Back to Main Battle Reports Page Tournament Finals

Gamegopher in Albuquerque hosted an Armies of Arcana Tournament on Saturday, March 26^th. We had a great turnout for it, with 14 contestants bringing 10 different army types! The tournament rules allowed for 4000 point armies, with a 1000 point sideboard. Each player had three games in a round robin, and those with the best record played for the Golden Thug trophy.

Tournaments are great ways for the players to really challenge themselves. The rules limited units to 800 points, which was too few for big units of top tier troops. Players had to make difficult choices about what they brought to the table - one player said he built 40 different compositions before finally deciding on his final roster! Players then get to play against unusual combinations of troops, often run by players they don't normally get to play. The armies included Wolfen, Demon, Dwarves, Dark Elves, Lyonesse, Undead, Marrian, Halfling/Centaur and Orcs. There were five wolfen and two orc armies, though each was made up of very different compositions. Justin Floyd's Orcs brought three big units of beastriders and three big units of lesser orcs, while Todd Carlson's Orcs focused on Great Orc Infantry. Some Wolfen went heavy on the night guard, others had none; some had many shaman, while Steve Saddington's Wolfen put no shaman on the table in three of his games.

Each game was played to two of three objectives. In a relatively small game, this can make for some intense fighting. Some battles evolved into massive scrums where nearly every unit was engaged in a small area over the course of a few turns, each side desperately trying to seize the objective they needed to win.

If it wasn't the funniest moment of the tournament, it was definitely the most ironic. Justin's Orc Shaman on a Wyvern got jumped by Hamilton's Griffins. Though he brought in his Air Elementals to help out, the Shaman was unlikely to survive - that’s 28 attacks coming at him. With two points of Chaos magic, Justin did what any good Chaos shaman would do - called a Chaos vortex down on himself. God will sort it out.

The vortex was at maximum strength - 5d3 models had to save or die (halved for skirmish/single models). Five griffins, the two elementals and the wizard had to save or be sucked into randomness. As the Albuquerque mantra proclaims, "A 4 save is no save" - the shaman got to meet his god. And took the elementals with him. While only killing two griffins. "Live by chaos, die by chaos" is another Albuquerque mantra, though it sometimes gets expressed as "Chaos SUCKS!" or "Chaos ROCKS!", sometimes by the same person … on the same turn.

But the real irony was that the griffins broke from their losses, and failed to rally on an 8 the next turn, leaving the battlefield altogether. There loss appeared likely to cost Hamilton the game, though he barely recovered to win. "The ways of Chaos are mysterious" comes up around here a lot, too…

 Final Standings

Three Players went undefeated in the Round Robin: Mike Baltes, Brett Manus and Steve Saddington. The tie was broken by tracking the value of lost units through the first three games. All three players did a stellar job of keeping their forces alive - Mike lost roughly 650 points of troops , Steve lost 1250, and Brett 1350. This is out of ~12,000 possible points fielded! Steve squeaked out ahead by this measure, so he and Mike met for the Finals.

 Of the 14 players, the breakdown of records was:

 Onward to the Finals ---->