I’ve decided that we’re going to resurrect the blog after a couple years of not touching it. I’m not a big fan of most forms of social media these days, and when I have a longer form thing I want to write down - whether it’s about painting or gaming - I need a place for it to go. So that place is uh, this place.
The local community for CMON’s A Song of Ice and Fire has been growing steadily over the last year, and my FLGS has been organizing league play for a little while. We’re early in our second season, and I’m making an effort to write little battle reports on my games. This has been helping me, I think, to understand the game better. Performing a little bit of hindsight-assisted self-critique of my play certainly helps me think through the outcome, and maybe if I share that process publicly it can help someone else too. I know there’s not exactly an overwhelming amount of content out there that talks about the strategy of this game, so here’s hoping somebody gets some mileage out of these besides me.
Game Mode: Honed and Ready
Opponent: Andrew, playing Night’s Watch
Win, 10-9
This game was a test of the Roose list’s main reason for existing, the NW matchup vs Qhorin Halfhand NCU. Both of my opponent’s lists have Qhorin, and we’re on a 5 objective game mode, so the choice of 9 activations and Roose was pretty much locked in without any input from me. My opponent chose a Vargo Hoat-led list with Ranger Vanguards and Bronn in Crossbows, with 3 NCUs.
For terrain placement, my opponent started with a Weirwood tree on the midline of one flank. I put a low wall directly on top of the center objective, with the game plan being to shove Roose in Blackguard forward and take up a position to score it the following turn while taking the two objectives on my side of the map to ensure I’m scoring at least 3-2 to start with. If my opponent ends up going first, he can deny the center objective but he doesn’t have anything remotely as sturdy to put there. Ranger Hunters or Crossbows getting shot by 3 trays of Ironborn Bowmen + Swords + a Blackguard Charge will die, so it’s a pretty safe bet I’ll have the center without a fuss. Another Weirwood comes down, mirroring the placement of the first. For my last piece of terrain, I placed a Corpse Pile on what I wanted to be my right flank. The corpse pile would help to minimize the impact of the vanguard if they were brought in from outflank on that side, and I planned to deploy a unit of Drowned Men with naked Bowmen on the other side to tie them up if my opponent went that route. The reason for a Corpse Pile instead of a Bog there is to make sure my own units aren’t slowed down advancing in the early turns of the game. -1 Morale is pretty irrelevant to naked Bowmen, and the Weirwood at the midline was going to offset it anyway once they were in position to score the objective. In exchange, Ranger Vanguard should they be deployed on that table edge would have nothing but Hindered charges, which would give either unit of Bowmen a significant boost to their survivability while I maneuvered the Drowned Men back to engage them.
Having forgotten to snag a photo at the store, here’s my reconstruction in Tabletop Simulator of how the terrain looked +/- my bad memory.
I ended up being able to choose sides, so I claimed my prepared position. In deployment I made a minor error that made it slightly more difficult for the Drowned Men to screen off the bows from the Vanguard on the open side, but otherwise things go more or less according to plan. My opponent elected to go first in order to bring his Vanguard in on Round 2.
Again, reconstructed courtesy of TTS, with apologies if I don’t quite have the Night’s Watch positions correct:
The first round of play unfolds more or less as I expected it to. We end with Blackguard sitting on the center objective, two units of Bowmen facing off against Bronn in Crossbows, and the third unit of Bows + Drowned Men maneuvering toward the other objective on my side of the table. In round 2, the Vanguard come in on the open side, facing off against the Drowned Men and the naked Archers. I immediately tied them up with the Drowned Men, to force a retreat that would leave the Vanguard sitting between Drowned Men and the naked Bows. I elected to shoot Coldhands with the Bowmen here instead of turning them around, accepting the possibility of the rear charge the following turn wiping the tray because I had What is Dead in hand. The walls were going to shoot Coldhands at least 3 times, meaning maybe we can score a VP in exchange for using an early WIDMND by making the attack vs turning to face the cavalry that I essentially know are coming. Coldhands instead made all but one save, then saved all the wall arrows. Woops.
My opponent decided it was worth the risk to take a run at Roose with Vargo in Hunters here, and did the thing with Threaten and Sadistic Mutilation. The Rangers failed their Visage check and took 4 wounds before retreating, but killed Roose. The Crossbows passed their Spread Fear panic check, sadly. I elected to No Secrets the Quickfire at this point, for two reasons. One, I wanted to preserve the ranks on the Blackguard for a better Visage panic check if he charged again the following round. Two, with a 2 activation advantage and this early in the game, I really didn’t have anything to fear from Qhorin, because me just sitting there is mostly fine. Also, I thought that by going for it early and then sandbagging a card in hand the rest of the game and leaving condition tokens lying around, maybe I could bluff my way to convincing the opposition that I had the other one in hand already. Andrew told me after the game that I gave him “too much credit” with that logic, but I disagree - the number of times I have seen someone about to make a play, then stop and say “Wait a minute…” in the face of a possible A Flayed Man Has No Secrets is pretty high. I don’t really lose anything right now by setting the stage for that bluff to pay off later, and in exchange I maintain the value of one of my more important units in play.
