Bendigo Besieged Aftermath - Part 1

It's been a while since my last post. In actual fact, the last time I posted on the blog, I was recounting my experience at a 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy tournament. Well I'm back again, ready to talk about another tournament I have attended - but this time it's for 8th edition! If this is confusing for you, rest assured that it confuses me too. I had to double-check so many rules to confirm whether I was in the right edition or not. Anyway...

Bendigo Besieged is into its 3rd year, having kicked off back when we were in the middle of COVID lockdowns and the general chaos around that. I wasn't able to make it as a result, and the next year it proved impossible as well. But this time I finally made it, and it was great to see people keen to play some games of 8th edition. There were 18 players, which is apparently a new record for them. But it was also the first 8th edition tournament I've actually played since the End Times blew everything up all those years ago, and also probably the first multi-day Warhammer tournament of any edition I've played since then, apart from Cancon (which barely counts, as it's part of a larger convention that gives it the pull it needs). Very frequently nowadays, it seems that people are unable or unwilling to commit to a 2 day event. They are very few and far between. It amazes me that this is actually my 4th Warhammer tournament this year. Before this year, I don't think I had played one of any edition since End Times, contenting myself with Kings of War as the old Fantasy community was scattered to the winds. 

When I committed to this tournament, I decided I wanted to use Wood Elves. I never really got to use the 8th edition Wood Elf book when it came out, because its arrival prompted every man and his dog to suddenly pull out their dust-covered army and bring them to events. I am not really keen on being part of the "problem", when it comes to one army being a craze that results in far too many of one army flooding a tournament. So I decided to sit back, wait out the storm, and use them when people had calmed down and moved on. Except then the Warhammer world ended and I never got the chance. So now, some 9 years later, this was finally my chance.

I had a few ground rules for myself, based on my reading of the army book and what I saw at events back in the day. I would not use Trueflight Arrows. They were a no-brainer choice that was absolutely everywhere in people's tournament lists. I wouldn't hate them so much if it wasn't for True Line of Sight, which basically ends up meaning nearly everything can see everything all the time. You can't hide from the, and they don't miss much. And they're relatively cheap. Very balanced. My other thing to avoid was Wild Riders, because they were also one of the key go-to options. They're not as broken as Trueflight Arrows, but they're the ultimate glass cannons and hit unreasonably hard. I wouldn't mind taking one unit of them, but they were indeed everywhere - so I decided to avoid them. 

Previous years of Bendigo Besieged had avoided a comp pack, but apparently that had seen some pretty tough stuff appearing. So instead they went the complete opposite approach, and brought in a vast swathe of criteria known as Highlander comp. This rewarded taking no duplicates in a list ("there can be only one", hence the Highlander reference), and tried to make known problems down whilst encouraging things perceived as softer, like a big unit of Empire Spearmen, not taking a proper mage, a dispel scroll, or a BSB. In fact I've never seen so many 8th ed armies without BSBs. An army's comp score could be as low as you liked, but it maxed out at +10 for a soft list. Naturally I promised myself I would get maximum comp by taking a compromised list. In the end, my score was actually an 11, in true Spinal Tap fashion. What's softer than soft? I am! I still only got 10 points, of course...

• Glade Lord on Great Stag with Moonstone of the Hidden Ways, Armour of Destiny, Shield, Spear
• Spellweaver (Level 4, High Magic) with Talisman of Preservation
• Glade Captain with Battle Standard, Hail of Doom Arrow, Great Weapon, Light Armour
• Branchwraith
• 20 Glade Guard with Standard, Musician, Swiftshiver Shafts (multi-shot arrows)
• 23 Dryads with Champion
• 4 Warhawks with Champion
• 8 Wardancers with Champion
• 6 Treekin with Champion
• Treeman
• 6 Waywatchers
• Great Eagle

So that's a list that gets you 11/10 for comp thanks to unfavoured choices like a big block of Dryads, a Branchwraith, a Great Stag, no dispel scroll and no duplicate choices. The list basically had 2 party tricks up its sleeve. One was the Moonstone on my Lord, who could teleport a unit from forest to forest to hopefully move my Treekin behind someone's lines and cause mischief. The other was the big Glade Guard unit with multi-shot, backed by a High mage who could hopefully cast Hand of Glory on them to boost their BS up towards 7. I figured this plan had great potential for amusement. I wasn't so sure it could win many games.

It should be noted that as extensive as the comp pack was, the points were not actually worth all that much. It was a 5 game tournament over 2 days, and the comp score was added just once, at the end. Nobody was going to get more than 10 points added, so a very solid list with a 0 or slightly negative score could easily regain those points across the span of 5 games. Oh well, I knew that. I wasn't trying to win the event or anything.

