The Occupiers of Atlantia

The crew on route to Invasion. I think this may have been taken whilst we were being given our hosts.

As is customary with all tournaments, and was noted in my last blog post, the three weeks before Invasion were spent mostly with me glued to my sofa painting tiny blocks of shaped resin. Normally for a gamer this would be a delight; to have a solid reason to chill out (or cotch as the street kids say) on your sofa, listen to podcasts and paint your hobby. However, it gets to a point when this stops being the case. In fact I'm going to let a selfie of myself from the day before Invasion highlight just how fed up with painting blue and pink I was:

As you can see, I couldn't be further from delight. Everything did get finished though (at 2:30am Saturday morning, with snow flock still drying, and to be up at 6:45am to catch a ride to Croydon) and to my delight it was all worth it! I managed to get my large grubby mits (still covered in snow flock and bright pink paint) on best painted army, and also managed to nick third place! Before the winners were announced it was already the most fun Invasion I had been too, and winning both of these places meant more to me than winning the last two years. As to why, we need to look a little closer at my army choice...

I knew before the tourney that I had no hope of retaining my champions belt. Why? Well, for a start Mike was going with Shaltari, and he had never lost with the hedgehog peoples (literally, never). Secondly, and most importantly, I was using Scourge. As much fun as the Scourge are (possibly the most 'fun' army in DzC) they are not tournament winners, because they flounder on focal points. Due to a lack of dedicated ground units who can take a pounding, and also the most useless commander of the all the races who cannot contend focal points, facing the wrong army on missions such as Take and Extract are an automatic loss. By wrong army I mean mainly Shaltari and Resistance, and PHR to some extent (A quick note to Shaltari players: if you get beaten by a Scourge list on a focal points mission, you have done something wrong.). To boil things down, I have marked the key points below:

Why Scourge can't, or shouldn't, win focal point missions:

• No commander able to contribute 175+ points
• Ground units worth little in value and/or vulnerable like a baby duck

Because of these points Scourge either have to:

1) Deploy all units in front of the enemy, in the hope that you win activation (no certain thing) and again hope that you destroy that nasty Hades/Caiman/squad of Gladius/Odins that are about to ruin your day.

This is not a viable tactic in a tournament as kill points count towards the total win. If you do not get activation and/or your dice rolls go poorly you will be pulling models of the table before your tears of sadness can hit the plywood. As such not only have you lost, but you have gifted your opponent (and denied yourself) three or four extra tournament points.

2) Try a sweeping attack on a vulnerable unit. If it works, you may get to attack something else, but if not withdraw and hide for the game to limit your loses.

Sadly this is what I had to do in two games. I won one, Bunker Assualt, against a PHR army by not
deploying my Despoiler's nine tanks until the last activation of turn 6 to steal a focal point. I lost the other however, as I was playing a Shaltari army at Take and Extract. Before the game started I new I had lost (as I could never win a focal point against two Caimans, two Jaguars, two Tarantulas, a Coyote with CV 4, four squads of infantry, a Warspire and a partridge in a pear tree. I literally didn't have that many points to deploy on the ground!) but the deciding factor was by how much. So I did a fleeting run in with some Prowlers and Reavers, who spectacularly failed to cause more than two points of damage over three turns of shooting (and those damage points were from two Intruder shots...). After losing two Reavers and an Intruder I called it a day and withdrew everything to my side of the table, to keep the loses to a minimum, and deployed the bare minimum necessary to contest the focal point on turn six.

Seem gamey to you? It does to me, and in a friendly game believe me, my Hunters would have deployed and been destroyed in their droves... I mean they would have spectacularly lit up the Jaguars and won me the day! This was a tournament though, and I was currently in first place with a tiny points gap to 2^nd place. If I could reduce my deficit to a small amount, and the rest of the games played out to draws, I could still nick the tourney.

As it turned out it wasn't to be, but I didn't mind. Third place, in my opinion, is about as good as a Scourge player can hope to be in a large tournament (whilst being surrounded by Shaltari) and the fact that I had played so defensively did me a justice in the standings.

Talking about Scourge's drawbacks wasn't really where I wanted to go with this post, but oh well. It's an interesting discussion point never the less. Hopefully with the introduction of the Oppressor I can sack off the Desolator and actually compete on the ground. Who knows. All I do know is that I had to be gamey to compete with the way the army currently works, which is a little sad considering the way the race is meant to be played.

As I had already lost the fifth game before we started playing, because I was up against Shaltari, do I think they are 'overpowered'?

Yes I do.

But I intend to discuss that another day, with spreadsheets to gather information, alchemy jars and Bunsen burners to melt down the models (Skeleton Jack Christmas style) and a little help from the rest of Team OB to explain why.

It is definitely worth adding that on objective missions Scourge are a huge threat, and I even beat a five infantry Shaltari army at Military Complex (that's right, four squads of Braves and one Firstborns)! Who says you have to be Shaltari to create shenanigans? To find out how I did it you'll have to have a listen to Podcast 5!

I'm going to end this unintentionally sombre post on an upbeat note.

Every game I played at Invasion was fun and taxing, even against the newer players of the game. I had the best time I have had at a tournament in ages (possibly because I wasn't using Shaltari?), and I am the most proud I have been of an army in my Scourge!

What will I be doing in the future? Well expect to see a review or two on a few unloved models; Tormentors, Slayers, and the Annihilator, as I continue my quest to have fun with the Scourge beast.

For picture based viewing pleasure for your eyes (don't stare too hard now), I present to you the Occupiers of Atlantia. Or if Skullsword's resistance are about, the Harassers of Snow Mountain.