Convic 2019 Aftermath - Part 3

This is a continuation of my tournament report of Convic. You can find the previous part here.

Somehow I was undefeated after 2 games, and it was now time to shift to our larger 1995 point army lists. This was the point where I kind of wished I wasn't packing away my Arquebusiers, but I was pulling a lot of monsters out of the box instead. So it was a matter of give-and-take.

Game 3: Ransack (1995pts)

Huw Evans - Ratkin

• Warrior Horde
• Warrior Regiment
• Warrior Regiment
• Enforcer on Fleabag with Diadem of Dragon-kind
• Lab Rats (Formation)
• Horde of Blight with Brew of Strength
• Horde of Shock Troops of Potion of the Caterpillar (I think)
• Troop of Clawshots
• Troop of Hackpaws
• Horde of Tunnel Runners
• Death Engine with Bloody Carnage
• Warlock with Critter's Call, Bane-chant, Amulet of the Fire-heart (I think...)
• Night Terror with Inspiring Talisman
• Swarm-crier

Again, this falls well short of the 1995 point limit. I've missed a few things. I'm so good at this. Hey, I've never fought Ratkin before, OK? This is all new to me.

Actually, I think I missed a character. Maybe a War Chief with 2 hand weapons? Could be a thing.

Ransack meant we scattered a number of control counters all around the field. The central (light grey) point was worth 3 points instead of 1, and the orange ones (both of which were slightly to my right) were worth 2. The dark green were just worth 1 each.

Huw stacked most of his speed over here, on my left flank. The Rat Ogre dude is the Night Terror (apparently the dude on top is his Inspiring Talisman). The wheels are the Tunnel Runners. The Lab Rats formation meant all the regular Warrior units (the 2 regiments you see here and the horde up the other end) all had Regeneration.

The Clawshots were up the back. The Shock Troops are the ones on the left. I'm pretty sure they had Pathfinder, hence going behind the terrain. The red guys are the Blight. Man, check out those luminous pink dice. Sorry, I'm getting off topic. I don't remember being blinded by them in person.

I interpreted this as the Warrior horde being hung out to die, although they did have an Inspiring guy lurking behind the tower.

The most valuable points were more to my right, so that was where I put plenty of forces. This list had a lot more speed than the previous one, with the extra 3 monsters. A lot of that speed ended up over on my left, facing off with the faster stuff in Huw's list.

I got the first turn (I don't recall if it was my choice), and set about trying to work out what the hell I was doing against these Ratkin things. The hordes in the centre were dangerous, and all the infantry out-paced mine. None of this sounded ideal. But I had little shooting (and it did very little all game), so I figured advancing made sense. Need to control those tokens, right? I was still cagey around the faster elements, though. I was generally content to offer a charge, so long as whatever it was would be coming in alone.

I was actually being more aggressive on the right (things were moving at closer to best speed), but the trees slowed me down a bit.

It would appear I didn't take a photo of Huw's turn. Clearly the infantry moved up. The stuff over on the left was being more cagey, a bit like me. All my monsters moving 14-20" was freaking him out a little. Anyway, in my turn I went aggressive. Seemed like a good idea at the time. A horde of Pole-arms and a Beast of War into the Blight horde. The Pole-arms would be hitting on 6s, but I figured it would be a start, and the next attempt would probably be a counter-charge, so no longer hindered. The Giant was mainly charging the Shock Troops to prevent them flanking the Pole-arms. I hit the Warriors on the flank with what I could, bit the horde couldn't get there so that combat was also going to be a work in progress.

Aggression!

Not aggression! It was quite the stand-off. I did move the Winged Beast within range of the Hackpaws. I figured if they wanted a hindered charge into me alone, that would work for me.

And they went for it! Success! Now I just needed them to miss completely and I could fly over them and really mess with Huw's lines...

Right. So. You know how I was kind of having a preliminary swing at the Blight in preparation for a second, more serious attempt? Yeah well that only works when they don't just counter-charge your horde and rout it in a turn. Yeah, they had Inspiring in range. Didn't matter. I had banked on them missing a lot more than they did. Ironically I might have been better to try to bait them into the first (hindered) charge. Oh yeah, the Giant also perished straight up. That was unexpected. They normally take more work than that. Huw's character-who-I-didn't remember (the maybe War Chief) did contribute some wounds. I hadn't factored him in, but then I hadn't really crunched the numbers. It was gut feel. My gut was wrong. Got kicked in the guts. Was gutted. Now I had no centre. Very bad.

In my turn, in between sobbing about the centre of my army being dead and lamenting my life choices, I managed to get rid of the Warrior horde on the flank with a second charge before reforming. I elected not to charge with the Beast of War. I think I decided I'd rather be the one benefiting from the hindered charge this time, so I settled for shooting at the Clawshots (I think) and angling to drag the Blight horde out of the terrain so I'd get a clear run at them. At least, that's how I interpret what I see here. Maybe I just forgot to charge, or couldn't steer straight...

