I meant to post this on earlier, but couldn't quite make the time. I am going to / went to another small tournament. It was a one-day, 1500 point, three-game singles event at the relatively nearby Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for Dragonfall 2024.
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| The crew! We'll explore how I got here in this post, and then get on to the games! |
I wanted to write out my list thoughts here to keep the reports themselves a little less cluttered, and give me a bit of a rubric and a springboard for thinking and discussing future tournament lists, as fine-tuning lists is definitely not a strength of mine. Essentially, my thinking boiled down to two broad categories, which is how I will try to approach future events:
1) Metagame Considerations:
The metagame, or “game beyond the game” can be understood here as the strategies and approaches players adopt in order to play a given game. More casually for Kings of War, it is just the kinds of players and list and armies you are playing and are playing against. Recognizing patterns can allow clever players to make more savvy decisions, and the more competitive you get, the more important knowledge of the metagame becomes.
Metagames will vary from place to place. Ogres might be strong among one group of players, but not played at all among another playgroup. Data and Dice has done a lot of great work recently regarding metagames, comparing things like army popularity, generic list variations (looking at things like the number of drops, amount of unit strength, points spent on items, etc.) between regions, as well as more generic, categorical efforts which seek to define list types, so strategies can be discussed more generally.
While all that is helpful, this particular tournament was at a weird points amount, and likely to be predominately attended by our local community. Rather than wade too deep into hypotheticals, my metagame considerations were mostly thinking about what local lists I may bump into, and what they might do at 1500 points.
Notably, I was giving Joe a lift to this, so his Imperial Dwarfs would be making an appearance. I believed a few Abyssal Dwarf players would be around as well, and Bob and his striding Halflings would be there, as well as a numerous Ratkin list.
2) Event Considerations:
A lot of tournaments seem to run unique scenarios, terrain, or even units to mix things up. There wasn't really a player pack circulated, so that didn’t appear to be on the horizon here, and just the point-size looked like it will make this an interesting and unique event. At 1500, you can only run doubles of stuff, and I wanted to try and lean into that. I was originally very keen to try out Undead MMU with double Revenant Wyrms, or maybe swap over to the Varangur for Double Cavern Dwellers and such. As it became apparent I might not get in any practice games in, I scrapped the more unique army ideas, and committed to bringing the more familiar and straightforward Kingdoms of Men.
I still wanted to lean into the double monster idea. For the Kingdom of Men, this meant two Giants, with Rampage, as that’s been my approach with them the last few years. Rampage also looked like it would work well against all the armies I knew were coming. I knew I wanted a Monarch as an honorary 3rd Giant to help bully things, but rest of the list was tbd. Thankfully, I did get a game in recently with Battle 085 to shake off some of the wargaming rust, and to help me plan.
Neither of these categories is paradigm-shifting. These are rather straightforward things to consider, but it's always helpful to state even obvious things as one thinks something through. Anywho, knowing a bit about the event, its attendees, and what army I wanted to run... what did my final list look like?
LIST STUFF
That recent game against the Sylvan Kin let me test out a lot.
Trevor and I like a cheap shooting horde in our human lists, as it throws enough dice around to usually contribute a few damage most turns, but isn’t threatening enough to actually engage, so it often sticks around until the late game. His Villein hordes are cheaper than my Bowmen hordes, and come with Phalanx, making them even stickier. Instead of doing what he is doing but a little worse, I opted for the slightly more expensive Crossbowmen, to hopefully get a little more out of them when their shots to manage to land. As a reflex, I have been sticking Fire Oil on my shooters, but I don’t know if that’s actually worth it. We’ll see who I face, and if that might need to be reconsidered.
The Pole Arms are neat, but at Def3, just can’t cut it as your only line unit, so the Foot Guard got the nod instead. A Def5 defensive horde + Hammer of Measured Force is common in my little local meta, so I opted for the two handers here, to try and make that item less impactful against my horde.
Pike regiments are something I have liked for a while, and wanted to bring. Phalanx helps against cavalry-centric lists (like the Halflings), and Ensnare lets them hold most things up for at least a turn.
Cool and versatile as he is, my game taught me that the Captain was definitely going to trip me up right now, so we’re leaving him at home, and going with an ASB with Lute, which will play well with my infantry.
With a lot of the big things clearer after Battle 085, I ended up with the following core list:
I had 180 points remaining. At this points level, I wanted to go with a third source of Inspiring, just to help me out, as the Monarch was a very big target. A Wizard could be cool, but I couldn’t figure out what spells I wanted, and spells are still a bit of a blind spot for me, so opted to run another cheap ASB. An ASB of mine needs an Item, so I gave him the War Bow, thinking he could babysit the Crossbows and the Lute can babysit the Foot Guard, and that would help me in the deployment phase. That left me with 125 points remaining, and a dazzling amount of options as it turns out…
Finalist 1: More Pikes
Bob and his Halflings were going to be there. Phalanx (and Ensnare) should help in that potential match-up, and with the extra 5 Points, I could drop Liliana's Tear to help against that match up too. I liked that each horde could have some Pike support, but this list was feeling a little wide, and seemed like it would make me a slower and more reactive player in any match-up.
Finalist 2: Knight Troop
Giants can be fun, but as the battle proved, I needed a way to cheaply instigate a piece trade and let the Giants hit stuff. With 125 Points left, well, that’s a Knight troop, and that looked like a promising way to contribute to the chaff war.
Finalist 3: Double Ballistae
I actually had the points to add in double Ballistae, and this was initially appealing, as it would give me an extra drop and some more reach against stuff like Imperial and Abyssal Dwarfs. War machines are a gamble though, and Ballistae only have Piercing 2, so I figured adding more fighting units would help me more in a generic match-up.
Finalist 4: Chariot Troop
In lieu of games, I had started hobbying on some long-overdue Chariots for the Kingdoms of Men in mid-Septemeber. Chariots look like a lot of fun, and with Speed 9, a troop looked like a promising way to instigate a trade. While I could have gotten a troop to table quality in time, I opted not add this stress to my life.
Of these ideas, Finalist 2 appealed to me the most, as I realized that I really needed something to help fight in the chaff war and get my Giants to their targets. If the Knights are just going to be charged though… yeah, they might be able to take a hit and Headstrong their way back into the game, but I figured I could improve the list a bit. I ultimately ended up with the following:
This is good enough! In addition to the Rampage Giants and Crossbowmen and Foot Guard, in my final version here, we get IW on the one Pike Regiment to improve their stickiness and help me remember it more generally, Iron Resolve on the Foot Guard to hopefully encourage me to remember Lifeleech from the ASB and protect them from chip damage, and then a troop of nimble, speedy Mounted Sergeants to help instigate, or perform odd duties as needed, like war machine hunting. The Sergeants aren’t my favorite unit, but I haven’t tested them all that much either. They are pretty straightforward, so we'll give them a test in this tournament and see what we can learn.
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