No Ultimate Bragging rights were achieved in the first week of flipped tables in Zoom League for a replay of Shifting Objectives @ 2K with players now using their opponent’s lists.

Until late in the game it looked like Bonesplitterz were going to pull out their first win.  Somebody apparently told Pebbles, or Rogue Idol, that Forgeworld had decided to cancel him and he didn’t take it well as he moved into the middle where it preceded to put a beating down in the early rounds; wiping out a unit of Ironguts and a unit of Mournfang.

Pebbles would finally fall to the Frostlord on Stonehorn but by that point he’d allowed Bonesplitterz to hold onto a modest VP lead by giving them control of the middle of the board and essentially “freezing” the Frostlord in place for two turns before dying in R3.

It was 6-5 at the end of R1.  11-9 at end of R2.  At the bottom of R3 it was the Bonesplitterz turn and if they did almost nothing they were going to go up 15-12.   Really they just had to hold on against the single Mournfang in the West (which would also remove the last battleline Mawtribes could use to wrack up bonus points) and an Icebrow Hunter.  At worst they  were well positioned to go up 14-12.  At that point the Mawtribes list would be scrambling to move around the board with the limited units they had left to close the gap in the final rounds and need a little luck as to where the primary objective fell at that.

Instead, (maybe because they forgot they were no playing an army that largely sucked in melee instead of the Mawtribes they had grown used to?) Bonesplitterz tried to move their Arrowboys off the central objective to a potential charge into the Huskard on Stonehorn sitting on the primary objective.  But when the charge failed they were left in no man’s land, too far away to give a bonus for the Central objective but nowhere close enough to challenge in the West.  Net result was a 13-12 game at end of R3.

Bonesplitterz got lucky and got the double turn but then charged the Arrowboys into the newly freed up Frostlord, (it went as well as you’d expect, refilling Mawpot to add insult to injury) conceding the primary objective in the East under the Huskard’s control.  This would push the score to 17-12 but in their turn Mawtribes would score the East and the West to close the gap to 17-16 at which point the Bonesplitterz only had two models left.  In R5 when the objective came down under Mawtribes control and Mawtribes won initiative Bonesplitterz conceded the game.

As the concierge this was a tough one as I really felt like Bonesplitterz could hold out for a VP win even if they were tabled if they’d just played for VP at the end of R3. They’d get bad luck admittedly with how the primary fell a couple times it a 3 VP lead at end of R3 looks like it might have held and even been extended to a 4 VP lead in R4 that, without battleline and down to a few units, could’ve stood a tabling in R5.  Given how familiar the player piloting Bonesplitterz this game was with Mawtribes they should’ve known that the while they were low on models, the two Stonehorns were going to be pretty resilient.  But in talking with them post game they seemed to get fixated on taking out one of the two remaining Stonehorns and thus made moves that hurt them on a VP level and cost them the game.

On the Fyreslayers main thread I went into detail on Khorne vs. Fyreslayers.  The net of that match was while as Khorne I had a plan to end the Fyreslayer win streak I’d built up it (a) took too long to develop so even though I pulled off the key elements it didn’t matter because (b) a couple failed charges and a couple dozen 2s on the dice in R1 meant that I scored 0 VP after my opponent had wracked up the full 7 in their first turn and it was just too big a deficit to climb out of.

Coming up we have the Khorne v Mawtribes and Fyreslayers v Bonesplitterz rematches in Scorched Earth.  Really hoping to see a reversal this round.  Hoping Pebbles is still angry at FW and does as well for me as he did last week!