At the end of the round I score 3 to my opponent’s 1, but both units of Bows sitting on objectives take 5 hits and save zero from the walls. This did not augur well for their continued existence. My opponent had elected not to move his Crossbows onto one of the wall objectives, and honestly that might have ended up being a good play in the long run, because taking excess hits there facing two units of Ironborn Bowmen could have cost him that tray, which did get pretty low on wounds at one point the following round.
Round 3 with the Night’s Watch going first, the Vanguard charge some bowmen in the back. They take a pile of damage and fail a panic test, but live with a single wound remaining thanks to What is Dead. I spend a bunch of resources healing them back up, get the Drowned Men re-engaged to hold the Vanguard in place, then retreat the bows to safety off the objective. Unfortunately, I have to let one of the units of bows on the other side of the table die for this, but I think it was the right play because it leaves me with a scoring threat in all three of the positions I need to hold. Temporarily I send the Blackguard after the Hunters, mainly to keep them in a less threatening location so they can’t march in toward where the naked Bowmen + Drowned Men are fighting for essentially the game against the Vanguard. I score only a single point here, which makes the score 4-3.
Round 4, my opponent has to devote some resources to keeping his Crossbows alive while I attach Finger Dance to the unit of Bows that was previously saved with What is Dead and make three attacks against the Vanguard to kill them off of Swords and We Do Not Sow. The Drowned Men move back onto the near objective and score it. The Ranger Hunters charge and quickfire my other unit of Drowned Men, and in spite of a disorderly charge roll four hits and then 5 hits on the quickfire, while I save zero attacks. So that’s the end of them, and the score is now 5-4. I move the Blackguard back to the center objective, and my other unit of bowmen facing down the crossbows die, tying the game at 5 points. Coldhands dies to the wall arrows this round (he may have taken a stray shot from my remaining unit of Bowmen after a Wendamyr shift as well, or a zone replace d3+2 somewhere in there, I can’t remember) which means the score is 8-7 for me going into Round 5.
Round 5 Coldhands gets redeployed over on the Corpse Pile side of the map, and I can see the plan take shape for my opponent. If he can get the Ranger Hunters onto a wall objective, his Crossbows on another, and Coldhands on a third, he can tie the game at 10 points forcing a round 6. If he can hang on through that round and score another 3 VP, he’ll win, for a final score of 13-12. His route to that outcome involves sticking Qhorin’s influence on the Ranger Hunters, attacking the Blackguard, and rolling well on a retreat. He doesn’t get the distance he needs, and that’s the game.
Now if he had made it to that objective, I probably could have blown Coldhands up with wall arrows as my first act of Round 6, and there is lots of potential for me to bring up a now very healthy remaining unit of bows to kill the Ranger Hunters, but he would have still had Qhorin’s ability available and potentially used it to pin the bows in a bad spot. Either way, the game ends in round 5 instead thanks to not quite enough distance on that retreat.
Overall this was well played by Andrew - he applied a ton of pressure through Bronn in Crossbows and I didn’t do enough to shore up that edge of the fight. Taking 10 wounds from the walls in Round 2 across two units was a disaster, and totally avoidable if I just use the Drowned Men to score those objectives instead of the bows. I am so used to playing Drowned Men in a Balon list where their ability is used on your main objective holders (Blacktyde Chosen) that I forget that they can’t actually support the Blackguard. That means it’s OK to deploy them wide with this list, as long as they can help out a unit of Bows. If I have the Drowned Men score those objectives I’m in a much better spot with a lot more material to work with on both sides of the map.
This was another game, incidentally, that featured at least one really poor use of a Varys token by me on a low percentage but potentially high payoff option. I spent a token on a Panic check that would have made Crossbows imminently killable if they failed it, and they had a Panic token. This happened while Andrew controlled bags though so their morale was a 5+, which means that even with the Panic token I’m shooting an angle that’s in the 30% range to deal 2 wounds, which is terrible compared to using it when he takes bags, letters, or horses on a later turn.
I think I made the right choices for the terrain, as it funnelled the Vanguard into a location that I could predict and control. It might have been wiser for him to bring them out on his side of the table so they could support his other units instead of ending up stranded on my side of the map, but on the other hand, if I don’t have What is Dead, those Bows die and he easily wins the game.
But I always have What is Dead. Never forget that.
