I've been remiss in writing this article about the recent GT I attended at Jekyll Island Comic Con on December 9th and 10th. The holidays in full swing and the wallet draining out pools of money have been a bit distracting. Those married with kids will feel me there. The event was held in South Georgia on the infamous Jekyll Island, the alleged birthplace of the Federal Reserve. Sadly I couldn't make it up Friday night to enjoy the drinking at the club which house the alleged meeting between Rockefeller and others took place, but I heard a lot of the GT participants had a pretty good time and quite a night (no banks were formed in the process though). I guess it saved me a few bucks since they got it out of their system before Saturday night. With my daughters Christmas program the night before I made the drive up early Saturday morning at about 5am. I'm a morning person so it wasn't half bad, and being as it was only 3 hours from Titusville it wasn't a bad drive up either. Being this is the closest GT to Florida outside our own Crucible GT there were quite a few of us Florida folk attending, about 7 total which ended up being half of the tournament.

Another cool thing about this GT is that it is the premiere event of our club, the Kings of Warlando, centered in Central Florida and encompassing the 7 members in attendance of Jekyll Island GT and a few more. Pictured to the right is an awesome logo we hope to see on shirts soon that was designed by Jamie W.

The venue itself for the GT was a pretty nice convention center within walking distance of our swanky hotel, and the event which we were under was a Comic Con that I didn't get much if a chance to check out. The Con itself had some interesting hours which gave us a few problems but it was a awesome room with a beach view so I can't complain too much.

My List

I was pretty excited for this event as it would be the first that I was taking Orcs to after having painted 2250+ points in under 2 months start to finish. So needless to say I was pretty proud of the army as I set them up on the pretty simple display board I made in haste a week before Jekyll. Behind them of course I had my page worth of fluff that i had imagined for this Mordor Orc themed army, but as per usual most just tl;dr’ed my fluff, which I half expected as not everyone appreciates a good backstory like I do lol.

The list itself which can be seen on the right is centered around the godspeaker, Ax Horde, Troll Horde, Orclings, and Wardrum formation which make up my infantry center. The Godspeaker is given heal 2 to try and take advantage of the Godspeaker special rule and be able to sustain some of the anvil units from a forward attack as the Gores and Krudgers would concentrate on a flank to try and hammer the enemy against this formation. Sadly I’ll have to rethink this strategy coming into CoK18 if the leaks turn out to be true, I’ll have to hold out some faith that the Orcling not counting towards the Godspeaker special rule had some sort of purpose in the grand scheme of rules balancing, otherwise it's beyond me.

The First Round: Abyssals

After a brief period of setup and getting to know a few players whom I only ever had talked to on facebook or played on Universal Battles 2, we were ready to start the first round. Pairings had been posted the night before so I knew I was facing against Justin Ridgon, a player from Alabama and a member of the Sons Of Vulcan.

Oblivious going in to the GT, just before the round some of my clubmates had informed me I was going up against the flying circus of Tortured Souls and Abyssal Archfiends that have been notorious in the meta this year. If you have read any other entries in my blog I’ve said and I will continue to say i only view myself as a pretty average player so going up against a tuned list like this I was not having high hopes for round one. This coupled with the Sons of Vulcan polo had me a bit intimidated going into our game. The first scenario was control so I was hoping my Orcs would fair better than my Brotherhood did at Crucible in this objective.

Justin was a pretty nice guy and very cordial as we joked around and playfully smack talked during setup. Before the GT I had practiced deployment so I knew exactly how to set up my infantry units, and had previously decided I was not going to be super mysterious or reactionary about it as the formation stayed pretty much the same situationally.

My Orclings deployed at the line, 4 inches apart. behind them I set up my Ax Horde careful to ensure the distance between the left Orcling horde was 6 inches from the right corner of the Ax Horde. Next my Godspeaker and Wardrum would deploy one behind the other even with the corner of the Ax Horde and touching to ensure both units were within range, the Trolls would be added to the right of the Godspeaker just in range. After this formation was placed I would determine how my enemy is deploying and deploy the GreatAx and Giant to the flank that my Gores were not.

At this point I saw that Justin was deploying in the right corner opposite me, so I deployed my Gore/Krudger formation to the left to try and make a broad sweeping motion to secure zones as the battle raged on. Coming into the first turn he gave me the first go, and I decided that charging against the 5 Tortured Soul regiments and 3 Archfiends supported by the Well of Souls, Basusu, and a Troop of Gargoyles would be ill advised. So I did what I seem to do allot and I got cagey, only slightly scooting up and keeping my formation tight to not allow any LOL Archfiend charges and flanks. Better the flying Circus come to me while I am at my tightest than the opposite.

