Thursday Nov 2nd, at worlds we have the team tournament for Runewars. Originally the idea was that a ‘team’ would be 2 people and we’d play one round, with 200 pts of valid army per person.
As of Wednesday the exact rules for what would be allowed as far as mixing forces and the potential for the mixture of allies when it came to abilities was unclear. So walking into things on Thursday morning, I just brought stuff knowing it’d get figured out.
Curt and I had originally planned to play together but instead the organized play staff had something special instead planned for us. What we did was play a 3 on 3 mega epic battle, 600 pts a side, mix factions as you like.
Crazy! And totally fun.
Andrew, Dustin and I played a Daqan, Latari and Waiqar army vs a double Waiqar and Daqan force.
We did Bounty mission, so 24 tokens up for grabs! Per side we had 14 and 17 activations. Now I know what you’re thinking, things look wheelhub to wheel hub, there can’t be any room to maneuver.
Well keep reading, because it was through maneuvering and successful use of good tactics that decided the day.
Early on we decided on this side of the board we’d just put a holding force in place and otherwise not try and push. Instead we’d attempt to hit hard on the right and therefore pick up a majority of tokens between what we had in front of us as well as what we’d grab from their own side.
First turn was a lot of inspiration tokens and not much movement still the action for the flanks immediately was important.
Dustin’s archers and Ardus were charged with holding the right flank. Using arrows and fire runes as able he started to land some hits into the Waiqar archers across the table who were basically thinking the same thing. Those worms tho…
So this picture captures one of the downside of throwing cav close in with a tray based system. Andrew’s riders are next to my spearstar and they basically can’t wheel over to engage and basically pound the stuffing out of that 2×1 Cav. Consider that cinematic eye melding with game mechanics. That shouldn’t be impossible to do.
Because we couldn’t do it, it basically meant that the worms just off the right of the frame were able to change into the riders flank.
Things more or less static on the left flank. The Waiqar were holding back, just inching forward.
None the less to the left of the spearstar, all those archers and their fire runes started to rain down on the reanimates nearly directly across. (The unpainted ones) So while we were losing our right flank, the hope of some holes opening up ahead of us where more victory tokens lie just out of reach.
Rolling the clock forward a bit, the cav wheeled around charing into the side of the riders. The worms moved up both the group in front of us as well as the ones that were able to get on our right flank. Then their spearstar came forward getting ready to bash our archers. With my spearman I got into the formation directly across from me and resulted in lots of hits such that they wouldn’t last long at all.
Meanwhile almost out of frame on the left side two of our units of cav charged forward, essentially sacrificing themselves to plug and hole to hold the side effectively trying to buy us time on the right side.
Perhaps a better view of the situation on the left hand side. Their Ardus and lots of Waiqar essentially having their way.
Losses starting to really mount now. Our Ardus fighting for his life against two carrion crawlers. The riders down to their last figure. My spearstar having completely a charging turn onto the flank of the carrion crawler.
Mid-table a number of the archers had been hit. Hawthorn was coming back as was Aliana in hopes that both could get in a flank or rear attack on their mega block of spearmen.
Otherwise the heroic cav that had charged in on the far left were nearly gone. A ”lucky” moral effect had turned one of the remaining trays around. They would flee, clutching onto 2 victory tokens.
Very nearly the last turn. Our Ardus fell. The enemy cav tried to charge my spearmen and ended up just short. Nearly all of our archers were gone. Aliana and Hawthorn were booking back. Aliana landed her charge whittling the enemy spearmen down even more.
On the left flank a dismal picture, just one tray of Cav left alive and fleeing. They’d done their duty.
And with that the final picture. What might we have accomplished with just one more turn? Who knows. With the 7 turns we played in 3 hours there was plenty of destruction, lots of fun and importantly a pretty obvious conclusion.
In summary our side lost. The token count was pretty huge in their favor. Dustin lost his entire force. I’d lost about 1/2 of mine. Andrew was down to just Aliana. The Waiqar forces on the left flank were largely untouched and starting to swoop in.
This huge epic game I think really was a great test of the rules. There was no additional rules added for cross allies or across armies. Everything as written worked. (*) The back and forth activation did mean that you did have some standing around going on but at 3 on 3 it wasn’t bad or excessive.
With all that stuff on the table, it didn’t just look awesome (and we had quite a bit of traffic walking by having a look) it sure was an epic massive battle that the game is supposed to be all about.
If your local meta can support it, I’d sure strongly recommend having a day where you all bring a 200 point army and have a massive battle. Dedicate 3 hours. You’ll be glad you did!
(*) – Prior to the game we did have an interesting discussion about nubs and shifting. Does a tray that gets caught on another tray, specifically the ‘nub’ count? Consider if you’re shifting and trying to get away, or even shifting as an elf. Clearly that would be broken if getting caught on the nub counted. However on a charge with a razor thin margin, the nub sure counts. Who knows if we’ll see a future FAQ update on that but none the less was an interesting discussion.