I’ve never made it to a UKTC before, because my selfish and ungrateful wife always has a birthday around the same time. However, this year, the UKTC was held in April instead of January, so I was finally able to attend. Friends had always lauded it as one of the events to go to, worth the long, long drive up from down South. And… they were right!
I always love team tournaments. The wins feel better and the losses don’t feel as bad. Flying the flag for team BUBBA (Bristol) was myself, Rubick, Smurf and a vacant space occupied by our fourth member who unluckily got covid a few days before and wisely elected to stay at home.
The way they handled this at UKTC was each team that had a missing player gave away a free win each round, so we were going into each game already rocking a loss. This was going to make doing well as a team rather difficult!
Rubick was taking High Elves with a reliable roster comprising of three catchers with a smattering of skills, a dodge thrower and a few other bits and pieces. Very sensible.
Smurf was taking Halfings. Now, Flings already were hobbled at UKTC because there were no stars permitted. What do you do with a sackful of cash and nothing to spend it on? Well, you take a roster with a little something different… Smurf took two Frenzy trees (one with +MA), the Chef, a leader Hefty and six (SIX!) rostered rerolls, meaning there was the potential to start a drive with ten rerolls! Insanity!
I’ve played his Frenzy treemen before, and I can tell you, they have the potential to be nasty. Especially with the ability to throw almost limitless rerolls at them, this Fling team could potentially do something spectacular.
As for myself, I was taking Tomb Kings (or Khemri, depending on how old you are.) I’m taking them for the Eurobowl, so I need more practice. My NAF ranking going into Game One was 195.98, and so my goal I set for myself was to try to get above 200 ranking with them. If I could manage it, I’d be happy as a skeleton in sand.
I elected to ignore the double skill available, (not for the first and almost certainly not the last time,) and went for a very boring but reliable set of skills: 4x Guard on the Guardians, Block on the Throw-Ras and Tackle/Mighty Blow on the Blitz-Ras. I considered a Sneaky Git Skeleton, but as I had such a deep bench I didn’t bother. My standard TK roster at 1100 is 14 men and two rerolls, so with the extra 50k at UKTC, what did I do? That’s right, bought another Skeleton. You can never have too many! The thing to remember is you never want to set up on a LOS on defence with anything other than three Skeletons, otherwise you’re asking for trouble, so this is the best way to guarantee* that.
We drove up with Glowworm on the Friday, stopping at Bugmans in Warhammer World for lunch and to gawp at the prices of forge world miniatures (£40 for a Scylla!?) We rocked up to York at around 3pm, which gave us time to chill, unwind, then explore the city, and be very sensible and avoid drinking so we were fully prepped for the next day’s promise of intense, competitive gaming. Ha.
The venue was a 30-ish minute walk from the hotel we were sharing with the swarm of Team Chaos coaches, so after a slap-up breakfast on Saturday morning, with the sun shining down on us, to the venue we all went…
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Game One: Dwarfs ~ Coach: the_joeker (NAF Rating 185.59)
A lot of people (quite understandably) groan when their opponent cheerfully declares they’re using Dwarfs. I’m more than happy to play the beardy buggers, especially when I’m using my Tomb Kings. They’re phenomenal at shutting Dwarves down.
My opponent (Joe) was using a smattering of Guard and one each of Block/Wrestle Runners. He might have had a Mighty Blow, I can’t remember.
I won the kickoff and elected to receive, as I always do with Khemri. (The logic being it’s much harder to perform a decent offensive drive with less than four Guardians, so at least this guarantees a drive that starts that way.) I was skipping with delight when I KO’d a Longbeard on the first block of the game, only to be brought down to earth by Joe performing what he called a Power Apo, i.e. immediately changing that KO into a Stun. Rackum-frackum…
It was all going so well until it wasn’t. Tomb Kings started leaving the pitch at a rate of knots. They were making their Regen rolls, which was handy, but the chaps left on the pitch were in a pickle. I wasn’t making enough progress and my drive sort of fell to bits after losing three players in one turn and trying the practically-never-works Khemri Potato Play. This happens with Khemri sometimes. They run out of steam (or players) and end up pootling around picking their nose-holes. Thankfully, however, I didn’t completely flub up and allow Joe to score on my drive, so the first half ended 0-0.
I remember not using any rerolls on this drive, so perhaps I should have played more risky and pushed for a score… who knows. The thing with my roster is that it’s very RR light (only bringing two, remember) so I pretty much save them for game-ending Double Skulls or failed Dodge/GFIs to score, if possible.
