This is a quick write up about my first Warcry tournament which was hosted by Rogue Games in Leyland. Over the last week or so I’ve been frantically putting paint on models to allow me to play in the event on Saturday afternoon. There was no painting requirement, I just prefer to play with painted models, especially in events. I played 3 very good games of Warcry as part of the event with my Splintered Fang warband.

As it turned out not many people attended, I think the venue could have accommodated up to 6 Warcry tables easily, so there was room for 12 players. However with only the 4 of us playing the room was very comfortable and relaxed. In fact Lewis of The Model Shed rocked up to paint and watch the games unfold – hopefully we can persuade him to play in the future too – so there was plenty of space spare.

Bryan of Rouge Games had also obtained an Organised Play kit for the event. So there was some interesting prises up for grabs, which I didn’t realise Games Workshop had produced.

The Warcry event used Matched Play scenarios providing the primary objective and the deployment of the game for both players, and the Hidden Agenda being the secondary objective chosen by each player for their own warband to achieve. Before the event a player’s warband is split into 3 groups called, Dagger, Hammer, and Shield. These groups are kept the same throughout the event, and interact with deployment and the scenarios differently from game to game.

There was no real logic applied, other than a little common sense, in how I divided my warband up into the three groups. I wanted a hard hitter in each group, I wanted to try and make each group as survivable as each other, basically just balancing each group as well as possible. It made sense to keep the snakes and the snakechamrer in the same group as they interact with one another. My Splintered Fang warband was split up as follows.

Dagger

• Pureblood – the hitter of this group.
• Vemonblood with shield – adding some staying power.
• Clearblood – to make up numbers.

Shield

• Trueblood – the hitter, and leader of the warband.
• Vemonblood Aelf with sword and whip – fast moving attack piece.
• 2x Clearbloods – for survive-ability in numbers.

Hammer

• Serpent Caller – speed, toughness, and hard hitting all in one package!
• Serpents – speed, and can hit hard, although very squishy.
• Clearblood with shield – for adding some toughness to this group.

Game 1: Splintered Fang vs Jack’s Cypher Lords

• Game Battleplan: No Mercy – take down half of your opponent’s warband.
• Hidden Agenda: The Architect – take down half your opponent’s warband but have more than half of your own remaining. I thought I was being cunning here picking an Agenda that matched the Battleplan. However Jack had exactly the same idea.
• Twist: Arcane Inscriptions – a [Double] ability, if within 1″ of an obstacle you can read the inscriptions. Roll a D6 and on a 6 gain a wild dice to use next turn.

I think its fair to say that the Cypher Lords are the typical ‘glass cannon’ force, they hit hard and can certainly move around, but if you can pin them down they can be taken out relatively easily. Jack began the game yoyo-ing the models back out of harms way, I thought I was done for. A Cypher Lord would come steaming in, rack up some damage, and before i could commit enough retaliation, another Cypher Lord would pull the model back out of harms way. I lost my first models to this tactic, however the way the models ended up interacting around terrain and our battle lines merging in teh second and third turn, meant that eventually I managed to start taking models out. Here I found out that the fang have a numerical advantage out of the box, having 10 models vs Cypher Lords 8. So I only had to take 4 out verses Jack having to take out 5. I ended up claiming 4 Cypher Lords before Jack got my fifth Fang, and so I got the full 21 tournament points for the win.

Game 2: Splintered Fang vs Bryan’s Iron Golem.

• Battleplan: Shock and Awe – take down all fighters in your opponent’s Dagger.
• Hidden Agenda: Hold the Centre – at the end of teh battle have 1 fighter and no enemy fighters within 6″ of the centre of the board.
• Twist: Dead Of Night – no ranged attack or ability can target an enemy more than 3″ away.

I wasn’t looking forward to facing the Iron Golems. On the odd occasion I have played with them they have impressed me, and every time I’ve played against them its always felt like a challenge. But hope was kindled when Bryan told me he only had two models in his Dagger, and neither of them was the Ogor! The set up for this scenario saw both our Dagger groups deploy on the table, but the rest of our forces turning up at the start of turn two.

I was lucky enough to have a quad from the first initaive roll. I held back my Pureblood to activate last and use rampage to move as far as possible and still get an attack. As it turned out I manged to get two attack actions on the the toughness 5 Legionnaire doing a significant amount of damage.

Turn 2 saw the rest of our forces coming on. I was fortunate enough to have both my Hammer and Shield within range of either of Bryan’s Shield, but Bryan’s Hammer was out of range of me, well the Ogor and Prefector were. So I used some Clearbloods as Ogor fodder speed bumps, and concentrated everyone else onto Bryan’s Shield and Dagger. The Pureblood easily finished off his target taking out the first of Bryan’s Dagger. However Bryan’s Dominar was closing rapidly on the first of my Dagger. The last thing I did was send the elf off (Vemonblood) to hunt down the last of the Dagger, the rapidly retreating Drillmaster.

