Convic 2018 Aftermath - Part 1

On the weekend I attended my second Kings of War tournament of the year. Convic is the most high profile of the events held in Victoria, and attracts a number of interstate players for the occasion. Given my lack of focus recently, I didn't give all that much consideration to the event in the lead-up. But when I was reminded that it was coming up a couple of weeks out, I decided I should get involved. I had failed to attend last year, but I had enjoyed Cancon back in January and figured it would be silly not to take advantage of a 2 day event only about 10 minutes from where I live.

Convic is a strange "escalation" type of event, where you play 2 games with a 1250 point list, 2 games with a 1750 point list, and then the second day consists of 3 games with a 2150 point list. I briefly considered a few different armies, however given the format and my lack of practice, the simplicity of an Ogre army appealed to me. Hordes of Warriors and Siegebreakers make lovely 200 and 250 point building blocks, and it makes the whole process that bit simpler. I don't know if it results in the army being better, but that wasn't really the point.

Pete (who also made the late decision to enter) hurriedly ordered the Clash of Kings 2018 book, and it arrived just in time for us to flick through it and discover new and interesting things before submitting our lists. Chariots have received a boost, and I noticed in particular that Ogre Warlords on chariots no longer lose their Nimble. They are faster too, which is another bonus. That seemed pretty appealing to me, so I set about putting a couple of these into my lists (where more than 1 was permitted). So these are the lists I put together:

1250 points:

• Horde of Ogre Warriors
• Horde of Ogre Warriors
• Horde of Ogre Warriors
• Regiment of Shooters
• Warlord in a Chariot with Dwarven Ale
• Boomer Sergeant with Inspiring Talisman
• Giant

1750 points:

• Horde of Ogre Warriors
• Horde of Ogre Warriors with Brew of Haste
• Horde of Siegebreakers
• Horde of Siegebreakers
• Horde of Shooters
• Warlord in a Chariot with Dwarven Ale
• Warlord in a Chariot with Staying Stone
• Army Standard with The Boomstick
• Boomer Sergeant with Inspiring Talisman

2150 points:

• Horde of Ogre Warriors
• Horde of Ogre Warriors
• Horde of Siegebreakers
• Horde of Siegebreakers
• Horde of Shooters
• Horde of Boomers
• Warlord in a Chariot with Dwarven Ale
• Warlord in a Chariot
• Army Standard with The Boomstick
• Boomer Sergeant with Inspiring Talisman
• Giant

You may notice a lack of subtlety in my list construction. I find Ogre hordes to be very solid (if not necessarily very imaginative) selections. I'd normally fiddle with the odd item (like the Brew of Haste on a Siegebreaker unit), but the points worked neater this way. In the 1250 point list you couldn't have anything worth more than 200 points (which conveniently is the cost of a horde of Warriors), and nothing more than 250 points in the 1750 point list (which is what a horde of Siegebreakers costs). This all contributed to my choice of both army and units.

Anyway, I played a single practice game against Pete with the largest list and got soundly thrashed, so my tournament preparation was complete. Hopefully that wouldn't happen in every single game of the event...

Round 1 (1250pts) - Invade
Clint Richards - Undead

Regiment of Revenant Cavalry

Regiment of Revenant Cavalry

Regiment of Revenant Cavalry

Regiment of Revenant Cavalry

Regiment of Revenant Cavalry

Regiment of Revenant Cavalry

Troop of Revenant Cavalry

Necromancer with Bane-chant and Inspiring Talisman (maybe?)

Right. So. First up I would be playing Clint, with his list of eleventy billion Revenant Cavalry. The list amused me, but the threat of the entire army charging 16" was slightly less amusing. Still, I felt slightly relieved to know there was not much Inspiring or Surge for Clint to work with. Given how solid Ogre hordes are, I felt maybe I had the edge in this game. He'd need 2 units or a flank charge to be a good chance to rout one of my hordes, so if I could avoid that I'd be in good shape.

Knights! Dead knights! ALL the dead knights!

The objective of Invade is just to get your units into your opponent's table half by the end of the game. A concept so simple that even I could remember it. But first I needed to worry about the fact that Clint's combat units outnumbered mine and were pushing into my own table half...

Man, look at all those knights. How cool is that? What do I do about the fact that they all charge much faster than Ogres on foot? I honestly can't remember who went first in this game, but based on this picture I think it might have been me, and not by my choice. We've both moved once here. Clint's list was deceptive because with it all being shambling, it doesn't approach quickly - it just has a large charge range.

My second turn. I still haven't routed anything with my modest amount of shooting, but I've done a little damage to the central unit of Revenants. I've set the Giant up so that if he has to receive a charge, it will be hindered and by a single unit only. That forest was helpful given the nature of the opposition. You can see I was pretty cagey over on the left. I had to try to avoid combo charges as that would be the end of some of my units.

At this point Clint needed to start trying to work his way through my stuff. He charged one regiment of Revenant Knights into these Warriors, but the others were out of range. They settled for moving up for a surge, needing 3" to get to me on 8 dice. Clint very obligingly rolled only 2", which meant he had a single hindered unit in the charge and had left the other unit hanging with its flank exposed to another of my Warrior units. It was a bit of a disaster.

