This year we offered to put on a Warband tournament as we've been playing it lots and getting fun out of it and the PAW committee agreed. Warband is Pendraken's fantasy set of rules and promotes their lovely 10mm range of fantasy figures, however the rules do cater for any scale as all measuring is in base widths, so as long as your army base widths match then you are good to go. We play with 28mm figures and use a 120mm by 60mm base. To save time at PAW we went for pre-set terrain.
Due to a typo we were allowed 501 point armies, and could have 3 list variants to compensate for the pre-set terrain.
Pendraken kindly sponsored the event with a 10mm Taurian army and sent some promotional material for us to distribute.
Please enjoy some pictures and narrative of our weekend:
Saturday morning, Andy and Colin set up the first table.
Round 1
Upon which it turns out I'm playing Andy, he deploys and dresses the Elven line.
Then pops off for a quick check round the Bring and Buy.
My Dwarves line up for battle.
Shine, pretty toys!
Hillwalking Dwarven artillery. Sturdy those mountain goats!!
Mark's Goblin horde arrayed for battle,
Colin's Eldritch Vampire army arrayed.... just before the pitchforks and torches were found.
The Duncan Ainsley Memorial Trophy and a rather nice prize from Pendraken
Keith said "Go get a plaque with this text..." Never mentioned what size to get... Just fits.
Dwarven tactics go to pot as we split the army.
Mike's Taurians. Fast moving and Fierce. Rather nasty if they hit you head on.
More Taurians, just with a little poetic license.
Trolls and Spiders from the Goblin army.
Oh dear! The Elven dragon rolls up the Dwarven line.
Elven machine gunners... Once you add 6 CP!!
What the dragon saw just before he landed on my artillery.
Goblins hit the Eldritch.
Goat kebab anyone?
Very messy main battle line fighting between the Eldritch and Goblins.
Mark explains the rules.
Kev Jackson in his first ever game using pseudo Taurians.
That damned dragon is still munching on Dwarves.
Finally I get some shots on it and kill it off.... but it's all to late.
Tautians vs Kev's pseudo Tarians.
Those Eldritch thralls don't last too long.
Bye bye dragon... but bye bye Dwarves too
With the archers in the rough gone it's game over and a win for the flower loving Elves. The late Terry Pratchett was right, Elves ain't so lovely.
Goblins scythe through the Eldritch.
Lesser Vampires not looking to happy about the Fierce Direct charge.
Round 2
Kev with Samurai Apes (aka Ratmen) lines up against me for game 2.
I decide to use a full Dwarven gun line, 4 archers, 2 rangers, 2 artillery and +1 general. Turns out if using a gun line you are better of going second so they cannot escape being shot.
Dawrven artillery prepare.
How many guns do you have?
Samurai Apes move out.
Don't wait till you see the whites of their eyes, just fire!
And make sure we don't get flanked.
Two artillery (1 with hero), and a full set of CPs can soon hurt an enemy army that can't get out of the way fast enough.
Meanwhile the Goblins are marching on the Elves.
And Taurians are hitting the Eldritch...at an angle. Which is sneaky if you can get 2 on to 1 that way. Lots of Direct and Fierce dice!!
Panorama shot of the tournament hall, there were other tournaments going on too.
Samurai Apes thinned out.
The fire elemental makes it through the woods and trashes some Dwarven Rangers but us then mobbed.
Elven horsemen in disarray.
The PAW 2016 memento were dice, with a paw on for the 6 of course. And lovely dice they were too, as you can see from the Elven Mage's final act before he died.
Tarians and Eldritch grind to a draw.
Round 3 (Sunday)
I'm up against Colin's Edlritch. He sets up behind the hill.
I've anchored my Hillwalkers to the far left hill.
Samurai Apes mass to protect the town from dastardly Elves.
Pretty Elves hope to flank the Samurai Apes.
Mark's Goblins arrayed for battle against Mike's Taurians.
Mike awaits the charging horde.
The Eldritch are coming! Fire! The Dire wolves were ripped to shreds by the Dwarven Artillery.
Hillwalking Artillery start to clear the opposite hilltop.
Dwarven right flank dresses the line.
Eldritch caught in the Dwarven artillery crossfire.
Samurai apes attack in penny packets.
More cannon fodder.
Textbook overhead shooting. Shortly after this the Eldritch general and I won that game.
Prizes!
Samurai Apes in trouble.
Elven Guard Archer.
Samurai Ape archers.
Samurai Ape mage.
Round 4
Round 4 sees me and Mark on the top table with Mark on 3 wins and me on 2, but a win for me would put me through as I'd have beaten him. Significant terrain was the 2 woods which I lined up between.
Mark formed up in a deep column to his right so I swivelled my artillery to meet him. Notice how my general is glued to the 2 artillery to give them the best motivation for moving. The spiders from the front corner are blown to icky stuff early on.
My Rangers are there to slow them down...aka a road bump...
Boom!! A Goblin warrior goes up in smoke as all the general's CP are pumped into the arty.
Steady lads, we lay down our lives so that the clan might live.
Some archer support for the skirmishers just delays the inevitable but does buy more time for the artillery to re-position.
Meantime I sneak a couple of archers to Mark's rear to occupy the general and force him to use up valuable CPs.
Here they come lads!
There were other games too....
The Goblin view as the come from behind the forest.
High Elves crash into the Eldritch line.
Both artillery have swung left to support the poor stand on the left.
Fierce and Direct charge by Goblins!!
Bird's eye view. The Goblin stand crashes in, but is fire upon with 8 dice from 2 artillery, 4 dice from 2 archers, 1 Hero dice (on the artillery) and 6 CP dice. BOOM! 9 hits.
With Powerful shots and only 5 Goblin CPs it was over and Mark's loses broke the 250 points.
Needless to say my archer stand was toast too but all in a good cause. Which gave me the win and the tournament.
Meanwhile on another table the High Elves fight the good fight against evil.
First place, Steve Price. Award presented by Keith McGlynn
Second Place, Mark Fry
Nicest Army, Kev Jackson with Samurai Apes.
Youngest Player, Charlote Walkley receiving her prize kindly donated by Pendraken.
Four games over the weekend worked out well, particularly as we had to fit in beer, rugby and food too, in that order. Berkeley Vale club are really enjoying Warband, 'tis a fun set of rules, we keep changing our minds over which army is most deadly with almost everygame!
And that's all folks. Many thanks to the kind chaps at PAW for hosting us. Thanks to Keith for organising, thanks Pendraken for sponsoring us.
