TOP 8 Lists of AdeptiCon 2024! - Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game | MESBG

[Music] welcome to another episode of into the West podcast my name is Charles with me today are Richard Ian and we have a returning guest alisher this episode is all about adepticon one of North America's largest tournaments just happened and uh we have two of the attendees with us today Richard and alisher who who went and both did really well so we'll be going over the top lists from this tournament including both of their lists and uh we'll just be talking about the tournament as well before we get started just want to do quick shout out to our sponsor barf dice they make some amazing dice for miniature wargaming please go check out the products on their website and you can use our promo code West for 5% off your order and a quick thank you to our patrons over on patreon for supporting us us if You' like to see extra content See videos early please check out our patreon in below okay so I don't know if um the viewers know but Richard and Alish are both podiumed so um let's have our guest alisher start how did it go this year I know that you've been to decom before and how did it compare to previous years yeah I it was really uh it was a fantastic experience all in all uh they I think adepticon the the uh SPG tournament as a whole took a large leap between last year and this year it's actually remarkable that they had as many players as they had I wasn't expecting that at all but it was a fantastic experience it's really nice the Lord of the Rings tournament is in a separate hotel from like the main convention which like at face value might seem like oh you're missing out on a whole lot but it's so nice to just have like an entire dedicated space all for Lord of the Rings I know having gone to like Nova for example Nova's a fantastic experience but there's like so much chaos going on all the time it was nice to have some like calmness in between rounds yeah it was my first time at adepticon and I think yeah it was a great venue and a great event I I really liked it there's some crazy terrain we can talk about it a little bit more later on the top tables but overall I think great thematic like spread and we had for doubles we had over 100 players like 120 players and for the actual there was uh 85 and there was still maybe half the room for like open tables really great for people who just want to drop in and play like games whenever so yeah it was really really awesome definitely on the level of like a Nova open I heard over a 100 players for doubles right yeah it was like 122 like that's crazy how many doubles teams there were it's the only tournament that I've heard that's like the doubles is bigger than the GT yeah so I was surprised that neither of you showed off your Hardware so you guys have your trophies with you I do I do have mine I mean I can bring it into the camera give me the loot give me the loop the actual words have like gotten rubbed off at this point but here it is I'm gonna set it next to me congratulations guys thank you thank you so going into this tournament did either of you try anything new either Army wise or like in terms of play style or strategy going into this this was actually kind of a bit of an experimental tournament for me because um we don't play a lot of veto here on the West Coast and also this is a relatively new Army I picked up this year that I've only played at one other tournament so yeah I'm pretty happy with the results yeah I I think for me took throughout Halls of thrw well I've played them at a few different events leading up to this but I've been really trying to Tinker with the exact build so this style the which we'll talk about later but the combination of the lake toown morbin in addition to the elf contingent that was new for this event in terms of like mentality going in I don't know that too much have changed I would say that I probably adepticon I felt had a very like welcoming like sense to it uh so I think of like for big tournaments I probably felt more calm than usually do going into events but it was all kind of a little bit like the like the leading up to the event I was originally planning to take goblin and the problem with what happened there was I did not really have a whole lot of opportunity to practice and I had scheduled one game day with Andrew and actually fortunately we'll get to talk about Andrew's list a little bit Andrew lives two hours and 15 minutes away from my house so I because I travel a lot for games I have all my bags usually packed but I taking Goblin Town the like the bin that they're in and I was sorting through them and put them on my kitchen and then I got everything I got in the car 2 hours later I'm walking in the door and I realize I left Goblin Town at home I have all these bags so I had to go with to Andrew and I had to be like You know despite having like my entire Lord of the Rings collection with me right now I have no Goblin Town so fortunately adepticon um the event organizers were willing to let me change over my list so in a way it was a little bit unexpected that I ended up taking the elves but it's a list that I've played before I mean for listeners that don't know this is alur's back-to-back Championship so in my opinion uh don't don't change too much you know if if it ain't broke you know last year was survivors so a little bit different I kept the Survivor War band so there you go I had a little bit of flavor with it so if I heard you right you won adepticon with a list that you didn't plan on playing I didn't plan on playing that makes it sound like oh look at this aliser Wong with the list he wasn't planning on I can beat you with one arm I have played with uh uh Halls of thandel at events before so like this wasn't something random but the original like plan was Goblin Town and then I had my mishaps occur with that and so like the week before it had to get changed to randle's Halls don't give any more credit than I deserve I really don't deserve any so what was the biggest challenge would you say throughout the tournament because I as I can tell from the roster it was a pretty competitive event was there anything that you found to be difficult or like something that you're inexperienced with I wouldn't say m a huge roadblock but um I think the scheduling was kind of rough it was a six-game tournament which is great uh for that many players but uh having play Four 750 point games in one day I think it was uh something like a 8:30 start to like a 9 9:30 p.m. end so uh yeah that was a long day but a fun day I know maybe people who are a little less experienced than us might have had an even harder time but yeah that it was it was definitely a good day but at the end of it your brain is mush I've gotten the chance to play six game events well and I'm young enough to preface uh to where I don't know that that like is super daunting ahead of time I know the tournament ended up having a reasonable amount of drops the next day I assume it had to do with the schedule of how intense it was because we were