The Warriors on the right there - they're in range of that flank, although the charge is hindered. In the meantime, I had done my bit of evasion but I was out of time. I couldn't go back fast enough to keep the enemy out of charge range again. I had to act, but it was liable to cost me something.

In the end, this is what I decided to do. Whilst the Warriors on the right smashed the unit in the flank and reformed, my Warlord charged the unit on the far flank. It was highly unlikely he would rout them, but it would negate their thunderous charge and he was voted "most likely to survive being flanked by more Revenant Knights". Also he was the only one quick enough to pull the trigger on the charge. He did a little damage, but bounced back as expected. Then he hunkered down and waited for the inevitable flank charge...

Meanwhile my remaining troops did their best. The Giant charged the troop and did a little damage. The Boomer Sergeant moved to shield the flank of my Warriors and scratched a wound off the other Revenant regiment, whilst the Warriors counter-charged the unit right in front of them for modest damage.

As you would expect, I got charged for my efforts. The Giant had his bit under control, but it was only a question of time for the Boomer Sergeant, and the Warriors started to take more damage with the help of some Bane-chant from the Necromancer.

This flank also looked pretty much as you would expect. The Warlord copped a counter-charge and a flank, whilst the other regiment went into the Warriors in an attempt to at least waver them. Unfortunately for them, they failed to achieve this by 1 on the nerve check. So the Warriors were free to retaliate...

...and they did not do it alone. The other Warriors returned from their mission on the right and arrived in the flank, ensuring that particular regiment's destruction. In a development that must have been particularly galling for Clint, the flanking Revenants failed to even waver my Warlord. They did 10 damage (and the counter-charge from the unit in the front added another), but the nerve roll was appalling and it left the undead awfully out of position.

On the other flank the Giant cleaned up the troop and reformed to help his shorter friends, but the Boomer Sergeant was a victim of my own foolishness. Having survived the hindered charge of the Revenants, he was unable to shoot and so counter-charged. Of course this meant that for the maybe 1 damage I inflicted, I ensured that their next charge would also be a counter-charge, so would ignore the terrain. In effect I traded a wound for giving them +1 to hit. Idiot.

It's worse than that, they're dead Jim! The Warriors paid the price for a couple of mediocre charges and were finished off, whilst the Boomer Sergeant paid the price for being only a mediocre sized unit under the control of a mediocre player. Guess the Giant would just have to go it alone.

On the other flank, some justice was done as the Warlord succumbed to another round of charges. Realistically the damage was done, however. Clint could have cleaned off either one of these units with a combined charge, but he didn't get the chance because of my Warlord's stubbornness. Or his own dice. Blame who you will.

My units charged in together against the front knights and cleaned them up, then I followed through with the fresh horde of Warriors in order to shield the one that would have been in peril from a charge. It was all under control, except... it was now turn 5. And all of my units were still on my half of the table. That is not how you win Invasion!

The Giant went into the more damaged knights and cleaned them up, however there was another unit and a Necromancer with Surge to contend with. I think that's what's happening here. I don't think I would willingly have given them a rear charge. No reason to do that. I had used my D6" overrun to get out of the arc of the unit, but Surge does not give up so easily. At least they wouldn't have Bane-chant.

I know it looks bad, but it's only 48 attacks. On 5+ and 5+. Honestly on average it's like 5 wounds. That's not so bad really. Right??

The remaining Revenants on the left flank had no choice but to charge the fresh Warriors, who wore the damage without wavering. 

Those Revenenants were basically fresh, so I had elected to ensure both units of Warriors could charge in together. I didn't really have a choice; they were in my table half. If I only went in with one unit I'd probably not have routed them. In hindsight it might have been worth risking it in order to ensure one of my units could get over the line in turn 6. My horde was worth 3 unit strength compared to the 2 of the Revenant cavalry, but if I'm honest I didn't realise that at the time. The units were comparable in my head because they were about the same size on the table. Put this down to inexperience - I've not played many games using these newfangled rules (the ones that are over 18 months old)...

Over on the other side of the field, I had elected to walk away from the enemy with the Giant, in order to get him into the scoring zone. The Revenants did the same. They were worth more than me. Did I realise that at the time? I don't remember. But I'm not sure I could have stopped them scoring by charging them anyway.

At this point we had to roll to see if the game would go to a 7th turn. If it did, my hordes on the left would get across the centre line and I would win 7:2. If it didn't, I would lose 1:2. Clint rolled the dice and it came up a... I don't remember. But it was not a 4+ (which was consistent with Clint's rolling for much of the game).

So the game ended with me going down 1:2. As I say, if I'd fully registered the unit strength values and realised that I could have had 4:4 as a worst case scenario rather than gambling on a win in order to clean up those Revenants on the left, I probably would have taken the draw.

I was well up in terms of damage to the enemy, with a 450 point advantage on attrition. That was enough to help me claw back a point on my narrow loss, so all in all it was not a disaster.

Result: 8-13 loss

I might do this in bite sized pieces. One game is enough writing for now. Til next time!

You can find the next part of the report here.