Disappointingly the Hackpaws did manage to do a single wound to my Winged Beast, leaving me little choice but to counter-charge. I didn't do enough damage to rout them, but it was again a start. And nothing had dared move within range of my other stuff in order to capitalise on my delay.

Look at me skillfully pulling the Blight horde out of the terrain. Let's assume that was the plan, OK? I took 6 wounds on the Beast of War, which was a reasonable price to pay. Better than a whole horde of Pole-arms (sob).

The Shock Troops were advancing behind the cover of the hill, but the Death Engine was a lot taller. Not sure Huw remembered that at the time. Everything else was still hesitant, however I was starting to take damage from the combined shooting of the Weapon Team and the Enforcer's terrible bad breath.

In my turn I hit the Blight hard and avenged my fallen Pole-arms. The regiment at the back had been proper stuck and elected to reform facing backwards after the previous turn. It would have been a long walk around the tower. They were now driving backwards. But that's OK, that's where the objectives were.

My Pole-arms did indeed charge over the hill and into the Death Engine, and (I believe with the help of Bane-chant) they did just enough to rout it. That was great, but then I was in an awkward situation. Reform to face the Shock Troops and expose my flank to all manner of fast and hideous things, or try to get lucky and overrun out of sight of the Shock Troops. Neither plan was great, I elected for Plan B, and rolled 1" not enough. Dang it. My beautiful flank! Help was on the way, but it would likely be too late...

This was a bit lucky. The Night Terror finally got bored, or decided that stuff was happening and his moment had arrived. He charged the Pole-arm regiment that had already taken 6 wounds. He did another 3, but only managed to waver them. His flank was now exposed... 

Yeah, those Pole-arms... They didn't make it. The centre was looking pretty grim again.

Help was coming, but the War Chief of Mystery and the Swarm-crier took it upon themselves to ground my birdie. Sadly it worked. He would be stuck looking for terrible vengeance instead of rear-charging the Shock Troops.

So that Night Terror? I had decided that a Beast of War in the flank would be copious force with which to remove him, whilst the Giant kept an eye on the other stuff nearby. I was wrong. I only wavered the Night Terror, which left things more complicated. 

It was also at this point that the chess clock came into play. We were both running out of time, and it was affecting our play a bit. Having wavered, Huw's Night Terror was free to back up. He did so, saying something about preventing shenanigans. I wasn't entirely sure what he meant, but later on it became apparent. I think his intent was to prevent my Beast of War from rear-charging the horde of Shock Troops, who had turned to face the approaching Pole-arm horde. I didn't realise this, and given we were tight for time neither of us really got the chance to ensure we were on the same page. I'm not sure if he had enough movement to reverse far enough to block the charge completely, but given the model moves 9", it is quite possible that he could have done it. As it was, he didn't go far enough and I realised I could get around him. I probably should have realised what he was trying to achieve, and made a point of confirming whether it was possible. I felt a bit bad about this afterward, once I realised what had happened. As I say, the clock was killing us.

The other thing that was happening was Huw's shooting was murdering my reinforcements. The already-wounded Beast of War got picked off by the Clawshots and breath weapons. Then the birdie perished in a similar manner, once he had dealt with the Swarm-crier. It was looking very tight. I think the Pole-arms claimed the War Chief-ish dude, but then they were facing the Shock Troops.

You can't see it, but this side of the field is now littered with the smoking corpses of my monsters.

With time getting so tight, my camera work really fell away too. I have missed multiple key moments here. After dealing with the Hackpaws over on the right, the Winged Beast had decided to take an opportunistic crack at the Warrior regiment (they had no reinforcements, the threat of their counter-charge didn't seem very dangerous). Rather unexpectedly, I went straight through them. You don't really expect a model with only 6 attacks to go through the front of a regiment in one go - not even a modest regiment. This meant the birdie was free to reform in a really dangerous position. As things like the Tunnel Runners were suddenly obliged to shift facing to counter things, he ended up rear-charging the Shock Troops alongside the slippery Beast of War. Obviously this was too much for the horde, although realistically that was more down to the Beast than the birdie.

The very wounded regiment of Pole-arms ended up finishing off the crippled Night Terror, and my final moments (I think I had 45 seconds to try to act on Turn 7) saw the Pole-arms lunge at the Clawshots but be unable to get their dice organised fast enough to kill them. It didn't really matter: their unit strength on that 2 point objective meant that I had stolen it at the last moment. The Beast of War held the 3 point centre, and the obviously lost regiment wandering back toward my lines over on the right had taken the other orange one.

It had been a strange, confusing game. I've never encountered quite such a stand-off before as what we saw on the left, especially when the units involved all moved at different speeds (it wasn't like 2 knight units trying to avoid being the charge victim). Huw was a bit unlucky with the Night Terror, particularly with the confusion over his efforts to save the Shock Troops at the end. With a bit more time on our clocks I don't think that would have happened. Sorry, Huw.

In the end I walked away with more objectives, but the game felt like a stalemate. The damage tally was only 210 points difference. It was a tight contest.

Result: Win 

Tournament Points: 16-5