Tournament Report: Warhammer World Warcy Matched Play September 2022

Some people might notice that I am putting out more Warcry content recently. I find myself having really taken to the game; With it's compact rules and almost non-existent barrier to entry if you already have an existing Age of Sigmar force it's evoking the same kind of feeling that early release Killteam was almost twe years ago. I have a big Warcry event coming up in November but generally not having all that much time to practice led me to enter in Warhammer World's first Gnarlwood Champion event; I could get some games in and take a small jaunt up to Nottingham for a few hours to get some much needed RnR.

I'm going to be taking a slightly different format for this article then my usual long-form fare. I have recorded a separate video-article which covers the event in-depth as well as what I brought, the games and some of my thoughts about the game itself which you can find below:

Over here we will go over the event pack and go more in-depth about the tournament format itself so without further ado lets dive in.

Event Essentials

Great and terrible are those that ascend to claim the mantle of the Gnarlwood Champion: mighty warlords, ruthless leaders and luminous heroes all. Although their ranks are small, their strength is undeniable. Will you defeat all comers and rise to become the new Gnarlwood Champion, the self-styled ruler of that bestial forest?

This is the first Warcry Rumble, a series of Warcry Matched Play events held at Warhammer World. These events are held once per month, and they use unique battleplans designed by the Age of Sigmar Skirmish Studio that can be completed in under an hour. Come and join in the Rumble! 

System: Warcry Matched Play

Warband: One 1,000 point Warcry warband painted and based (battle-ready or better) and an accompanying tournament roster. All Warcry warbands are in use, using their most recently published rules.

Battleplans: Battleplans will be selected from the six Gnarlwood Champion Matched Play Battleplans (to be shared at the event). The battleplans in play for that evening will be randomly determined on the night, in addition to the sidequest for that battle. No battleplan or sidequest will be used twice on the same night.

Number of Games: Three

Publications in Use: Warcry Core Book, Warcry Compendium, all current and up-to-date FAQs and Errata. Warcry publications released up to one week prior to the event may also be used.

Results

After each game you will need to report the result of the game, as either a win, a draw or a loss for each player, along with your total victory points and kill point total. These results will determine how many Tournament points you gain over the course of the tournament, which will determine your final ranking at the end of the event.

• Win = 5 Tournament points
• Draw = 3 Tournament points
• Loss = 1 Tournament point

The first tie-breaker after Tournament points will be victory points, which are scored in your games. Report your total victory points along with your game result.

The final tie breaker will be your kill point total. At the end of each game, record the total points value of enemy fighters that are taken down. This total is your kill point total.

Best Warband

During the break between Game 2 and 3, all players will have a chance to display their warband. All players will then have a chance to vote for the warband they feel is the best, be that for painting, conversion or anything else worthy of recognition. The player whose warband receives the most votes will win the Best Warband award. Any ties will be broken by event organisers' vote.

Favourite Game

On your final score card you will need to put the player number of your opponent from your favourite game, which is the game you enjoyed playing the most that evening. The player with the most favourite game votes will receive the Favoured of the Realms award, seen by many to be the highest accolade of all. Any ties will be broken via tournament score, victory points then kill points total.

Prizes

The event, being held at Warhammer World and organised by Games Workshop, was using the Warcry matched play organised play (OP) kit. I know that this has already been sent out/requested by a number of stores already but as a summary it's supposedly good for an event of up to around 32 players though the Gnarlwood Champion series that we actually played had 16 participants.

There is enough prize support for the following;

• The Gnarlwood Champion (Trophy): Won by the overall winner (which in this event was calculated by tournament points, then total victory points and finally by kill points)
• Best Warband (Trophy): Allows the organisers to do a painting/modelling competition for the players' warbands.
• Sentinel of Order: Won by the highest placed Grand Alliance Order player.
• Agent of Chaos: Won by the highest placed Grand Alliance Chaos player.
• Bringer of Death: Won by the highest placed Grand Alliance Death player.
• Harbinger of Destruction: Won by the highest placed Grand Alliance Destruction player.
• Favoured of the Realms: Won by the player with the highest amount of favourite game votes (players at the end of the event would submit which of their opponents was their favourite and the winner receiving this prize).
• Seeker of Talaxis: Won by the highest ranked player using one of the warcry core warbands (Spyre Tyrants, Rotmire Creed, etc) with no allies, thralls or monsters.
• Top 8 (Acrylic Tokens)

My Nighthaunt ended up winning best Warband for the event.

Missions and Sidequests

Because the rounds themselves were only one hour long, the Warhammer World staff had worked with the design team to come up with a never before seen Gnarlwood Champion matched play mission pack. You will notice that in all of the missions only one of your battlegroups starts on the field from turn 1 with the remainder coming on the board on turn 2. I think that this was one of the decisions, along with some of the deployment locations which they made to try and speed up the games by about 20 minutes or so. The missions are still 4 turns long so despite the time limit you are still getting full games of Warcry in the time limit.