playing what we didn't get out of there until 9:30 Richard is that right so that's a lot for players especially people who are coming and making like a holiday out of this for me the maybe the biggest like the most daunting aspect of it was just a lot of the are seeing a lot of the same familiar competitive faces so like in my mind of course you have to be like if you're going to win you're GNA face some of these players so I think to some degree my own familiarity with the competition was probably one of the bigger like mental challenges going in so alisher was on our podcast last year and uh we talked a little bit about veto and I know at the beginning of this uh episode Richard talked a little bit about veto but what are you guys thoughts about the veto system on the west coast here we don't really play it so this was Richard's first experience at a big event with the veto system do you guys find that it's more competitive and less reliant on luck just to start um I would say that I really enjoyed it personally I felt it was more like strategic and be between the rounds you know we have a core group of competitive guys that we were able to kind of talk about our next matchups and you know to me that's always a good part of the game where you can add another layer of strategy and I think it probably also helped lessen the variance of like being taken out by a a less favorable matchup so I'm a big fan of it now I know like some of the critiques is that like you know you might get some armies like Goblin Town not very weak in too many scenarios and then you've veto those ones and then you know they'll be like undefeatable so maybe you can speak on that alisher because you were planning to bring Goin Town well I did appreciate the uh the messages right before round five Richard where uh you just started spam messaging our podcast one like What scenario do I do I'm playing Rohan against Rohan it's objective ones there's it adds another layer of consideration that's for certain I feel quite at this point partial to veto especially at the larger events because I think it it offers some balancing I guess to some degree I'm a proponent of like shaking things up and not letting anything become too stale so I'm not saying I'm against non veto system or the random selection uh process I generally prefer that for smaller events there's kind of the flip side to you know if you do things random it's really possible that like your really skewy list just gets a good set of scenarios if you're have a really Killy scenario a probability exists where you play three combat oriented scenarios so I definitely understand or multiple but I I understand that aspect of it um having played at adepticon back-to-back years where one year was random one from each pool and now this year veto I feel like um The veto offered an element of Equalization between me and my opponent to where I didn't feel like going into a match either of us were immediately more or less likely to perform well the scenarios are put in pools of based on similarity but like for example last year you know game five the final game I played a game of seiz the prize against an opponent who had like identical to what I had except they didn't have a captain so obviously me having a captain was an immediate Advantage whereas I think I think in these events having veto allow it it eliminates an additional element of bad luck for an opponent if that makes sense yeah I I think that's definitely a big Advantage I didn't hear anyone basically say they had like a bad game because of the scenario because they everyone had some sort of say in it so I think that's a definitely a positive okay final question for the two of you any tips for a less season player when preparing to attend a large tournament like adepticon well apparently um for us practice is overrated true this is true less practice equals better results at least for me first of all you know it's very easy for us as like a competitive circuit to get very caught up in like efficiency maxing when we make lists and like getting super caught up like all the little fine details of the list first of all I try to be as big a proponent of this as I possibly can be play what you want to play and optimize it don't feel like you have to go like build a very specific list that's super like optimized because what's inevitably going to happen is a you're probably going to have more expectations of the list than you should at the end of the day this is a skill game more than it is a luck game um you're probably not going to enjoy it as much because it's so efficiency kind of like you know stat driven and you probably won't have any familiarity with it so the big thing for me is play what you want to play and then the second thing is like while skill is a big uh component of this game there are so many pieces that go into and contribute to the result of a match don't lose a game because you're so stressed out about it too many times people lose games because they go in they play against like a competitive player that they've like they've seen or know about and they just assume oh I can't possibly win this that's not not how this game works and it it for me I always feel bad when someone like loses a game for themselves because they like get they like psych themselves up for it so we're going to be reviewing the top 10 lists of Decon 2024 lists 9 and 10 will be available on patreon and for Youtube it'll be 1 to8 so if you like to see all 10 make sure to check out our patreon so there you go [Music] and it will be missed Ian has cut his video because he is in a hotel and his Wi-Fi isn't great so we'll have this picture of Ian right here representing him still on the podcast Charles do what you may yeah another another thumbnail one let's go I have one in mind okay so eighth place we have Dakota and Dakota brought a rivendale aror Alliance yes Ian's favorite so from rivendel we have gloro Lord West on asfaloth with the armor of ganglin leading seven High Elves with shield and spear two High Elves with bows and spear one high elf with Shield Spear and banner and two knights with Shield second war band we have Kyan as a single drop and then from aror we have arvad leading seven Warriors of aror two Rangers of aror and one Ranger with spear and then we have malbeth leading eight Warriors of aror and three rangers Dakota had four wins one loss and one draw anyone get the model count I think it's 37 I got 37 the thing that stands out to me is Kieran as the single drop yeah I like that cuz even with veto you're still going to be playing one mstom scenario right I think maybe the thinking is you drop Kieran first and then wherever he shows up then you try to back him with the rest of the might problem with that is malbeth also only has one point of might so there's a very real possibility you you end up with those two on opposite corners of the table and then you're in a bit of trouble I mean to be fair Kieran can only lead six guys so maybe the thinking is even if he is isolated by himself adding six guys is just going to give the