Shirecon
On the 16th of May I participated in a The Ninth Age tournament at Shirecon. Shirecon is run by the same team as MOAB, which is went to previously and the tournament was run by the same team as Backyard Brawl. The tournament was a 2 day event with a total of 4 games, each game was played with 3500pt lists, we managed a total of 8 players across 4 tables. I only played 1 day totalling 2 games due to being busy on Sunday, swapping with someone who couldn’t make Saturday. I had an amazing time and I am really grateful for everyone who put in time and effort to make the event happen.
In the above image you can see list deployed and ready for action. I have started to become known as the guy who brings double buff wagons, these are the two independent models you can see at the top. I enjoy using these models as rerolling misses in the first round of combat and +2 offensive skill means that I rarely miss attacks on top of being able to cast spells and blessings to further buff my units. I have two units of sword and shield imperials, they have excellent armour and with all the buffs they can get they can be a real threat. I have two marshals a general and a battle standard bearer to make it very difficult for my units to flee and to give orders for even further buffing. I have two imperial detachments with greatweapons but I found it difficult to position them correctly. Another unit that felt underwhelming was my block of 14 knights with a knight commander, I felt that just charging them in independently would not provide much value but using them to hold my flank resulted in giving my opponent lots of unnecessary kill points. I had a unit of crossbows, I feel that they did their work. I’ve been experimenting with using rangers as a screening force and for some extra shooting, everyone keeps on telling me that reiters are a much better choice for similar points.
For my first game I versed Dark Elves, with a bunch of shooting and a few scary melee units. I was wary of his three gorgons, who had the ability of cause casualties with their stony glare, I did not want my knights to fight them so I moved my knights to the right. Now near the middle he had some elite fighters who he managed to send into my knights, my knights fled at the first casualty and I lost the whole unit due to being chased down. As this unit all together was in excess of 800pts I couldn’t really recover and lost 17 to 3. This shows how important the courage check reroll the battle standard bearer gives can be.
My second game I faced some orcs and trolls, this was basically a rematch as I had versed Lee’s orcs list recently and neither of us had changed our lists much. The second game used the refused flank deployment, which is played diagonally, and we had an impassable terrain feature in the middle on one of the deployment zones, marked by the shipwreck. I picked defender and gave Lee the side with the impassable terrain, then I deployed most of my forces on the left so I could defeat him piecemeal. I managed to cause most of his units on my left to flee but his boar riders meant it was difficult for my forces to turn right and fight the rest of his force. I had my knights once again protect my flank, but after being charged by a unit of trolls and a unit of iron boys they did not stand much of a chance, even with the assistance of some greatweapon imperials. I ended up winning due to Lee getting confused about the primary objective, he thought we scored for having units near the middle rather than having units in each quarter, not counting the middle.
I have been slowly progressing with my painting, I have completed a half dozen Viking spearmen but as you can see I have many more models in need of painting. I’m going to have a go at getting just the base coat on some units in hopes it would look a bit nicer on the table.
As I said before I had a great time at Shirecon and I appreciate the community we have around The Ninth Age.