Cronch’s Road Through 2025, Part 5: Trinity Throwdown: Revengeance

Welcome back chums. Last time, I was getting battered by pod co-host Matthew, and prepping for running an Age of Sigmar RTT at my local store. This time I’m going to focus on that event, and cover off a bit of hobby progress at the end.

Being a Tournament Organiser

Part of trying to grow and solidify a local scene for any game is running events in the system. Over the last couple of years, I’ve run a few events in my local city, single day events with minimal hobby requirements designed to tempt in as many attendees as possible. Broadly it’s gone well, we’re regularly getting 6-10 people turning up on Monday game nights for AoS games and there are probably around 18-20 active members of the community, with more appearing most months.

Thankfully some other members have started running events too, so it’s not just down to me! In the run up to and planning of this event I’d been looking forward to playing, but as it got closer I was kind of feeling like I might just like a day of doing some gentle hobby whilst supervising. In the end though, after some ticket swaps and drops, we were left with 9 people registered, plus me – I’d need to play to make sure I wasn’t forcing someone to sit out.

I’d decided up front (and communicated to attendees) that seeing as I was taking part, I’d be putting myself in contention for the 1st – 3rd place trophies, but excluding myself from eligibility from the painting and sports votes. In the event that I did win something, I’d be passing any actual prize element down to the next player. I think in a small event this strikes the right balance of encouraging myself to play competitively, hopefully without engendering any bad feelings over awarding myself prizes. Anyway, I didn’t expect it to be relevant, given that I was running the same Iridan the Witness list that I’d had two dramatic losses with in its previous outings.

Rich’s list - click to expand

I’ve explained the logic behind this before, but the idea is to have a couple of fast threats in Iridan and the Prime backed up by a resolute core of Reclusians, with the Prosecutors there to cause pain in the backfield. At the time of writing we’ve just had a Battlescroll with some points drops, so I’ll be looking to change this up before my next game.

As there are three games to get through, and also because on the day I was more focused on answering rules queries and keeping things running smoothly than taking photos and making notes, I’ll run through the games pretty quickly.

Game 1 – Linked Ley Lines vs Zippy’s Slaves to Darkness

Zippy’s list - click to expand

Zippy’s list is a love letter to big models – Archaon and Be’lakor, which doesn’t leave a huge amount of space for anything else. 30 Chaos Warriors are there to hold objectives, and the Chaos Lord is set up to give you an almost-guaranteed Daemon Prince thanks to Favoured of the Pantheon. Still, it’s potentially an uphill battle, and it needs to hit hard and early and then keep the big pieces alive, especially Be’lakor so that he can Dark Master any threats.

Zip won priority, and after a bit of deliberation decided to go first. Everything shuffled forward, but unfortunately he failed his charge with Archaon, leaving him 6” away from the Reclusian block. Because of this he havered on making his charge with Be’lakor, but eventually launched him into the Celestant-Prime. I used a counter-charge with Iridan to bring them into the fray, and Be’lakor was left alive but hurting.

In my turn Zippy used Dark Master on the Reclusians, which was a good choice as it locked them out of reliably engaging Archaon this turn. My shooting units dropped to grab an objective and pepper Archaon and Be’lakor, the latter of which was picked up this turn. In Zippy’s backfield, my Prosecutors dropped and then charged his terrain piece to grab his objective. A 16 point turn for me, to Zippy’s 11.

I won priority and gave Zip 1st turn. He cleverly chose to move away with Archaon and charge the smaller units in the backfield rather than smash him into the Reclusians. A selection of charges with a limited number of units made Wrathful Cycles part 2 an easy pickup for Zip as the underdog here. In return I spent the turn positioning, and chipping wounds off of Archaon with shooting units. I doubled into turn 3, picked up Archaon, and we talked the rest through – Zippy’s hero would become a demon prince at which point it would become easier to shoot off, with Iridan ready to finish it off on the charge. I was ahead on score with tactics in the bank.

Result: 72-33 Win

Zippy’s always a fun opponent, and this was his first game getting to grips with the army. A fun one nevertheless, and he went on to come 4th in the event with it!

Game 2 – Bountiful Equinox vs Ben R’s Ogor Mawtribes

Ben’s list - click to expand

Ben’s another local that I’ve played a few times, including at past events. If I had to sum it up quickly I’d say he likes to play armies that catch his opponents off guard – he was playing Kruleboyz and putting 40 Gutrippaz in the middle of the board before it was popular!

Ben’s Ogor list was a real surprise. I’ve never seen this Army of Renown before, but I really like it. Whilst Gutbusters definitely feel like they need some love still, this seems to be a fun way of getting some juice out of them.

I said that Ben likes to catch people off guard, and that’s exactly what happened this game. My target priority was awful, his units have a surprising amount of movement, and the Mawpit turning off my commands for most of my units for 2 whole battle rounds was hugely painful, Stormcast definitely wither when you can’t deploy a tactical All Out Defence.