enemy six more kills that's fair actually that is very fair like it's it's not a lot that can protect him but I guess he the one drop over the risk in melstrom because malth does have a pretty big war band so he he'd be okay if he was isolated like he'd last out a little while and he won the mm game so the thing with this list and I think other lists as well I know like we talked about it in the intro about veto and then how you might be able to skate by with no heroic March but because it's veto by pool you know there certain pools like you know maneuvering or stuff like that where there's going to be multiple scenarios in that pool that March helps a lot so I know it's like the easy cop out just saying that oh it's veto so I don't need March but having the March though ows you to play a lot more scenarios and you don't feel like you you're forced to like veto a certain one cuz I I see that one of his uh draws was actually divide and conquer right and a big part of that one is trying to get to that Center and like sit there and defend it and this Army can definitely do that you know once it gets on an objective you're not going to move it because it just doesn't die but like obviously I didn't watch this game but I I have a feeling that he just maybe wasn't able to get to where he wanted to fast enough mhh unfortunately for both of these armies there's only one profile with March right so either a high elf captain or an aror Captain which you would have to find something to replace to to get the points to get him but yeah definitely like that in the maneuvering pool this is a there would be a weakness for this Army yeah so at 800 the my version of this list is basically the same you just add in the captain so I think if he wanted to keep his numbers the same or up is still in like mid-30s or high 30s he he just have to drop the knights and then take the captain but I think that's what I would do personally I would not take the knights and I would take the C I don't know if I would have taken as many elves as he did personally the only two things with this list that kind of strike me oddly is a I don't know why glor fendel is the general given that you can just veto contest of Champions if you need to I feel like arvue makes more sense you can kind of play the game without him as involved I feel like I would personally drop the two Rivendell Knights and I maybe would only take six elves total with spear because you want the Arians anyways because of bth you want like to get more of them I feel can you might up the uh the five plus save though on arvad I think so I don't think so because then because then I would say then it might be a good show um to make him the leader but the I guess the slightly more scary thing is that you're probably a little bit weaker towards like a black Dart VP but yeah that's I mean that's fair that's fair he does have heroic defense though yeah but I think the the thing with this is because you have Kieran and malbeth as like back supporter they're not going to be in combat you want arvad to be involved in combat and because he has strike and defense he can occupy other Heroes which allows glorfindel to go do his thing so the fact that glorfindel has you know the fight seven and the defense seven and the three fate like he's he's still a very defensible hero and also like Richard was saying like you're not worried about black dark because you have fortified Spirit up all the time so even though you can contest I I think well personally I like to just throw arvad into you and and he's big hero and he just sits there doing heroic defense with like a five up save and just you know their big here does nothing interesting list all right seventh place we have saltman who we know as uh Scott Alman haing from California yes also one of my patrons and he brought a pure Eisen guard list and uh just speaking to a little bit this was an idea that he had that that he really wanted to make work he has sarman on horse with GMA on horse leading one creane uh six Wildman of dunland five orc warriors with spear and one orc warrior with spear and banner goral iron skin leading six wild men of dunan five orc Warriors of Spear and one orc warrior with spear and banner Freda tulpar leading six wild men of dunland six orc warriors with spear and the final war B is a Wildman oath maker leading six Wildman of dland and six orc warriors with spear Scott actually went four win one loss and one draw as well 54 models I think maker have March no strength o it's a very very scary list I got to play it in one of the games and uh yeah the numbers are really good and he has the magic support and then GMA and The Caine for tricks I believe it was game two he actually quartered a goblin Town pure Goblin town so I mean that's that's pretty impressive so it definitely has the hitting power given the numbers but yeah I think what Ian like alluded to he doesn't have the March I think I might like trade Frida here for uh for one of the irai captain Heroes I think might yeah uh fit better I I know this is probably more themy because he takes all the dunlin heroes but if you're going to go optimization probably one of the ERC Heroes might be better uh I okay I'm not 100% sure I agree with that because the numbers in this list are good but they're not insurmountable so what would shut this list down is some big heroes getting in there and like doing damage against the troops right along with your your um soldiers just like grinding in them out however Saron plus gorov plus Freda that's a lot of hero shutdown ability right there but I don't think you need all all three because you also have GMA to mitigate the heroic combats too it's interesting because uh we were just talking earlier about how in veto you don't really need March but all of a sudden we're like oh this would be better with March it's true with Eisen guard at least cuz Eisen Gard has so many March options like throwing like an uglu or like a vasu right they so many of them have March I really like the look of this list and just in general Eisen guard doing well at a tournament it it's um it's nice to see I think the idea of the list is really solid even though like Freda and gorol aren't like big heroes they both have defense so you have a lot of answers to big heroes actually you can stall them and then sarman of course you have the blast and immobilize and and I think it's got a lot of tools maybe more than it looks on um at first glance also the other thing I want to mention is the double Banner you he could have dropped one of the banners in order to maybe get up to like 60 models but I I don't know how what do you guys feel about that because it's a fight three Army right and generally it's like more banners usually you will want more banners if you're a higher fight Army like is it worth it I think so person I mean like if we really reverse engineer this is this that much different than Lake survivors of Lake 10 is I mean that's kind of my impression of it at first glance this seems like reverse engineered survivors yeah and I I mean I like double