As I had proclaimed here I was about to visit an open tournament organised by the german Hobbit Tabletop Liga. The tournament’s intention was to bring new players to the scene, therefore it was addressed towards 24 rookies exclusively. I am a long time tabletop veteran but you have to keep in mind that I never played against other people than my club mates let alone visited a tournament. In fact this was quite a scary and unpleasant thought for the last couple of years. As we don’t play that often we mostly end up sitting around the table having a chit-chat and a couple of beers, outperforming each other with our lack of knowledge regarding the gaming rules. Since that’s really not what a tournament is all about I guess you can understand my initial resentment now. Anyway, let the chips fall where they may…
“It’s a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.”
I heard Mr. Baggins’ voice echoing in my head while I drove to the tournament last saturday morning. Fortunately I discovered the Took Side in me and gave it a try as the event was a blast! It was a whole day of fun right from the start to the very end. All people I came across were just great! I think I have to add that I was a bit biased regarding the other players as I’ve met a fair share of strange people in some of the Games Workshop stores around in this area. But not only my opponents were really nice folks and very friendly but the tournament staff were top-notch guys aswell. And all of them were able to communicate in an appropriate way and obviously knew what taking a shower means if you can catch my drift. I really don’t want to sound snotty but having the aforementioned encounters in mind this is unfortunately not a matter of course.
These were the 350 points of Moria Goblins I brought with me. As this was a special rookie event you just started with one army and not a good and evil army as it is mostly common here.
I would like to show the gaming boards first which the Hobbit Tabletop Liga offered us players. Each board had a theme, this one here was obviously Smaug’s lair deep down under the Erebor.
I am usually not a huge fan of those printed gaming mats and prefer real texture for our Aleator matches. Yet they were more than enough for a tournament with 12 gaming tables. Here you can see the Shire.
I really appreciated that every board had its own theme everyone could immediately relate to. Here you can see some place in Rohan.
This one could have been in Erebor or most likely in Moria.
All boards were 48″ x 48″ and this one’s theme was Harad.
The East gate of Moria!
The Argonath and Amon Hen.
Some evil looking place in Mordor.
The Barrow-downs.
I think this one was supposed to be Celebdil, also known as Silvertine and Zirakzigi.
This one was my favourite board – the ruined city of Dale.
Each of the 24 players performed four matches during the course of the day. The tournament staff used the “swiss tournament rules” so that the players end up with opponents who are equally successful (or not) during the later matches. The first mission was “To the Death!”, the second “Hold Ground!”, the third “Domination” and the fourth “Lords of Battle”. The players were able to achieve four results: “terrible loss”, “little loss”, “small victory” and a “huge victory” giving different points for the end result.
My first opponent brought some elite formation from Mordor with him. The Witch-king on a Fell Beast and five Morgul Knights. Whoops! Never faced something like this before.
But I was pretty sure that they would be pretty tough in battle. No idea what they tried here, maybe outflanking the Goblins?
We ended up in a brutal close combat later on anyway.
My freshly acquired dice rolled a lot of devastating sixes thus leaving the Witch-King all alone. I knew I couldn’t handle him properly with my Goblins anyway therefore I occupied him with some compensable Goblin Warriors.
My opponent realised that the battle was lost even if the Witch-King was still going strong. So he made quite a good move as he invested some heroic might, killing the blocking Goblins and moving on to get my Goblin Captain aswell. This prevented a terrible loss for him and gave me a minor victory only.
The second match was quite different as I was facing Moria Goblins here aswell.
My opponent decided to have one of my warbands on his side of the table to take them down first.
That wasn’t a bad plan at all but it took some time due to my shaman and his forces were bound in battle.
While my other two warbands crossed the whole table, occupying the important mission objective marker.
When my warband was finally eradicated his troops couldn’t make it in time to the board’s center thus granting me a huge victory.
After the lunch break my third and most thrilling match started in Mordor.
This time my Goblins had to face the forces of Angmar. One part led by the Troll Buhrdûr…
…the other part by a Nazgûl who was mainly a spell caster. He gave my Shamans quite a hard time as he drained all willpower from them thus making it impossible to cast fury.
The Goblins stood zero chance against Buhrdûr as they couldn’t rely on the spell fury anymore. Also the Troll threw one of my Warg Marauders. An experience me and my Goblins never had so far.
Angmar was really dominating in battle and I only could achieve a very, very tight victory with a desperate move. The last Warg Marauder left and some Goblins sprinted to the non occupied mission objective markers.
Everything went fine until I met a good army during my last match. I faced a beautifully painted force of Rohirim Cavalry led by Erkenbrand and Éomer.
Although the Goblins were much more in number they stood no chance against the men of Rohan right from the start on. I’m not even sure how this happened.
The Warg Marauders could at least rival the dominating riders a bit.
But after all it felt a bit like a déjà vu from the Pelennor Fields as the northmen trampled down the Orcs. This last game was a terrible defeat for me and my first loss of the tournament.
Well those were the four matches I had during the tournament. Two minor, one huge victory and one terrible defeat. That was way more than I had even dreamed of as I was more like “please not the last position” in the morning. After the first three matches I was ranked on the third position which was a bit irritating to be honest. After the last and final match I went out with the eighth position of 24 which is great! But the icing on the cake clearly was the fact that my Goblins got the third place for the best painted army of the tournament which I appreciated even more.
I would like to express my regards and gratitude towards all of my four opponents first. Not only were they all relaxed and down to earth gamers, some of them even gave me good advice during the matches. Also I have to give a huge salute towards the tournament’s team, the Hobbit Tabletop Liga. A very great performance from the guys and this will certainly be not my last visit to one of their events. I hope I was able to evoke the Took-side in some of our readers who might end up trying something new themselves.
The only problem I have right now is that I have at least 10 ideas for new LotR/Hobbit armies, oh well…
Yay! Place 8 out of 24 players and the 3rd place for the best painted army. Got me some new Hobbit Tabletop Liga dice aswell.