The Scouring of Che-Shire 2: Dan Stu's Writeup

Dan Stu: I'm afraid there are no hot, controversial takes about magic on the blog today - just a good old fashioned writeup. I'll leave the sensationalist clickbait to Dan Slob. 

This is the first major tournament to which I’ve taken the Dunland Legion, after a small 1-day event around 6 months ago – and perhaps foolishly, I took the army out only twice in the months between (I have been very preoccupied with my Easterling / Khand alliance). Dunland are a good list, but I’m not particularly confident with them yet, so I went in hoping to go 2-4 – or maybe 3-3 if I get lucky. Really though, I was just happy to finally get this finished army out on to the tabletop after chipping away at them for the last year or so.

Note - apologies, there are not many photos of my actual games - I was very rusty and my overworked brain kept forgetting to take them. I've instead included photos of my army kindly taken by fellow blogger Steve Thorley. The full album can be found here, for anybody interested.

Army of Dunland Legendary Legion

Thrydan Wolfsbane on horse
3 Warriors of Dunland with Shield
3 Huscarls
1 Warrior of Dunland
3 Warriors of Dunland with dagger and bow
1 Warrior of Dunland with banner
1 Crebain
2 Dunlending Horsemen

Gorulf Ironskin
4 Warriors of Dunland with shield
2 Huscarls
2 Dunlending Horsemen

Frida Tallspear
4 Warriors of Dunland with shield
2 Huscarls
1 Dunlending Horseman
1 Crebain

The Wildman Oathmaker
11 Wildmen with axe
1 Dunlending Warrior with banner

46 models, 4 warbands, 12 might, 3 bows


Game 1 - Assassination vs James Wilson’s Minas Tirith

Having seen the pairings a day or two earlier on Longshanks, I was quite apprehensive about this matchup. Minas Tirith have good ranged options and no shortage of F4 and F5 troops, as well as Elessar himself! However, the tradeoff for taking Elessar is the cheap, 1-wound heroes in the form of Mablung and Damrod, both prime targets – making the scenario tricky for him. Gorulf was my assassin and Mablung my target. I assumed (correctly) that the squishy Oathmaker would be the target and held him back.

Thrydan and Gorulf (an absolute wrecking ball pairing) managed to smash through and dispatch Mablung in a few turns – not unexpected. What was unexpected, though, was that my troops massively overperformed (James’ dice dried up pretty badly for a couple of turns) and then the warriors of Gondor were all but gone. I had plenty of troops to keep Aragorn penned in, stopping him from doing Aragorn things, until he was eventually mobbed and cut down.

10-1 win, a good start!

Game 2 – Seize the Prize vs Nick Whit’s Assault on Helm’s Deep

So, if I won my first game through good judgment, good positioning and good luck, game 2 was lost through lack of those things!

Nick’s advantage – 12 crossbow, a ballista, and a narrow corridor to engage in. My advantage – 2 crebain swarms. They managed to peck up the objective on turn 2, but my list took heavy casualties in screening them to safety, and they finally managed to fall back on turn 3 with 1 and 2 wounds remaining. Uruks with pikes are absolutely brutal in a choke point, and my over-extension in the centre corridor saw me taking heavy losses and breaking, while inflicting only a small handful of casualties.

The smart play here, with no real way of breaking or killing the Uruks’ leader, would have been to fall back, play defensively and go for the 3-3 draw. If Nick had the priority on the final turn, I’d be able to swoop in to his half after his movement for a 5-3 win. However, priority went to me instead. In a lapse of judgment, I flew the Crebain in to a spot I thought would be relatively safe in his board half, but Nick managed to get enough bodies in to get the kill and steal the objective for a 6-0 loss.

Not my finest hour, but a good lesson in *ahem* keeping your eyes on the prize. If I’d kept focusing on where the point-scoring opportunities were, this should have been easily winnable. Lesson learned – don’t get greedy!

