After Tournament Report and Some Navel Gazing

Whilst I'll be dedicating this blog to battle reports, I thought I might just write up a short post of my thoughts on my recent Wellington Warlords Super Series tournament, and where I think I'll go from here :)

I won't be posting this on Facebook because it really is a lot of self indulgent naval gazing and I don't know how much interesting I have to say!

My first thought on the tournament, and the Wellington scene more generally is on how great my opponents have been. Its really nice to play people who are competitive but still polite, mature and sporting.

As for my performance, I aimed to come mid-table and achieved that goal, but I'm under no illusions that I was lucky to get there and that there are some things to work on in this weeks' Runefang IX (where I'll similarly aim to get mid-table, but I won't be upset if I totally fluff my lines and come 8th).

The two things which I think I'll work on are 1. keeping a cool head and thinking before I charge and 2. practice chaffing up and stalling enemy units. Neither of these are likely to be quick fixes, I've already repeated one of them in a game against Pete (which I'll post soon)! I'll just work on being aware of them and trying to change my play over time :)


I mentioned the first recurrent mistake in a couple of the games. I like to take offered charges, especially if I think that I can break the target. This is very orky but it can lead to me getting out of position and setting myself up to lose valuable units. I think that I've actually already improved on compared to my first games (I once charged a troop of Gore Riders into the flank of a Zombie legion) but I do still tend to see red once or twice a game.

I think that this is part of my problematic use of the Gore Riders, I tend to throw those units unsupported into the enemy lines and then watch them die. Improving on this probably will involve me thinking about the possible exchanges that I'm making but also thinking about my final positioning - charging the Ax horde out of the dominate circle in the game against Ryan for instance.

This also relates to the second point, sometimes it's better to not charge or counter-charge and break enemy units, particularly if they are stopping more dangerous units getting into the fight. This is something that Pete does really well with both his Beast Packs and Tunnel Slaves, and which Ryan also did with his Zombie legion.


There is of course more of an art to stalling and chaffing up the enemy than not charging. Practicing things like using the threat of a charge, throwing units under the bus, or positioning units in ways which disrupt my opponents' positioning are also things that I need to work on.

I have a tendency to not plan ahead in this regard. All to often I rely on throwing my individuals between my units and the enemies far to late to achieve anything (I've lost track of the number of times that I've needed an advance of 1" to save a unit).


I'm going to make a slight change to my list for the next tournament - dropping the Trolls and one of the Flaggers for another Godspeaker (with the inspiring talisman), another Orcling horde and another troop of Skulks. I'm not that optimistic about dropping the Trolls, but they're the only unit that I can easily cut whilst still having 4 heroes and 2 monsters.

Pete has posted a valuable warning about tinkering and failing, and this has stopped me from doing just what he warned against (I've now played about 20 games with this list). However in this case I want to try out a few different unit types to help me learn a bit. I'm not sure if my proposed change will stick but having a go with a couple of more chaff units will be a bit of an interesting challenge.

I'm not expecting that I will suddenly improve with these changes, but it will offer a few new learning opportunities. I don't think that I'll change my orc list any more after this though.

This means that my list will be:

Ax Horde 205
  - Godspeaker, banechant, heal 100
  - Wardrum 80
  - Skulk Troop 75
 
Ax Horde 205
  - Godspeaker, banechant, heal 100 
  - Giant 190
  - Skulk Troop 75

Morax Regiment, Brew of Sharpness 245
   - Godspeaker, heal, inspiring talisman100
  - Skulk Troop 75

Gore Rider Regiment, Mace of Crushing 185
 - Flagger, mounted on Gore  65

Gore Rider Regiment 185

Orcling Horde* 90 
Orcling Horde* 90

I had a game on Saturday against Pete's Ratkin, which I'll post in the next couple of days. That will be the last post for a couple of weeks - I'll be going on holiday from the 4th - 12th of June. I'll work on posting my Runefang IX reports after that.