Banner at that point I it's an interesting list this is definitely this is a thought-provoking concept I don't know I'm just trying to think of like to the point of March I'm the type of like I religious ly include March in the things that I play I I like the just knowing that I have that as an option that being said with veto I don't what's March getting you because I feel like if anyone's gonna go it's Frida personally you need the oath maker for Fearless you need gorl to sandbag Heroes you need GMA and Sarma so if it be anyone it's Freda and I think Freda is like negating the the charging is huge I I I like that a lot from my experience all my mounted Heroes were dismounted before combat with sarm in there so it didn't really matter but I guess if that that doesn't go off that's fair that's fair you played against it obviously you just said you thought it was a scary list like I mean you did well I can see the score you did well in the game like what allowed you to do that and is there a tweak he could make that would have prevented you from doing that go I'll probably end up doing a recap of like my games and stuff but I I was able to uh take advantage and destroy the supplies and burn his supplies but I think a big part of it as well was I did have 11 Hunter orc bows and the reason why I said U maybe he should include the March was there were a good few turns I think four or five turns of him marching up where it wasn't gamebreaking but me being able to take down maybe like six or seven guys was able to like weaken his line and then it was a lot easier to kind of uh get into combat and and I wouldn't even consider myself a very heavy shooting list because they are Hunter orc bows so if it was a you know an Elven army or something like that you know invariance doesn't go his way yeah yeah it it could be a rough rough day for him and obviously he still did extremely well so I know like props to him but I think that is a big weakness that's fair actually that is very fair I'm looking at fre I don't know now that you say that all of your Heroes were dismounted I'm forgetting how uh efficient Saron is at doing just that so that actually that's fair if you take a captain over Freda I'm assuming she's 65 I'm assuming a captain's 55 and you take a couple more guys get closer to that all right take a captain and then do do that that probably a direct swap for uglu I think he's 65 yeah yeah that's fair yeah that's fair all right and then in sixth place we have another player from California Jake delie and he brought an Angar list so warband one we have the witch King with crown moral horse three extra might four extra will and three extra fate leading three Orcs with Shield two Orcs with spear and shield one orc with spear one orc with twoand weapon one orc with Shield spear Banner two Orcs with bow and one Spectre War band two we have golvar leading four Orcs with Shield two Orcs with spear one orc with shield and spear two Orcs with bow one or Rider with shield and throwing Spears one wild war and two specters Orman three we have a barrel white leading four Orcs with Shield two Orcs with spear one orc with shield and Spear and the second bar white leading three Orcs with Shield two Orcs with spear and two Orcs with shield and spear finished with four wins one loss and one draw I think it's 42 models and three specters it's a very like orc heavy build I'd expect like a couple more like Wars or maybe specters in there I mean three specters isn't bad I wanted to ask alisher this is that like if this is like different than some of the Ang bars you I see on the the East Coast because we we have I guess several prominent like really competitive players Jake being one of them that plays Angar in the west coast and this is essentially like the classic build with the double barrel whites and you know goldar essentially the same thing here and there small things will swap and then when they build out to 800 they just add the captain it's really strong as you can see even in uh big tournament like this yeah I hate facing Angar I mean this is prob give your listeners like the dish if you ever want to like freak me out in a game play Angar I not a fan at all so he did play against last Alliance which as you would assume that was probably his toughest game it was a draw yeah I mean it's a good list I think on the East Coast pretty much some of the same I feel like I'm seeing the shade a little bit more just because of how common resistance resistance to Magic is just very common so like looking at what he played against he played the arnor guy first round so obviously glorfindel resistant to Magic he played against Rohan he played against last Alliance Rangers of ailan he played against Andrew and then he played against aable reclaim so two resistance to Magic armies out of six that's like really good resistance to Magic armies that's tough didn't have any matchups against to that's interesting so the good usually has more like courage Shenanigans to M mitigate the uh the terror on the Orcs or from the from the heroes there were a lot of good armies like it was definitely disproportionately more good armies than evil I'm okay with that so the past couple years have been mostly evil this is true this is true we've Swan yeah I don't have much to add this is like your classic scary Yar list I mean if I was bringing yar to adep CL this would be the build I would go for like two barel whites golvar and witch King so yeah I wouldn't change really anything in this list I I definitely don't want to underscore Jake's like actual achievement with it I just to do that well in Angar where given that like I know I am not the only player who does not like playing Angar so like it's very within like the vein of our Consciousness around here so great job I believe this is one of his new armies too I I don't think I've seen him play this had a major tournament yet so yeah this is a great showing like we said don't ever practice just show up to events with stuff I think the the fact that it's veto it kind of it makes up for a lot of the weaknesses right like especially not having the march in there the the only thing i' maybe say to change is is swapping four Orcs for two War Riders because just to get a bit more mobility in there but I I'm not sure that it's super necessary or how much of a difference that would have made but all right and then in fifth place we have Steve Stokes from Ontario Canada he had five wins and one loss and he had a loran and Kingdom of kazad Doom Alliance you don't see this Alliance very often uh War band one we have floran we have gadriel leading eight glad warriors with shield and Spears one Glad Warrior with Banner one glad Knight with Shield two guard the Glad core five elf warriors with elf bows and W elf Spears and one Sentinel and then in the Kingdom of kazum we have Duran king of kadom five Hearth guard six Iron Guard and six Rangers with long bows and throwing axes interesting I'm not opposed to this Alliance like I I've tinkered with it a little bit before but I'm I'm surprised by the B only two