Tales from the Madlands: Regionals Madness

By Jukey, in Runewars Battle Reports

Finally have wifi again, so putting up the Indianapolis regionals from last weekend.

It was a small turnout, pretty sure gen con wore everyone out. 4 players total.

Myself (Jukey)

Maegan Cyndewin [36] 1x1
Reaping Blade [4]
Martial Magic [3]
Total Unit Cost: 43

Leonx Riders [30] 2x2
Aliana of Summersong [12]
Raven Tabards [2]
Metered March [2]
Lay of the Land [4]
Total Unit Cost: 50

Deepwood Archers [30] 2x2
Dispatch Runner [7]
Tempered Steel [3]
Rallying Starling [4]
Simultaneous Orders [2]
Total Unit Cost: 46

Darnati Warriors [19] 2x1

Verdant sorceress
Total Unit Cost: 22

Deepwood Archers [17] 2x1
Tempered Steel [3]
Total Unit Cost: 20

Aymhelin Scions [14] 1x1
Vicious Roots [3]
Total Unit Cost: 17

@Church14

3x2 Death knights

Dispatch runner, deathmist, magarth

3x2 Deathknights

Dispatch runner, deathmist, obcasiums

2 carrion Lancers

2x1 wraiths

@kaffis

Alliana

Ambush, malcorne

1x3 leonx

Column tactics

2x1 Archers x2

Fire rune

3x2 Darnati

Avenger, warsong, shield wall.

1 scion

@marinegrunt01 (I think that was you)

3x2 deepwoods

Tempered steel

2x2 deepwoods

Rallying starling

3x2 leonx

Metered march, column tactics

Alliana

Ambush predator, packleaders spear

2 lone scions

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First round Kaffis and Marinegrunt used their regional byes, so church and I faced off. Not my ideal starting match.

First game I believe was standoff with demoralize their forces.

lRJvIRj.jpg

Tried to set up in a hard to reach fortress, which was not great because church had no 3 wide units. Caught on an open field I knew his deathknights would run my latari down.

Turn 1: church moves his wraiths in on a late march while rallying his death knights. 10m0HpL.jpg

I unpack my army fairly well. I keep units in position to block the wraiths hopping behind me, and line up my archers for a strong defense.

Turn 2: church comes in fast with the knights. The wraiths sidestep and take fire. Meagan has trouble moving behind the darnati. The Lancers blight and move in. pBDa1gR.jpg

My cats are in a bad spot, not able to help in the fight, but oh well, so is one of churches blocks of knights.

Turn 3: the death knights turn the scion into splinters. The wraiths take 1 tray of my small archer unit before returning to the grave. My darnati have difficulty penetrating the Lancers thick skin, but keep it busy while meagan looks to other targets. oY4xzx3.jpg

The cats reform to aid in the failing left flank.

Turn 4: the death knights begin tearing into the dispatch archers. I'm running out of threat to hurt the knights effectively. Church reforms the second knights to look towards meagan. dQ5Q5cN.jpg

On the right flank, meagans splash damage and the darnati drop one lancer.

Turn 5: the archers are finished. The leonx get a flank charge which drops the knights to three trays. However, a dispatched attack from the auxiliary knights takes the back rank and drops obcasium on the leonx, they are now doomed. 3g2ySZm.jpg

Without blight, the lancer has no chance of getting thru martial Meagans high defenses. She puts another wound up on him. At this point the lancer is working as a shield against the knights.

Turn 6: a reform from the 3 tray death knights and a dispatch from the full knights kills the cats. Meagan finishes her lancer off. pmNJuDQ.jpg

Turn 7 or 8: I must have missed a picture, this was turn 8, or the game timed, I'm not sure which, plus there was a cat bounce somewhere in there. Church wins with an 8/3 PxZnWp7.jpg

Afterthoughts: the armor of the knights was very hard to penetrate with only two threat units. Deathmist and obcasium tore my army apart. Good game all around.

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Round 2

Church pairs off against Kaffis

(More on that later)

I pair off against Marinegrunt

Confluence of magic with the 1 deployment on either side, I forget the name.

This is my first time ever facing another Latari army, as I am the only elvish player in my area.

We both set up in a almost as if playing maelstrom. I have concerns running heavy amounts of ranged while marinegrunt has ambush alliana.

7aM3g6w.jpg

Turn 1: missed the picture, but basically both of us push our short side closest to our armies and set up for a long canyon battle.

Turn 2: Finally, pictures! They are taken on the start of the next turn, hence, set dials. My darnati lose 1 tray to archers, the armor up modifier kept them alive. 9rr4hd2.jpg

Turn 3:

I derp on Meagans dial, setting a 3 charge at i4 thinking I was setting an i7 4 charge, oops, this is what happens when I get up before the crack of noon! 62bupzv.jpg

Marinegrunt faces a difficult approach against my stacked archers. He holds alliana back, not wanting to waste her ambush on a small target.

Turn 4:

I can't get meagan into melee safely without alliana coming after her, so instead she starts tossing fireballs. She kills the scion and delivers 3 damage to everything nearby. My leonx drop the other scion but are now immobillize. Meagan takes a wound fron archers. xzU4vqf.jpg

Turn 5: missing this picture.

