AOS Blog Round 2

Round 1 is complete with a bumper Tuesday at HH with 4 games being knocked out this week.

This means of course we can roll straight into Round 2, but what, I hear you ask, happened in those Round 1 games? Let me regale you!

(We had a couple of drops mid round which mixed up games slightly, so some of my predictions will not apply entirely in those cases)

Steve (Seraphon) vs Andy (SBGL)

Prediction: Andy win

Result: Steve win

I underestimated Steve’s ability to sweat one out for this game. I’ve never seen a man so deep in his head during a game before.

Turns out, Andy’s Blood Knights CAN whiff, and having their rend reduced is actually quite impactful (who knew).

Nagash was able to reduce Kroak to dust, however by that point I think Steve had run away with points.

Callum (Chorfs) vs Pete (Seraphon)

Prediction: Pete win

Result: Callum win

Pete, for some reason has made it his mission to subvert my expectations whenever he plays, and duly allowed Callum to win this one.

Looking over in the early part of the game, Callum’s soul had left his body, with Aggradons all over him. Coming back later, there were hardly any lizards on the table.

What happened in between, only the 2 taking part can explain…

Mark (LRL) vs Leo (Skaven)

Prediction: Leo win

Result: Leo win

We come now to my first, and sadly quite predictable correct guestimation. 

Leo absolutely bullied Mark here, finishing early enough for both parties to have a whole evening left to go do something else.

I imagine Mark sat with his vape in a dark room trying to understand what just happened to him.

Ross (BoK) vs Alden (CoS)

Prediction: Alden win

Result: Alden win

Ross forfeited this game ahead of time to pursue his new career as a talking head on YouTube, so his great ol’ pal Liam stepped in for him to give Alden a bye game via TTS whilst he’s in the Netherlands.

The result was about as much as you would expect from an Alden game!

Jamie (DoK) vs Dan (SBGL)

Prediction: N/A

Result: N/A

This was a belated match up so had no prediction.

In the spirit of that, Jamie decided to just roll a random mission and the 2 chaps had a great and close match. Dan showed a great performance for his debut game!

Me (FEC) vs Tom (BoK)

Prediction: Tom win

Result: Tom win

Look, I know what I can do against gigantic hordes of multi-wound models, and if it comes to a straight brawl I’m going to lose.

And lose I did, with the mission essentially requiring a mid-table brawl throughout, and Tom having far too much OC for me to take any primary.

The game probably went longer than it should have, with Tom charging his Bloodthirster in, only for him to whiff all his attacks! Ushoran then got swarmed by Bloodletters and it was a long way back from there.

Round 2 Mission: What’s Yours is Ours

This is the first league mission with some funky deployment, both players having quite small areas to deploy, in only a little over a quarter of the map each.

Points for primary are more generous than round 1, with points available for at least one held, then some pairs of objectives to control for more, which are both in fairly tricky locations. It will be difficult to go from controlling one pair to the other, with the underdog mechanic being likely very strong here.

I think most games this round are going to feel like carnage!

Predictions:

Mark (LRL) vs Pete (Seraphon)

Both players had a bit of a chastening round 1 and I’m sure will be looking to bounce back in this round.

I think battle tactics are going to be easy to score here, with both players using Blazing. Hideout options are very limited, and all pretty close to each other’s deployments, so I can see both being taken at some point during the game.

Pete should have a few fugitive targets (don’t pick LoE), and will need to kill heroes to deny Mark’s Legend tactics (easier said than done).

The Aggradons could come from almost anywhere on this map, but Mark is playing elves and has boatloads of silly movement and tricks.

Prediction: Mark to win if he can deny Pete’s shenanigans.

Alden (CoS) vs Callum (Chorfs)

Callum is just delighted with this match up.

I actually think cavalry aside, this isn’t an ideal mission for either player’s fairly slow forces. 

Holding both red objectives could be tricky particularly.

Hideouts are close, but may be difficult to access for either player who I expect to be fairly castled up, then it will be a question of achieving their other tactics.

Prediction: Alden has the psychological advantage.

Tom (BoK) vs Leo (Skaven)

Well, this is an interesting one.

Leo is on a run in which he is brutalising every opponent he comes up against, and Tom is rather new. 

However, this could be the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object, as Tom has such a crazy density of wounds in this army. I’ve predicted such a meeting before and been wrong every time mind you.

Tom made some good decisions in our game, but Leo will be allowed the mobility I wasn’t and Tom needs to be careful of gnawholes as they can allow so much movement and recursion for Leo.

Siege of Ashes for both players should be pretty nice here, with the other tactics a bit tricky (I still have no idea how you do Smokescreen stage 2 and it not be actively bad for your turn).

If Tom can actually hit something with his Bloodthirster he has a LOT of lovely infantry to smack at rend 3 and 5 damage.

Leo‘s list is finely tuned and he has some sneaky Skaven tricks up his sleeve though. Both players also have a teleporting hero to mess things up with too.

Prediction: Leo to win and continue his upward trend towards being the new final boss of Hobby Henchmen AoS.

Steve (Seraphon) vs Jamie (DoK)

Another match of 2 seasoned campaigners here.

If Steve can convince Jamie to play the right mission, the next comments should hopefully be relevant.

This is gonna be a tricky mission for Steve to keep the Daughters at arm’s length, as most of both armies are going to be bunched not too far from each other. This means that those blood rites are going to start stacking up which could end up with Jamie snowballing.

However, Steve is a wily customer (despite his love for Gargants), and I’m sure will have a plan for this match up. 

I think Steve’s battle tactics are a bit more aligned with this mission, and if he can pop off some of the foot heroes of Jamie’s with Kroak or the Realmshaper, he might be able to nicely deny Jamie’s tactics.

You never know how crazy the DoK can get if they start going though, so this is going to be a close one.

Prediction: I’m going to predict Steve to win, because Jamie is never reading this anyway.

Ross (BoK) vs Andy (SBGL)

This should be a fun one, Ross experiencing Nagash for the first time.

Contrast of styles is what comes to mind for this match up. Ross has no magic, Andy has a stupid amount and will probably bore Ross to tears for 5 rounds with the amount of spells that Andy is going to be slinging around.

That said, if Skarbrand or the Bloodthirster can connect with Nagash, I think it all falls apart pretty quickly for Andy.

Both players can deny each other’s battle tactics fairly well here, if Andy loses one hero, Legend is off, ditto for Ross if he loses 2. 

This is going to be a bloodbath (Khorne will be happy), but could go either way on the table.

Prediction: If Andy can keep the scary red things away from his big hero, he wins (which actually also applies to Ross ha).

Me (FEC) vs Dan (SBGL)

Death comes for Death in this match up, with the slow march of the skeletons taking on the fleet-of-foot ghouls.

Our lists on the whole are fairly similar in a way, both using a big Mortarch, with lots of supporting units.

Mannfred can absolutely tune up his skeleton friends, and Ushoran can hand out lots of fights last and be a general trickster.

I have a few tools to stop Mannfred killing stuff with his mortals between Delusions and the SoA Royal Decapitator’s ability to make units ignore points of damage.

We are both playing Siege which I think is a nice one for this battleplan, then I think Burning is marginally better for me than Legend is for Dan if I can drop a fugitive.

Prediction: I’m on an 8 game losing streak with FEC, so I'm gonna plump for Dan and hope I can arrest the slump.

I’ll be back with a recap of Round 2 in a few weeks!