I don’t know how viable a lot of tournament travel will be for me, but with local ones popping up a little more as our community grows, I will try to attend what I can. Speaking of local tournaments, we have the sold-out, first-ever Northwoods GT coming up this weekend.
I want to approach my tournament play like I do my usual gameplay, which is to say, erratically! I’ve not going to keep myself to any hard rules on what to run, but having multiple armies, I definitely want to try and mix it up for tournaments, like I do for my normal games and reports. Cutting right to the chase, I am running the Undead for this.
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| Awkward team photo beforehand. I don't have a display board. |
I ran the Abyssals at the doubles tournament in June, and the Kingdoms of Men at the little Dragonfall event in September. If I want to run a different army, yhat leaves the Varangur, Herd, and Undead as the main armies to consider for Northwoods. It should be a fun time, and the event has a neat twist, as all tables should have a 3rd forest, which may or may not replace another terrain piece on the board.
I settled on the Undead, since I’ve enjoyed playing them recently. The frigid Varangur would have been a fluffy choice, but I haven’t run the army in months. I’ve played a lot of games with the arctic Herd over the last year, and it would have been a very fluffy choice as well, and could be powerful with Pathfinder, but I still don’t feel super-confident or comfortable with my “mid-range” speed 6 approach with them, despite the insights I’ve gained throughout the year. So, Undead it shall be. Here is the actual list:
The list is building on all the Undead things that I have learned and have been enjoying the last few months. The list brings:
- Six striding units (three Wraith troops, one Wraith regiment and two Burrowing Wyrms) to take advantage of the extra terrain on the tournament’s battlefields.
- Skeleton Warriors with two-handers, since that has been a fun unit and provides the unlocks I need for my heroic picks.
- Soul Reavers to blender things, as I do need hammers.
- MMU-style of play, featuring the aforementioned Skeletons and Soul Reavers.
- ASB’s to help the Skeletons and Wyrms get in some more wild charges, Heal to help things grind, and BC to help the Reavers and Wyrms really punch through armor, as I want them to be routing stuff on one-go whenever possible.
- A Liche, with Scorched Earth. With more terrain, things should be hindered more often, but stripping Strider/Pathfinder from opposing units and/or hindering open charges seems like strong move in conjunction with my Def6 Wraiths. A counter charge is never hindered though, so I'll need to use this tactically.
- Mhorgoth the Mandatory, since he is Very Inspiring and proved to be a ridiculous support piece on the battlefield in my most recent games.
The majority of the list was settled on about two weeks ago, very importantly with no extra hobbying needed since I was not going to have the time to do any significant hobbying. The final tweaks was between this list, or swapping Lute (BC) for the cheaper Tome (Surge) and dropping the Periscope to free up the 10 points needed to bump Scorched Earth up to 3 dice. Since we’re using Command Dice for the tournament, I figured I could be greedy and use a reroll on Scorched Earth as needed, and the Periscope should make the Liche easier to protect and position, and Bane Chants should let the Soul Reavers go bananas. If I can keep my errors low and be mindful of the clock, I think the list should do well, and should catch some folks off guard that might be expecting a slow, Shambling Undead force.
My only bummer going into the tournament was that I wasn’t going to have a display board for the army, so will allegedly take a slight hit in the paint score. I wanted something with a frame, so that I could have bits and bobs on the board without worrying about them getting ripped off too easily, but couldn’t find one quickly locally at the start of the year, and while it was all shipping within the US, my online order looks like it will take over two weeks to arrive, and should get here just after the tournament. I tried! I did however order a few boards, so I should be set for the next few tournaments, whenever they may be!