Yesterday was the last Age of Sigmar tournament for me prior to the 2017 Las Vegas Open. It was hosted by Game Empire Pasadena and jointly run by their staff and Scott Reed.

The event used a similar rules pack to LVO’s. 2000 points with a 500 point sideboard from the General’s Handbook.  Again I brought my Nurgle Rotbringer list led by The Glotkin and his Lieutenant Bloab Rotspawned.  My sideboard had 500 points of Daemons of Nurgle but I did not dip into them for the event.

For my first game I was matched against David and his Tomb King army. He didn’t have snakes but he did have tons of chariots! I deployed mostly in the center of my deployment zone. I have learned my army does better moving slowly (4″ movement for the Rotbringers) as a cohesive army and turtle over the objective when it drops in turn 2 rather than try to cover all three potential objective areas. Each deployment zone had a Chaos Dreadhold with gate wrapping around a table corner. I elected to go first on turn one hoping to bait David’s chariots into my Warriors of Chaos and Chaos Spawn. It worked out pretty well. He had a unit of insanely buffed chariots fly right into my warriors and killed the whole unit but I was able to pile in with a unit of Putrid Blightkings and return the favor. I found that by taking the first turn against very fast armies allows me to get The Glotkins very crucial command ability to activate. 20 attacks from 5 Blightkings is WAY better than 15. When the objectives landed in turn two David’s was in his open right flank and of course mine landed in the Chaos Dreadhold… where there was only really one way in. I was able to run Bloab in and get the objective while slowly running the rest of my army over to block the gates entrance. However, by turn 4 David was able to contest my objective securing him the victory. I had a small opportunity in turn 5 to charge Bloab across the board and contest David’s objective but he was able to kill The Glotkin standing on mine and capped both. This was a very fun game and the game was essentially decide by me failing to score one more wound on his one heros contesting my objective and his ability to get exactly 18 wounds on The Glotkin turn 5.

My next game was against Frank and his army of Death. It was led by a Vampire on Zombie Dragon assisted by a Ghoul King on Terrorgheist, Vampire lord on Abyssal Terror, and Crypt Ghast Courtier. They led 3 units of 20 Ghouls and a unit of 5 Blood Knights. The mission was Three Places of Power so we both had a good amount of heroes to capture objectives. Again, I elected to go first and surged my army to the central and right flank objectives. Frank then blew my mind. He Charged his Ghoul King on Terrorgheist into a gap I had dead center of 3 units of troops and his Vampire Lord on Terrorgheist straight behind my line and into The Glotkin. His Abyssal Terror and Courtier went for the left and right flank objectives. Frank activated his Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon first. He did a good amount of damage dealing 9 wounds… then my jaw dropped. Being his General Frank gave his Vampire Lord the Allegiance Ability Red Fury. This meant he automatically got to attack again because he did more than 6 wounds. This time the Vampire laid The Glotkin to rest with a massive amount of wounds from himself and his Zombie Dragon. The Terrorgheist on the other had targeted a unit of Chaos Warriors that were buffed with Mystic Shield and Fleshy Abundance (an extra wound per model). I piled in on the Terrorgheist with 2 units of Blightkings and worked him down the next 2 turns. I had some luck in turns 2 and 3 against the Zombie Dragon getting a unit of Blight Kings and Lord of Plagues to finally take the beast and his master down. By turn 4 I had the center and right flank objectives secure and was in a position to kill the Abyssal Terror and cap the left flank. Realizing this Frank called it as I was quickly taking control of the board (Ghouls die fast to Blightkings) and he was out of heroes. I won 16-15. It was very tight despite my table control.

For the final game of the event I was matched against Garry and his legion of zombies. I believe he had a Vampire Lord on foot, 3 Necromancers, 2 Mortis Engines, a Corps cart, a unit of Dire wolves, and an uncountable amount of 10 man unit of Zombies. The scenario was  Blood and Glory. For the first time ever with my Blightguard I decided to go on the offensive and attempt to cap all 4 objectives. I felt my army was faster and did not want to get bogged down by zombies defending my deployment zone where their sheer number would allow them to steal the objectives away from me. The first turn was uneventful as we both shamble up the board. Gary did summon in a Balewind Vortex by one of his Necromancers and now had a 28 inch summon range for a 400 point pool he had left in reserves. Turn two Garry combined 4 units of zombies, summoned in 20 more into them , and got off Dance Macabre on them. Next he charged with an 11 and was able to get that single unit of 60 zombies in combat with 2 units of Blight kings. In his first activation Garry killed 3 Blightkings from one unit but the other only took 3 wounds. I activated the full strength unit of Blightkings and rolled 12 sixes out of 20. Sixes on a to hit roll for Blightkings become D6 hits. That turned into 50 something hits re-rolling to wound rolls of 1 per my Battalion and Gary had to make a little over 40 wound saves… he didn’t make many. Next he activated what he had left in that unit thanks to Dance Macabre and was able to kill another Blightking. Then the battle shock happened and the rest of the zombie unit fled. Between that and losing his Dire Wolves and a Mortis engine in my turn Garry conceded and we shook hands. He still had a lot of models on the table but I took out close to 1000 points in turn two and took the will to fight out of his army.

David from my first game ended up winning a well deserved first! I ended up taking second overall for the event along with best sportsman (despite making a unit of 60 zombies explode on their charge) and Scott was awarded best painted by the staff of Game Empire.

It was another great SoCal Age of Sigmar event and truly appreciate the event organizers and the players for coming out!

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