Runewars – Worlds 2017

The very first Runewars The Miniatures Game worlds event was held at Fantasy Flight Nov 1st (4 rounds of swiss) and Nov 2 (top 4). I’ll have another post about the painting competition and the team side event.

For this one we had 14 actually show up but one of the entrants dropped as he apparently presumed that Death Knights were going to be legal so he dropped out. For the 4 rounds of swiss we were a stones throw away from Fantasy Flight over at the Radisson were there was both Runewars and L5R going on.

Across the fora and the lands of Facebook there’s been some kibitzing going on about the turnout and really I think it’s important to keep things in perspective. First the game has only been out for 7 months. While there are 3 factions (of the soon to be 4) available one of those factions just basically came out and isn’t even available in parts of the world. Third, the event was on Wednesday in November in Minnesota. Fourth, the vast majority of those that came to the event were just there for Runewars. Unless you’re a local that’s potentially a very long distance to travel for a midweek game. To me I think the turnout was good especially for a game that has lots of growth already announced.

Round 1 getting under way. I ended up drawing the bye. That resulted in some thumb twiddling on my part but that means you get to look at more pictures of all the various games, least for round 1!

Brooks the TO did offer to get his army out tho indicating he’d especially for the first round like to keep an eye on things. I agreed that was a better use of his time but certainly a nice offer on his part.

The round 1 pairings.

Here’s my boys ready to go. I ended up going with the dreaded spearstar with a citadel weapons master, shield wall and of course everyone’s favorite, Mr Golem. Lord Hawthorn to direct the trays including both Shield of Margoth and Might of Daqan. Next two clumps of Cav, that played as one 2×2 and one 4×1. The 4×1 with Rank discipline and Raven tabards. The 2×2 with just Raven tabards for a total of 199.

Of the 13 playing there were 3 Latari elves, 3 Daqan and 7 Waiqar. Most of the lead …er plastic was painted but a few fearless naked armies were out there. A number of the armies were still works in progress. Even for my Daqan that I had first started to obtain at AdeptiCon, I had *JUST* flocked them last week.

Dusty and Oisin getting going. Oisin was one of the two fellow from Ireland. Great guys! Dusty and Andrew had come all the way from Montana.

Off at the far table is Kyle and JD. Brooks is just walking up to answer a q.

I think this is Nathan vs Ben.

First round was Bounty and Careful approach. This brings up the subject of the tournament rules which as it turned out has indication a change in approaches / missions. As it turned out for worlds instead of going with what would be the current set, we went with the past set. This was a slightly annoying since you can guess what I’d put the most time and preparation into. Still it’s not like I hadn’t put games into these missions etc but still.

Tony and Curt going at it. Spearstar on the prowl!

I think this is Kyle vs JD.

Nathan and his swarms of Cav vs Ben.

Round 2 and into the action finally! Unfortunately that means I couldn’t get much more for action shots from the other tables as I needed to concentrate on my own game.

I ended up being in the 5×5 going up against Kyle’s elves. This was my second game against the elves ever. If there was a blind spot in my ‘preparation’ if it could be called that for worlds it was against the elves. I have very little appreciation on their combos much less how to best approach them.

I settled for the Conan the Barbarian approach to the problem. Let’s just get after them and cut them down.

So without much for terrain in my way my Cav were more or less ready to get out there and have some fun. I figured I’d try and match up my spearmen against what I thought might be the better approach. I was to find out through the school of hard knocks that least for my main units I really should have deployed differently.

Approx mid-game. The left flank was under control, but the right and middle wasn’t going well. Between the shootie-shootie and fire rune combos I was learning that the main block of Kyles force really was Maegen and her archers that really want to sit back and rain down arrows. The riders are more distraction. When my 4×1 hit them the ones of the left evaporated. I probably should have gone with 2 4x1s for this game since it really takes away from the Elves easy access to your cav flanks. Well ok… makes it a little more harder :-).

Getting to be late game. Was trying to get Hawthorn and my remaining last bit of Spearmen to where they could pick up victory tokens as well as get on the flank of the archers. My 2×2 cav had just evaporated so that presented Kyle with the choice of either letting his one unit take some hits or coming back to help while giving up tokens.

It ended up a 9-2 result in Kyle’s favor and me much wiser for taking on the tree huggers in the future.

With round 3, took on Kyle’s Waiqar with the very impressive worm-star. I’m not sure at the deployment or mission on this one, I think it was bounty.

I had both of my cav on my right flank with the idea I’d zoom the 2×2 into the rear to go after those archers and then continue on into the flank / rear of his force. My 4×1 cav ended up facing the worm-star, I didn’t expect them to last long but I hopped to at least do a bit of damage and keep the worms busy.

Unfortunately this is the only picture of the game that I took. It ended up a 5-6 loss where my charge on the archers missing by a millimeter combined with their having a wind runes really ended up throwing the game Kyle’s way. Ardus died. My 4×1 Cav died and my other cav was really beaten up.

Otherwise lots of dancing on the battlefield.

After 3 rounds. Wasn’t looking good for me. I figured a good goal for the day was just getting into top 8. I knew by this time I wasn’t going to be in contention for top 4. Still after 3 rounds all the elves being in the top was a slight surprise. From the discussion between players as we had about a 90 minute break for supper was since the majority of us hadn’t actually played against the elves that it was the unfamiliarity with them that really gave them the advantage. We just didn’t have the tactics down.

Last round I played Oisin who’d come all the way from Ireland. He was running Waiqar.

I deployed and inspirationed up. Kept my cav placed such that they could protect my flanks and then have Hawthorn placed in such a way that he could continue to hand out inspiration tokens to counter the invariable blight rain that would likely occur.

My spearmen managed to take out his reanimates without taking much damage. I threw the remaining cav after his archers with Hawthorn helping.

Wind rune to the rescue again as he disengaged from what would have been a complete slaughter.

Didn’t matter tho as I ended up winning 6-5. Another lesson for me. I’d only seen wind runes maybe used once before. The local meta just doesn’t use them so seeing them in action especially with archers to either evade in incoming charge or get out of contact was kind of crazy.

Final results. Met my goal of getting to top 8 and thus in the ‘money’ for the acrylic movement tools. Looking back on the day even had a done a little better here or there against the elves or had a charge actually go through don’t think it would have changed things much. Importantly was a fun time and that’s what counts.

Over all the game still feels new. We’re all fumbling a bit here and there. Tactics, good deployment go a long way to seeing a successful win. I doubt there was one error free game across all the players all weekend long. That’s a new game for you.

Congrats to the top 4 Dustin, Ben, Kyle and Andrew, all great competitors and well deserved in their victories.

Last let’s talk about swag!!

Whoever came up with a worlds stocking cap, you totally were awesome. So whomever that nameless person is, well done!

The mat was also part of the swag just for singing up. Completely useless for Runewars players but then we were the only miniatures game actually AT this worlds so given the card games being played, makes sense they would create this.

For playing we each received I think it was 10 prize tickets. If you won a round of swiss, 20 tickets.

Here is what we had to choose from that was Runewars related to spend our tickets on. Certainly we could spend on other games. I don’t play those so this is where my tickets went. The Cav alt art card is plastic so that naturally got my attention!

Last here’s my winnings. Dice, acrylics and cards. The Maegan card was another participation card.

For those that didn’t attend, this is what you missed out on. Definitely some treasures 🙂