Second half begins and we both have full teams. Well, what did you expect? Joe has 12 man dwarves with an Apo and I brought 15 players. His drive stalled in a similar way to mine. A few key armour breaks by my boney boys stopped his score in the same way he stopped mine. By the end of the match, it was a tightly-fought gritty 0-0 draw that I think both of us were happy with. I suffered five casualties in this game and inflicted one, which against dwarves sounds about right! We finished with only a few minutes to spare. That was a trend that was not going to end soon.
Result: Draw || 0-0, 1-5c
Game Two: Khorne ~ Coach: Cornish (Khornish, shurely? NAF Rating 150)
I’ve played Glowworm’s Oft-Declared Object-Of-Earthly-Affection, Cornish (Chris) a number of times now (six, including this one) and he’s always a delight to play against. My particular highlight in our history was being 2-0 down with my Skaven versus his Wood Elves only to end up stealing the win by going 3-2. Don’t worry, he got his own back by beating me 4-0 with Woodies against my Nurgle. But anyway…
Chris was playing Khorne, that is the new Khorne, them with the S4 Chaos Warriors that come with Frenzy as standard (me likey!). He’d given three of them Block and one of them Guard, as well as Block on the big guy, then Sure Hands to a Khorngor.
Like Dwarves, Khorne (and Chaos, and similar teams) can really struggle to fight through Khemri when they get going. I elected to receive again for the same reasons as above. People often lament the initial pickup as the worst part of the Khemri drive, but it’s not as bad as all that. With Sure Hands you’re still picking it up 75% of the time… usually. This game, and the previous one in fact, were the first games I’ve had in a long time where it literally takes three turns to get the ball in hand. By that time, I had some Khorngors threatening my flank and my solid blob of Strength was all tied up slapping some Khorne Warriors about, so I was in danger of getting separated. Luckily for me, it all came together at the last minute and I scraped together a desperate surge forward with my faster positionals. The drive ended up with most of the Khorne team and a few skeletons/Guardians all tying each other up, with around 5 players doing all the exciting stuff. The very last turn revolved around whether a Warrior was going to be able to make a 4+ dodge (with a RR) to get a 2D block on the ball carrier… but he tripped and I ran it in. Lucky me for sure.
In the second half the Bloodmonster or whatever the big guy is called finally woke up and started removing key players on my side, including a Guardian. However, the rest of Chris’s team couldn’t make enough of a spearhead through my boney boys and Chris was forced against the sidelines with a Tomb Guardian breathing down his neck. It was either Dodge away (4+/3+ with a RR) or make a -2D (with Frenzy) and then Dodge away. A hard choice. It came down, once again, to a Dodge with a reroll to walk it in… and once again, his player tripped up. Crushing! I was able to protect the ball long enough to steal the victory.
Result: Win || 1-0, 4-4c
Game Three: Skaven ~ Coach: Mr_Zay (NAF Rating 150)
Finally, a team with lower than AV9! I’d not met Mr_Zay (Jose) before, so it was a good opportunity to play against someone new. That’s part of the fun of these larger events.
His Skaven team had a Block Rogre, three GRs (Block on one, something else on the other, one with nothing), a Guard Blitzer (and a Tackle, but who cares?) and a Thrower, then Linerats up to 13.
I lost the kickoff here, so had to kick instead (boo). The defence with Khemri is, in my opinion, the much harder part, especially against a fast, agile team. You have to make sure you’re spread out wide enough to discourage an easy score down one flank, but not so much that you’re spread too thinly to mount a proper defence.
I would typically keep around four players in the backfield (both throwers, both blitzers) and use the Skeletons and Tomb Guardians (spread out enough, but not too much) to harass the line. A blitzer would run forward and hit a rat or two, then retreat again. Got a few nice removals, but Jose kept the pressure on…
He was unafraid to play risky with his Skaven (dodging with the AG3+ pieces), which is the right way to play Skaven in many situations, like the one we were in. It made it very hard to stop him. I just had to play calm and collected and wait for something to fail…
I managed at one point to hit the Thrower and knock him down (and that wasn’t easy), but my dastardly luck meant the ball scattered into the hands of a Gutter Runner. Drat!
When the time came for him to score, he needed a blitz with the ball-carrying Gutter, but could only engineer a one dice, and it was a Skull/Skull. With that, the drive was stopped, and I was going into the second half two guys up and no Skaven score on the cards. I counted my lucky stars.