As usual, I failed to grab a copy of my opponents' army lists, so there may be some guesswork in the details.

Game 1 - Battleline
Alex James - Dwarfs

• Ungrim Ironfist
• Thane BSB with Gromril Armour, Great Weapon, Master Rune of Grungni, Strollaz's Rune
• Runesmith with Gromril Armour, Shield, Rune of Stone, 2 Runes of Spellbreaking (destroy scroll)
• 35 Longbeards with Heavy Armour, Shields, Great Weapons, Full Command, Rune of Stoicism
• 24 Warriors with Heavy Armour, Shields, Full Command
• 29 Slayers with Standard, Musician, 3 Giant Slayers
• 20 Rangers with Heavy Armour, Shields, Great Weapons, Crossbows, Throwing Axes, Full Command
• 10 Miners with Heavy Armour, Great Weapons, Standard, Musician, Blasting Charges

The other impact of the comp scores was that the first round was seeded based on them. So in the first round, I found myself across the table from Alex's Dwarf army which had also totalled 11 comp points. How did he achieve such a feat, you might ask? Well, I will tell you. Look at that army list. Look at it! Where are the war machines? For that matter, where are the damn deployments? He placed 3 units, his characters, and he was done. Then it was just Dwarf elevator music (low-key humming about beer) whilst I laid out all the rest of my army.

There was a bit of tension in the roll-off for scouts, because Alex had 2 units with vanguard and was very keen to prevent me from blocking them off with my Waywatchers. He managed to beat me in the roll, which allowed his Rangers to drop in a screen to protect his advance. That allowed him to push both vanguard units half-way across the table before the game had even began, but it did mean there were some Rangers in the way of his Slayers...

After both sides have placed their scouts and used vanguard. Some pretty serious disrespect for the sanctity of deployment zones on display here, really.

Yeah, that's his whole army except for the Miners, who would arrive later.

They do look lovely, though. So many stubborn Longbeards. Certainly wouldn't be a problem.

I'm a big fan of Ungrim Ironfist. I've always liked that character (and model). I feel like the Rangers are kind of cramping his style now, though.

The Runesmith was in with the Warriors, but they were very much left behind at this point.

Happily (for everyone involved, I'm sure) I got the first turn, and immediately set about worrying whether the Dwarfs would manage to charge me in their first turn. This is not what you'd normally be worrying about when facing Dwarfs. It was very novel. I moved the Treekin and Lord around the flank, assuming they were out of arc of the Longbeards, but not actually checking it. It was lazy, and I was wrong. The Treeman decided he'd give people a 12" charge if they wanted to try to roll a 9 on the dice. The Warhawks swept around the flank of the Warriors, whilst the Wardancers went around the Slayers and the Waywatchers crept up behind. Then the shooting started. The Slayers lost a few of their number to the rapid fire from the Waywatchers, whilst the Longbeards lost maybe 7 models to the massed fire of the Glade Guard.

Alex spotted that I had failed to keep the Treekin out of the arc of the Longbeards, so declared the charge. I think he needed about an 8 on the dice, and thankfully he failed. That combat would not have gone well. The Rangers, having done an admirable job of protecting the vanguard space, now became a headache for him. They thought about charging (it would have been a pretty long way), about shooting through the trees, and eventually settled for marching to try to clear a path for Ungrim and his mates to wheel past.

The Warriors turned to face the Warhawks, which was predictable. If I'm honest though, it was probably wrong. The Warhawks charging alone would have bounced off their flank or rear. As it was, the Warriors were wasting precious time when they were already well behind their friends.

At the start of my Turn 2, I already had some serious decisions to make. The Dwarfs were advancing into a pretty nasty area, but they were also belligerent and numerous. If I stood back and shot again to try to reduce their numbers, someone was probably going to get charged by Dwarfs. There's a level of shame associated with this, I'm sure...

Decisions here too. At this point I realised that Skirmishers can't see sideways in this edition, so the Wardancers were out of position. But the Rangers were right on top of us. I could have sent the Treeman across into the flank of the Longbeards, but Ungrim was right there, and he could kill anything in my army in a single turn. He was the main conundrum in this whole thing.

I am not a smart man, but I know what aggression is. The Dryads and Treeman decided they couldn't leave the Rangers to their own devices, and charged. The stand-and-shoot reaction hurt the Dryads a lot more than expected, but at least they couldn't panic.

The Warhawks skipped right past the Warriors and into the flank of the Longbeards, along with the Lord and his Treekin buddies in the front.

