This weekend see's the inaugural Drawn Combat Vs Rebel Base Gaming Grudge Match! Now we say it's a grudge match, but in reality we're a group of friends who just fancied a small scale, team based tournament. Also smack talk - of which RBG have been woeful for! So today we're having a preview of both the lists, and the initial matchups for the day (with three games being played in total). The rules of the tournament:
- 700pts Lists
- No same hero may appear across any of the teams lists (For example - King Elessar and Strider may not appear in separate lists)
- No same Legendary Legion may be taken by different members of the same team
With that in mind, let's take a look at the lists and matchups - we have Team DC on the left, and Team RBG on the right.
Game 1
Analysis: Some hot dwarf on dwarf action! Team RBG’s Khazad dwarves slightly outnumber and out-Might DC’s Iron Hills, and definitely have the shooting advantage! However the Iron Hills are much faster so the scenario will play a big part. More or less everyone is F4 here however IH have the advantage in that everyone is S4 compared to mostly S3 for Khazad. We also haven’t talked about the big iron-shod-wheeled Elephant in the room who will surely be hoping to squish many a dwarf!
Winner prediction: Iron Hills (Team DC)
Game 2
Analysis: Oof, this one doesn’t look great for the poor Survivors of Lake-Town. They are not only out numbered, but also out-Fighted, out-Strengthed and out Siege-Engined. They are going to have to hide the key pieces from those Ballistas like their lives depend on it (because they do). But then again… Iron Hills chariot? Yeah I think we know what’s going to happen here.
Winner Prediction: Survivors of Lake Town (Team DC)
Game 3
Analysis: What a truly horrible alliance of Elves and Dwarves. You end up with line of essentially F5 S6 D7. Contrast that with the F4 S3 D6 Easterlings and you have a very sad evil army. However that Fell Beast could wreak havoc if left unchecked and while the Good heroes are decent, they aren’t that killy. At the end of the day we are going to do the only fair thing and judge these armies by how shiny they are.
Winner Prediction: Easterlings (Team DC)
Game 4
Analysis: I think sadly for Aragorn and his spooky pals, the Isengard list simply has all the tools to deal with them. Magic, shooting and more troops at a higher Fight. I’m unironically calling this one for DC.
Winner Prediction: Isengard (Team DC)
Game 5
Analysis: Many, many shots vs D7 dwarves will probably wear the dwarves down eventually however once combat is joined the dwarves should have the upper hand. This is another one where the scenario will play a big part in how much shooting Evil can actually do before combat is joined. Let’s judge this one by another perfectly fair metric: number of bearded models.
Winner Prediction: Khazad Dum (Team DC)
Game 6
Analysis: Low defence on the Elves will be good for the scary spiders but winning fights against them could be tricky! There are also almost as many Elves as Evil models and they’ve got far, far better heroes. All we can really do here is use another fair metric: average number of legs per model.
Winner Prediction: Spiders (Team DC)
Game 7
Analysis: Rohan are going to struggle to do their usual kiting here vs the deadly bows of the Hunter Orcs, and despite having some great heroes they really don’t have an answer for Azog. That being said, one terrifying charge from Rohan will do some serious damage to the Orcs so careful play could see it go either way. However, Sean who is using Rohan has only ever played 3 games of MESBG before and we all know about beginners luck…
Winner Prediction: Rohan (Team DC)
Game 8
Analysis: The Elves here are better than the pirates in virtually every way, so how do you answer that? Well you simply bring twice as many models of course! A simply astounding number of throwing weapons will do some serious pain to an elite army like elves unless they are extremely proactive about tying models up. Once in combat though the pirates are definitely behind. We’ll use one final fair metric: number of Peter Jackson cameos of them in the movies.
Winner Prediction: Pirates (Team DC)
Hmmm, we seem to have accidentally come down on the side of DC for every matchup… well it must be the team’s clearly superior skills in both list building and on-table play. After all DC does stand for Delightful Chaps while RBG stands for Really Bad Gamers so that speaks for itself! We’ll report back on DC’s inevitable glorious victory next week so come back then to see the (foregone) conclusion!