I think the list does have one quite large weakness, which is that so much of it keys off of the Mawpit with all of 12 wounds. I managed to take 8 off of it, but then just kind of stopped committing to getting rid of it in favour of wildly unlikely dice odds against characters. I really should have focused it down. As such, this was a big loss for me.

Result: 33-78 Loss

Ben was great fun as always, we were laughing our way through the game. I do hope he commits to the army and paints it all! We need more Ogor enthusiasts.

Game 3 – The Liferoots vs Ben K’s Soulblight Gravelords

Ben’s list - click to expand

Ben K is another local, but we haven’t had the chance to play a game yet. He was rocking cavalry heavy Soulblight led by Vhordrai, a Vampire Lord on steed, and a mounted Wight King. Compared to round 2’s Ogors, this is an army I know how to play against.

I won deployment priority and as we were equal drops actually got the choice for once. Whilst I had deployed quite close to the limit of my territory, Ben had been a bit more conservative. I let him go first, knowing that his ideal game plan is to get charges in turn 1.

He brought everything forward turn 1, leaving Vhordrai with an 8” or so charge. The other cavalry ended up strung out next to him and not as far forward, meaning most of them weren’t even charge eligible. Unfortunately, Vhordrai then failed his charge! He was out front and unsupported.

On my turn, it’s fair to say that almost everything went right for me. The Reclusians got Iridan’s rend buff prayer, then got an extra attack thanks to a clutch 6 on a Bless Weapons from the Relictor. The Stormcoven were clutch this game, getting the fights-last spell off on Vhordrai this turn and again on some Blood Knights later. Vhordrai went down to shooting plus the Terminos/Reclusians combo, leaving Iridan free to pile into the Vampire Lord who also died. Always nice to have a tactic in the bank.

Ben won priority in BR2 and took the turn, charging his big block of Blood Knights into Iridan who took the Sentinels of the Bleak Citadel ward and heroically tanked the attack. The smaller unit of Blood Knights charged the Reclusian block, letting me burn the fight-first potion and wipe them out before they could fight. Ben had been warned about this, and knew about it as a person who owns Stormcast too, but forgot it in the moment. I get it, I also forget stuff like that all the time, it can be killer.

In my turn 2 the remaining Blood Knights got told to fight last by the Stormcoven, and were picked up by a selection of my units. From there on it was pretty much done – the Prosecutors had been in the backfield fighting a unit of Barrow Knights all game, and the other skellie units were in a long-running brawl with the Prime. Both of these got resurrected late game by Ben for some clever tactic scoring, but it was a pretty overwhelming Stormcast win in the end.

Result: 73-24 Win

Ben K was great fun to play! I’m looking forward to getting more club games in with him in the future.

Results

I had a great time at the event; 10 players can feel small but it was a great crowd and the vibes were immaculate. I was looking forward to prizegiving, as the Warhammer Events Team had provided some Spearhead boxes to give away as a celebration of 10 years of AoS. Huge thanks to them for this – it also meant that I could stack some extra voucher prizes onto the other positions.

There are no losers, but there does have to be somebody that won the least, and this time it was Will C claiming the Wooden Spoon (a delightful affair painted by the store owner!). The sadness was short lived, however, as he also got voted as the favourite opponent and got to take home a Cities of Sigmar Spearhead. The Favourite Army went to visiting player Chris with his beautiful Sylvaneth, although there were some other strong contenders in the field too. And finally, the gaming positions. Round 2 opponent Ben R took 3rd, I took 2nd(!) and Chris took 1st after going 3-0.

I do have to confess – I wrote something down wrong in the moment, meaning that Ben didn’t initially get his trophy! Thanks to everyone for being great about sorting it out after the event.

I was pleased to get second, and have a bit more confidence in my list going forward. I am thinking of removing the Prime, and changing a few things, but I’ll talk more about that next time. I’ve still got the organising bug, too – I’m hoping to do another before February next year.

Hobby

A short (ha ha) hobby segment this time – I spent a lot of time painting Helsmiths of Hashut, alongside Norman.

That effort paid off though, as both of our models got into a Warhammer Community article! That’s definitely a hobby goal ticked off, we were buzzing. You can see more pics and read our thoughts in the army set review.

Post-review, I’ve also finished off the Tormentor Bombard. This thing seems simple, but it really took me a long time to get (in my opinion) not as good a finish as the Despot or Dominator Engine. Still, I think it looks plenty good really.

At the moment I’m working through the Infernal Cohort, hoping to get them done before next time around but we’ll see!

Next Time: Decompression?

I don’t actually have any games planned before the next article goes out, but I do have a GT coming up in early October so I need to try and get some practice. I’m thinking of taking a week or two off though, I have played a lot by my standards this year and I’m thinking of locking in on some quiet hobby time for a couple of Monday nights instead. See you next time and we’ll find out how that goes.

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