ASOIAF:TMG East Anglia Grand Tournament Report

Finally I have found time to finish off the write up for the East Anglia Grand Tournament. The event is the biggest ASOIAF:TMG event in the UK for Season 6 so far. Many people from across the community attended the event, and I took my well oiled Neutral forces to judge their performance in a competitive environment. I played some incredible games against players I have never had the chance to interact with, and one has become my favourite game of my entire time playing. Without waiting any longer, let’s get into it. 

My Forces – Golden Company and Harrenhal

List 1 - Golden Company

List 2 - Harrenhal

Those of you who have read or followed my series on the competitive scene so far may be familiar with some of the themes of my Neutral forces. My Harrenhal lists tend to be a thematic mixture of forces who have resided at the ruin during the War of the Five Kings such as the Boltons and Mummers, in addition to shady figures for the NCU slot like Petyr Baelish. This list is designed as a Panic Test casino, backed up by the best light cavalry Unit in the game. I know that is a hot take when Riders of Highgarden are doing so well with Brotherhood players, but I promise these are better due to the utility of Motley Armaments. 

This list is incredibly flimsy having four Units with a 5+ Armour, and pretty weak morale across the board. I am relying on failed Panic Tests and a hefty initial attack from the Zorse Riders to punch through, if either don’t work then the game is over. A lot of eggs in one type of basket, but fingers crossed my luck pays off. 

My Golden Company list is a little mismatched as it was designed to show off some of my favourite freehand paintjobs across the neutral range, whilst also experimenting with some playstyles. Trying out different Attachments such as Ramsay/Reek in Stormcrow Mercs pains my thematic heart but was an incredible combination. The mercs were converted to match my Golden Company with spears and new shields with some freehand, but Ramsay is just a misplaced pick. However, the rules he brings amplifies the melee dedicated light infantry unit, and it becomes a huge problem for all my opponents to shift. I will need to figure out a good character to convert them both into. 

The War Elephant worried me since it just doesn’t perform when I bring it. I was planning to play it more reserved and use it for a pass whilst bringing it forward later in the game, whilst also utilising Issue Commands to get the most effective attack. It is only here so I can enter the monster category for painting, but it is looking like one of the last chances for me to consider it for future builds.

Leading up to the event, my hopes are that I can utilise my extensive knowledge on how to use Neutrals with some average lists to perform as best as I can across the event. GTs bring out some of the toughest opponents and gives you a fresh opportunity to test yourself. As long as I am proud of my performance with few mistakes then I will be satisfied. Let’s get into the first day. 

Day 1 – War for the North

Game 1 – Sherwood Starks

Stark List

The first game was drawn against George from the Sherwood Brotherhood; a tight knit friendship group who I met for the first time at the Sheffield event a few weeks prior to the EAGT. I was ecstatic to be playing one of the members of the group at the event and it was a relaxing way to begin the day. Although, as soon as I realised it was Starks I got concerned about Tully Cavaliers showing up since it feels almost impossible to kill the Unit. A lesson I learned from the Sheffield Event going up against Psychoste’s dual Tully Cav.

Fortune favoured me at this moment when I saw that George had no Tully Cavaliers in either list. I could breathe again. With the gamemode being Dance With Dragons (my least favourite gamemode) I knew it would come down to who got two tokens first, which was not myself thanks to the Tully Sworn Shields sporting their new 5 Movement and rushing for the center objective. George outflanked his Bowman with Robb NCU to get the left objective, whilst I raced Dervishes to get the third and be lined the entire game to the Stark deployment zone for a spot prize. 

In hindsight, if I abandoned the spot prize and included the Dervishes in the game, it may have been a very different outcome since it was so incredibly close at 9-10 to George by the end. There were other moments which weren’t the best tactical choice but were funny to do. After so many games playing against Grey Wind flanking around and being a nuisance, I saw red and took the little fella out straightaway, leaving Stark Outriders to stare down a few Units of my force. They were also swiftly dealt with. 

But aside from this, no other combats were significant. I kept a wide berth from the Bowmen due to the Crannogman Warden, and due to the objective providing them with a 2” move they never got into the game. So we both had Units not taking part but scoring a few points here and there. However, my Hedge Knights looped around and managed to take down the Bowmen in the end. My main focus was on the Tully Sworn Shields with Brynden Commander attached, which was an impossibility to defeat.

Rickard Karstark with a Crannogman Survivalist inside Stormcrow Dervishes was a really strong combination. I don’t think Set For Charge was ever played, but they didn’t need it since they took down the Elephant and Golden Company Swordsmen relatively on their own. Rickard attachment is finding his place in the Stark force in this season.

It was a really fun game, and I got a EAGT 2025 mug out of it that I am more than sure I will accidentally drink paint water out of. A close loss for the first game. 