The second drive began and I was feeling confident. Pride comes before the fall… I set up one of my TGs on the LoS (Why! It’s basically my one rule to not do that!) and the rest in a wide line one square from the centre to protect against blitzes. The ball lands around the middle and I stand a guy next to it. I then threw a few blocks on the LoS (perhaps a little nervous that the pickup was going to flub, so delayed it for as long as possible.) Of course, one of these blocks is a Skull/Both Down, and I look at my side of the field and feel confident enough to let it slip. The failed block even removes a Linerat, so I’m feeling good. Then, Jose starts counting squares and before I could blink his Rogre has punched a gap and there are rats all over the ball. Drat and double drat! Curse my overconfidence!
The game descends into a tense, scrappy back-and-forth where I’m trying desperately to shift these gorram rats and secure the ball, while Jose throws everything he has at me to try and get it. We’re both out of rerolls before you know it. Eventually, rats start leaving the pitch, but I’m really running low on time… I have to make a half-potato involving sending the Throw-Ra up to within scoring range, and the TG I send to babysit him fails his GFI to protect him. With another Dodge from a Blitzer (bloody rats!), Jose pops the ball loose and stuns the Throw-Ra, meaning there’s no way for me to score. Thankfully, Jose can’t either, so the game ends with another 0-0 draw. We ran right to the end of the time (again!), so I was ready for a pint by the end of the day!
Result: Draw || 0-0, 4-1c
Day one ends with me on 1/2/0, which isn’t bad, but isn’t outstanding either. The team has three losses, unsurprisingly, as we’re giving way a bye each round, so need bloody good results to get anything other than a loss. We check the draw for the next day, and we’re starting on the third table from bottom… ouch!
PS: we went to the Indian restaurant Masala Craft Street Food on Saturday night and it was bloody lovely. Lots of great vegan options. I had a Chana Dal, rice and a hyuge Naan bread. Would recommend.
Game Four: Orcs ~ Coach: TurtleHead (NAF Rating 123.37)
I was drawn against a young chap (Thomas) playing Orcs. I asked if he preferred Thomas or Tom, he said whichever, so I called him Tim. He wasn’t 100% familiar with Khemri, so I taught him a lesson that he won’t forget. (Nyuk nyuk nyuk!) Naw, I wasn’t that mean. So I fouled his troll off the pitch in turn two and killed a Blitzer and Black Orc on random blocks, so what… so I surfed a few players, no big deal… ahem.
We spend about ten minutes at the start of the game in this sequence: roll a cheering fans kickoff event, roll off the fans, figure out who won the prayer to nuffle, roll prayer to nuffle, get the one that gives a random player -1mv, roll the random player, find some way of marking him out… only for him to be instantly killed on the first Block of the game. Wahoo! Fun!™
I did feel for the kid a few times… he knew what he was doing in the broad sense, but clearly had no idea how to overpower the Khemri guard-spam strategy that I love so much.
I scored on turn 8, and Thomas set up for the goblin-throwing play, which flubbed when his troll got hungry. (Note, if the troll fails this roll, then you get the 2+ ‘wriggle free’ roll, and you wish to reroll that, do you have to roll loner?)
As we set up for the second half, the goblin-throwing is valiantly re-attempted a few more times, but to no avail, and I am able to swipe up the ball and storm in for another TD.
Result: Win || 2-0, 2-3c
Game Five: Orcs again ~ Coach: Blackorcdown (NAF Rating 180.66)
More orcs, this time against a chap who makes dice called Blackorcdown (Chris.) This is a man who knows what he likes. Eight tournaments attended and one team used: Orcs. This was going to be a good fight!
He had a Block troll, a few guard Blitzers and and Bigguns, and Block on a few others, as well as a Keg and a lineman with Dauntless. He told me this was because this Lineorc had one job: stand next to big guys and cause a nuisance. If you didn’t knock him down, he’d knock you down. To be fair to him, it worked once or twice, and was rather effective!
He knew how much my Khemri were going to ruin his day if he didn’t get in and stop them, so he elected to receive. The fight was close, brutal and sloggy. A few times Chris had to make the difficult decision to Dodge many of his players to better positions, and similar to Jose, it kept working, making my life very difficult! It was intense, with both of us taking quite considerable time in trying to figure out how to punch our way free of this mess, but ultimately I stopped him scoring on his drive.
