Jack of Herts 2

So back at Jack, an excellently run tournament by Mat Green and Paul Roberts.
Army build were limited to 1700 points, which made unit selection tight and rule of 2 was enforce.
With the date of the tournament rapidly approaching the threat of Yellow Snow emerged, yep not got a scooby either what yellow snow is, unless its for piss poor snow.

Sleep What Sleep

Crunch time approached and forgot to go to sleep before the day! Going to bed at 4:30am cause your too wired to sleep is not cool when you need to get up for 6:30.
Oh well joy oh joy.
First coffee going in almost intravenously.
Pack Car.
More Coffee (maybe should point out I don't use a spoon to measure coffee in my LARGE mug, but as long as can no longer see the bottom of the mug, then that's just about enough coffee).
Grant arrives, so we head off on snow free roads, making up good time, so good a Mc D's brekkie was in order.
Then we arrive at Jack of Herts 2 in hemel Hempstead.

7 glorious tables with various mixes of terrain and also some epic Vanguard tables for a separate consecutively run Vanguard tourney.
General greetings with Mat and Paul, the PIT crew and faces old and new that I have met at other tournaments (not all I have played yet).

Go big or go home!

So I like building lists from an idea, be it great or dumb, i will build to that list.

So Idea was Giants, lot of Giants I want bug striding giants with D6 attacks and lots of Crushing.

But what about Inspiring, pah, what about it, overrated i want Giants.

But which Army??

Well I have Gobbos, but none are painted and most are unbuilt, but more importantly, they are somewhere, not sure where but I put them down (about 3K points worth) in the house but now cannot find em.

So Kingdom of men, hmm I have the minis for it somewhere and mix in my Barbarians, yep contender.

Orcs, I dont have enough models to field the unlocks

Ogres, I possibly have enough ogres or ogresish models, but not feeling it.

Varangur, hmm Love the nuttiness of going giant with the Varangur, I have my northern Alliance, hmm, I also have a load of Bassila men at arms ripe for conversion. Interest pipped. Yep Varangur.

So I have 5 giants so what flavour are they can can I get them all in? Can i go full mantic?

Hmm cool challenge.

So get to converting a load of men at arms to Varangur with various head and arm swaps.

and start building the list in..oh easy army not updated yet.. scrap paper, in head, pseudo builds with standins in EasyArmy.

I come up with:

• Varangur
• x2 Warband reg
• x2 Warband reg with CS1 and lower def
• x2 Cavern Dwellers
• x1 Frost Giant
• x1 Frost Giant with Blizzard
• Orc allies
• x1 Axe Reg (which I used the northern alliance Hurscurls for)
• x1 Colossal Giant

Yep no inspiring, but a Giant delivery system within 1700pts

Anarchy at its best. Win lose or Draw this should be fun.

Round 1: Invade

So get to play the lovely Danny Graves beautifully painted Trident Realms.
Danny broke my Trident Cherry and I found out how frustrating Ensnare across the board is.
Tough game and unfortunately I misplayed and the slug fest kicked off 2 inch odd on my side of the table, and was a full choke for the whole game. Beautiful butchery.
Danny won 4:1
Hindsight - should have striked with the Giants first and hard over his side and backed up with the band, rather than the other way around.

Round 2: Plunder

Met Richard Miles first time at this tournament and played his wondrous Herd. Never faced them before, so two games in and two races I have never faced - excellent.
New Scenario which I think we both had never played before.
Full Slug fest over the top of the objective markers.
I had a cunning plan at the start and picked one of the far extreem markers as a 2 VP, as it was hemmed in by Blocking Terrain, so hordes would not fit in the space.
Theory WAS that I would ignor this VP and let the opponent hold up and claim it with an expensive unit, taking it out of the game.
I stupidly abandoned this tactic within Turn 1, can faced of and engaged the unit protecting the VP, after that it was down hill.
Proper jigsaw game, with tight placements and refusals on both sides, great tetris game inside Kings of War.
Richard won 4:1
Hindsight - stick to the the plan you twat, it was your own plan!

Round 3: Control

Round 3 beckoned and played the famous Rusty, he has soo many different armies; Dwarves, Dwarfs, Stunties, Ankle Biters, it is always hard to workout which race Rusty will bring to a tournament.
This was a epic game, where is swang heavy each turn.
We chatted so much throughout the game we both made stupid mistakes (that we let each other fix), as we were enjoying the social of the game as well as the game. To the point that I bought another Mantic Giant mid game, and so did Rusty.
Rusty won 4:2
Hindsight - See Round 1, did not learn from it!

Round 4: Loot

So the battle for the spoon came up against Rafici's Trident Realms, and Loot was the game.
I had not twigged two things.

1. Loot token can be picked up and moved
2. Trident Realms are FAST

Was Playing catch the pigeon the whole game with the rest of the Realms playing interference.
Lots of blood lost and even had at least 1 Warband that survived, but could not catch the pigeons.
Rafici won 3:0
Hindsight - learn from hindsight's as same as 1 and 3!!

Result

Unsurprisingly with 4 loses I won the Wooden Spoon.

Wooden Spoon Bear hug

Surprisingly with the friendly opponents I faced and the generally very friendly atmosphere for the event I won the Most Sporting which was greatly appreciated and picked up a pack of Vanguard Items Cards as a prize which I was eyeing up.

Most Sporting

Summary

Lovely Venue
Lovely Hosts (Paul and Mat)
Lovely opponents
Epic fun games
Lovely competitors
Cannot wait for next one

Links

Jack of Herts (this one): https://www.facebook.com/events/1992717607449841/
King of Herts: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2034232993516266/
King of Herts at Franticon 23rd March 2019: https://www.facebook.com/events/1841774202605061/