The von Trapps at the NZ Team Championships - Day Two

So as noted in the previous post, we were sitting in second place, ten points behind the NZHammered team going into Day 2. Certainly we didn't think that this gap was insurmountable.

Round 5 Shaken Not Stirred

Jack (DE) 14-6 Mike Stewart (O&G) [Prediction: 10-10]
Tom (DoC) 3-17 Tim Joss (Chaos Dwarfs) [10-10]
Pete (OK) 15-5 Damon Quaid (Lizards) [10-10]
Joe (WoC) 17-3 Alan Redmond (Empire) [13-7]

This was the round where Tom got thrown under the bus. We realised that the Chaos Dwarfs were a likely winner over the Daemons (rather than our initial thoughts of a draw) but felt we had the opportunity to push for big wins in our other games. As it turned out, our predicted 43 points grew to 49.

I had my third Lizard in a row and was confident I could push for a good win. As it turned out in pushing for the win I left myself exposed and Damon got a 9" charge with a Saurus block into the flank of my big Mournfang unit. I was lucky to hold the initial charge, turned and then over time worked my way through the block. In the last turn, my Maneaters (in flank) and Ironguts (front) hit the other Saurus - containing Slaan and Old Blood - and I ended up getting those points.

This left us on 231 points going into the last round. This was the same as the Nerdymen and one behind the Grumpy Old Men. NZHammered had been beaten 51-29 by the Nerdymen and were now 10 points behind us.

In the last round the Grumpy Old Men drew the Nerdymen (as they had played us) and we drew the Krushers (having played 4th through 7th). NZHammered drew Team OMEN.

Round 6 Kapiti Krushers

Jack (DE) 10-10 Hermann van Kradenberg (DE) [7-13]
Tom (DoC) 18-2 Nicholas Jebson (O&G) [17-3]
Pete (OKs) 17-3 Sam Campbell (DoC) [13-7]
Joe (WoC) 12-8 Hamish Gordon (WoC) [7-13]

The potential scores we had assigned the Krushers marked them as having the strongest suite of lists at the event so it was important to get our matchups right. We also knew that we had the edge in experience so we might be able to squeeze more out of the matches.

Sam had 90 Bloodletters plus supporting chaff. I knew that it was madness to move into a position whereby I didn't get the charge and/or I had to engage all three blocks. To this end I worked to reduce the battle frontage so that only two BL blocks would be able to engage at once. In tandem I went about removing as much of his chaff as possible. My front line move back over Turns 2-4 narrowing the BL's available frontage. Eventually the General's block charged my small Ogre unit (fled) and then Gnobblers (fled and caught). This allowed me the opportunity to focus shooting and magic on this block reducing it to 12 before a next turn charge wiped it out.

We managed a big win this round and knew that unless either the Grumpies or the Nerds had done the same then we were in the box seat.

Awards

NZHammered

The League of Extraordinary Nerdymen

The von Trapp Family

Wrap Up

We finished on 288 points, five points clear of the Nerdymen. NZHammered was two further points behind on 281 points.

Our score was exactly 12 points per game - which was far lower than I thought would be necessary to win the event. However I clearly underestimated the effect of a bad matchup.

In terms of our team scores:

• Joe - 79
• Pete - 77
• Tom - 76
• Jack - 56

Given that Joe's last tournament was October and Jack's was in March, I thought that they did incredibly well. Our scores were far more even than most teams - where generally there was a large spread between the players. In part I put this down to the matchup process we employed where at some point everyone took an undesirable matchup.

When I look at the results for the other teams, it wasn't a surprise that for 5 teams their captain (and controller of the matchup process) was the highest scorer. I think it is only human nature that the captain isn't entirely neutral in engineering favourable matchups for themselves. However I'm not sure consistently throwing your team mates under the bus is the best strategy for team harmony. 

The other major talking point for me was the fact that 1st and 2nd Place didn't end up playing each other over the six rounds. Given that the field only had ten teams, you don't expect this to happen. 

Overall I loved the event and I hope that it will become a staple on the Warhammer calendar.

EDIT: I grabbed the photos from Hermann's Border Princes blog because I'm useless and always forget to take photos