can't reduce the numbers in my army too much or I start losing them. Plus dropping lots of numbers is anathema to me. The easiest way to go would be to just drop the King of Men and lead it with Gandalf. Unfortunately, Gandalf isn't the any of the Minas Tirith lists. And there is NO way I'm dropping Mithrandir. Besides, then I'd have even MORE to paint.

So the solution I came up with was this: Drop the King of Men, then use the Rangers of Ithilien list, from which I can take Damrod, the 20 point hero of goodness. Yep, he only has 1 wound and 1 of M/W/F, but he counts as a hero, and he even has a bow! So here is the list I developed.

Gandalf

Damrod

6 Rangers
6 Rangers with spears
17 Warriors of Minas Tirith (I got three more in the mail last week)
4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with spears (hey, they're already painted, so why not?)
4 Citadel Guard

Total: 500 points
Models: 39
Might: 4



So that's my list. This does mean that I have some really, REALLY quick painting to do, as seen below.


22 models to paint, 4 of which need to be built, and 11 of which need to be checked for mold lines again. I was going to prime the warriors last week when I primed the rangers, but unfortunately I found fat mold lines on almost all of them. I thought I'd gotten all of them... Grrr. So it's time for a real quick plan.

Tonight: Remove mold lines, build, sand, and possibly put the base coat of brown on the primed bases.
Tomorrow: Prime the models that haven't been done already, then do basecoats for the rangers (including Damrod). After primed models have dried, basecoat of their bases.
Tuesday: Overbrush of warriors and guards then wash. While wash dries, do first layer of highlights for rangers.
Wednesday: Drybrush highlight of warriors and guards, followed by basecoat of cloth.
Thursday: Shadow warriors' and guards cloth, then detail rangers. Drybrush bases and flock the rangers.
Friday: Detail warriors and guards, then flock their bases.
Saturday: Go forth and kick butt!

Alas, I did something very foolish last weekend. I went to get a book that we'd ordered, and while walking through the mall to pick it up, I passed a video game store. I ended up picking up an RPG for the Xbox 360, Mass Effect. That's one of the reasons I haven't gotten more painting done, I've been playing silly video games. It definitely takes time away from my silly miniature games! I'll have to try not to play this next week, and hopefully actually get some tests corrected for my classes.