I had decided a round of shooting was not going to get me anywhere fast, and I could still focus on the slayers whilst I tried to remove their support. The downside to this plan was that the Longbeards probably weren't going anywhere, and Ungrim was right in front of my Lord (and probably the Treeman). Oh well, at least he'd have to choose between them...

Maximum firepower was unloaded into the Slayers that turn. That probably included Hand of Glory on the Glade Guard, and the Hail of Doom Arrow. I had considered saving it for the Miners when they arrived, but I decided to focus on the immediate problem.

This combat was important. We were going to need to do as many wounds as possible on the charge, before we lost all our spear and impact hit bonuses.

In the end we did quite well. The Treekin got hacked up a bit (I don't roll 6+ ward saves), the Warhawks got off relatively lightly, and the Longbeards copped it pretty hard, losing something like 15 models. We won the combat, they were stubborn and didn't go anywhere. Pretty much as expected. Alex had rolled the maximum level for how much his army hated mine (ie everything in his army was utterly Wood Elf intolerant), so the toll in the first round of any combat was likely to be high for me.

The other combat went far better than expected. The Dryads and Treeman managed to kill 16 of the 20 Rangers on the charge, and they duly fled. The Dryads pursued and failed to catch them, but they'd need double 1s to rally so it didn't matter (they did run all the way off the table eventually). The really important thing was that the Dryads went far enough to hit the flank of the Slayers. That meant Ungrim would be slowed down and couldn't hit either of his ideal targets. It was a great outcome.

The situation actually looked pretty good in terms of how much I had waiting in the wings, but when you think that nothing was likely to engage Ungrim without dying, and he couldn't be broken, the equation became less favourable.

Yeah, I see you there... I really like Ungrim. Shame he was working for the other side.

The grind on the Longbeards was very nearly successful in the second round. Only 2 regular models left, including the banner bearer with the stubborn rune. Unfortunately that was my window. When I killed the rest of them now, the BSB might hardly lose combat at all, and keep us all stuck there.

The Dryads (I think the Branchwraith in particular) actually did quite well against the Slayers, and even beat them by one. Of course they then reformed to face us, and a time of horrors would soon be upon us...

OK, so the table is a bit messy over there. But you can see that the Miners had now turned up on the flank. They had looked around for somewhere useful to appear, but lacked the range to really make anything happen. You can also see that the Glade Guard advanced without any target to shoot at, and the Eagle had moved into a sacrificial position to try to shield the Warhawks from the Warriors (in case we failed to break through the Longbeards, which we obviously did).

The following turn, Ungrim and his wave of Giant Slayer mates made short work of the Dryads, broke them, and ran them down. 

My Lord ended up in a challenge with the Dwarf BSB, which resulted in them wounding one another but nobody running away. The Treeman discovered the wonder of Walk Between Worlds, running over and getting stuck behind the Eagle. If I'd thought of this plan earlier, I would have left room for the Treeman and maybe the Eagle wouldn't have had to make the sacrificial play.

The Dwarf Warriors charged the Eagle of course, and he didn't survive the encounter. Of course, their reward at this point was to run into a Treeman. Not quite what they had been hoping for earlier.

My Lord managed to kill the enemy BSB in the second round of their challenge, which freed up my units to spread and engage other targets. The Lord and Treekin went into the flank of the Warriors, and the Warhawks decided to avoid the fun of engaging the Slayers, flying past them and into the Miners. The rest of my army was busily engaged in trying to wipe out Ungrim and his friends with shooting.

This was always going to be a one-sided combat. The Warriors were not equipped to deal with such tough opponents. They lasted a couple of rounds, and then they were gone.

The Warhawks made surprisingly hard work of the Miners, but right when it looked like they might actually die as a result, they finally fired up, broke and ran down their opponents.

My shooting wiped out the last of the Slayers and wounded Ungrim, who wound up standing all alone, out in the open. He looked rather sad, and it seemed a shame to just gun him down in a less-than-heroic fashion. So instead of the firing squad, I decided to finally get the Wardancers into combat. They went in looking for Killing Blow, but Ungrim passed his ward save aganst the only one I landed. He did limited damage in return, both sides survived another round of combat, and the game was over. Ungrim was still standing, but he was standing all alone.

I had lost the Dryads, Branchwraith and Eagle, but only Ungrim was left on the other side. I had been fortunate with one or two charge rolls, notably where the Longbeards nearly got my careless Lord and Treekin. That would have changed the complexion of the game. As it was, it felt like Alex's pretty restricted list didn't really have the answers for mine. I had triumphed in the clash of the squishy lists!

Result: 18-2 Win

You can find the next part of my report here.