Gaz Taylor Posted November 6, 2017 Share Posted November 6, 2017 I just thought I would do a quick review about my time at the first Shadespire Grand Clash and my thoughts about it. Like most people who have seen it and played it, I think Shadespire is a great game. So when it was announced it was going to have a Grand Clash at Blood and Glory, I jumped at the chance to be able to play in it. It was interesting going to the event as I had a rough idea how the game worked but didn't actually get chance to play a game of it when it was released. As somebody who learns by doing things rather than reading about them, I was treating this as a fun event to play a load of games rather than have hopes of winning it or getting into the top 32 to get some of the prize support. GW was also at the event, providing prize support and running the event. I used the Sepulchral Guard as they are cool models and I ran a twitter poll to see what my followers wanted me to use. My initial thoughts with the warband, is that while they are slow and not very hard hitting, they seemed to have some good game control mechanics and numbers. This screamed to me that they could do the claiming Objectives game fairly well. My Power and Objective decks were centered around this as well as going for easy to do objectives (such as Stymied where you got a Glory Point if your opponent didn't use any power cards). Match One - Joe with Sepulchral Guard I'm not going to do a full turn by turn report as my memory isn't that good and I think it would be dull to read. This was going to be an interesting game as Joe hadn't played with Sepulchral Guard before or Shadespire! So as we were both in the same boat, our first game was very cagey as we were trying to work out what did what. Second game was bit quicker with both of us being aggressive. It was fairly close at the start of both games but Joe was able to pull more and more points due to getting better Objectives than me. I also made a big mistake in game two and left an opening for my Warden to get assassinated. Whilst not the end of days for me, it meant I had to take less risks with the rest of the warband. Match Two - Alex with Khorne Bloodbound After a mix up with pairings, both myself and Alex had been missed off the draw. Although Alex had won his first Match and I had lost mine, I was quite happy to play him as it kept things simple and meant no messing around with redrawing. This was Alex's first tournament and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He had done GW games before but had a bit of a break and rediscovered things with Shadespire and got entry to the event the night before! This game was fun as I had a grasp of the rules now and a rough idea how my decks worked and I played quite aggressively. Game One I was able to kill everything in Alex's warband but in Game Two he was able to get a win. We discovered we didn't quite have enough time for Game three but decided to play a round to work out the winner. I managed to get this due being lucky with my Objective Deck and claiming the objectives in my board getting me a win! Match Three - John with Orruks Last match of the day and it's against John with Orruks. I decided to keep playing how I have been and see how it works against the Orruks. This was a repeat of how my match against Alex went, with Game One being a slaughter to me and John got game two with Objectives. We had just enough time for a round of Game three which resulted in a draw! At the end of the event, I managed to come 41st out of 79 and I was quite pleased with this because I had no preparation time to practice the game or using my warband. I felt that I had played okay and not made many big mistakes (most of them were not playing a ploy or upgrade when I needed to but that's due to being unfamiliar with the cards), but I think the biggest issue I had was not playing fast enough. I think if I had played faster, I would have been able to get more Glory Points and wins which would have helped me place a bit higher (but not by much). I'm still learning but I think my decks need to be reworked. I was suspecting that dropping Objectives 1 to 5 from my deck might be a good option for me, which has sort of been confirmed with what I know of Rhu's deck (Rhu won the Grand Clash). Need to practice but I think I will be getting better at this game! Event Review I enjoyed the event. The venue is amazing and I thought the room we had was quite well laid out for all the people in the event. GW support was great, as the staff were on hand to help out with any queries and there was plenty of stuff to buy a day early! I only had two issues with the event. Firstly, the Match timings seemed very tight. I think if you had been playing a while, it would have been okay but I would say around a third to half the players had played less than a few games. For the future I would like to see this increased slightly. Secondly, was the wait time between Matches but I know it's quite complex entering all the results, especially when a lot of games were finishing right at the end of the round! So my advice to anybody attending an event, is learn how to play quicker! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CanHammer-darren Posted November 6, 2017 Share Posted November 6, 2017 Thanks! I’ve been suspecting that playing heavy objectives for sepulchral guard is actually a trap given how slow they are. Was that your experience? I also suspected that they in fact hit harder than their numbers would indicate. Thoughts? how much time was each matchup? I’ve seen other places use 1.5 hours. What was in the winning list? whats in your new list? