Vanguard GT Review

Well boys and girls, we went, we saw, but certainly did not conque

Let me start off by saying that this was by far the best event I have EVER played in. Mike Adkins was an absolute legend from the jump, and smoothly herded 30+ gamer's from around the world to 5 games over 2 days. Anyone thinking of running an event, or even if you have for a while, take some tips from Mike!

This post may not be completely clear, so if you have not already check out the first part HERE.

Overall record was 1-4, by far my worst result at an event of any game. This did not stop me from having an absolute blast with Shannon Shoemaker, Brindley Smith, Mike Rossi, Jan Stother and Robert Hutson!

Hindsight 20/20 List Review

Its all crystal clear when you can look back and see what worked and didn't work. There were some really interesting lists at this event, and very few were OP or Auto-Pilot.

PROs

- Butcher Regiments were excellent in every single game. These units were not ones that opponents expected, and a couple of times I was asked what my actual core army was as a reminder lol. 3 of the 5 games I was overly aggressive with them and that was mostly due to lack of reps playing with them. However in two of my games I was patient, setup charging lanes and situations that really took my opponents into the tank.

- Knight Horde, provided a true threat and was able to lock off hold portions of the table as even being counter charged by this behemoth was not something most opponents wanted to do. In combination with The Captain's re-deploy I was able to get these guys lined up as needed.

CONs

- Cannons were not the best choice in my mind with my list setup. Combined with Mike's innovative terrain maps, shooting lanes were tight and I found myself in multiple games not shooting for 2-3 turns with every cannon.

- 1 Pegasus Wizard was a mistake, there should have been 2-3 in total. With each game being very objective driven having US1 harassers floating around would have actually one me 1 or 2 other games.

Be Patient & Do the Math

One of the biggest mistakes I made all weekend was I did not take the time to think through all of my most important moves of each game. By nature I play fast, I always have. My turns are planned out multiple turns in advance, and I use my opponents turn to adjust and re-align to what I may have not expected.

With that being said, I need to slow the pace down a little. Specifically I can recall in Game 5 a move that cost me the whole game, and it was very late turn 4 or 5.

Here is the situation:

My pike horde has a flank on a Horde of Salamander Unblooded. They have 6-8 wounds on them and to be honest the Butcher Regiment was doing just find grinding them down. With no CS they were only doing a couple of wounds each turn. 

Not pictured are two Rhinosaur Cavalry Hordes which are being dealt with and in two turns will be off the table. My debate was to either charge the flank with 60 attacks coming out of the woods on 5's, or staying put and protecting the two objectives near me. 

What did I do?

You guessed it, I got greedy and charged. End result was I completely whiffed on my attacks with the Pike Horde, did my expected wounds with the butchers but ended up 1 point off of even wavering them.....

My opponents turn was used to rear charge the Pikes and remove them, leaving me to move other components out of position to grab tokens and lost the game by 1 objective. 

Kings of War is a game of numbers and angles. I was sloppy in my execution of placement and even more horrible at considering the averages for damage. This will be my focus in the next even I play in, think more, slow down and play tight.