Game 2 – Wardens of the South Starks 

Stark List

I must have counted myself lucky far too early in the event. Celebrating no Tully Cavaliers in the previous game came back to bite me hard for the second game in which Brad from the Wardens in the South decided to bring the two George forgot and add it to his two for a killer list. Honestly, I was terrified but thankful. This would be a super quick game and then I can wander around, mingle, and take some nice pictures. The Old Gods had different plans however. 

I have played against Starks a lot over the years but not enough against the Tully Cavaliers to know the best way to face them with Neutrals. That being said, I have faced Brynden Cav Commander a lot and know to stay well away from a sentinel lance charge. From the get go it was going to be about survival, which meant the Golden Company was brought back out. The strength of the Neutral deck under Daario is Weakened token spam. At no point in the game was there a Unit not Weakened because I knew how to dish them out and when. 

Add these tokens to double bog terrain, positioning to block charges, and some darn good lucky rolls, and it took several turns for Brad to make a dint into one of my units to take them down. But as the game was crawling on, we were tying on points from the special missions of The Winds of Winter. We had 10 minutes left and knew we could both play quickly enough to get the final round in. 

It was 4-4, and both my missions would not help me get more points without giving Brad the same amount of points, I needed to take down another unit to take me to 5pts and may need to take a zone on the Tactics Board to help with this. If I did take a zone, it would tie the game again thanks to Brad’s mission selection. However, in this instance I would win with points on the table. I just needed to do whatever I could to kill one more unit. Brad chose to flee and survive which meant my Hedge Knights were the only unit able to chase them down.

Going first I took the Swords, followed up with an Issue Commands charge as he retreated, and then finally the Hedge Knight’s own action. We were so close to killing the Unit but failed to do so. Ending the game on time, and Brad winning the game. 

Another close loss with only losing the Dervishes accompanied by Rorge. The strength of always keeping your opponent Weakened and stripping their rerolls from terrain is enough to save anyone it would seem since the rest of my army was relatively untouched. Playing one of the worst Factions in the game against one of the biggest menaces and coming out with a close loss is nuts. This was one of the best games of ASOIAF I have played and I am super happy with my performance. 

Game 3 – Wardens of the South Starks 

Stark List

Third game of the first day, and it is my third game against Starks. This was also my second game against a Warden of the South, and it was a tense game with cagey positioning from both sides throughout. I was concerned about the manoeuvrability of the Starks and so chose to stick with the Golden Company Daario Naharis list to try and keep an advantage on the table if one of my units got caught out of place. 

Something I tend to notice with a lot of events is that playing cagey for too long will result in your downfall if you do not have the upper hand. Most of the time it is an objective advantage which is difficult to achieve with Clash of Kings. I pushed the Hedge Knights up a flank that had the Stark Sworn Sword Units on it, Steve never chose to move up with them fearing what the Hedge Knights could do. So for the whole game my cavalry sat on an objective whilst Sworn Swords looked at them, neither unit moving too much. 

After a turn of burning resources to get into the best positions possible, Steve threw the Berserkers into the opposite flank against the Dervishes who managed to hold on. They delayed the Umbers enough for the Stormcrow Mercs with Ramsay to sling in between them due to Robb pulling too far away, resulting in Ramsay getting into the rear of the Umbers. We traded units for the Umbers to be killed whilst the Elephant cleaned them up. But this put me on a victory point advantage and objective advantage. Mostly because I was able to focus my forces on the immediate threats whilst the opposing force didn’t take the risk of pushing forward. 

By this point in the game Robb had done very little, whilst the Stark Sworn Swords never dedicated themselves into the Hedge Knights. Slowly I built up an advantage on objectives due to gambling my position forward whilst Steve stayed away from me. Some good dice rolls on my end, and some bad ones on Steve’s end made the outcome very clear. 

It was great to play against Steve, but I think the long hot day had gotten to him since he forgot to use Ned’s tokens, and wasted Arya’s very quickly. I learnt the hard way how cagey play results in a loss. You need to commit to throwing something up and expecting them to get hit hard just so you can push the conflict along, otherwise you will run out of time to turn the tides. 

Game 4 – Microwaved Free Folk

Free Folk List

Fourth game of the weekend was against Jacob and the game was streamed live on Yecats Miniatures channel. I have known Jacob for a while but never had a chance to play against him; mainly because Jacob is a really good player floating around the top tables. Free Folk is a faction I rarely get to play against and so I am in the dark on the best tactics to use against them. It will be a learning experience for sure. 

I decided to bring my eight activation Harrenhal list expecting to get some big panic tests from Spread Fear on the low morale Free Folk. On top of this, the removal of abilities from the Zorse Riders and Roose’s Flayed Men Have No Secrets card, will be very important for dealing with the Bonelord’s Chosen who are a difficult unit to take on. 

