02 May 2010

Southpark Tournament - April '10 - Game 1

Southpark Tournament - April '10 - Game 1


This weekend I went to a small 3-round WFB tournament at the sister-store to my local FLGS.

This was a little different than most tournaments and local games, as it allowed special characters and enforced no composition requirements or scoring. The result seemed to be more decisive games and the irrelevance of most normal rank & file type troops.

I took Karl Franz on the Imperial Dragon (who I've named "Lucy",) two scroll caddies, two steam tanks, three cannons, three units of five knights, and a unit of ten militia.

My first game was against another Empire army. While that may seem a bit vanilla, we both have themed armies (when we're not playing cheese-fest no-comp tournaments, it would seem), mine as the independent city-state of Marienburg, and his as an Estallian army!



I set up on the right. From the furthest flank to the closest I had... Karl Franz, knights, cannon, STank, militia, cannon and two mages in the woods, knights, STank, knights, and a cannon on the hill in the corner.

My opponent had, from furthest flank to closest... Captain on Pegasus with Sword of Fate (nominated KF as the target), inner circle knights with grand master (general) and behind them a unit of handgunners with a HLR, cannon and mage/caddy in the woods, STank, handgunner detachment, unit of swordsmen, cannon in the woods, STank, and some knights with a warrior priest.




My opponent went first and right out of the gate he disabled both of my STanks with cannon shots. The one on my left (foreground) took 6 points of damage, the other took 3 (I think) or 4. So I was left hoping my cannons did the same.

On my turn it didn't happen. I rolled very short for the cannon in the foreground and missed the STank on my left completely. The STank in the center took a few points of damage, but was still rolling. The luck with my cannons, however, paid off on my right flank, where I shot the Pegasus out from under the captain with the Sword of Dead Franz. Good thing, since I advanced pretty aggressively to threaten the IC knights and Grand Master. In fact, everything other than my scrap metal STanks and cannons advanced.




The IC knights turned to face the inevitable charge from Frank & Lucy. The dragon obliged & charged, with some knights coming up to (hopefully) intercept the walking Captain before he could reach Frank. My militia ran towards the central STank, and my central knights sped past the block of swordsmen, weathered a hail of bullets and charged the handgunners. On my left I probably should have played a bit of cat & mouse, but figured that "He Who Risks Nothing Is Lost" or "No Guts No Glory" would be my motto for the afternoon, and charged the unit of knights who admittedly outclassed me due to numbers, command, and Priest.



So the results where that my knights did get chased off and run down. However, in the center my other unit of knights ran down the handgunnners. Karl missed with all of his attacks at the Grand Master and the dragon barely manaced to kill a few knights. I lost combat but (thankfully) didn't run away.





So my knights on the right did intercept the Captain of Karl's Doom (and ran him down.) After surviving another volley of cannon fire, my right STank risked a few steam points in order to hide behind the woods. I killed my opponent's STank on the opposite side, but contined to miss the one on the right flank, which started to hit high-gear & head towards Frank & Lucy who continued to miss all of their fn0rking attacks and lost combat again. The enemy knights and WP swept past my left flanks and started moving across the backfield...


Finally Frank & Lucy score some hits (last minute!) and chase off the IC knights, pursue, run them down and head into the swordsmen (missed a turn or two in the pics!) The knights in my backfield charge and finish off my crippled STank before heading back to the center of the battlefield. The enemy cannon crew in teh central woods panicked at some point. I don't remember if that was from the broken combat or from terror. In any case, my militia continued to spend the game dodging cannon balls, dragons, steam tanks and all manner of madness and quickly followed up the panicked crew! With a few lucky cannon shots I managed to finally hit and destroy the STank that had eluded me for the first half of the game.



So this was the last bit of mopping up. Frank & Lucy finished the WP and last knight (who charged me) and then ducked out of the cannon's line of sight. The final victory of the battle was the militia defeating the rallied cannon crew.

End result massacre for the Marienburgers over the Estalians!

What may not come across in the report above is that I really felt like I was losing for the first three turns of the game. It was only when I finally broke the IC knights and took down that first STank in the bottom half of turn three that things turned around for me. So it was a pretty up & down game.

A few highlight pics....




Noble Estallian knights make a charge against an immobilized Marienburger steam tank. The panicked engineer turns around to meet the unexpected destruction of his precious machine.




Brave Estallian swordsmen were some of the only infantry in sight. But were they brave enough to face...



Frank and Lucy? No. After witnessing the death of their general, they failed to withstand the terror of the dragon and fled... but fled too slowly and became dragon snack food.


2 comments:

  1. It looked and sounded like a good game. The last time I fielded my Empire verses another empire army is was pure gunline on both sides. It played like a Napoleonic game were we blazed away at each other for most of the game, didn't have much fun and the game ended in a draw.

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  2. I quite like your color scheme. I'd like to ask you which GW references they are.

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