‘Warhammer: The Old World’ – How I Won The NOVA Open GT
Over this weekend some of the best Warhammer The Old World players gathered in DC to duke it out in at the NOVA Open, here what it takes to win.
This weekend saw the NOVA Open in DC. It’s one of the premier North American wargaming events and a grand old time. For Warhammer: The Old World the highlight was the 60 player GT event. This was one of the largest ToW events we’ve had. A group of really amazing players from all over the world came together and duked it out over 5 rounds. The event was put on by SquareHammer, who did a bang-up job running it. The event was 2500 pts and used a comp system. It was a great event. Since I’ve spent so much time telling everyone what’s good and what’s bad, I figured I should put my money where my mouth is and go play in another big event. At the end of five rounds, I managed to take Best Overall/Tournament Champion with the most points, while the Amazing Luna Valentine took Best General. Let’s take a look at the list I ran and how it did.
My Bretonnia List
For NOVA I was running the Bretonnian Exiles Army of Infamy. Just to be up front, this is not a friendly list. This is one taken to win a major GT. My list was as follows:
Kingdom of Bretonnia – Bretonnian Exiles – NOVA GT LIST – [2498pts]
++ Main Force ++ [2498pts]
Characters [987pts]
Baron [276pts]: Hand Weapon, Heavy Armour, Shield, Lance, Royal Pegasus (Barding, Hand Weapon), The Exile’s Vow, 2x Lucky Heirloom, Virtue of Heroism
Baron [262pts]: Hand Weapon, Heavy Armour, Shield, Royal Pegasus (Barding, Hand Weapon), The Exile’s Vow, General, Frontier Axe, Virtue of Knightly Temper
Damsel [106pts]: Hand Weapon, Battle Magic, Wizard Level 2, Bretonnian Warhorse (Barding, Hand Weapon)
Outcast Wizard [147pts]: Hand Weapon, Wizard Level 3, Dark Magic, Ruby Ring of Ruin, Warhorse (Hand Weapon)
Paladin [196pts]: Hand Weapon, Heavy Armour, Shield, Lance, Royal Pegasus (Barding, Hand Weapon), The Exile’s Vow, Battle Standard Bearer (Rampaging Banner), Falcon-horn of Fredemund
Core [630pts]
Mounted Knights of the Realm [309pts]: The Exile’s Vow
• 12x Mounted Knight of the Realm [24pts]: Bretonnian Warhorse (Barding, Hand Weapon), Hand Weapon, Heavy Armour, Lance, Shield
• 1x Musician [7pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [7pts]
• 1x First Knight [7pts]
Mounted Knights of the Realm [261pts]: The Exile’s Vow
• 10x Mounted Knight of the Realm [24pts]: Bretonnian Warhorse (Barding, Hand Weapon), Hand Weapon, Heavy Armour, Lance, Shield
• 1x Musician [7pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [7pts]
• 1x First Knight [7pts]
Peasant Bowmen [60pts]: Skirmishers
• 12x Peasant Bowman [5pts]: Hand Weapon, Longbow
Special [637pts]
Pegasus Knights [316pts]: The Exile’s Vow
• 5x Pegasus Knight [55pts]: Barded Pegasus (Barding, Hand Weapon), Hand Weapon, Heavy Armour, Lance, Shield
• 1x Musician [7pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [27pts]: Banner of Chalons
• 1x First Knight [7pts]
Pegasus Knights [321pts]: The Exile’s Vow
• 5x Pegasus Knight [55pts]: Barded Pegasus (Barding, Hand Weapon), Hand Weapon, Heavy Armour, Lance, Shield
• 1x Musician [7pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [32pts]: Banner Of The Zealous Knight
• 1x First Knight [7pts]
Rare [244pts]
Border Princes Brigands [117pts]: Scouts, Skirmishers
• 1x Brigand [17pts]: Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Desperado, Blunderbuss, Additional Hand Weapon
• 9x Brigand [90pts]: Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Blunderbuss, Additional Hand Weapon
Border Princes Brigands [127pts]: Ambushers, Skirmishers
• 1x Brigand [17pts]: Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Desperado, Blunderbuss, Additional Hand Weapon
• 9x Brigand [90pts]: Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Blunderbuss, Additional Hand Weapon
It was built in according with the NOVA comp rules:
How The List Works
Basically, fly fast and hit hard. The core of the list is really the two units of Pegasus Knights. These are a strong, tough, and very cost-effective unit. With them, I have three Pegasus mounted characters. One is given the Virtue of Heroism, giving her killing blow and monster slayer. She can be scary to even the largest units in the game, and a with a couple re-rolls – does good work. The second Baron is rocking 4+d3 attacks on the charge, with hatred, at S6 Ap -3 and 2 wounds- he can smash most enemies. The BSB with the Falcon gives me re-rolls on the charge and shuts down enemy flying.
I’ve also got two Wizards for support and big blocks of Knights to tank stuff and occasionally kill things. Three units of skirmishers give me some random range and a scout unit and ambushing unit to pull tricks. But the core is the Pegasus knight combo. It’s also worth mentioning that thanks to the Exiles Vow, all the important units are Stubborn and have Veteran for re-rolls of LD tests.
The Killer Combo
The core combo in this list is the unit of Pegasus Knights with the Banner Of The Zealous Knight. This gives the unit Vanguard. In effect they have a 29 inch threat range on turn one. I also place the BSB (allowing charge re-rolls) and one of the Barons, normally with the Fronter Axe in the unit. Before the game I get a 10 inch move. The goal is move forward aggressively and get into charge range if I go first. With one of the longest charge ranges in the game I can normally make sure I am in range of something if I go first but can’t be charged if I don’t. Or whatever can charge me isn’t something I’m worried about, especially with counter charge on the units.
