On Saturday I took myself off to Hinckley to play Warmaster for the day. I'd spotted this event when it was first advertised back in January, but then everything went quiet and I largely forgot about it until a Facebook reminder popped up. The day was still free in my calendar and after a last minute check it was till going ahead I put the army in the car and set forth. Regular opponent Andy was also hoping to attend but family life intervened. They had about 12 people interested/signed up but several last minute drop-outs meant there were a small but perfectly formed group of eight of us - a few familiar faces in Murray, Jim and Nigel and several newer ones, including a potential new local opponent from just down the road in Nottingham.
There hadn't been a tournament pack circulated but it turned out to be three scenarios from Paul Winter's "Winterroller" pack - all of which I'd played before, so nothing new to wrestle with.
First up I was to play Murray - an old chum and someone I've played agqinst quite a few times. He had a Beastmen army. The first scenario was one where mist restricts visibility for the first few turns of the game. As neither of us had much in the way of long range shooting this wasn't going to be too much of a problem.
The Kislev army assembles
The Beasts had plentiful chariots
And soon put them to good use
Beastmen ambushed me from the village
I laagered the War Wagon in the centre
Some shooting from the horse archers confused the Baests in the village, but they were then caught by chariots
The cavalry and chariots clashed
Leaving both sides battered
The other Kislev cavalry were caught by still more chariots
Murray's ambushing Beasts slowly closed in on the war wagon and it's supporting troops
The last of the winged lancers were caught by infantry
Time ran out at this point - Kislev was unbroken, but the Beastmen had racked up ample victory points to claim the win.
A good, hard fought game
After lunch I was drawn to play Sam. Sam was the store employee asked to make up the tournament to even numbers in the event of no-shows. He'd last played WM over a year ago and was using Dwarfs, an army he'd never played with before.
All of which seemed a bit harsh on the poor chap.
The Dwarfs and Kislev were in the desert, for reasons.
The War Wagon and supporters pushed up, beyond them I had a "forlorn hope" who's job was to catch cannonballs in the face.
The scenario rewarded capturing the five objectives on the centre line of the board.
I used the terrain to further hide from the cannonballs
Sam pushed unsupported units of handgunners out on my flank
Horse archers nabbed one of the objectives
The Winged lancers fell upon the thunderers.
More lancers charged Dwarfs in the centre
As a unit of their brethren scarpered with an objective
The trollslayers were lured into charging the War Wagon.
The Red Guard took damage but the slayers themselves took a beating.
Shooting wiped out some horse archers and the Dwarfs swooped on the discarded objective
Winged Lancers crashed home and the anvil finally failed to prevent one of the Wizards turning into a Monster Bear!
This combat broke the Dwarf army and Kislev claimed the win!
A good fun game - I did my best to help Sam along with a little advice. About half way though we realised that what I'd thought was a single unit of cannon was supposed to be two units - he'd been misled by the app into thinking a cannon was a single stand unit. That really didn't help his cause.
So on to round three and a win and a draw meant I was playing....Murray again!
In a small tournament that's always likely to happen and I like playing Murray, so this wasn't a problem.
This scenario got you double points for units killed by your general - which is all well and good but (in the absence of a tournament pack beforehand) I hadn't tooled up the Tzarina so i wasn't sure how this would go.
The Kislev battle line drawn up.
My infantry pushed up in the centre
those darned chariots (and their accompanying puppies)
My light cavalry was facing a wall of chariots
So they decided to charge!
As the infantry claimed the town
Once again I was ambushed on the flank
A bitter infantry clash in the town saw Kislev driven back
The lancers were caught by chariots
As the beasts cut down horse archers
The cavalry charge proved devastating, taking out two units in a single round
One unit rampaged home into the archers, even though they were defended, no armour save against a chariot charge looked good odds
And so it proved as the death of the Archers saw my break point hit and the game was up!
Another great game - it started well as my hose archers cleared out a flank, but failed orders and bad positioning meant I wasn't able to capitalise and Murray pulled it back.
Three great games, I hadn't come last and I'd even managed to win a game!
Sam promised there's be more Warmaster at Black Dragon in future - I'll be going back if there is.
Some bonus phone pictures
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