guards at the Glad drum Court that's shocking this is like 37 models yeah it's a it's a weird Alliance I'm a little bit surprised to to see this kind of list like so far up not saying that it can't do well but just the composition is I'm trying to wrap my head around where the synergies are and how this would work in in the scenario pools I think it's just gadriel and Duran just each pick on a and shut them down and then your dwarves burn aot of damage with like the Earth guard the Iron Guard and all the throwing weapons they have you just kind of like grind them down with like high strength attacks so they'll usually end up killing whatever they're fighting with they want to fight yeah I mean um yeah we've talked about this um about how you know our opinion of D funny thing and uh alisher was on the episode that we talked about Duren Duran goes to legend for me he's probably like if I were to make a top five hero he's probably on that list like an actual utility too not just because I'm fond of him wow I feel like you like him even more than the Duran Show I I don't think even the guys from the Duran Show would break him as Legend in a sense that Steve has helped alisher prove us wrong making top five at a dep toon with dur that's really impressive but he also I think followed one of Alisha's rules which is don't max out your Hearth guard which I think a lot of people are um used to doing what they're in and getting you know more Iron Guard instead I think that's big yeah I mean I like the build I think like given that I was looking at this I've seen that this player uh Steve has taken a similar rendition to other events I think it's just a lot of like not backward logic but side logic so like you think a reasonable amount of SC scenarios do play on the like protect a hero use a hero like like revolve around your Heroes and in this situation like because he has like arguably one of the best support Casters in the game who's his General and everything else like in terms of being a Target in terms of being an assassin like that's all on Duren if there's ever a hero in the game where you could like do that I mean it's probably Duren I mean it's going to be very challenging for anyone to kill Duren as a fog of War Target be pretty easy to protect Duren as a fog of War Target I have to imagine that was some of his consideration as he was playing uh because I mean that's one of the primary synergies I like the uh the emphasis on Iron Guard I'm a huge fan of Iron Guard I'm also a huge fan of 12 throwing axes total six of which were dwarves with a bow and throwing axes I don't think he gave any of his wood elves throwing anything uh so a lot of shooting um it looks like 12 bows which I think it needs uh blinding light so like those two factors make it one of the better shooting armies in the game because of the blinding don't have to worry about hypermobility because of veto it's a good list six Iron Guard paired with a a a fountain guard or just an Iron Guard paired with a fountain guard I mean that's a hero right there the strong point of this list is that it probably outg grinds pretty much any battle line like no one wants to go head-to-head with this one I I guess uh props to Steve though because I'm looking at the games you know he was able to win retrieval divide and conquer and heirlooms and those ones are a little bit more Mobility driven I know I can see in retrieval he won a three and three to0 so very likely he just camped on his own objective and then broke the opponent when they came to him but yeah well played by him props this steep are not vetoing our looms what would be challenging for me if I were to play a list like this is having only six might on two Heroes like that's close to 300 points on Heroes and I I mean we've seen lists with low number might do really well so it just the fact that three of it is on Duren and you might want to save like one for a heroic strike or here a combat you don't have a lot to work with so I I don't think he is calling like any like like maybe he'll try and keep a point of mind on gadiel for Heroic defense and maybe one on durren for strike later in the game but I like for the most part that his might's being used for Heroic moves right key heroic moves yeah like Duren probably doesn't care if something charges into him like he probably won't Counter Strike he'll just tank it because of the D9 um and then glad is GNA be doing her thing and sitting in the back line spending on mov so it's low might but it's it's all like usable might the Army rather than for the heroes if that makes sense yeah okay we're we're on to fourth place so in fourth place we have Andrew pomier who is a frequent guest on our podcast from New Jersey and he finished fourth with an aor reclaimed survivors Lake town and Halls of thuel triple historic Alliance so first warband also his leader is Thorin King under the mountain on a goat and then he has warband 2 bar The Bowman with horse and armor in his warband he has Alfred cigarette and Tilda six militia with Shield seven militia with spear Percy leading 12 militia with bows and then a lak town Captain leading two militia with Shield four militia with spear and two militia with no War gear and then finally in Halls of thand Legos green leaf on a horse leading one merkwood Cavalry with shield and Andrew finish with five wins and one loss 44 um yeah I'm sure you guys are thinking it but this is just a terrible list like all all the way around Andrew has sent all of us basically 100 variations of this list so this is like version 100 I've definitely seen a lot of this no this is a great list I know I played against it a couple times in practice going into the tournament received many like potential revisions to it but I think he settled on a good list got to be careful with what I say because I will see him at some point soon no Jing I have to tow the line between like maintaining my Philly Pride because obviously you know Andrew's from New Jersey but also maintaining respect because we uh we play against each other but no I like this list I like the thorn Splash I'm actually I didn't ask him what he thought his production with Thorne was or how it has been uh but Thorn and alist is great and what better of a combination than in this survivor's good army to take for like their Fe foundation in a veto tournament because you don't need to worry about Banner VPS and seems like all of his Warriors will probably get rerolls it's a good build deadly shot to his Arsenal there to snipe Heroes and as if like Bard's great bows not good enough he's got a lot of tools he's not missing out on the March he has a lak town Captain so yeah it's just a little bit of everything as you guys said the shooting this list is very oppressive from from the heroes and legless is a nasty combo and if if anybody leaves like a hero expos in the front rank they're they're going to die in one turn not to mention the fact that he has pery and and 12 archers that are rrolling to some some of their shots to hit right they can definitely catch people if they expose any their Heroes like I think when he played Jake right he managed to put a couple wounds on gvar pretty early and then and then gvar was kind of out of the game for most of it right so kind of good uh good way to show showcase the shooting potential of the list yeah I mean just not to underscore because like reading down a list you can miss like there are up to 20 bow shots in this list like that's remarkable like Bard and legalist really like pump up the numbers quickly and three of those like bows are on three might Heroes like this list lacks no might um there's so much in it like the fact that he has that much output potential with his shooting is actually it's really really good and double free heroic combats it's juicy kudos to Andrew for having to play Angar twice he absorbed them all so I didn't have to face any of them all right so we're on to the top three armies so in third place we have Ted kantu with five wins and one loss and Ted's list is Misty Mountains lothorian and numor Alliance so in the Misty Mountains we have guir and then from loran we have gadriel leading eight glad warriors with Shield four guards of the Glad core one Sentinel and two wood elf warriors with wood elf Spears and then we have in numor zeldor with horse in the One Ring leading six Warriors in numor with Shield four warriors numor with shield and Spear four Warriors of numor with spear and bow and then one warrior numor with Shield Spear and banner that's uh 32 models but you know pretty good heroes in there so it's a very interesting combination that you don't see a lot of obviously gu here and gadriel are quite common of a pairing but mixing is yor in there is yeah it's it's really interesting I mean um it obviously did really well he was undefeated up until top table where he had to play alisher so um yeah aler I'm sure you have more insight on this list yeah I mean this is a great list um I have had the I guess the benefit of being able to like witness it at unexpected which was about a month ago and then also adepticon so Ted's got a great range of games with it really good at isolating big heroes um kind of like a reverse not necessarily a reverse Angar but like you know certainly close to having a similar ability to really lock things down in a way that Angar can who did he Gua here's his General which is fair I want to say I don't know now you guys have me questioning myself in veto I would normally say make gladel the general but uh I don't know gu I mean gu is a fantastic General so there's nothing nothing against that I think gadriel makes more sense as the leader because then you can pick gu here as the Assassin an [Music] assassination or you can like freak your I guess he could pick gadriel as yeah like in fog he could pick gadel to protect which is nice so oh yeah I'm sure Ted has a reason I mean I've known Ted long enough to know that Ted's usually pretty intentional with how he sets things up but I know I've said to you guys like personally like numbers are a big consideration for me always and defense like as a part of that is a big consideration for me always you know like I said between the two events I've gotten to consider this list it a decent amount it's just really low models given how many of them are defense five that concerns me and that ended up I mean that came up in our game pretty considerably from the perspective of shooting Maelstrom last round so he had some very unfortunate luck but uh yor warband was able to get like isolated and I killed a lot of his models just with shooting there so the defense five with 30 32 or 33 models really is a concern but the hero output but is great and his performance with it was great I guess you can mitigate that partly by swapping those numor archers with u some Elven archers because then he would not only improve his uh shooting a little bit but also more although The Archers would also be defense VI yeah it's kind of tough and I mean you can say this for anything but I think this hero combo would rather play at 800 MH if that's POS if there's any room in his there's a little bit of room in his War BS yet yeah I think this list would rather play 800 yeah get to 36 models swap the wood elves for somebody with more armor yeah maybe get a cab in there just to have some more support it's still very solid really really strong list though but it it it yeah it does seem like tailor made for 800 like everything would slot in just like perfectly Ted took a similar list to lbo the Las Vegas open obviously well he won that tournament that might not be obvious but I pretty sure that's 800 I don't quite know what he did differently but I it was a similar build I know okay now we're on to second place which is Richard's list and Richard finished with five wins and one loss and Richard why don't you we have you go over your list since you probably know it inside out by now okay yeah so I have uh a mix between azog's Legion and AOG Hunters my leader is bul with Fel Warg leading uh six good to bad orc warriors with shield and spear three with just Shields one with Shield spear Banner two gundabad Berserkers three War bats second warband is got a goblin mercenary Captain with five Goblin mercenaries and then we have the AOG Hunters portion we have fimble the hunter with Fel Warg leading four Hunter Orcs uh four Hunter Orcs with orc bow one with Fel Warg and then in the last war band we have narug with felg four Hunter Orcs And five Hunter Orcs with orbo total of 42 models 11 bows with including the hero bows alluding to what alisher said as one of his tips in the beginning this isn't what I see and I think what a lot of top players in North America would view as like a super competitive list or Army at this Point's level but I wanted to see it kind of work in one of the bigger tournaments and I did feel like it has potential I'm not taking like something I think is complete garbage or anything like that I just I just don't think feel like this Army is you know ever really seen at the very top tables of like Nova open or like adepticon or stuff like that so so that's another reason why I wanted to take it I feel like it might be able to surprise the top players that I would eventually encounter with a super optimized version right I know there were other AOK Legions at this tournament but they were playing signal Tower so presumably less serious but yeah I I wanted to go with a list that was very very um highly mobile I know there's a lot of people who gave me feedback saying that the three War bats and and like the goblin mercenaries might be Overkill and I have a fell orgon there but to me it was like the fighty scenario the to the death Lords of battle contest of Champions is probably my weakest pool but I'm not even that bad at it because I have bulg and contest of Champions I I can fight it's just not like where I excel at and I'd rather lean into the skew of I'm going to like just out mobile most armies like talking with Ian before the event about like general rules of what to veto his advice was just choose whatever is more like like combat avoidant and like stuff I can like run around the enemy and just do weird things and um yeah that was kind of my like rough game plan going into every matchup that was in the back of my mind yeah I I think it it worked out well obviously I had pretty favorable matchups I think shooting and heavy shooting and and like terror is my biggest like weakness and I was lucky enough not to face like a all Terror Army I did face like a witch King suly list with like a black Dorian line but I was able to deal with that with like bul getting in early taking out the row of like most of the black narian and it was okay from there but partly matchup dependent but I'm also happy with like the list and how I played curious to get your guys' thoughts on it I'm sure I've already spammed you guys before the event and stuff but yeah yeah at least Charles and I have definitely seen like 18 different versions of this just to be sure I like how at the beginning you said like this isn't seen as the super competitive list locally it kind of shows the potential of uh of the veto system right because there's no way you would have brought this if it wasn't a veto seems a lot scarier be just because it was veto it kind of makes it a lot more viable I I like how you design this list for for the veto tournament out of curiosity like which round did you feel like veto helped you the most here or made the biggest difference maybe that's an interesting one but I I would maybe maybe round three we got to play destroy the supplies okay yeah that that was against Scott so the Eisen guard horde we ended up with a scenario that was like a good in between but I I believe the other scenarios in that one was was it retrieval and seize the prize yeah seize the prize much of the time you know a 50/50 I know he didn't have March so I think he thought I was going to try to go for that one but the fact that he had sarman and I don't really have magic resistance anywhere is always going to be a little bit sketchy retrieval again against The Horde Army and like magic it's it's not something that I I was looking forward to and I probably have the least experience with that one comparatively to the other ones and destroy the supplies I just feel like you know with the goblin mercenaries that's like a cheat code there and then also the bats I can play defensive with those ones yeah I I just felt like all all three were very like playable but like veto helped me like select the right one obviously no that makes sense I do want the record to show I was supportive of this list like I was one of the more like yeah that's a good list it's great to see some of the list diversity at adepticon but I don't want to underemphasize the fact that this is more of a a skew list compared to what you see a lot of times azog's Legion is not something that like um is uh kept away from tournaments but bulg being a general and being the real focal point that is rare despite the fact that he's great by all means but that is rare and then having you know a defense for front line then as you said is low courage you you ended up not taking a war horn am I correct in thinking that or am I wrong yeah that was the big big debate but I ended up taking two Berserkers instead thinking that it kind of mitigates the terror matchup but they're still useful in non-or games which you know ended up being all my games luckily except for the black numor one right yeah yeah but I don't know if I count that as a terror matchup he I think he had maybe eight or so eight or nine like black new manorian so you could play around it yeah yeah that was one of your biggest decisions before you went on this trip was whether you should take the horn or not and we we had multiple variations of both and I was just trying to think like well it's really match dependent right like you could take the horn but then if you don't face any Terror armies it's almost like 30 points down the drain like you're you don't want to get it just to help you like when you break right so you're you're almost like hoping to face Terror armies he would take the horn so I don't know I was on the side that he should use those points for something else and and just lean into it knowing that it was veto even even if he had a bad matchup maybe he could pick a a scenario Terror would affect him a little less I mean it worked out for him but I I don't know if how he would have done if he went the the warh horn route if if it would be about the same or or if it would be a significant difference like with a pool of players that big that's actually pretty good advice I think Charles because like even if he does end up in a tear matchup it might be like one out of his G of his games right there'd have to be like a big prevalence of Terror there for it to matter more than once and then like you said otherwise it's not going to matter in like most of them right so yeah the extra the extra mobility and stuff is probably is probably better yeah I think that's a great like competitive tip like again in big tournaments like do not hyperfixate over like your bad matchup at a local event like you might be much more aware of it like especially if someone you know plays it but at a big event like you could just not face the thing that you're terrified of it's got me thinking because I know obviously Hunter Orcs And like AOG Hunters are very very like strong at low points and arguably the Medalist but somehow like people just stop taking them in higher points because of their weaknesses but I guess yeah shows that if you like lean into it then like they're obviously still like a freaking amazing profile naruk is such a good take I just he is underutilized as a profile he what because of the army bonus he hits on threes yeah or is it so for it's on threes with one modifier throughout like he is such an underutilized hero I had some bad bad luck or otherwise I would have like sniped the witch King and like there's another leader I could have like sniped but it's crazy that like yeah if you if you put in all your might like you're almost like guaranteed to do a wound or two throughout the course of the game in first place alisher the only player to go undefeated at this tournament please go ahead and uh break down your list and let us know what you took yeah let's emphasize the end ofart because obviously in the top three I had the fewest pictory points if anyone um I had uh Halls of thandol so my General was thrand wall King of the merwood realm with heavy armor additional oven blade and the ceret no Horse bar anti horse very Pro foot Thell five merkwood elves with Shield four merkwood elves with elf bow one merkwood elf with elade glaive and banner two Palace guard with spear two Palace guard with shield and spear a merkwood Cavalry with shield and a sentinel legalis was on horse and he had five merkwood elves with Shield four with elf bow three merkwood elves with El M glaves and shields one merid elf with Elin mlade and bow and then another Cavalry and then the third was a survivor of Lake toown add in which was a lak town militia Captain just bear so with the spear but