We are back with another tournament overview, it feels good to start writing again. During my absence I still attended tourneys, but I won’t be covering them since it would be lousy writing trying to remember everything. I still managed to make a decent write-up of the Nations cup (linked here). It was too big of an event to forget about. However, we are in Haarlem now at a teeny tiny 8 player tourney hosted by Dennis. Let’s see what I am bringing to the table.

Yes this tourney is not just small in player count but also in point limit. We are getting 450 points to work with. It’s small, but no complaints from me. I think it’s fun to have some variation in points levels. You get to experiment with lists in a different way and you also see a lot of armies that you would not normally see. For me that experiment is Shadows of Angmar. I opted to not take a banner and just focus on getting as many orcs on the table as possible. 28 models at 450 is very decent considering I can still field Gully and 2 Barrow-Wights. Might is a tough resource to come by in this list. I could probably switch out a Barrow-Wight for a captain, but I want to see if I can get away with my only might being Gully. The enemy can’t call Heroic Moves anyway if they are paralyzed right?

When the new edition launched I was very quick to judge this list. I saw Gully with no Witch-King to support him, everything in the game going up to Fight 7, and him not getting Fight 8 or Strike. Not that this guy needed a buff mind you, it’s just everything in the game getting stronger and not having the WK to back him up made the list feel lack luster at first.

After carefull consideration (and playing against it a few times), I can say that this list definitely has some teeth. Sure you don’t have the tactical nuance of a transfix or compell at your disposal, but a good paralyze still works wonders, as it always has. Plus, I feel like you play the list differently from how you would play Angmar in the previous edition. Normally, you wait out your opponent and play a very slow game when playing Angmar. You would dwindle resources and try to wear your opponent down. With this list you still kind of do that, but now you also have more tools to stay in cover and do serious damage in the turn that you go in. Friendly spirit models gain Stalk Unseen in this army, which is very handy because enemy shooting is usually your biggest fear when you’re playing Angmar. Note that Werewolves also have the Spirit keyword (for some reason). All of your important pieces completely ignoring all enemy magic and shooting is quite a big deal. But I will save all my blabbering for the upcoming army review of Shadows of Angmar. Let’s see what this tourney has in store for us.

Game 1 – Hold ground vs Lindon (Stijn)

Hold ground with 28 models against literally half… I liked my odds. Stijn brought quite an elite list with the High King of Lindon together with an elf captain on horse, 2 more riders, around 4 King’s guard and some elves. It was going to be an uphill battle for him from the start. I had more warbands and more pressure to get unto the middle of the board. Maelstrom was completely one-sided, as it often is. I didn’t have to spend any might and could position my forces like I wanted to. Stijn, however, rolled a 2 for Gil-Galad, who got thrown in a corner, and a whopping 1 for his elf captain. He kept his momentum going by rolling a 3 the next turn with his captain. Very rough, but here he made a game losing error. He didn’t spend any might to bump this to a 4. This was crucial since I already had my entire army grouped together on the western board edge.

The photo doesn’t show it well, but I was able to spawn his warband (1 captain and 2 knights) right in the middle of my army. To make matters worse, it was his priority, so I could immediately get to gobbling up his force with Gulavhar.

In my opinion the game ended right here, and I could also sense that Stijn realized this. He still tried to make the best out of it, which is very admirable.

Over the next few turns my opponent did a very good job at protecting his banner, which showed that he knew how to position his army well. The odds were so stacked against him, that it didn’t really end up mattering in the end. Gully waited patiently until Gil-Galad was paralyzed on the ground and pounced on the banner, before eating up the High King of Lindon as well.

A very short game and a very short write up. I think we were done way before the bell rang. This could have been a longer game, had my opponent opted to spend the might right at the beginning. He got punished extremely hard for a single mistake, but that is the nature of the game. I almost ended up tabling him. He was still very sportsmanlike about the whole affair and a general joy to play against. The game ended up being 20-2 (a banner in this list might have been a good idea) for the forces of evil.