Every now and then you get a game where luck can make or break you. For me it was the fact that Jacob didn’t fail a single morale test for Spread Fear to go off. There were a lot of opportunities even to the point where I debated about spending a Vulnerable token to keep his Varamyr alive for the chance at a failed morale, and start the spreading of fear. But it just didn’t pay off. 

This cost me the game due to the gamemode being Fire and Blood. The Free Folk unit I had marked and generated extra VPs on just got out with one model left. Had there been a failed morale at any point that unit would be dead drastically bringing VPs up and in my favour. But since I overextended myself into this, it was myself who lost a unit worth a lot of points sky rocketing Jacob into a crushing win.

This all took place on one side of the board, as the other side saw both my Zorse Riders go up against Raiders with Harma in one of them. I used positioning to block some charges and limit the amount of damage coming in on my cavalry, and I managed to pull off a rear charge into the Bonelord’s Chosen. There is never going to be a better chance to take them out, and I whiffed. Failed to do enough of an impact and fled before the tides started to turn drastically. 

I wish that the game could have been more tense had one of the above two scenarios gone differently. It would have been an entertaining watch but instead the game was cut short. As mentioned previously, a lot of my eggs were in one basket with this list hoping that one failed morale would turn the tide. In all of my practice games players just don’t seem to fail panic tests for this to go off, I just cannot seem to make this work and it’s devastating when it doesn’t. 

Game 5 – Neutral Aftermath

Neutral List

After playing nothing but Starks on the first day I was hoping for a lighter run on the second. With a major loss now under my belt from the fourth game it shot me down to another Neutral player for a Neutral showdown between Roose and Vargo. This was with Peter from Norwich Aftermath and was one of my favourite opponents from this event. I decided to run my Roose list again here as I was still adamant that I was close to making it work, but also to counter the double Blackguard’s Horrific Visage in the opposing force. 

We were playing Honed and Ready which is a favourite gamemode of mine. It did make me feel nervous since I had very weak units to survive the shots from the wall after scoring, and then my opponent had units that were very likely to survive. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

Speaking of which, I decided to make a very strong early game gamble against my opponent. I was going first on the second round and he left an opening for one of my Zorse Riders to charge his Golden Company Crossbowmen in the flank, and then be behind enemy lines. This would be a huge thorn in Peter’s side to have to deal with since only one unit of Blackguard with Sandor would be able to do anything, and it would pull him from the objective. So I manoeuvre and march all the way up and prepare for a charge in the opening of the second round.

With my reckless charge comes Peter’s Careless Aggression; he is able to make an attack with a unit at the start of the round. He shifts to the side with the Crossbowmen, shoots my Zorse Riders, and now I have an injured cavalry unit with no space to charge the Crossbowmen in the flank. My plan is foiled, and I am ambushed. Rather than spending all my resources on fleeing alive, I decided to commit to the attack and risk the damage. I did a good amount of work on both the Crossbowmen and Blackguard in that flank, but by the end of the game a few wounds are left on both. However, whilst all that was going on, there was a game of cat and mouse, or should I say leech and goat? 

Whilst Sandor held the objective on the right flank, the Dervishes held the objective on the left flank. I wanted to engage these but it would mean I would send my Zorse Riders into a stronger unit who is backed up by a unit of Zorse Riders. We were at a stalemate. In the middle Vargo rushed the middle objective and so did I with Roose. I did end up losing Roose to Vargo’s Sadistic Mutilation. 

Once my opponent committed with the Zorse Riders I sent my Cutthroats up to take the objective from the Dervishes. Eventually we did take this and caught the Zorse Riders. We have point advantage and objective advantage, but it would come down to whether or not Roose could survive against Vargo and the remaining Crossbowmen. I only just held on whilst Sandor was standing on his own from the bow shots as well as my other Zorse Riders who spent the whole game on an objective being shot from the wall. 

It was super close. One failed save here and there could have turned the game in any direction. I scraped a win out of the game but it felt a lot more like a tie. I would have loved to have seen what the Zorse Riders were able to do in the flank and rear of the opposing force, but the luck of the draw on Careless Aggression was an incredible moment that I will not be forgetting anytime soon. 

Game 6 – Bruces’ Brotherhood

Brotherhood List

As soon as I saw I was playing Brotherhood I started to get really nervous. The Brotherhood are the new hotness in the game with a lot of powerful abilities and combinations that see them at the top of the leaderboards in a lot of areas. It is difficult to face them with a good force, and I decided to bring a thematic list for a faction that is performing poorly. However, what turned this whole game around was the player. Wayne was a blast to play against and our match showed off how the game is about positioning and strategy more so than about who is better at killing. 