no Shield three Lake Town warriors with bow two Lake Town warriors with shield and four with spear uh for a grand total of 42 models with 14 bows 16 if you count all three of legalis um and eight might we've talked about this quite a few times but you're a big advocate for Randle on foot I know there's been many a discussion on the online forums about what spec to uh take thandel give us your uh take on why you should always take a monfit yeah always this is like without a doubt the best take I just I like the consistency given that thrw as a general is not like the most defensive spe I'm specifically talking about the fact that he's defense six I need him to be involved in combat because he is the main combat hero but I also need him to not like recklessly die because he just gets trapped in an awkward situation and doesn't have enough dice to win so the math is really straightforward with it if you charge him into two obviously you get five dice if you have him with a spear support that six bannery roll seven there's no way you can get that on a mount the best you're going to get is four uh five with a banner roll so we're saying seven dice potentially to five dice so you have a higher probability of winning fights consistently it's harder to trap him when he's on foot and so technically you know seven dice to win the fight you get a maximum of six dice to try to wound things if you win the fight as opposed to eight if he's on a a a mount the big thing is like in 99% of cases you can faint with Randell because either you have a palace guard behind him that's fight thick uh or a merkwood elf behind him that's fight five that's higher so he's rrolling ones with five of his Dice and his support's getting plus one to wound so basically I'm getting very similar actual killing output that I would with a hero but I'm either getting two extra elves if I take if I would have taken the ALK or an extra ALK if I would have taken a horse that's really the big thing uh and then another I mean the biggest aspect is just play style I really like uh Interline Mobility as opposed to like pregame or pre- lines clashing Mobility I like to be able to weave in awkward places a question about your lak town contingent since they FAQ that you can't take Alfred in just like a lak toown war band is the reason you're taking him just to like boost up your numbers and and provide the March because I I feel like you could probably get March in just like get an Elvin Captain as well right it really just boils down to numbers like with this breakup between like the ratio between elf to Lake town I think it works out to not counting Heroes 30 elves to nine Lake town so essentially the nine Lake Town are six point elves so it's hard to say to say no to that when it just feels like elves for the price of Orcs in addition to that I've taken thrand's halls I want to say to four or five events now every time different points I tinker with it a little bit when I took it to clash what I felt I had 40 models at 800 points I took a piscar captain and what I found in games was I had 40 models something like Bor air with the banner had 47 something around there and that felt really bad to be down seven models when for the most part they're tying up a lot of things that's actually I think one of the hardest matchups for thrs halls surprisingly is a Bor me with the banner and then a bunch of high defense gondorian so this is really to equalize myself with them the only thing that I have personally like you know agonized about as it pertains to this list is the weakness of the captain in scenarios like assassination fog of War Etc the rationale that I have with this is the Sentinel the one of the Lesser known songs that the Sentinel plays as a Fearless song So if I need to the captain's always going to pass his courage test um which is huge I never have to worry about that and then if I really need to I put a palace behind him around Thor and he's fight six is really my thinking I like that line of thinking too because in the pool with fog assassination and I believe Clash By Moonlight I mean no one wants to play your list with legless and a bunch of Elf bows either right so um yeah you can afford that small weakness of having a lak town Captain yeah absolutely anything that you would change in a future event for the most part I am at in that at 750 like I have at 650 they're best pure at 700 I think they're still best pure at 750 this is probably the list the only thing that I'm still debating is whether or not I think it's worth to try to move things around to give legalist the Alvin cloak which is five extra points the reason being in an assassination or a fog of War I just hide him and I shoot every turn like that's what I'm going to do with him if I need to Dismount him I Dismount him to use the Elvin cloak uh that's the only thing that I'm still trying to decide everything else I feel pretty confident about you feel about orist um you just had to bring that up didn't you I don't think it's I think it's a waste of 10 points honestly because like I'm not legalist if legalist is my main guy in combat clearly I've done something wrong uh leading up to that moment and it's 10 points he already has an Elvin blade like it's really only good against AOG or bold because all the other orc heroes are not very like hard to kill maybe the hardest one outside of those two would be like a A gothmog or gothmog ask model shagra same yeah shagra gothmog something in that vicinity like I guess one last question would be what matchup do you think you had the arest game I know Ted obviously is a really strong opponent with a great list finishing in third but I know with how Maelstrom pounded out it didn't seem like maybe the toughest game for you but um what would you say I say this a lot like outside of opponents the toughest games for me are one round one or round three like from the competitive sense everything factors in your actual like what happens at a tournament my round one was against azog's Legion and that was my only minor win in the tournament and that probably felt like the hardest one to win partially because round ones for me are always like the mo I feel like there's a lot of pressure around one so that one was the toughest from the perspective of like circumstance um asog Legion is still very good uh especially they get the the ancient enemies Matt Hammond in round five was from the perspective of playing against a good player who knew what they were doing doing and really pushed me to like the edge of my comfort was probably that between player army and scenario probably pushed me the most all right thank you guys for breaking down your list for us and and thanks to alisher for coming on to the podcast to uh talk to us about adepticon and also just going over the top 10 list thank you all for watching look forward to next episode of into the West podcast

Channel: Into the West

Views: 2,340

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Id: rpqGytbVm1E

Length: 64min 58sec (3898 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024