THRO Tournament Review, Part IV of IV: Round 3 and Final Summary

Dear Reader,

Hope your pre-Friday is going well!  Today we wrap up the final round of the TMAT THRO Tournament 2013, as well as the final standings and placement of all of our competitors.  As a quick reminder from my previous post, the only true competitors still in the running for first place are Captain Glot (with two Major Victories) and Tavros and Zorro (tied with a Major Victory and a Draw, not calculating points for oaths).  Because none of them were facing each other, the endgame conclusions would be decided by each game.  They'll be reviewed here in table order: Tavros, Zorro, and then Glot.



1.  Table One: Tavros v. Duke of Milan - Domination

This was a fun game to watch intermittently during my game, primarily because I quickly began to realize that Tavros, at heart, is a teacher - he was giving a number of helpful strategic pointers and tips to the Duke, who is new to our gaming group (and Warhammer generally).  Their fight was pretty intense, with a solid line of Easterlings meeting the horde of Angmoria.  The fight spanned three objectives in a never-ending stream of units - it was incredible.

Burduhr declared that he would outkill Amdur, and after wading through the middle of the Easterling ranks, he managed to kill far more warriors than Amdur did.  The Duke declared that one of the shamans would die, and the shaman survived (oath failed).  In the final assessment, the Easterlings stubbornly held onto two objectives, and the greenskins successfully pushed the Easterlings away from three objectives.  Both army leaders survived the fight, resulting in a 9-6 Minor Victory for Angmoria.

2.  Table Two: Zorro v. Glenstorm - Arkenstone

There were no pictures from this fight, but there wasn't much to see tactically from this fight, either.  Zorro declared that Rosseloth, one of my Dunedain, would die (yeah...no one has any imagination against my army, :-/  Choose a place on the map to reach?  Nah.  Choose to outkill Aragorn?  Nope.  Fight in combat and survive?  No way - let's all just elect a Dunedain to kill!), and I declared that the Drummer would die (and later learned that I wasn't all that original with this idea, either).

I played a game against a similar army a few weeks before the tournament, and we got our sorry Numenorian carcasses handed to us.  This game was the first game where I got to use the advantage of range, and it came out in spades.  By the time we entered melee in Turn 4, the uruk force was five models away from breaking.  After a few rounds of heavy melee combat, the uruks were broken, the Grey Company was broken a few rounds later, and Rosseloth was slain by an uruk captain (oath fulfilled for Zorro).  After using all of his Might points to stay in the field, Vrasku managed to pass his Courage test, and held the remnant of the uruks in the field, with the Drummer beating (literally) a hasty retreat into one of the buildings to avoid being sniped by archer fire.  The following turn (and the last round of the tournament for both of us), Vrasku failed his Courage test again and was unable to promote his roll, so he was removed from the field.  The result was a 3-1 Major Victory for the Grey Company.

3.  Table Three: Tiberius v. Glot - Ill Met by Moonlight

The Nazgul played their final game against a heavily mounted force, making the classic game of bait-and-switch a bit harder than normal.  What is more, because the Rohan force sported Erkenbrand, Rohan was running an army of C5 - C7 (in the case of Eomer - such a boss!) models, making charging terror units much more manageable, even within the shadow of the ringwraiths.  The Undying declared that he would outkill Eomer (which, when you've only got five eligible targets for Eomer to kill, is a pretty safe bet), and Eomer declared a line in the sand in the Ringrwaith deployment zone.

Both aims were achieved, as the Undying felled two of the strawheads, and Eomer only finished off one of the ringwraiths.  Eomer did manage to reach his end objective, and the game devolved into a massive game of "keep away" for Erkenbrand as he attempted to keep the Rohan army in the field with a high Courage rating (resulting in, from what I gather, an interesting strategy of dropping to the ground and staying on random sides of the rock pictured above).  In the endgame, the Ringwraiths were broken, Rohan was not, neither team took a banner, and both army generals survived, resulting in a 3-0 Major Victory for Rohan.

Summary

Like the TMAT GT II this past March, we allowed players to declare an oath at the start of the game, and the completion of the oath allowed the competitor to gain Campaign Points that contribute to their total campaign score instead of a battle score.  Additionally, if a competitor completes all three oaths, he gains an additional 3 points.  We also allowed players to award kudo points for things accomplished during the fight, worth 0.5 points each.  Before calculating points scored for oaths, here are the standings:

1.  Captain Glot (30.5)
2.  Tavros (25)
3.  Zorro (20)
4.  Glenstorm (18.5)
5.  Duke of Milan (12.5)
6.  Tiberius (7)

After tallying completed oaths, only two players successfully completed all of their oaths (Glot and Zorro), so the final tally including the additional bonus points for Glot and Zorro was:

1.  Captain Glot (38.5)
2.  Tavros (28)
3.  Zorro (28)
4.  Glenstorm (19.5)
5.  Duke of Milan (13.5)
6.  Tiberius (8)

And that wrapped up the tournament for us!  We had a lot of fun playing, testing out lists we had never run before, and enjoying six hours of fun and fellowship together.  As we head into November, I'll be following up with a post over the weekend about what I'll be doing with my Rohan force over November - I'm really excited!

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"Whose forest is it now, human?" ~ Bane, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix