NASHCON Tournament and Road Trip Part 1 of 3

With all sorts of crazy things happening in this season of life, getting to tournaments has been difficult. However, I just so happened to be free for Nashcon and so was Andrew! We decided to make it a weekend, and bring our better halves along. Andrew and I made the drive from Virginia while the ladies would fly down and meet us so we could hang after the tournament. In this series of posts, I'll not only cover my 5 tournament games, but do a little bit of travel blogging for fun.

First up, we hit the road bright and early as we had quite a drive before us! The road trip on the way to a tournament is always a great joy of mine, and honestly the long trip didn't feel long at all thanks to lots of MESBG chatting and strategizing, and the soothing voices of the Gallagher brothers (the Gondor Calls for Ale podcast)

Conveniently available on Spotify!

We made it to Tennessee after hours of MESBG chat!

We stopped at an awesome pizza place in Knoxville called A Dopo Sourdough Pizza. Truly some of the best pizza I've ever had! The service was top notch; they even squeezed us in without a reservation. Highly recommended if you're going through Knoxville!

MY LIST

Well, this is what I've been working for over the last few weeks! My painting has crawled thanks to Battletech, and life... so this is the list! Elendil and the boys making their first tournament appearances.

What's there to say about the list, really? Cirdan is my "I can face any weird situation" contingency plan, and besides that it's a solid battle line with elves in the front and strength 4 spears in the back. Elendil and Glorfindel are free to cut loose and make things happen!

So without further ado... on to the first game of five! 

Game One vs Evan's Necromancer Legendary Legion in Fog of War

I forget Evan's exact list but it was the Necromancer and 8 of the named ringwraiths. The mission was Fog of War. I knew I'd have a hard time killing stuff thanks to their resurrection rules, but I figured with his -1 to duel rolls and my F5/elven blade combos, I chose Khamul the Easterling as my target. For my terrain piece, I chose the brown plowed field just in front of Evan's forces. I chose to protect Glorfindel, which was risky in hindsight for how aggressive I played him.

Normally I really do not like all-hero armies but I gotta say this LL was super cool, a ton of fun to play against, and really not oppressive. Probably because you do tend to kill them regularly.. it's just rarely for good!

We both advanced right up the middle. Cirdan got both aura of dismay and aura of command up and running, and promptly came under attack from the Necromancer. At this point, I assumed he was the target and did my best to keep him hiding!

All semblance of "battle lines" disappear once wraiths start dying and popping up all over the place. Elendil and Glorfindel have a field day, generally riding together for Glorfindel's elven blade (which makes the wraiths resurrection roll a 3+ vs a 2+).

While I lost a handful of troops, by and large the Nazgul were getting beaten up pretty badly by the Last Alliance; and though they only rarely failed a resurrection roll, each failed one cost Evan a might point and by the mid game his Might stores were starting to look pretty thin.

Glorfindel's high water mark was when he charged two, got trapped, and then slew all three in one fight. Elf lords for the win.

At some point, Evan ran out of might with his first Nazgul (the Lingering Shadow) who he retreated deep into my board edge. I figured I'd lose that terrain piece, and Evan had wisely chosen one that would take a few turns to navigate to (the big watchtower you can see in the earlier pics).

Now the chase was on. I had secured my terrain piece, and a few Nazgul had fallen for good- but not Khamul and not the Necromancer.

Elendil continued pushing hard, as Glorfindel closed the trap from the other direction.

Glorfindel starts putting in work on the Necromancer.

Glorfindel and Elendil meet up and finish off Khamul.

The Nazgul really fell apart right there at the end... with his target terrain captured and me scoring... pretty much everything else this one was an auspicious start for the Last Alliance netting me a 12-3. 

Honestly, this was an uphill match for Evan, I think. I'm not sure how I would have played it differently if I were in his shoes, but boy this is an interesting LL that I am actually interested to try. I love that they're strong until they just start super falling apart. Seems like a fun list to both play and play against.

CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO

I'll go over my next 2 games in part two! Thanks for stopping by!