After a Saturday that had seen the rats take two wins Sunday looked set to be an interesting day. I was starting the morning against the Forces of Nature, which was quite exciting as this was another army that I had not yet encountered in fourth edition.
We played Hold the Line. I anchored my rats off a piece of impassable terrain, ranging my infantry from the centre to my left flank. The plan was simple. Flood the centre and left scoring zones with rats and hope for the best. The only fly in the ointment were the two regiments of air elementals at either end of the nature line patiently manoeuvring in the hope of a flank.
My left flank surged forward, hoping to find a way of pinning the air elementals, but my opponent managed to keep them away from anything that would pin them down. A lucky waiver of my vermintide forced me to push forward before I was completely comfortable, but fortune smiled and the resulting reforms pushed the air elements into a position where they missed out on a flank surge into one of my shock troop hordes by mere millimetres. The up-shot of this was they had to reposition over the next couple of turns, effectively taking them out of the game for a bit.
Just as I breathed a sigh of relief it became apparent that the focus I’d been putting on the left side of the table had distracted me from what was going on over on the right side, where the other regiment of air elementals had picked up a flank charge on my shock troops with the brew of sharpness. It was a hindered charge, but as nature have a surge command, and bane chant, not to mention that the elementals had the brew of sharpness as well I figured karma was course correcting. Nature rolled their dice, strider failed, bane chant failed, and to cap it all off the elementals rolled pretty poorly. The shock troops survived comfortably, unfortunately the same could not be said for the elementals in the next round given the mutant rat fiend was in their flank.
Whilst the air elementals danced the rest of the combatants traded more grounded blows. The rats wore down and overrun nature but had been forced out of scoring zones to secure defeats, so as the end of the game loomed both factions had secured a flank section and the central zone would be where the battle was decided. Narratively appropriately the game came down to a stand-off between the damaged sharpness shock troops, with plague pots, and the remaining air elemental regiment who had been enchanted with scorched earth. If the air elementals prevailed nature would win. The spirit creatures charged, with most of their attacks failing to hit. Needing two nerve rolls of nine it looked as though the rats were about to take their third win and break their curse. The first roll was eleven, and then another eleven. With no seventh turn the rats retreated, the curse unbroken.
Game five saw the rats take on Nightstalkers in a game of plunder. This was a really interesting list as it didn’t feature any of the usual gribblies I’d expect, however, it was clearly full of units that could make life really unpleasant.
Uncomfortable playing loot counter-based games, and not really sure how my opponent’s army was going to function, I decided to try deploying my forces a different way to usual. Very quickly I realised I’d made a mistake. My army is designed (as far as I would say it’s intentionally put together) to be put down on the table and be a problem because of sheer weight of unit strength and attacks.
For reasons best known to myself, I stretched the army too far across the table. This then became a problem because my opponent’s army had sufficient high-quality shooting to make me move forward quickly and sufficiently killy units to destroy my units before I could set up opportunities for counter strikes.
The rats certainly didn’t go down without a fight, but rushed decisions and a poor starting position meant my brave little warriors could not give one another the love and support they usually would. Whilst the rats secured a couple of points, they couldn’t focus enough to stop the nightstalkers collecting the rest of the counters and scuttling away to victory.
And finally, the tired vermin made their way to the last match up of Pillage against the ogres. At this point I’m going to admit I’m writing this several weeks after the event and my mind has largely blanked on how the game went. What I do remember though, is that this was the sort of game that is objectively the best way to finish Clash of Kings. My opponent was friendly, and the game flowed easily. My opponent’s army looked great on the table and brought some interesting units, like the terrifying ogre warrior horde (or legion, can’t remember which, but it was very imposing on the table).
And so, the weekend rounded off with six enjoyable games played against six players I’ve not played before, against six different factions (half of which I hadn’t played in fourth edition yet). The cherry on the top of this event was the rats did manage to sneak a win in their final game, breaking their curse.
I’m sure when I titled this there were some clever thoughts I had about both mawpups and pumpkin spice, however those have well and truly escaped me. So, all that remains for me to say is that Clash of Kings is awesome, the organisers are all flipping amazing and a massive thanks to the people I played against for some brilliant games.
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