Justin gave me some friendly grief for only the slight movement forward, but its not Chicken if it works right?

Over the next few turns my caginess payed off as I gave little flanks to the forthcoming demons, castling behind my wardrums and hefty Orclings. That was until I began to make my own charges which allowed a few of the Archfiends to get behind my lines, and from there a massive cluster of grinding ensued as I attempted to hold off the onslaught of demons with what I could maneuver around my own lines. But in the end I was able to scrape out a respectable Draw, Controlling one section and contesting another.

Second Round: Night Stalkers

Coming off of a hard fought Draw which I didn't expect to get, we all went and grabbed some chow at one of the local Jeykll Irish pubs. One of the cool things that allot of people say about GTs and what I have found to be very much true is just the general comradery amongst the players, and thus our scheduled 1 hour lunch turned into a 2 hour lunch. Good enough for government work.

Coming back from lunch I prepared for Round 2 against Patrick Justice and his Nightstalker list. The scenario was Secure, and thus not something I felt my very “ team-player” Orc army was going to do well in since I relayed on tight formations. My only hope would be to remove a lot of the nightstalker threat and spread out on turn 5 and 6.

This all came pretty much tumbling down in about turn 2 as I slowly made my way forward using a rather large piece of blocking terrain as an anchor. Some of Patrick’s Fiends came far enough forward to be flanked by my Troll Horde, which should have been no problem, until I rolled double ones… that pretty much spelled the end as all sorts of nasty creatures of the night were able to break through my formation, ground my Krudger on Winged Slasher, and flank my Trolls. In the end most of my force aside from my Godspeaker, 1 Wardrum, and a Gore Rider Regiment were destroyed. I attempted to claim a few objectives on the opposite half of the board but I ended up losing that battle for my first loss of the GT.

Third Round: Kingdoms of Men

It was getting pretty late at this point and I was pretty tired from mentally putting myself into some of these past games, but I knew I needed to keep my GT fortitude up if I hoped to pull something out. The third scenario would be Invade, this was a scenario that with both Brotherhood and Orcs I felt pretty confident with. My opponent was the one and only Jamie W my Crucible GT Fifth Round opponent and Kings Of Warlando Clubmate.

One reason I like this scenario is it's pretty simple, just gotta get my units to the other side of the table right? Well seems simple until you realize that Jamie’s famous KoM army is a gunline. Aside from amazingly painted it is also pretty deadly when running at it, which my Brotherhood Army learned the hard way in their Pickett-styled charge during Crucible. However this also would play to my advantage as I knew it was to his advantage to stay in the backfield and not advance to my side.

Using some buildings to my left i would attempt to sneak up two hordes under cover from the barrage of ranged attacks to try and get some Unit Strength on Jamie’s side of the table. But to my right I would reenact last GTs charge in hopes of stopping any of his Unit Strength heavy units from getting to my side of the board.

For the most part this worked out as planned, however most of my right flank was evaporated under heavy gunfire, my Krudger on Slasher deleted in one swoop of siege artillery, while my other Krudger took 3 turns to destroy one cannon. It was pretty bloody per usual but in the end I was able to keep to the plan and hold Jamie’s forces from any advance to my side, giving me my first win of the GT.

Fourth Round: Ogres

So my brain was pretty fried at this point and outside our stunning vista of beach view had turned into a starry sky free of much light pollution. We were now entering our fourth round and it was about 8pm at night, no rest for the Orcs.

My opponent was Ben Bowers and his Ogre list, with a scenario of dominate. I figured that Orcs would do pretty good in this objective as all I really need to do is smash face and survive. But on the opposite table I knew that would be the objective of the Ogres as well, at least until the shooting round came. That’s when I realized really the whole point of the list was to keep the 3 Warlocks in range of the Berzerker braves to dish out large amounts of lightning bolt. Thankfully though it seemed like his dice were off at this point and I decided my best bet would be to encircle his formation of berserker braves which stood 2 wide and 3 deep and try and eliminate his forces while keeping him far enough away from the 12” sphere of domination.