Game 3 – Contest of Champions vs Queen Jasmine’s Fellowship / Lothlorien / Minas Tirith / White Council Nightmare

At this point of the day, my focus was out of the window, and I didn't know what half these heroes did (nothing nice, I suspected) so I went for a straightforward battle line deployment, with Thrydan and horses ready to pounce. Jasmine’s leader was Boromir, and with his might stores and offensive output, there was no way I was going to be able to rack up kills faster than him. I decided to push the centre, chance a lucky kill, and allow the sides to wrap around, hopefully securing the break.

However, as I probably should have expected, the combined might of Galadriel, Haldir and Boromir was a complete wrecking ball, tearing a transfixed Thrydan to pieces on turn 2, and shattering my line. This left three engagements – the Dunlendings securing the left and right flanks, and elves dominating the middle.

With both sides broken, and currently standing at a 12-1 win to Jasmine, we decided to play out the game. In a ridiculous spike of bad dice, Boromir dies to Gorulf, having rolled a 2-highest on 9 (!) dice in the duel roll, unable to even spend his 3 might to match Gorulf’s 6, and is swiftly beheaded. 11-2 loss to me, and a crazy way to end the day.

Note the untargetable wood elf  sentinel in the tree. If you're thinking they probably stayed there all game shooting and tooting, then you'd be right. 

Intermission – Evening Festivities

Steven puts on a fantastic quiz, and the rest of the night was spend with great company, decent beer and some board games – skip ahead to day 2 if you’re not interested in these!

Startups – a fantastic and very pretty small-box game from Oink Games, this game sees you trying to sucker people in to investing in companies that you will (unbeknown to them) end up holding the controlling share in, earning you hard cash rewards. Very well suited to a bar / pub / drinking setting, it’s a fairly simple card game which can be taught in 5 minutes, with each round lasting about 10.

Looks like this guy is going for a monopoly in Hippo Powertech. Careful though - don't scare away your potential investors!

Kakerlaken Poker – a game of pure bluff, kakerlaken (or cockroach in german) poker sees you trying to fool your friends in to taking one of eight types of bug-themed cards off your hands. You'll find yourselves untangling webs of lies as you and your mates double and triple bluff each other. If you enjoy fooling your friends (or collecting insects) this is a great party game for up to 6 people.

The instructions also list French, German and Italian names for each type of bug, which is an evening's entertainment in itself.

Taxi home, solid 8 hours of sleep, woken up with a cup of tea, lift back to Element Games - lovely stuff. Hangover situation – could be better, could be worse. I’ll take it. On with the show!


Game 4 – Capture and hold vs Peter Wilson’s Lothlorien / Rohan alliance

This was an interesting pairing. The elephant in the room is Dunland’s hatred of Rohan, making my offensive output potentially very scary here. On the other hand, Peter’s back line was almost all elves with good banner support, which gated my offensive output behind my inferior fight value.

Maelstrom deployment here was not too unkind to either of us – with a few might points spent, we were both able to deploy more or less where we wanted to. But crucially, while beelining to the centre and weaving around the busy terrain, I did not form up my battle line quickly enough, and I should have played much more cautiously forming a solid line before reaching cavalry charge range. Theodred and Dernhelm, with their uncontested mobility, saw their chances to slip through the gaps and hit my back lines and my wildmen like heat-seeking missiles. They racked up many kills, and by the time I'd mustered a counter-offensive to put down the threats, their job was already done and I was more or less broken. 

Thankfully, I managed to salvage a decent engagement, and Dunland did their thing, chewing through troops with their terrifying offensive output. I was extremely aggressive with my heroes, trading leader kills. We ground on to a 6-3 win for Peter - a very bloody game, with some poor positioning on my part on which Peter smartly capitalized.

After losing their numerical advantage early on, the Dunlending fought a bitter, bloody battle to the end. 

