An actual hobby blog: Halflings go to the Southwest Clash

It’s been a while since I’ve had time to write a blog. Loads of reasons, but juggling a new addition to the family, prepping for Bristol’s premiere Kings of War event, and deciding I really needed to paint a new army on the off chance I got to play left little time for much else.

Now Southwest Clash is finished for the year I clearly have a hole in my schedule, until the October one dayer, so you get some scribblings.

Southwest Clash

Firstly, I want to say a massive thanks to everyone who came this year. It was great to see so many people return and a bunch of new faces at the event. I would also like to give an extra massive thanks to anyone who lent a hand in anyway over the weekend, it was massively appreciated especially as I ended up playing (which I was really happy about). Kings of War in the UK has a great tournament community, and I would recommend giving a local event a go to anyone. It’s a great way to get some games in and meet some lovely people.

First place went to John Quayle and his three Phoenix Basileans, the less said about that the better, with Jerry Marshall’s beautiful Ogre army taking best painted and Nick Davies voted most sporting. Amazingly I managed to get through the entire event without taking any pictures which was wholly due to my Halflings and the five incredibly closely fought games they played.

My Halflings

I’ve been trying to get my head around Halflings for some time now and about a month or so ago I decided to try using a force that leant heavily into nimble stuff. The outcome was surprisingly good and as I refined the list over the next few weeks, I felt it might actually be worth trying out at a tournament. I’ve become quite excited about this list because it leans into the nimble cavalry and aura shenanigans I’ve always wanted to run with Ratkin but don’t feel they have the right units to do it well with. My 2,300 point list ended up being:

Horde of Braves

Hordes of Forest Trolls (2)

Regiments of Juggers (2) – 1 with Blade of Slashing

Troops of Wild Lancers (2)

Regiment of Aeronauts

Iron Beast with Pride of the Shires

Saucerors (2) – 1 mounted on miniature aralez

Muster Captains on Winged Aralez (3)

How did it go?

Without any photos I don’t really want to try talking about individual games, however with 3 out of 5 games resulting in a win I was really happy with how it all went. I had a solid win, a solid loss and three really close games.

My solid loss was against a Sylvan Kin list consisting of, amongst other things, a bunch of Gladestalkers, 2 hordes of Air Elementals and 2 Greater Air Elementals. My opponent soundly out played me, however what I did notice was that the key combats where the Elementals did what they did best, getting into irritating positions and one shotting stuff, could have been better managed by the little folk. In a nutshell they weren’t lacking in capacity, it was just my lack of capability. I will of course take the “new army” excuse.

My solid win was against Nightstalkers. This was the first time my opponent was trying out his list, which was based around 3 hordes of the new Ravagers (shooty Butchers). I have to admit the new large infantry is going to present some really interesting challenges in the future because of how neatly they work with Enthral and Windblast. Fortunately, Spellward stopped any major issues arising with this particular combination and my dogs set to work dismantling the flanks. The Trolls and Iron Beast presented a sufficiently tough anvil that the Nightstalkers were unable to break through before the dogs started to close in.

The other three games were all thrillingly close. Against Northern Alliance a massive underestimation of how much surge the army had meant I served up a Muster Captain to be shot and surged by Ice Elementals, however another Muster Captain and a Sauceror managed to waiver a Frostfang horde and then kill it before it could do any damage which more than made up for it. The game finished on the sixth turn with a win to the Halflings that would have switched to the Northern Alliance had there been a turn seven. The third win was against Ratkin Slaves, it was a fantastically close game where the manoeuvrability of the army really came into play.

The second loss went to the Goblins. It was another close-run game and one that I went into thinking I had no chance in, but it was certainly hard fought with Groany Snark really firing on all cylinders. I don’t generally like to speculate on what might have happened if I had chosen different units, however this game did make me rethink one element of my army. I lost this game by half an inch. One of my Muster Captains was just short of being within three inches of an objective at the end of the game which would have tipped the game in my favour. In my rush to get my army completed for the tournament I had not fully explored all the options I had for chaff and had gone with two Wild Lancer troops. I then had five points over which went on the always forgotten Blade of Slashing. I now realise I could have taken a regiment of Ej Grenadiers for the cost of the lancers and the item. If everything else in this game had been played in exactly the same way this change would have won the game, and so this is the only change I’ll be making to the army.

All in all, I was really surprised by how well the Halflings played, and how much I enjoyed playing them. I had been worried about a lack of resilience and a lack of killing power, but when push came to shove their resilience was surprisingly impressive. The consistent issue with this army though was definitely the lack of killiness, and that certainly came through in the results. For now, I’m going to put that down to a lack of practice and not taking the Ej Grenadiers. The next tournament I’m going to will be the London GT, and I will definitely be taking grenadiers.