Really flinging my Orclings out there I was able to stop any sort of advance on his part and being in range of my Gores on both sides. In the meantime a few units of Red Goblin Scouts I had been ignoring managed to get into my backfield. This is where I use one of my favorite units of the Orc army to my advantage, the Wardrum. Most opponents don't realize that the Wardrum is a monster, and has 3 attacks at CS1. This makes it strong enough to get 1-2 wounds on something like goblins and gum them up enough to hold for backup. As my forces encircled I was getting a few kills which allowed me to reform and send my Gore Riders out to destroy the Goblin threat.

It was about this time that the Comic Con people came around to enforce their really strange con hours and kick us out. We were about to get into turn 4 but I was totally ready for a break. We grabbed dinner and a few drinks, but most were not up for another crazy night of partying due to the festivities I missed the night before (Yay wallet). So we called it a night and got some rest before ending out the GT the next day.

Waking up we had a good while to wait before the Con would open again at noon, so we all got in a good walk around and enjoyed the first southern cold of the season. The hotel we were staying at had a pretty killer breakfast spread if you didn’t mind the 20$ price tag.

Myself and a few clubmates decided to walk over to the side of the convention center and stare into the gaming room like kids at the candy store to try and talk about how our games were going. It seemed for the most part that the game would continue to go in my favor, so as the doors opened at noon and we picked up the dice again I continued as planned.

It wasn’t long before I was able to take off the rest of the Ogres to give myself a second win, my Orcs continuing their encirclement of the enemy and destroying the Ogre threat.

Final Round: Dwarves

So I had at this point some hope that I could place in a decent position at Jekyll GT and maybe think of myself as more than an average player. But of course as fate would have it I was paired with my clubmate Cody S whose Dwarf list has beat me up a few times in the past. The scenario was eliminate and of course the three units I would have to take care of on Cody’s side would be his two Brock Rider regiments and a Horde of Earth Elementals. I find the def 6 to be rather intimidating, and perhaps let intimidation get to me when I play a bit too much.

Deployment of this round was pretty standard with my infantry block, I put down my Gore rider element to the right in hopes of dodging the Earth Elemental horde that was not part

of the eliminate scenario and coming into the flank of the one that wad. I find that this “juke” maneuver pretty handy when I want to cause an opponent's unit to waste several turns in futile movement, but it typically works better with flying units such as Order of Forsaken. Yet in this instance it did not go quite as well with only a 8 movement. While I may have dodged the Earth elementals for the first few turns, I never managed to reach the target to gain that point.

On the left I was unable to foresee Cody’s Berserker lord with the Blade of the Beast Slayer using Individual to his advantage and eliminating my Krudger on Slasher and Giant. This pretty much caved my left flank as well and shot most of my chances in destroying his Brock Riders. Thus giving him the win and my second loss.

Wrapping Up and Final Standings

So with a record of 2-1-2 I was perfectly average, just as I expected, so no disappointment there. Wrapping up and packing up we awaited to award ceremony where hopefully we would have a chance at some of the awesome prize support that was available to pick from. In all there were 3 Mantic KoW starter armies, several large beasts from Atlantis Miniatures, a couple very nice dice sets, several Frostgrave books, and a box set with the Mantic rulebook and wound counters, and many many more nice things.

As standings were given out, first place went to Brian L and his Forces of Nature list..I’ve played Brian a few times on Universal Battle 2 and he is an excellent player so I am not at all surprised he took the win. Best sports was announced next and it went to my clubmate Cody S who also placed 5th overall. Best Paint was also given to a clubmate Jamie W and his Kingdoms of Men army that won best paint at Crucible GT and ended up tying regionally for Best Paint as well.

I myself ended up placing 8th overall. While it doesn't seem that fantastic, I was only 7 points from 4th place and clubemate Christopher J. So if I would have turned one of my losses into

a win or a draw I would have been significantly better off. So maybe there is hope for me being a good player yet? For prize I was allowed to pick three items, which scored me an awesome set of dice, the Kings of War rulebook/wound counter set (which gives me an actual hard copy of the rules finally, yay), and a copy of the Frostgrave Folio, which gives me an excuse to get a game in of Frostgrave soon.

So all and all it was a great weekend with some great guys. I'm pretty stoked that our inaugural event as the Kings of Warlando we did so well with us taking top Sports, Paint, and a good portion of the top half. Hopefully this bodes well for the Siege of Augusta which our club will be at in force, but sadly I will not be able to make.

So thankfully after about 3 times of Blogger deleting my draft of this post I am finally done, and hopefully despite part of it being rushed you all enjoy reading.

Unit next time this has been Fred On Fantasy.