Game 5 – Breakthrough vs Jay Davidson’s Khazad-Dum

Dwarves did what they do best – deploy in the centre, dig in with their D9 shields, and grind out a prolonged combat with their superior stat lines. Unfortunately, Dunland have the numbers and the offensive output to deal with them...eventually! My battle line engaged in the centre with Gorulf absorbing Durin’s blows with his free Heroic Defense. Thrydan took his cavalry around one side, and the oathmaker led his Wildman blob around the other. The stubbornness of dwarves was on full display as they just refused to die - but gradually they were worn down until being quartered. My might advantage had a huge impact here, giving me the run of the board in the mid to late game, going for the big traps you need to fish for those 6s to wound. 10-0 win to Dunland.

Game 6 – Divide and Conquer vs Glynn Seymour’s Angmar

At this point, Glynn and I commiserated on how fried our brains were – I’d achieved my aim of 2 wins for the weekend, so a nice casual dice chucking game to finish the weekend with suited us both just fine.

Dunland vs Angmar isn’t the worst matchup. I struggle with courage a little, but both wildmen and huscarls have access to fearless in the list. I’m also not overly reliant on one hero to get the job done, and have lots of high-strength troops to fall back on. The Tainted baited Gorulf and his troops out of position, far away from the trolls on the other side of the board. However, the fearless Wildman blob blunted the trolls’ offensive, and Glenn’s truly shambolic dice saw him fail to cast a paralyse with either of his Barrow-Wights for the entire game. One good transfix roll on Thrydan saw me counter with a natural 6. I think Glynn's dice were also ready to go home. 

With superior stats, board-wide banner coverage and access to fearless, my troops simply outclassed the Angmar orcs, breaking them quickly. From there, it was a case of consolidating the centre and side objectives - and despite Burdhur going on a last-minute rampage and contesting the centre, I grabbed a 6-0 win. I feel like had Angmar got some half-decent dice on some magic dice, this game could have gone very differently. 

Wrap-up

Glynn was a lovely final opponent and gave me some truly excellent cake to cap off a truly excellent weekend. I also managed to secure the Best Painted award, which was very exciting, especially considering some of the extremely talented hobbyists that were in attendance.

Thanks for a great tournament, Ste - see you at the next one!

Thanks to all my opponents for some very memorable games, and to Ste Crowe for putting on a fantastic Scouring yet again.

Final score – 3 wins, 3 losses. 39th over all, right in the middle of the pack. Happy with that, and tons of lessons learned - with a bit of practise I think I can take this list to a 4-2.

List thoughts – I like Dunland a lot. My inexperience with the army was pretty evident and I made some big mistakes, but they have the punching power to forgive a lot of those. The tremendous 12 might meant that I was often calling heroic moves long after the opponent had run dry, giving me a lot of late-game board control. I’m happy with the 2 banners for effectively board-wide coverage. I’m also happy with 7 huscarls – they are too expensive to spam, but it gives you enough F4 in the right places.

The Wildmen often struggled to perform – in some games they are amazing, and in others they are just a free pass for your opponent to break you, so there is a skill curve there. When used as line troops, they are guaranteed to crumble in a few turns, so I need to factor that in to how I use them. I also feel that I’m just scratching the surface of Gorulf and Thrydan’s combined offensive output – a combo of Heroic Strike, Heroic Combat and War Cry just puts out insane damage and could easily dispatch a couple of heroes in a turn, or at least kill enough stuff to turn the combat in your favour. 

Changes to the list – I may take a few less Wildmen and a couple more warriors. I’m going to swap the 3 bows for axes & shields, too. Finally, I’m going to think very hard about replacing Frida with a Chieftain, just for access to Heroic March. She’s a gorgeous model but she’s far less consistently useful than any of the other named heroes, having not used her special rules once over the weekend. Having a F5 support is nice... But Heroic March can be the difference between winning and losing a game.

MVP – Gorulf. He’s a monster. Thrydan hits like a truck, but Gorulf hits almost as hard for half the cost, doesn't rely on his horse, and is nigh unkillable when he wants to be - Thrydan only wishes he could tank like the G man. The fact that he’s not your leader means you can really throw him around too, allowing you to make some really high-risk high-reward plays. If he dies - so what, he'll be back next game with a bad temper. But having said that, the only time he died all weekend was from fleeing the battlefield - presumably to go and punch somebody somewhere.