Scouring of Che-Shire 4: Dave, or “Why have 2 legs when you could have 8?”

I recently attended Scouring of Cheshire 2020 at Element Games, hosted by the wonderful Ste from TopTableGaming.

I had 6 great games and all had some lessons I could learn from them, so lets have a look what my games were, how they went and some of my thoughts about them.

First of all, I was running my “Denizens of Moria” army, the list is as follows:

Durburz
5x Goblins with shields
5x Goblins with spears

Ashrak
3x Goblins with shields
3x Goblins with spears
4x Venomback Giant Spiders

Druzhag
4x Goblins with bows
3x Giant Spiders
3x Fell Wargs
1x Bat Swarm

Spider Queen
3x Mirkwood Spiders

Lots of spiders, lots of fast movement and a decent amount of Goblins to help hold some objectives.

Game 1  - Assassination Vs Callum's Return of the King LL

My first game of the tournament was Callum and his Return of The King list, the mission was Assassination. This is typically an army my list will struggle with, the King lowering my already low courage value went about as well as you could expect, courage 1 goblins weren't getting their charges off. I made a pretty huge error early on and split my 2 shamans up and for whatever reason, I didn't cast Fury with either of them until late in the game. I'd chosen to kill his Herald, which he kept pretty tightly defended. A hilarious friendly fire from one of my Mirkwood Spiders meant the Queen got Paralysed and died to Aragorn who'd committed pretty hard down the left side of the board, thankfully an enraged spider and a trap made short work of him in the following turn.

We slogged it out a few more turns but I inevitably broke, the -1 to my courage coming in huge here, most of my remaining models fled the board.

10-2 Loss. Lesson learnt: Don't split up the shamans, cast Fury, don't paralyse the Queen.



Game 2 - Seize the Prize Vs Matt Hill's Shire

Firstly, Matt has some wonderfully painted Hobbits! I like this scenario a lot and against an army who move 4” most of the time, I felt pretty confident. A turn one dig up from a broodling led to a heroic move off from Farmer Maggot and his dogs in the following turn. It went to me and I ran back into my own line, eventually flying the prize off the board with a bat swarm. Not a great deal to say about it really, 12” move vs 4” on this scenario should really only go one way!

9-0 Win. Lesson learnt: Take your time with the prize and don't over commit. Shroud of Shadows comes in clutch in a pickle.




Game 3  - Contest of Champions Vs James Wilson's Minas Tirith

Durburz vs Aragorn, King Elessar. Not going to lie, as soon as the game was pulled I knew I was going to lose. I managed to keep Durburz alive for a while due to some slight model misplacement from James meaning his Aragorn couldn't smash into my line. An enraged and shrouded Venomback ran through his line and got to Aragorn but lost the duel roll. I never got another opening to attack him as my list began to crumble pretty fast. Last game of the day so I know I made a lot of dumb decisions, I should have sent the Queen in sooner but I never felt like I had the chance to.

12-0 Loss. Lesson learnt: Don't slack on decision making, commit harder with the Queen, don't go into a game expecting to lose.



Game 4  - Hold Ground Vs Matthew Allen's Army of Gothmog LL

I'll say right now this was my favourite game of the weekend. We played Hold Ground, the first maelstrom mission of the event. We both got decent deployments from maelstrom, and he marched onto the objective faster than I could get there. My Spiders worked a flank and the Queen even made short work of his Troll in only the second turn. The Queen came in strong again as a hurl from her dismounted Gothmog from his Warg. I played my Shamans right this time, enrage and shroud let me get strong charges right into the middle of the board and I chewed through some Orcs. Alas, as much as I tried I couldn't shift the Orcs. Going into the final turn if the combat went my way, I'd knock enough Orcs off the objective to secure a win, but if it went mostly even or in his favour he'd bag the central objective. It wasn't to be and Matthew's Orcs held the centre. Super close game, loved every minute of it.

3-1 Loss. Lesson learnt: Get on the objective asap, fighting up hill is hard against D6 with goblins.



Game 5 -  Breakthrough Vs Tim Garlick's Dunland

Another fantastic game, Breakthrough was the mission. I'm afraid to say I've forgotten how a lot of the early game played out. I know I kept him in the centre for most of the game by sacrificing goblins into multi charges whilst my spiders flanked around the side to try and make a play for his home objective.

The big swing of the game was when my Queen failed to win a duel against the Oathmaker and lost 2 wounds in the process. Next turn she got absolutely surrounded by bodies, Thrydan included. In a last ditch attempt to keep her alive I used enrage beast on her and she Heroic Struck up to F10, with Thrydan only getting to F9. She rolled a 6 in the duel and put all 4 strikes into Thrydan causing 4 wounds. With no way to survive it, I managed to snag the points for the Leader kill with my own Leader still being alive and unwounded thanks to Heroic Defence.

5-4 Win. Lesson learnt: Enraged Queen is a beast, eat as many control zones as you can, never give up hope even after bad dice.



Game 6  - Divide & Conquer Vs Tom Jennings' Angmar

I don't think I played this one too badly, just not a lot I can do to charge and tie up control zones, especially when the spectres can move me away and make Druzhag run off so I lose his bubble of C4 on my beasts. I held one of the side objectives comfortably but unfortunately I couldn't keep up the fight for the centre objective and the one on the left, the latter being heavily guarded by a cave troll! I feel like I had a much better handle on my list by this point though, a Venomback managed to get into the WK and forced him to spend might to win the duel. Sadly I never got another swing at him!

6-1 Loss. Lesson learnt: Angmar are hard! Use Shroud to tie up and hopefully snipe the Spirit heroes.


All in all, I picked up 2 wins over the weekend and learnt a great deal. Looking forward to putting everything into practice and making some tweaks to the list before Scouring rolls around again in March!