With only 7 drops (Ambushers don’t count, and I normally don’t end up scouting with my unit that can) most of the time I get the +1 to go first. My lvl 3 takes Dark Magic and the hope is that he will get Battle Lust. throwing this on the Pegasus Knights is crazy, giving them Frenzy and Hatred. They’ll then go in for a turn one charge – with their re-roll. One of the goals here is to kill something weak so I can overrun and get the Blessing and hit something else big.
At this point the enemy will start Turn One down a unit, with an 800 pt block of flying knights in their lines and another block, plus my other Knights pushing up. If they happen to have flyers of their own, they won’t be able to fly. It’s something a lot of lists can’t deal with. But it’s not just a one-trick pony. There are backup tricks. And that comes in the form of Stubborn. See, even if the enemy manages to halt the first unit, and pull off a counter charge, they won’t break it. In a number of games it got hit hard. With Stubborn, I just Fall Back in Good Order and allow the 2nd unit of Pegs, with their Baron (and hopefully battle lust) to charge into the enemy.
On top of that, I’ve got a couple Magic Missiles and just enough other tricks to deal with a lot of other issues. The speed of the list, flying, cav, skirmishers, also generally allows me to pick where and when I want to fight, and where I don’t. With the list out of the way, lets take a quick look at the games.
Round 1- Lizardmen – Michael
Round one went off about as well as could be wanted. I vanguard up, got first turn and pulled a round charge. That pretty much decided the game there. The Lizardmen put up a good fight and I took some heavy losses, especially on the normal Knights, which tend to be sacrificial units anyway. You can see the final round of combat in as I mob here. He was left with pretty much just a unit and half of Skinks giving me a 29-3 victory, thanks to objectives.
Round 2-Tomb Kings – Andrea
Round two was against Andrea, an amazing player who took second overall. He had a very mean double Casket army, and you can see our set up above. We were both in costume and this was a super fun game.
I again went first and here is my first turn charge. I punched though some archers and hit his casket. It also took me out of LOS of any counter charge. After that, the unit ate his flank. The large unit of chariots got off a charge vs my central Knights of the Realm, but they were stubborn and the chariots died to both Pegs hitting them front and rear. It was a harder game that it sounds, with one unit of Knights getting wiped out. But I won 18-7.
Round 3- Empire – Simon
Next up I played Simon and his Empire army. Simon was a friend of my previous opponent, and watched part of our round 2 game, so he knew what my army could do. As seen he set up as far back as he could to avoid a first turn charge and get some cannon time. I did go first and move up pretty aggressively, putting out one of the Peg Knight units as bait.
Bait that was too good for Simon not to take. Both units of Demi-Demigryphs went into the Pegs and I counter charged. In his shooting his cannons did some damage to the unit. However in the combat, my Baron went first and got three killing blows. Simon’s own attacks didn’t do hot and killed a single Pegasus knight while losing 5 Demigryphs, both his units broke, I ran down one and other went off the table. After that my Knights went though his army. There was a scary moment when his militia rolled double 1s to hold and let his general get in a counter charge, but didn’t work out. A really fun game that I took 22-5.
Round 4- Ogres- Julien
Day 2 started with a game vs Ogres, an army I had not played in ToW yet. We were fighting diagonal, and with only 12 inches between us we were going to be on each other quickly. This was a pretty bad match-up for the Ogres, as I out charge everything in their army and they don’t even have counter-charge to help. I once again got first turn and threw out a charge into the cats on the to right. I killed them and overran into the three man Ogre unit behind. On his turn he threw the second unit of Ogre, the unit of Mournfangs and the Ironblaster into me as a counter charge. The Mournfangs didn’t charge far enough to get impact hits and my Baron killed their champion with max over kill. His units broke and some went off the table.
Despite his best efforts I was simply able to keep running over his troops. This was just before combat on my turn three. After this he was left with pretty much just his big mounted dude and we called it. A crushing 30-2 win, versus a great player.
Round 5- Bretonnians – Luna
Finally we came to the last battle of the event. Brets vs Exiles. Tons of Pegasus Knights on both sides. Lots of killing power. This was like a crazy game of 3d chess with both of us having to map out moves to avoid charges, or only take charges we were good with. However I came into the game about 20 battles points ahead of Luna. Due to this I wasn’t as aggressive as I could have been. All I really needed to do was to not lose big, though I would have loved to win.
We actually went a few rounds without combat as we moved around, but eventually I went in for a scrum in the middle. It was bloody. My axe Baron killed a whole unit of Pegasus Knights in a single swing. One of my units got hit hard and reduced to a single model. Luna’s second unit was pushed half killed. I smashed up some Knights and infantry. She took out both my horse Knights and Damsel. When time was called she had 100 more VP killed than I did, which left us at a draw. However she played the mission much better, bringing a list made for NOVA. This allowed her to pull a narrow win vs me, getting 12 pts to my 11.
I think if you asked either one of us we’d say that with one more turn we could have turned things our way. This was just an amazing and super intense game of Warhammer. Luna took Best General thanks to it, being the only person to go undefeated. I may talk about her list at a later point. As for me, I was able to hold onto my lead, ending with 110 battle points – by far the most. Luna ended with 92 for instance and Andrea, who took second overall had 97. My soft scores didn’t let me down, and I took home the big sword.
Final Thoughts on ToW at NOVA
Overall this was an amazing event. A big thanks to everyone who played and help run the event. Everyone I played was super nice and I think we all had a great time. There are some changes I’d make to the list going forward. I think I’d switch out the Brigands (who didn’t do much) for 2 Bombards. I’d also swap out a few magic items. But overall, the list did what I wanted it to do. I’ll be writing up more thoughts on the event and the state of the game in general soon. For now however, I’d like to sleep.
Let us know what you think of the list, down in the comments!