Game 2 – Lords of Battle vs Lurtz’s scouts (Andy)

Both me and Andy had around the same model count. His army was vastly superior to mine in terms of battle-line. Fight 4, Strength 4, and a hero with free heroic combats? It was clear that I wasn’t winning the standard line fight. So I decided to go hero hunting, something this army is extremely good at. There was a big rohan house splitting up the board right in the middle. We could deploy 24″ forward and I was happy to see that my opponent decided to make full use of it. Yes I have stalk unseen on my spirit models, but I did not fancy needing to move across the board into 9 Strength 3 bows. A bigger error was that my opponent split his forces up. He had two warbands which he put down on each side of the house. I positioned my army in such a way that I could concentrate 90% of my army on 50% of his. He also did not put any models around Mauhur to protect him. This was the state of the board after the first turn of movement.

He did have a drummer to get his second warband around the house quickly, but they would only arrive in the second turn. Gully did try to make the game exciting by rolling a 3 high on 5 dices (big yikes). I opted to spend 3 might, since he would otherwise die because he was trapped at this point, and won the fight. He had no issue killing Mauhur and even got a point of might back. It was a big investment for me, especially since Gully is my only might on the board, but it was still worth it. Because of the many traps and one sided fights I managed to clean up half his warband on the first turn.

Next turn Lurtz called a heroic move to get into a favourable combat where Gully could not charge him. My opponent then failed all of his courage checks…. yeah. To be fair, my army bonus did pay dividents since his whole army got a -1 for courage checks, because I killed a hero last turn. This trend would continue as I killed him drummer the next turn and lastly Lurtz.

This game too was over very quickly. Gulavhar did what he needed to do and I felt confident in pushing my lead from turn one. I killed at least three times a many models (even four times now that I think of it), broke him while remaining unbroken, killed his leader, and killed three hero models for a 20-0 clean sweep. With this game, my opponent deserved a vote for best sportmanship almost automatically. Even with not standing a chance since turn one, he still held up high spirits and fought to gain any amount of VP possible, which is truly admirable.

Game 3 – Seize the prizes vs Return of the king (Ben)

This was an army I outnumbered almost 2 to 1, and I still had a big flying monster on the board. The scenario definitely felt in my favour. I also discovered this game that Gully has and intelligence value of 4+. Why he is so damn smart, nobody knows. Deployment was pretty standard. I deployed gully right in the middle to fly down to the center objective turn 1 and two barrow wights, plus their warband, contesting the flank objectives. My opponents decided to split up and deploy their army right in front of the flank objectives.

Since my opponent decided to split up his army, I decided that I only needed 2 objectives to secure the game. I completely gave up the objective that Aragorn was going for (because realistically he would get there first) and instead focussed fully on the center and right flank objectives. Gully flew over and picked up the center objective turn 1, while the rest of my army completely shifted towards the right flank objective.

Because my opponent was worried that I would also capture the right flank objective just as easily, he called a move on his king. I understood that he did not want to give me free reign of the objective, but by spending his only point of might on that side of the board, he gave me free reign on Gulavhar. Ben also picked up the objective with his king and left a nice open gap for Gully to fly into, so he did. After an unsuprising turn of combat, my 12″ flyer was now in posession of 2 objective markers.

The next few turns I spend paralyzing ghosts and eating up a few with Gully to guarentee the break. One turn before breaking his army I flew him away towards the board edge. The next few turns went as expected. I ended up almost tabling my opponent when the game had finally ended on a 11-4 victory.

Conclusion

I took Shadows of Angmar as an experiment to see if the lists would hold up, and man it did. I think it definitely has some teeth. Especially on higher point levels were you get a lot more options, like werewolves and spectres. It felt good to have that many bodies on the table, but in most scenario’s it was overkill. A banner would have been a nice addition to this army list.

Overall, I had a blast. Shout out to Dennis for organizing this tourney. I will definitely be playing more Shadows of Angmar on the future and look forward to seeing how it performs on higher point levels.