So today, February 25th, myself and my good friend Eddy went down to Warhammer Leicester for an Age of Sigmar doubles tournament. Now, my memory isn’t great so forgive me if this is a slightly rough account of proceedings, but I hope you enjoy reading about the event.

The rules were fairly simple to keep it straightforward. Each player was allowed a 550 point army containing 1 Leader, 1+ Battleline, 0-1 Artillery, 0-1 Behemoth, and 0-1 Other unit. Allegiance abilities would not be used for these games. Each game would take place on a 4×4 table with missions from the General’s Handbook. And so it was that our armies looked like this:

JESSICA: 1 Lord Relictor, 5 Liberators with Paired Warblades + Grandblade, 5 Judicators with Skybolt Bows + Shockbolt Bow, 5 Protectors with 2 Starsoul Maces.

EDDY: 1 Knight-Questor, 3x 5 Liberators with Shields and Warhammer, 3 Prosecutors.

The plan, if it could be called such, was for my Lord Relictor to hide from shooting attacks behind the Protectors whilst healing said unit and taking potshots with lightning at enemy units. My sword Libs and Judicators would hold ‘home’ objectives, preferably from cover. Eddy’s units were to push forward as a moving shield wall, with the Knight-Questor taking on any heroes who strayed too close and the Prosecutors to fly around and harass any weak spots in the army or grab unclaimed objectives. Would it work? Well, maybe. Let’s see.

GAME ONE

So game one was the Gifts From the Heavens battleplan, against a combined force of Seraphon and Stormcast Eternals. I was fairly confident at the start of this match, even though the opponent’s team each had a roll on the Triumph table for being at 40 points less than ourselves.

We had a fairly strong hold on our own objective, so I intended to push my Protectors, some Liberators and the Lord Relictor forward towards the large unit of Saurus Warriors pictured above. The Gifts in turn two came down right next to that unit of Saurus on the opponents turn, and our own came down next to Eddy’s Liberators, but also right next to a Realmgate. We came unstuck as a unit of Decimators surged through the Realmgate to assault the liberators holding our objective. They didn’t actually kill much, but did manage to push forward enough to contest the objective. Meanwhile I tried to get to the objective behind the Saurus Warriors, but my Protectors died in a single round of combat before hitting once, as the Triumph effects and other skills meant the Saurus Warriors were re-rolling both Hit and Wound rolls. I simply couldn’t hold up to that many attacks with a 4+ save roll.

Thus, with no way to contest the enemy objective and our own objective assaulted by Decimators, we lost the game.

GAME TWO

Game two was Escalation, against a combined Ironjawz army with two Warbosses on foot, two units of Brutes, a unit of Gore Gruntas and a unit of ‘Ardboyz. This mission would be tough, especially with the Gore Guntas getting into my Judicators far too quickly. For a fun narrative, we observed a lot of woods and ‘spooky’ scenery so we all agreed for narrative purposes to call all the terrain Sinister.

We took a bit of a toll from each of the units of Brutes, and the ‘Ardboyz, and managed to kill the Gore Gruntas after piling in with two units of Liberators as the Judicators and Gore Gruntas both fell to battleshock at the end of a turn.

Luckily for us, the opponents left their Warbosses til the third turn to turn up due to the Escalation plan. Interestingly this resulted in them both not getting into combat at all, which allowed us to hold onto objectives just enough to call the game a draw. However, because the Ironjawz had killed more of our units, they won a victory based on kill points from the scenario putting us at two losses.

GAME THREE

This battle was against a force of Skaven Pestilens and Slaves to Darkness with the Nurgle keyword. This was the Take and Hold scenario with one objective in each player’s zone 9″ from the table edges – to win a major victory a team had to control both objectives at the same time.

In this game we decided to just go for it and push forward, if we wanted that enemy objective we needed to push forward as much stuff as we can. So, being aware that the Skaven and Chaos force only had one shooting unit – one of the Skaven constructs – we pushed forward with Liberators and Protectors, with the Prosecutors and Knight-Questor jumping through a Realmgate right into the heart of enemy territory.

The enemy reacted fairly quickly, but were unable to kill the Knight-Questor or finish off the Prosecutor unit as they harassed the enemy and drew the Chaos Knights away from our side to protect their own units. WIth no Chaos units able to push into our own side, and with time running tight for the event, we attempted to push all our units forwards to clear out the units of Plague Monks and Chaos Warriors holding the objective leaving five Liberators to hold our own objective safely.

Had we had time for turn 5, I am sure we’d have been able to push through and claim both objectives. Sadly though, with the clock ticking we just about scraped to the end of turn four with no clear victor. However, again it came down to kill points for this scenario, in which we took the victory for slaying a good number of the Skaven and Chaos forces including the full unit of Chaos Knights.

END GAME

So in the end, we had a single win. But a great day was had, and I take a small moral victory in that our team was the only one with fully painted armies. The overall winners were the team we played last with the Chaos/Skaven army, partly due to the “favourite opponents” vote. Also we had doughnuts. That’s worthy of note, even though I only had one of the mini doughnuts because I’m watching my calories!!

I had a brilliant time and can’t wait to play even more AoS!