Unbelievably the Clearbloods sent to hold up the Ogor survived, and managed to take down the Prefector, before finally being deleted by the Ogor’s massive bludgeon fists. The rest of the Fangs managed to take down all of remaining Iron Golems except for the Drillmaster on teh opposite flank. The Vemonblood sent after the Drillmaster did some damage only for the Drillmaster to nolchalantly take down the annoying elf, retreat some more, and then heal most of the damage using a value 6 Respite ability – sigh!

I managed to take down the Ogor leaving only the Drillmaster on the table. I was starting to rub my hands with glee at this point – until Bryan introduced me to the ‘Desperate Last Stand’ rule. The Drillmaster suddenly became anything but a walk over. Taking down the Clearblood sent to hold him up and heal the last of his damage. Fortunately ny next initiative phase saw me getting the iniative and converting a triple into a quad. This allowed me to Rampage my Trueblood into the Drillmaster for the full 3 attack actions, ending the game.

I claimed the victory and my hidden agenda, earning 16 tournament points as I had less than half my warband left. I don’t have an image of the Iron Golems, but they were unpainted anyway, so here is a group shot of the not quite fully painted Splintered Fang.

Game 3: Splintered Fang vs Alex’s Daughters of Khaine

• Battleplan: The Prize – an item of treasure is place roughly in the middle of teh board. The game lasts 3 turns, and the player carrying the treasure at the end of teh game wins.
• Hidden Agenda: Purge – secretly decide which table quarter I want to claim before the start of the game. Claim it by having at least 1 fighter in that quarter and no enemy fighters.
• Twist: Dusk – as darkness falls the range attacks/abilities can be used reduces each turn by 3″, starting at 12″ turn 1 and reducing to 3″ minimum.

My game plan for this was to get the treasure quick and get out of there, protecting the treasure carrier as much as possible. To this end I sent in my super speedy elf. However those Daughters hit hard….so hard! My elf barely had time to pick the treasure up before being pierced by arrows and glaives. I then learnt that ‘my super speedy elf’ is actually just an ‘ordinary speed elf’ as Blood Sisters went berserk ripping out hearts out left, right, and centre. Amidst the slaughter one of the Witch Aelf cheerleaders skipped away with the treasure, taking it out of reach of my unengaged fighters.

I’ve played against Alex’ Daughters before and found them very hard to play against. One thing I did try was to concentrate as much as possible on a single Gorgal at a time, they are very resilient models able to soak up a lot of damage. They also hit very hard with the Bathed in Blood ability adding 1 to strength and more importantly attacks for their activation.

Having had a massive ruck in the middle of the table, I did eventually manage to reduce the Daughters to half their starting number during turn 3. However the treasure token was away in the far corner of the board – meaning I was trying to limit the damage as much as possible. My last activation was a choice between double moving to engage a Witch Aelf, or move and attack an undamaged Blood Stalker Gorgal. I choose the latter in a futile and pointless final dice roll.

The last activation of the game was the Witch Aelf that could have been engaged. It double moved into the quadrant I had secretly chosen. I’m not sure engaging it would have helped. A Disengage and Move action would probably have had the same result. Alex had done well to place each of his last models into each quadrant – and I hadn’t even noticed until it was too late. The treasure stealing Witch Aelf into the NW quadrant, the Blood Stalker into the NE quadrant, a Witch Aelf into the SW quadrant, and the final Witch Aelf in the SE quadrant.

This was a loss for me, but I did manage to savage 5 tournament points through reduced the Daughters to half strength.

Topping The Tournament Table

With these scores I manged to come top of the leader board with 42 tournament points, Byran coming in at 41, followed by Alex and then Jack. However, Bryan being the event organiser, and just playing to make even numbers graciously dropped out and so teh final standings were:

1. Dave, Splintered Fang
2. Alex, Daughters of Khaine
3. Jack, Cypher Lords

Sure it was a small event, and I got those crucial lucky rolls at just the right time. However its rare for me to place at events at all, so i’m really pleased at coming first. I’d like to thank Byran for organising an excellent day of gaming at Rogue Games, and to all the players for 3 excellent entertaining games of Warcry.

Here are the winnings, the Warcry organised play Gold Medal, a Warcry carry case provided by Rogue Games, and some acrylic tokens to replace the card ones in the Warcry set.

I’m being optimistic with this post’s title, I certainly hope Rouge Games put on more Warcry events. It was a fun relaxed day, well worth attending. I’m sure in future events it wont be me finishing top either 😉

In the mean time, Rogue Games has a webstore, as you’d expect, check it out buy some stuff**.

**but also go buy stuff from GoblinGaming or ElementGames – they aren’t my local game store but I do get some commission if you use those links – pays the WordPress fees etc.