Game 3: Elves-Rohan vs. KhandSo after the first 2 games I was now on the top table against a Khand army. I've never seen a real khand army, let alone know what the rules for the troops were like - so I was entering this on a blank slate. In addition Matt had literally disemboweled the isengard army (his opponent looked miserable during the entire game) in the previous round incredibly quickly so things weren't looking good for me, even with my high number of elite troops.
Matt won the roll off and slowly deployed his all-metal army. He had masses of Abrakhan guard and Khandish Mercenaries. In addition, he had a block of khandish archers and a block of axeman. Followed up with both the Shadow Lord (there goes my high shoot value), and the Golden King. I asked for his rules. He told me them. Oh damn. I hope that I don't break, or bye-bye heroes. To top that off, he had a khandish king on chariot. The cav advantage is looking bad here.
Layout of the final game:
He deployed on the northen side again, moving his archers onto the stepped hill. His mercenaries deployed on the left flank with the Shadow Lord, whilst the rest of his foot troops and the Golden King deployed on the right side of the hill. Lastly, he had a block of warriors deployed on the far right. I'm not really sure what he was planning to do with these - I assume they were used as either a distraction force, or to try and draw my line away from the main fight, but I ended up setting up in a refused flank formation, pretty much taking them out of the game.
For the first few turns, we had the general volley fire battle, Galadriel once again cast Blinding light to ward off arrows, just to even the Shadow Lord's playing field! My Cav were deployed opposite his, with my Galadhrim forming a battle-line in front of the hill - curved in such a way that I could collapse part of my own line if need be to intercept any of those stray Khand axemen. Matt's abrakhan guard deployed in a massive block, shielding the GK, and also using a screen of axemen to protect them from potential elf arrows.
Matt continued to come towards me...chariot and shadow lord in tow. All I could do was to use the choke points near the stone henge to potentially block fights off - so I had most of my throwing weapon warriors deploy on that side, to lengthen the line if they could - or if worst came to worst, hold the flank if Eomer and his riders were beaten.
Soon enough our cavalry lines clashed - I managed to pick off one or two of his own mercernary cav, but not enough to make a difference. The Chieften in the chariot burst into the fray, charging on of my cav. then the shadow lord tried to transfix eomer. Uh-oh. I counter this by spending all of Eomer's will-points as I can't chance Eomer being easy meat for the chariot riding king. Combat is mixed, with a few rohirrim getting creamed, with the multitude of heroes which are running around in the center now. Combat moves into the ruins, where Matt’s Khandish Captain calls a heroic combat, cutting down a rohirrim and poses a threat to the edges of my lines. I move my infantry against him, and in the following turns, use my numbers to wipe his forces and control the Stonehenge.
In the center melee, Eomer is still standing off against the chariot and his cav cronies while my line begins to try waits for his abrakhan guard block to hit. The shadow lord casts transfix against eomer again, who can’t resist as he drained his will defending the last attempt. As Eomer and the remaining mix of rohirrim on the left are the only thing standing in the way of his chariot breaking through my lines, I counter this by making Galadriel burn another 3 will and transfix the king in the chariot – robbing his chance to smear eomer into the ground. In the turn after, I burn another 2 will transfixing the king again – this time Eomer and his support have no problem dispatching him and robbing Matt’s flank of the banner bonus that the king conferred.
His army soon begins to crumble after this – Matt just can’t bring his numbers to bear as his force doesn’t have any spear support, and begins to pay for this as my elves slowly drag them down due to my greater numbers. My archers are still going strong, easily dealing with his distractor detachment, and helping me bag some easy kills as they are out of range of the shadow lords pall of darkness. His shadow lord does manage to sap the will of Galadriel, but by this time its too little too late. Matt does manage to take Eomers head though, as he manages to cast transfix eomer for a third time, using 2 abrakhan guard to easily take him down while he’s defenceless. I roll for fate, but botch the roll miserably – thats the first time someones managed to kill either of my heroes during the tournament.
In the end I manage to reduce him to 25% - where he calls the game.
End Result: Major Victory, +1 bonus point as I killed his leader.
OverviewIn terms of my overall performance, I think I did pretty well with the army I had - the elf/rohan combination was incredibly good as it let me max out the numbers of thrown weapons and bows. I don't think I would change my hero selection for that army either, as magic is dreadfully important for that points tier - if I didn't have galadriel in the second and third game I would've kissed my chances of holding on goodbye, as Eomer would've gotten flattened by the khandish chariot in game 3, allowing Matt to run rampant through my lightly defended supporting line. In the same way, not having Galadriel there to sit and go toe-to-toe with Cal's dragon would've resulted in my army quickly crumbling without much resistance.
I think the tournament scenario list was highly advantageous for my army as well, as a maxed out elf bow army crushed the high defence warriors of the dead, who I would normally barely scratch. In addition, I was able to play a very reactive game as I was generally outnumbering my opponent and could sit and absorb massive amount of damage, but still have plenty of bodies to throw into the meat grinder. In some games I would have 5 or 6 extra troops waiting an inch or two behind my main lines, ready to fill any gaps made in the lines - this was especially helpful against both khand and the army of the dead who would generally be facing double the attacks that they were throwing at me.
So all in all, it was quite an interesting tournament - lots of good armies this time, which I hadn't seen the previous times I had attended. In addition, I had done better than I had ever dreamed of bagging those 2 major victories and ending up as the overall tournament champion
I also ended up getting a plastic Mordor Troll as a prize, which is giving me the itch to get an evil army finished, just so I can use him and the troll chieftain I have together!
Anyways I hope you enjoy the report I've written up, and I'll be heading to the next tournament in January to defend my title
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keeping me at bay!), but I'm planning on entering a tourny over in brisbane (the same one that Shadowswarm is attending - see his army list 
Way to go for getting the win. Sounds like you had a lot of fun. Thanks for posting the report, I love those things!