Kings of War Singles - Franticon 2020

The final day of Franticon 2020 saw perhaps the most anticipated event of all - Kings of War Singles, or Erit Bellum II to give its proper title. Having already fought for two days straight, the Black Order's warriors (not to mention the nerd who painted them) were pretty tired by this point. So far, the results hadn't been bad - 5th overall in Vanguard (and 3rd best painted), 5th overall in the doubles and a couple inches away from overall victory (and 1st best painted). The armies for Erit Bellum were limited to 1650pts. This was a fairly unusual points level for me and I struggled initially to make a list I was happy with. In the end, I went with the following: -Frostfang Cavalry Horde -Frostfang Cavalry Horde -Ice Elemental Horde -Huscarl Regiment -Lord on Frostfang -Elf Clansmen Troop -Snow Fox Regiment -Snow Fox Regiment -Ice Queen Erit Bellum also marked the first time I used a display board! I was dead chuffed with this as it was just a tile from my homemade Vanguard board, backed up with a photographic background. The omni-talented Nick Williams was kind enough to snap some really good shots of the army which he's allowed me to share here:

The eagle-eyed will notice two things: that I made my own unit wargear cards (complete with flavour text and background images) and that I FORGOT MY DAMN MOVEMENT TRAYS. I changed the bag I used to transport my army between the doubles and singles to a bigger bag, in order to transport the display board, and in the process left my movement tray package in the old bag. Great start to the day. Luckily, my opponents were universally super cool about this, and no one complained about the makeshift cardboard trays I hacked together moments before the event began. Big shout out to George Kirke in particular for lending me some MDF movement trays that made the day much easier, too. Anyway, on to the games.

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ROUND ONE - SMOKE AND MIRRORS

For the first game I drew George Kirke and his Nightstalkers.

George was a great opponent. Super friendly, very communicative and extremely good fun overall to play against. He had a fairly nasty list - several Mind Screeches to hurl lightning my way, four regiments of Fiends, some Doppelgangers and Reapers as second-line units and a big ol' horde of Scarecrows to chaff me. Unfortunately, my dice were really hot this game and I managed to chew through several units in a series of big charges on turn 2. Despite the Reapers hitting pretty hard, and a regiment of Fiends threatening my backline (see above) the damage had been done. Win to the Black Order.

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ROUND TWO - LOOT

For the second round I drew a Spanish player by the name of José, also running Nightstalkers! José's list comprised a bunch of Butcher hordes, two Shadow Hulks, a Void Lurker, two Shades, a Phantom troop and a big Scarecrow horde.

José spread out quite a lot during deployment, and my initial plan was to capitalise on this, killing each division while the Snow Foxes and archers held up the other divisions. It might have worked. The Butchers and one Shadow Hulk manoeuvered straight into charge range of most of my hard hitting, and my Huscarls even managed to get a flank on one of the Butcher hordes. Enter, of course, the double 1. I managed to devastate one of the Butcher hordes but that was it. The following turn José managed to roll 17 out of 18 hits on one Butcher horde, 16 out of 18 on the other, and a big multicharge with the Shadow Hulk and a Phantom troop into one of my Frostfangs. His Nerve rolls followed a similar pattern and I lost three units in a single turn. The rest of the battle followed a similar pattern. I just couldn't kill anything. By the end of the game the Black Order had been tabled. I don't like to blame games on bad dice, but it was hard to avoid feeling cheated by my own dice on this one. Still, José took a solid list and got some great use out of the Butchers and Shadow Hulks.

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ROUND THREE - PUSH

Round Three saw the Black Order redeploy to snowier climes to face Nick Williams and his...you guessed it...Nightstalkers. Great, I've really enjoyed playing the same army three times in one day. What? This one is different? How so? How many Scarecrow hordes?!

Yep, Nick ran a 9 Scarecrow Horde list. This had a lot of people moaning before (and during, and after...) the event. Personally, I thought it looked cool as hell and was really (really) frustrated I'd left my movement trays at home, as this battle would have looked even cooler between two fully painted/based armies.

(Looks like the Battle of Winterfell, except sexier) Nick was a good sport about it and I actually ended up enjoying this game most of all four games, despite losing by a single point in the end - Nick and I had a good chat about tactics and overall strategy at the end of the match and he was without question the most transparent of my opponents over the weekend, making sure everything was fully clear. I gave too much respect to his Scarecrow hordes, being put off by one of them (marked by a white object in the pic above) having the Crystal Pendant of Retribution. I should have just killed that horde straight away, took the damage on the chin and then mulched through the rest of the Scarecrows in true Black Order badassery. Still, I'd never played this kind of list before, so a good learning experience and had some good laughs too. Black Order'll get ya next time Nick.

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ROUND FOUR - DOMINATE

By this point in the day I was fully ready to go home. Three days of gaming and four matches in one day really took their toll. However, the final game was against a very cool guy called Andrew who ran one of the best-painted Goblin armies I've ever seen in the flesh (and I won't lie, it was great to play something that wasn't Nightstalkers).

Andrew hadn't played much KoW before, but was a WHFB veteran so had a pretty good idea how things worked. I don't remember much of this game, but Andrew deserved to win it - I made a couple stupid mistakes in deployment, reinforced it with some questionable charges and ended up winning through an Ice Elemental horde that would not die and then managed to Surge into a flank in the final turn. We were playing Dominate, so Andrew just had to kill my Ice Elemental horde with something like 5 on a Nerve roll to win the game convincingly, but unfortunately got done over by his own dice, unluckily for him. I'd love to play this army again - in particular his Slasher (the Arachnarok above) was a stunning mini that had players coming from all over to admire it.

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FINAL RESULTS

Given my average results (2 wins and 2 draws) I finished middle of the table. I wasn't particularly pleased with this result as I felt, having played some pretty good players on day 2, I could have managed a better showing in the singles. To be honest, event fatigue played a big role. Three days of gaming (and 2 systems) was a bit too much. Next year I'll probably just do Kings of War, or skip one of the KoW days if there's another Vanguard event. However, the Black Order did pretty well for itself in terms of loot haul overall. I was very fortunate to win Best Painted overall, popping Juan Hidalgo and Matt Gorham to 1st place by a small margin, both of whom have studio standard armies. Had a really nice chat with them both after the event about different paint styles and the importance of theme and overall aesthetic in an army. So, the final haul:

Not too bad for a long weekend's gaming. Overall I really enjoyed Franticon. I'll definitely be back next year - hopefully I'll convince more of the Prague crowd to join me this time.