Take at my first game in the Warhammer The Old World – World Team Championships online – I learned a lot!
Starting this week I’ve been lucky enough to get to take place in the World Team Championships Online (WTCO). Over five weeks, twelve 8-person teams from a host of countries are duking it out online. You can also find the event here on New Recruit. Many of the best players in the world are competing in this event which serves as something of a prelude for the World Team Championship Clash of Nations in person event in Spain this September.
For this event I’m playing with and helping to run the second US team in WTCO, effectively our B-team, we’ve got a mix of experienced players and a number who are new to team events (as I am). As a team event, and an online one, it’s quite different from anything I’ve played in before, but also a very interesting experience. So today I thought I’d do a little report on my first game.
About Playing Online
For this event (and the majority of online events) Warhall is used. Warhall is an online tabletop simulator designed to play the Old World and similar games. It’s pretty easy to use. It’s also integrated into New Recruit so you can upload armies with ease. I could say a lot about Warhall and other similar online systems for playing, but I just don’t have space here. At it’s core this is a part of the experience I don’t love. While functional, it can be fiddley. You also entirely lose the hobby aspect, which is a key part of the game to me and many.
Warhall, and it’s like, are substitutes for in person play, but in my option they are poor ones. It’s just not the same. However it’s also the only real option if you want to play people around the world without having to fly there. If people like me in America want to compete with Europeans or Australian outside of a maybe once a year very costly trip, this is the option. So while it’s not something I’d every chose to use in other situations, it is unavoidable here.
My First Match Up
In round one of WTCO we got matched up with Team Belgium, they took second place at the in person event last year and are very strong. During the pairing process I was paired up with Vampire Counts player Arvid. Arvid is one of the may 2-3 best VC players in the world. So this was going to be rough. As for myself I am playing Warriors of Chaos in this event. Now I’ve played all of two games with Warriors of Chaos, and only one with this list, before going into the event. My goal is to learn the army during this event, but I’m not an expert like Arvid is.
The mission was also Domination/Baggage Train(quarters for deployment), which is pretty bad for my small list and good for Vampires. While judging by lists alone we figure my army should beat Arvids, once you factored in mission and player skill with their armies, it wasn’t looking great for me. However an important aspect of team tournaments is that each player doesn’t have to win all their games. Sometimes you just need to get a minor loss and that helps the team. So going into things we figured I only needed to score about 5-8 points to be OK for the team.
Deployment
My deployment and Arvids Turn 1
My first, and likely biggest mistake came during deployment (as it normally does). Now this was due to me misunderstanding how defending a Low Linear Obstacle works. I was under the impression that a unit partially behind the obstacle would still count as defending at (as this is likely RAW). So I thought Arvid could put both his Zombies and Grave Guard behind the LLO on his side and have both of them defending. When you lose stomps and only get 1 attack per model I just can’t crack a big undead unit behind an LLO. So this I felt really limited my options. I found out after the game (we had some tech issues and couldn’t ask during it) that for WTCO a unit has to be fully behind the LLO to defend it.
Unable to send my Forsaken down the middle I opted to flank with them, the Daemon Prince and Warpfire Dragon. Meanwhile my cavalry and other characters would work to tie down the center and look for any opportunity to charge. If Arvid pushed forward I figured I could swing the Forsaken and knights and hit him.
Turns 1-2
I won the roll off and gave the first turn to Arvid. My though here was that in Domination, going last is a big advantage and I wanted it. The first two turns were mostly positioning. It’s hard to see with these recaps, but Arvid is a master at moving. Between magic to buff movement and getting reserve move for a lot of the army he can do so much. Add that to a lot of powerful reforms and some strange, but legal, ways characters get free movement when joining units and he has a very very flexible build. Still for the first 2 turns he stayed mostly bunkered up.
For myself I flanked hard with the Prince and Warpfire dragoon. I wanted to get them around his flank and into the Spirt Hosts. Maybe I should have been more aggressive with them, but was worried about screams. I was also making a rookie mistake. By keeping them as close as I did the Warpfire was turning off the DP’s wardsave. I was too far out for it to matter (though Arvid could have maybe made a play for the DP). But still dumb of me. I pushed forward with my knights to get in range of puppet and annoy him and tired to turn the Forsaken to do something once I saw his Grave Guard starting to come out. He managed to magic 1-2 knights to death and I had to move my Horsemen to prevent the Hexwraits from flying over them.