Roll into the second half and it’s just as tight as the first half. All of our players were spread out across the pitch, with, once again, my faster players being the only ones free to progress. This time they were being hunted by Blitzers and Linemen… It all came down to one turn where I had no rerolls and precisely one path through: I needed to Blitz the Ball Carrier past a Blitzer and into victory, exactly 6 squares away. I needed not to roll a Push or a Both Down… Thankfully it worked, and I squeaked in a 1-0 win.
Result: Win || 1-0, 1-0c
Game Six: Guess what! More Orcs. Black Orcs, at least. ~ Coach: Slimjono (NAF Rating 151.54)
More orcs! This time, it’s Black Orcs. Slimjono (Jonny) was a good coach who knew how to control his Orcs. He had a smattering of Guard and Block on his orcs, with Block on the troll.
The poor guy couldn’t catch a break. In a bizarre twist of fate, he failed to pick the ball up for two turns on the bounce, meaning that I had time to sweep around the side, knock the goblin down and secure the ball for myself (Bizarro land or what!?) What followed was two scary turns of goblin uphill blitzing, I scored on turn four, and despite Jonny’s valiant attempts he wasn’t able to equalise.
This meant that all I had to do was protect the ball and stay still and the win would be mine. Easy, right? About that…
Despite a blitz from Jonny knocking down a TG, I got the ball right away and settled into a big, fat cage. The LoS was full of Skeletons being fed to the Blorc line, but I had all my positionals protecting the ball. However, Jonny threw caution to the wind and threw everything he had at that cage, and by turn three had used up all three of his rerolls on uphill blitzes on the ball carrier; two of them -2D and one -3D! None of them worked, but crucially every corner of my cage was getting swamped with Blorcs and Goblins and one big, mean Troll.
I wasted my rerolls on trying to knock these guys back, and by turn four I was in dire straits. My whole cage was full of goblins with orcs on every corner. I needed a good turn of blocking or I was going to be torn apart. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remove any goblins or knock any orcs down. All my blocks were either 1D with Block or 2D without, and with no rerolls, I didn’t know what to do! In hindsight, I should have just taken a bunch of those 2Ds and hoped for the best, but instead I was temporarily possessed by some insane spirit (perhaps it was all the time spent with Glowworm) and decided instead to foul a goblin with my tackle Blitz-Ra. Maybe it was the fact it was game six and I thought I was running out of options. We had a bribe from the kickoff, and I still had three assists (thanks Guard!). I kept thinking this stupid goblin was going to knock my ball down for sure, despite Jonny having no rerolls. Of course, I broke armour, double 3, failed the bribe and the Argue the Call and my blitzer got sent off. Whoops.
After that, Jonny played a blinder of a turn in which he orchestrated a chain-push I’d missed and got 2D on the ball carrier. He had a BD and a push, but remembered he had Brawler, and rerolled that BD into a Pow. Uh oh!
Then a goblin stole the ball and ran free, then I dodged a Throw Ra free to blitz it back, then another goblin swiped it up and ran, then a Tomb Guardian (freed by a succession of block-less blocks) charged 6 squares over to free it again, then another goblin swiped it up again to hand off and run it in on turn 14 for the draw. It was a blinder of a game that I won’t forget in a hurry. I could complain about dice, but it’s a dice game, and I gave as good as I got in many ways. If Khemri can turn you over and score on turn four, dice must have been involved…
Also, curses! My one and only TD conceded this game! Argh! Oh well… Sob.
Also, the team managed two wins and a draw today, by some miracle. Go us(?!)
Result: Draw || 1-1, 2-3c
Overall, my result was 3/3/0, which I’m happy with, all things concerned. A few of those games perhaps should have been wins, but then at least one of my wins should have been a draw, so it’s horses for courses. I finished 33rd out of around 340, and my NAF ranking increased to 204.32. I was chuffed to bits that I achieved my one main goal.
The tournament itself was just brilliant. York is a wonderful city with a lot to see and buckets of culture. As for the venue, there was loads of space to wander around and enjoy the sunshine (or the snow, depending on which day it was). The lunch was good, the facilities decent, and the location was great. I get tormented by a goose though. (See below video).
https://youtube.com/shorts/TxqzFmtP3fI?feature=share
It was fantastic to see so many familiar and new faces after so long away, and I can’t wait for the next one. Hopefully it’ll remain in April, or, if it does move back to January, maybe I can convince my wife to move her birthday, because I definitely want to go again next year. I mean honestly, having your birthday on the same day every year is a bit unreasonable, right? Right?
-A/T
Anything But A One! 
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