My Darnati help me more this turn than any other time today. They move at i3 to block alliana, while verdant sorceress pulls the immobillize off the cats. The cats lose a lot of trays from archer fire, but still wreck the archers. Meagan gets more splash damage.

Turn 6: I lose all the cats except alliana. She forms up on the flank of the 3x2 archer. Alliana shifts into the darnati. Meagan keeps taking wounds slowly. cEO5HfH.jpg

Turn 7:

Marinegrunts cas get too close and start taking damage, while the remaining archers fall back. Meagan dies, along with her guardian Darnati, but alliana goes with. ZqsUPpl.jpg

Turn 8: With heavy losses on both sides, the cats retreat, all points intact. Ods9UWS.jpg

This one ended 6/5 I think. It was a very well fought battle with many surprising twists. Hope to face you again in the future.

Afterthoughts,

playing against Latari is hard!

Marinegrunt was running tempered steel and rallying starling quite well, accomplishing much of what my rally/dispatch battery was for, but with much less points bloat.

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Round 3

Volatile runes, unprepared

Church faces Marinegrunt

(It'll be there eventually)

I face Kaffis

lUWthB3.jpg

Turns out that my 3d printed runes from Ebay are quite well balanced, this actually happened twice!

DE1ji5J.jpg

I spread my forces too far from the fortress of runes and obstacles. This will hurt me this game.

tXPxd4z.jpg

Turn 1:

My scion claims the high ground, while kaffis pushes his darnati into position. My cats play shifty games, while my archers reconfigure to a more defensive posture.

v8HyNiF.jpg

Meagan steps on the dimorian fissure, I also placed her too far from combat.

Turn 2: My leonx hit the darnati hard, but kaffis uses shield wall and avenger knocks the back rank off my cats in return. Then my archers hit them along with a dispatch on the cats, dropping the darnati to less than one tray. Kaffis misses his leonx charge due to the lost rank.

NXg4Y6t.jpg

Turn 3:

Fire rune tears up my archers and cats, but I take down a scion. Alliana clears out my darnati.

besoe2v.jpg

Turn 4:

Kaffis closes on my archers while staying out of arc, while turning his archers to drop fire runes on meagan. My scion comes out of terrain to aid in the battle.

z0FzaFe.jpg

Turn 5:

The rear archer unit shifts back to avoid Meagan. The other one puts a wound on her.

EMMJCGu.jpg

The cats take out my archers.

Turn 6:

Meagan charged the archers, finishing them, while my scion moves forward to avoid a charge from the leonx. I believe there were no red runes so no surge damage.

UpBkgfh.jpg

Turn 7: the scion dies, meagan reforms to meet the last archers. Alliana moves for positioning. I'm missing a picture.

Turn 8:

Meagan avoids damage from the archers but gets a triple panic test, which is flee in terror, this pushes her into alliana's path.

Wzh7LOi.jpg

The final tense moment! Q6Edlrc.jpg

Alliana scores a flank melee, but with meagans armor up to 4 plus protected 1, can only get 1 wound through, and has so surges to get that last needed damage!

What a crazy game!

Afterthoughts

Fire rune with malcorne is nasty, I need to try this. Warsong hareld makes it even better.

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Final placing was

1 Church

2 Kaffis

3 Me

4 Marinegrunt

Well played games by everyone. It was great to see so much latari on the table.

I'll get churches battles up later. Please correct me if I got some things wrong in the battles.

Thanks for reading!

Placeholder

2 more batreps soon

So there *is* a way to get 0 blue runes on the board. Good to know!

On 8/19/2018 at 3:52 AM, Jukey said:

Turn 8:

Meagan avoids damage from the archers but gets a triple panic test, which is flee in terror, this pushes her into alliana's path.

Wzh7LOi.jpg

The final tense moment! Q6Edlrc.jpg

Alliana scores a flank melee, but with meagans armor up to 4 plus protected 1, can only get 1 wound through, and has so surges to get that last needed damage!

What a crazy game!

Afterthoughts

Fire rune with malcorne is nasty, I need to try this. Warsong hareld makes it even better.

It should be noted that I initially rolled the blue hit/acc shown, a red hit/morale, a red morale, and a white... single hit? Double surge? Something worth one hit.

Knowing I had to get 5 hits on 4 dice, I opted to re-roll the morale red and fish for either a hit/surge, mortal, or a double-hit on the white die...

After I re-rolled into the results you see here, as we were packing up, it occurred to me I should have re-rolled the other red, as well, because odds were good that it would roll back into at least a hit, but it might roll into hit/surge or double-hit, as well. I mentioned this out loud, lamented that it would have been the smart move, and did the "well, we'll see if it would have panned out" re-roll on one of the reds before I packed the dice up... and rolled into the double-hit. ;) Sure, it's fallacious to assert that the roll would have been the same if I'd done it with the other two, what with butterflies flapping their wings in Tokyo and whatnot, but we all had a good laugh and I did, at least, demonstrate to my satisfaction that after 5 hours of tournamenting, I made a tired, suboptimal decision. :D

The good news is, while tabling Jukey with that last point of damage would have been an 40-some point swing and brought me up to a 77 MoV that round, the extra tournament point wouldn't have changed the standings, so I didn't have to kick myself too hard.