Since Brotherhood are really good at killing I decided to bring my Daario list to make sure the opposing aces were always Weakened to hamper their attacks. Wayne got really annoyed throughout the match in a joking way with how often he was Weakened but it was the only thing that kept me alive. By the end of the game I had lost no units, so it speaks volumes how powerful Weakened spam is. 

The gamemode was A Game Of Thrones, and the very first thing that happened was stakes under the center objective with Beric Dondarrion positioned to go straight for it. As soon as I saw this I decided to not bother with the middle and start thinking about how to take a flank objective from the Brotherhood. However, I didn’t want Wayne to know this, so I flung the Golden Company Swordsmen with Daario at them but refused to get into engagements whilst blocking the Sentinel charge. I am unsure whether Beric attacked once, or whether the Golden Company did at any point, but the ploy worked. Beric sat in the middle ll game with Stag Knights doing nothing to my forces.

On the right flank I had Hedge Knights and Dervishes staring down Men-at-Arms with Lemoncloak and a Peasant Levy with Sandor. My Dervishes would charge in, retreat back to the objective each turn, slowly shrinking the unit size down of the peasants which negated the effectiveness of this over the game with so much healing. The Hedge Knights were a little too cagey, but they did throw a punch in here early on against the Men-at-Arms which almost wiped them out. But, the healing brought them back up quickly and I didn’t take advantage of this to hammer the peasants as I was worried about the capabilities of the Men-at-Arms flank or rear charging me. 

I should have committed to the fight here and done as much as possible to force my way through risking the attack. But in not doing so resulted in the flank remaining strong and no one overtaking each other on the right side of the board. 

The left side was slightly different. Ramsay with the Stormcrow Mercs held against Gendry Golden Company but were backed up by the Elephant eventually. No one fell here but we did cancel some scoring here and there from healing or higher ranks. The Elephant did threaten the Peasants but again I was too late to commit to this attack that it was too late for me to over take. If there was one more round it would have turned the tides in one way or another. 

Because of Beric sitting on the middle objective, Wayne did take the win here. I should have learned to commit to an attack by now, but the risk was far too great and it pushed me away from doing so just too late. However, going up against Brotherhood and not losing a single unit and ending on round 6 is a crazy result. It is all down to Daario’s cards mixed with the base Neutral deck; too many Weakened Tokens to chew through. 

Painting 

There were a lot of amazing paintjobs at the event and far too many to go over in this section, however I do want to go over some of my personal favourites.

Simon took home the coveted Best Army Award for his Brotherhood Without Banners. It has been a really difficult task picking the right picture to capture the talent he exhibits but I settled on the item that drew most peoples attention; the diorama. Every aspect of the force was executed with outstanding precision that the whole army stood out. when you zoomed in on one model it was a work of art. The diorama is a nice touch to give more depth to the vision of the painter. Brilliant work from Simon.

Tomas had multiple pieces in his army that were stunning at the event, and it was tough to decide to feature either Harmen or Arianne Martell as the were both incredible. In the end I went with Harmen due to how crisp the paintjob is. The colours pop effortlessly but it is the tiny details of some orchards on the base or the scratches of the fabric from wear. Well deserved win for single miniature.

This is not the first time we have featured Johnny’s Boltons in one of the articles and it for sure will not be the last either. Johnny has gone the extra mile on the Spearmen by designing a new shield for the unit that would work as a full block for the person carrying it. This reminds me of the shield wall scene in the Battle of the Bastards but better due to the vibrant paintjob given to the forces of the Dreadfort.

I enjoy when people get creative with the base design for their miniatures and Daniel took it to a whole new level to create the Red Keep as a plinth for his Kingsguard. To push this unit further, each member of the Kingsguard is converted with details to match them to their characters, my favourite being the stand in for Sandor Clegane with the Hound helmet. It is a great idea to elevate a unit into a center piece of you force.

Quite a few people put a lot of care into their activation banners due to how they are not as exciting to paint up as your characters or dynamic units. Dan on the other hand has created a great atmosphere with his paint job turning the banners into a gritty-bloody showcase of the Bolton reputation. It stood out to me as one of my favourite paint jobs due to the blood effect.

Final Thoughts

The EAGT was an incredible event and one that I enjoyed so much that I will definitely be attending the next one without any hesitation. The best part of the event was meeting new people from the community due to it being an area I haven’t travelled to that often. I made some memories of this game that I will keep with me forever and know to bring a fan next time for the heat.

In terms of performance I am very proud with what I was able to achieve. I felt like I have moved into a new era for my skills seeing that I was able to take a mediocre army and do well against some tough matchups. All I need to do is hone my lists, get some more practice in, and hope the luck of the dice rolls are on my side. That being said the closeness of all the games were the highlight since a tense game is far more enjoyable than a boring quick one. I have never gone the full time before at an event for a game, and I found myself doing it so many times because of the tension.

Honestly one of the best experiences in ASOIAF:TMG so far!

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