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaz Taylor Posted November 6, 2017 Author Share Posted November 6, 2017 35 minutes ago, CanHammer-darren said: Thanks! I’ve been suspecting that playing heavy objectives for sepulchral guard is actually a trap given how slow they are. Was that your experience? I also suspected that they in fact hit harder than their numbers would indicate. Thoughts? Tough to say at the moment. At first I was thinking Objectives would be the way to go as it's very easy to include them in your Objective Deck, plus there are upgrade cards to enhance how many points you get. I was thinking with the action to move two additional models, this would be easy. How wrong was I. With all the models being move 2 (or move 3 when inspired), you just don't have the speed to get them where they need to be. Also a clever opponent would look at placing objective tokens quite deep to try and deny you access to them (but you can buff up a model to move 5/6 quite easily if you get a lucky draw). So I'm thinking dropping these and going for some of the other objective cards would be best. But then again, that is what works for me. Other players may have no issue with this. 40 minutes ago, CanHammer-darren said: how much time was each matchup? I’ve seen other places use 1.5 hours. I think it was 1.5 hours but you also had to factor in 80 people moving around in a room and setting up. I think in time with lots of games, this wouldn't be an issue but to be safe, you could increase it to 2 hours. I'm guessing on playtesting they factored in 1.5 but this was quite a large event. 42 minutes ago, CanHammer-darren said: What was in the winning list? No idea. Sure it will be up on the Warhammer Community site later this week. It's on the Twitch stream but I've not had chance to properly watch it so not sure how much detail they will go into. 44 minutes ago, CanHammer-darren said: whats in your new list? I think for me it's ditching the Objective 1-5 cards and then replacing those with some of the other ones and seeing how it pans out. I was fairly happy with my Power Deck as I kept it quite generic but I think there were some cool cards I could include (like the one which causes damage to anybody who moves) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killax Posted November 6, 2017 Share Posted November 6, 2017 Cool report, thanks for sharing! I think The Sepulchral Guard are a great Warband to grow into as you know more options and chances of having models killed, though if you do roughly know and understand those chances the Sepulchral Guard become amazing. Like you, I believe Hold 1 to 5 are amazing for this Warband and will almost guarantee a win the moment you can actually place 3 Objectives on your side of the board. In addition to that I also think it helps you out to have a really good look at the boards as I feel all boards are equally relevant to undead and versus specific match ups I do believe you want specific boards. This is true for most Warbands but the guard can actually play more aggressively against Bloodreavers and Orks while Stormcast require a well thought out mix of Objective runs and offence. Have fun! Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
someone2040 Posted November 7, 2017 Share Posted November 7, 2017 15 hours ago, Gaz Taylor said: I think it was 1.5 hours but you also had to factor in 80 people moving around in a room and setting up. I think in time with lots of games, this wouldn't be an issue but to be safe, you could increase it to 2 hours. I'm guessing on playtesting they factored in 1.5 but this was quite a large event. I reckon the first (and only so far) Shadespire game I've played actually took 1.5 hours just to play a single match. That being said, I had read the rules and had a vague idea what was going on, while my opponent had watched a game or two on youtube, but hadn't read the rules. So a lot of the time was spent trying to get him familiar with the rules and how to set up, etc. I think to be fair, 1.5 hour is probably a fine time once people are experienced with the game. But 2 weeks after release of Shadespire, it probably wasn't enough time as most people are still quite new and fresh to the game (And I'm sure there would've been plenty of people like yourself who had only played a couple of times before the event, perhaps not at all with the warband they were taking). Anyway, was very cool to read your write up. Sounds like it was a bunch of fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbanus Posted November 7, 2017 Share Posted November 7, 2017 Excellent write-up. Thanks for sharing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valenae Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Where can I look at table of results of Blood and Glory? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaz Taylor Posted November 10, 2017 Author Share Posted November 10, 2017 15 minutes ago, Valenae said: Where can I look at table of results of Blood and Glory? They've been added to the Blood and Glory Site now - https://bloodandglory.baddice.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Blood-and-Glory-Ranking-Rankings.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killax Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 15 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said: They've been added to the Blood and Glory Site now - https://bloodandglory.baddice.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Blood-and-Glory-Ranking-Rankings.pdf Thanks Gaz! I really feel that with the 4 Warbands the balance is good. Each seem to have a particular counter in either combat roles or objective roles, which I really like because that's what's the game all about and makes every game so different. Was hooked from the start but will certainly not let it go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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