Recaps of my games at the 12/18/2010 RTT at Paladin:
Domination was against Daniel and his Galadhrim. We both advanced with our ground pounders split on each wing, and archers in the middle. Daniel also had 4 knights to support, 2 on each wing. With his lower defense I expected to do well in combat, but it was my archery that started hot, shooting up his archers pretty quickly. That allowed me to begin pressing my bowmen forward to threaten his home objective. The battles on the wings started well for me. With terrain helping me on my right flank, I managed to eliminate his 2 knights quickly. On the left, I had near numerical parity and higher defense to boot. But I failed to resist temptation on the left side and it almost cost me the game. Rumil had burned 2 might already, so while I normally would have just fed Rumil (and that annoying rule of his) and used Dain to chew through elves, I tried to take Rumil out with Dain, knowing that it would give me control of that side. For each of 3 turns Dain and a helper charged Rumil, whose support I had pulled off. Each turn Daniel rolled a natural 5 with Rumil, and while I rolled a few sixes I couldn’t reroll any. Rumil wound up winning all 3 fights and killing 3 helpers. Meanwhile, without Dain chewing on the rest of Daniel's right flank, he had a great turn of combat and killed several dwarves. As Daniel neared break point both the side objectives were very much in play, while I was pushing on his home base. Daniel used priority to establish temporary control of the 2 side objectives, but he was premature as I managed to flip them around the next turn. On that last turn, Dan won a crucial priority roll, which allowed his few remaining archers to hold me off his home objective (had I moved first I could have swarmed it and controlled it easily). Both side objectives came down to fights. Dain was in combat with a Galadhrim warrior who was supported, but the supporter was not touching the objective. Dain slew the guy in base with the objective to control it 1-0, while a dwarf beat and took out another Galadhrim 1v1 on the right objective to give me that one 2-1, with a minor victory for controlling 3 objectives. Maybe the most fun game of Domination I've ever played – most of mine have ended so quickly or were so one-sided that I haven't had the back and forth, hanging by a thread game like this one, which could have been anything from a major for me to a minor for Daniel in the last three turns.
Seize the Prize vs Cliff -- I hate this scenario because it hates me (I call it “Seize the Draw”), and my dwarves aren’t real fans of it either. But I was surprised that Cliff decided to defend rather than challenge for the objective (true, it would have exposed his D5 elves to some nasty D3 archery). Despite that, my bad luck continued as I got to the objective. Balin attempted to dig it up and failed 3 consecutive checks. That screwed up my timing horribly as I had advanced my army ahead to gain better fighting ground (there was a huge terrain piece – a large pool – to the right side of the objective that was going to create a problem for me unless I could clear it). I wound up having to fall back a bit because my army was split up due to terrain and I could not stand off of Cliff while waiting for the artifact as it would allow Cliff to concentrate on separate groups and destroy them. Cliff then pounced, and my fallback allowed him to anchor his line on the large pool. Fighting 2 deep with higher fight value, Cliff was always going to win many more combats, and my fall back had moved some of my units out of range to counterattack for a turn or two. I couldn't win any fights against Cliff's supported line, and while he didn't inflict casualties often against my D6-7, he was winning bucketloads of fights, so the casualties still came fast. Worse, when I won the predictably small number of fights, I did not inflict the predictably high ratio of casualties, even against his D3 woodies. I over-extended my far left wing and Cliff chewed it up badly. My initial plan had been to control that side and then relay the artifact off it, but I lost almost half my warriors in the first round of combat as Cliff had excellent dice.
As the game wore down I had enveloped Cliff's left flank and chewed it up, but I could not move the artifact off that way due to Rumil and the pool, and my left flank was still outnumbered against his archers. I managed to chew a bit of a hole into Cliff's center and had advanced Balin and Dain into it, but we were running out of time. With another 15 minutes I would probably have been able to obtain a minor victory if I won a priority or two, but the delay in digging the artifact cost me ultimately as I didn't get it to the fight soon enough to exploit any openings. Both of our armies were pretty bloodied. I lost 24/40 dwarves, the most casualties this force has ever suffered, and Cliff was also broken by the end. So it was yet another draw in Seize the Prize for the dwarves.
Meeting Engagement vs. John A -- With his archery, John decided to sit back and shoot at me, and I had to advance to the middle of the board before I could return direct fire. John had many more turns of archery than me, but he was firing blanks. At one point he went 4 consecutive turns w/o a kill, despite 16 shots per turn. Once I got in archery range, I slowed my advance so that I could try to catch up a little in casualties, and managed to do so in about 3 turns, with 4 kills to John's 5. But John had screened his mounted guardmen and I had only killed 1 and dismounted another.
At this point we were over 90 minutes into the game, and while advancing into John's army was very risky, I didn't want yet another draw so I moved ahead. John countered by charging on my left flank while falling back on my right as my dwarves couldn’t keep pace. I wasn't too concerned on my left as I had a sizable force there, but then John won every single fight not involving Dain except for one, and killed 5 dwarves! I really need to win the next priority and heroic movement rolloff, but of course I didn’t (nor the next one). So Dain used a heroic combat to kill a Gondorian then come to the rescue of another dwarf, defeating and dismounting Forlong, but again the rest of the fights went against me except for one as I was now significantly outnumbered by John on that flank with his cavalry on the charge to boot. I feared that my left flank was going to collapse and allow John to swing around to envelope my line, but Dain and the remaining dwarves stubbornly hung on for dear life, despite spending several turns on the ground. Meanwhile, John got the best of me on the first turn of combat on my right side since he again got to pick his charges due to superior mobility, but once I gained priority I reversed the momentum. My remaining Khazad and Iron Guard, despite usually being outnumbered, began to chew up Gondorians. As we began the last turn I was still 4 from breaking, John several more than that, but any hope John had of pulling a rabbit out of hat by killing 14 dwarves in one turn went south fast as my dice exploded (where had these rolls been earlier in the game when it might have helped me?) and I won combat after combat with 6s and inflicted a bucket- load of casualties, chewing up most of John's mounted guardsmen. The game ended as a draw with each of us 1 model from breaking, and amazingly, after being in trouble early on, I had the momentum. Had the game continued it could have gone either way, but I liked my chances with numerical parity nearly reestablished (24 left for John and 21 for me) with me having better courage, superior heroes and lots more fight 4.
During the game, John asked me an interesting question. Who at the national level is the master of the dwarves? After thinking about it, if there is one, it would be Gary Lane, by default, and he has played a lot more Gondor and wood elves than dwarves. In truth, pretty much none of the top players play dwarves at GTs regularly because despite their obvious fighting prowess and survivability, their glacial pace is a killer in some games, especially if the opponent castles up and shoots at them like John A did to me. Gary won the 2007 Vegas GT with dwarves; Marc Raley won Best General at Baltimore GT 2008 (winning a tie-breaker over my Gondorians), but he had a fairly soft draw, dodging a couple major players and playing the overall winner in To the Death where all he had to do was castle up and survive against even slower moving hobbits. I did manage to finish 3rd (and tie for Best General, losing another tie-breaker) with this list at BBB this year in my first ever dwarf-list GT, but that had some idiosyncratic results. I had hot dice in a couple games and even that couldn’t get me a win in Prize or Recon. I knew that speed was going to be an issue for me especially at this RTT with the shorter time controls, but I still could have won the Prize game with any luck or better positioning on my flanks. There was no way I was going to win against John A in pitched battle with his defensive approach. What I need are some of those gyrocopter dwarves from Fantasy . . .
Regardless, my dwarves will return at some point next year. Too many pointy ears out there need to be taught some lessons.