Turn 3
Turn 3 things started to kick off. Arvid buffed movement on his Grave Guard and declared a charge on my Knights. I fled with them as the combat wasn’t a good match up. He then pushed up with the Hexes and Bats and characters to support he GG. Magic and screams took down a couple more knights and some of my Forsaken. On my turn I rallied the knights and pushed them and the Wizard back up to be in puppet range. I broke off the Exalted Champion to cover my back field as well. I had the option to charge the GG with my Forsaken. In addition I had thought that going after my fleeing knights with turn the GG’s flank to my Forsaken but the angle wasn’t right, and throwing them in alone didn’t seem great. So instead they pulled back a bit. I pushed harder with the DP and Dragon while also trying to minimize the number of screams they could be hit with. At this point with all the targets I was giving Arvid I figured they would be safe.
Turn 4
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Up till turn 4 no one had really scored any points, but that all changed here. Arvid charged with his Grave Guard and Mortis into my Forsaken. The GG failed the charge, but the Mortis made it in. This seemed a bit risky to me as it could tie up a wizard if I survived. However he got two screams into the Forsaken and I rolled a 10 and 11 (on LD 5) for my LD tests and they went poof!. He also flew the Hexes over my Knights killing the 3 that remained (but not the wizard). His bats run up to tag my baggage train.
While the Mortis charge worked out for Arvid I actually think his Hex flight was his one big mistake. By killing the Knights he allowed my Wizard to charge behind him into the bats. To help with killing them (and avoid a LD 7 fear test) I threw Battle Lust on him and also got off Word of pain on the bats. They died to the wizard who then went safely off the table. At the same time my Exalted Champion who had +2 attacks and +1LD went into the Hexes. I think Arvid would have been better off flying over him with the Hexes, but he didn’t and the Exalted killed the Hexes and also overran. Lastly my Dragon went into the Spirit hosts and start killing them. The DP played it safe.
Turn 5
On his turn five Arvid managed to get off a clutch Infernal Gateway with the Mortis. This let it move into contact with my baggage train (without that I would have been safe). He also screamed at and killed a few Horsemen. My dragon killed his spirt hosts. At this point with time approaching we talked out the last turn as it was pretty clear what was going to happen. I had a shot at charging my three horsemen into his Mortis to try and tie it up and save the baggage, but opted not to as this was just too risky. I was able to move my dragon to kill his baggage train on my end. Neither of us were going to be able to kill anything else, and thanks to going last I could contest all the table quarters but Arvid got to double outnumber me in each one.
Final Results and Lessons
The final result of our game was 1401 for Arvid and 732 for me. This resulted in Arvid winning a 13-7 victory. 600 of Arvid points were from Domination, without which we would have a 10-10 draw. While I would have loved to win, and think my list can win, a 13-7 was within range for me in this game. Towards the end I made a lot of conservative moves to save points and not lose worse – and those moves paid off.
Still I also made a number of mistakes. The deployment error basically prevented my Forsaken from doing anything due to my fear of the LLO. There was also a time in my Turn 2 where I could have charged my knights into his zombies since technically they weren’t defending the LLO, but neither of us knew this at the time. That possibly could have been a good play. I also think I needed to be more aggressive with getting my DP and Dragon into combat. As much as I wanted to avoid screams, the DP never saw combat and the Dragon got in too late to make good follow ups. I did have a plan (flank with monsters, delay the center, kill the ethereal stuff) and it… kind of worked, but it could have been a lot better. Arvid is also an amazing player and just played a better game than I did. So congrats to him on a really fun game that I learned a ton from.
Let us know what you think about this report, down in the comments!
Don’t Miss:
Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers Warhammer: The Old World, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe mourned over loss of WFB for its entire hiatus, but has been reborn like a gaming phoenix with Warhammer: The Old World.
Read more at this site