There were also a series of custom side quests in play for the event, These were randomly generated for each game for both players to try and achieve in order to generate more victory points to determine the game's winner. Some of them seem easier to achieve then the main mission objectives themselves and aside from a strange interaction between Predator and Prey and holding treasure in Loot and Pillage (essentially allowing a player to pick a fighter who has treasure and not try to kill it always netting 2 points per turn), I found them a welcome addition to the event.

Games

Overall I won two out of my three games (you can take a look at the video for an indepth coverage) but as a summary;

Game 1 (Spoils of War + Conquering the Land)

vs Stormcast. Bearing in mind that I'm no expert in Stormcast (they all look the same to me), it looked like 2x Vanquishers with the swords, 3x Praetors with halberds, and a Lord Imperitant for coordinated strike.

Our strategy was to hold onto objectives for the first couple of turns and then raze them in the latter turns to free up fighters for when we actually had to fight. I used my superior speed to stop him from claiming his own objectives (as we were equal in miniatures I could match my opponent fighter for fighter on objectives) whilst body-blocking with the Dreadscythe Harridans and Varghulf, and resurrecting downed fighters. Once I was a couple of activations up I could use resurrection to control the board.

Overall a win in game 1 with 20 VPs to 14 and a total of 300 Kill Points scored vs my opponent's 315.

Game 2 (Power Struggle + Strongarm the Competition)

vs a Soulblight Gravelord player who went on to be one of the two undefeated players in the event. He took a list consisting of a Vampire Lord, Wight King, Fellbat, Seneschal, a bunch of Greatblade Grave Guard, couple of Skeletons to round out

My opponent massively out-activated me with 13 fighters to my 6 including the very good value Greatblade Graveguard. On the first couple of turns I only managed to keep down a single miniature through resurrection but I started to do real damage on turn 3 where I took out 5 guys. Unfortunately the game ended early at the end of turn 3 due to time but at that point I don't think that I would have been able to make the points back in the last turn due to his domination of objective points.

Ultimately, I didn’t have the numbers to be able to contest the objectives (my opponent scored 9 points on turn 3 from 2 objectives and the centre). Also it seems like the Graveguard hit disproportionately hard and the in faction resurrection of minions can keep them up unless I manage to kill a lot of fighters in a single turn.

I think that I need more practice into larger warbands to try and come up with a solution to close the activation gap; The Varghulf generally has to carry a lot of weight to cut down numbers and if he gets bogged down in a tougher hero then he is out of commission for a good chunk of the game.

Game 3 (Loot and Pillage + Predator and Prey)

Again against 6 Stormcast, this time the faster ones with a Lord Aquilor, Vanguard Raptor with Hurricane Crossbow, Gryph Hound, Hunter with the hand crossbow and two more guys to make up the 6 fighters.

On Turn 1 I used the Dreadblade Harrow to grab and run away with an objective in the top left of the battlefield, and we both looted the objective in the centre. This put me in good stead for the rest of the game as I already had one of my opponent's treasure meaning that he would have to come to me where I could use the superior Nighthaunt speed to avoid getting shot and/or charged. I also double looted the objective on the right with a Varghulf and Dreadscythe which gave me 4 out of the total 6 treasure on the board. From there we had lots of running away and body blocking with the guys without treasure to keep my carriers in one piece for the rest of the game. The Nighthaunt -1 strength double (Aura of Dread) came in handy reducing the strength of shooting, and moving behind cover made sure that I was always wounded on 5s which helped bolster my defences further.

A second win putting me on 2 wins and a loss for the day.

Final Thoughts

Overall there were two undefeated players with at least one being the Soulblight Gravelord player from my game 2. With my two wins and a loss I managed to come in the top 8 and won the best warband trophy to boot so I would say that it was a good performance from the Nighthaunt which as I understand were less then stellar in the last edition. There was also a good representation of various warbands with two SBGL, two Sylvaneth, two Ogre Kingdoms, Seraphon, a bunch of Stormcast, the new Belakor boys with the Centaurian, and a couple of actual Warcry warbands to try and win the Seeker of Talaxis prize. As for the event itself, it was run to the usual high standards we have come to expect from Warhammer World, especially for the very low price of £5 per player (see my concerns about value HERE). I do think that one hour per game is pushing it slightly even with the custom missions but truth be told, this was the first time anyone was playing them and it was the first Warcry2 event in the UK as far as I know, so I expect that we would see the games speed up in the future.

Two Wins, One Loss and Sixth Place overall. Not so bad for the first outing of this list.

There are more Warhammer World Warcry events coming up between now and the end of the year so I'll be looking to go to those also and I hope that other stores will follow suit and run similar things, especially considering that the Organised Play kit is now out in the wild. Overall I'm really enjoying Warcry so far so it would be nice to play some of the other different warbands and see how they can do (I have some half finished Rotmire Creed and Slaanesh Daemons sitting on my painting desk that I do mean to finish sometime soon).