Introduction

Last weekend the Battle at the Beltway GT was held in northern Virginia. 29 players showed up on a warm fall weekend to battle for first place, and some swords. The tournament was put on by two great guys in the hobby, Yong-Duke and Todd, unfortunately Yong-Duke had something urgent come up and could only stop by on day one. That was a real shame because they both put a lot of work into the event and it showed. The venue was a non-descript suburban hotel in a room that was just the right size. I don’t have much to say about the hotel but there was a CVS and 7/11 right across the street which was great for grabbing a drink.

The tables all had great terrain, it was varied in theme but pretty consistent in layout and and types of terrain. They also put together quite a few trophies and while the engraved swords were the highpoint everyone seemed happy with what they won.

And let me lead this off by saying I didn’t do great in games. I had a great time but ended middle of the pack for reasons I’ll get into below. I think the list is very good but just didn’t work out this time. But I hope some of you will still get something out of this.

The table of awards. Not pictured: some model kits for raffle draw and bottom finishers.

List Building and Tournament Pack

The tournament packet can be viewed here.

Any time you’re looking at a tournament pack you’ve got a few things to consider. First up, is there any comp? And in this case, not really. There is rule of 6/3 (core/everything else) and a request to not bring super hard lists and an army comp score. The first half is expected, the second half is something I really struggle with. Any type of soft comp to me feels like an arms race. Going into the event I was pretty sure that best general would go to someone with a hard list, and best overall likely would as well. More on that later.

So yeah, when I see something like this I’m going to end up taking the low army comp score and trying to win all my games by a large margin. And that’s not great, but when you look at an event like MOAB where you had to submit your list for approval to confirm it wasn’t too hard, well, a very hard VC Scream list won the event.

Okay, so taking a hard list, no real comp concerns, got it. Next up is looking at the missions. And here I think the TOs did a great job. They’ve defined scoring units as non-monsters that started at Unit Strength 9 and are not in skirmish formation when they score. This isn’t perfect, it rewards cavalry pretty heavily, something not needed. But it does hurt skirmishers and monsters, two big issues in this edition. If you look at the missions they can all award 5 bonus points. So the max score has moved from 20-0 to 25-0. I’m not going to go through the missions one by one here, but looking at them you can see how important scoring units are. And in absolute terms 6 of the 25 bonus points require scoring units. They will help with some others, but for things where you have to be scoring, it’s only 6/25.

And based on that I’m not too worried about scoring units. I’d like to take them, but I’m not going to sacrifice my list for them. Which is good news, because I’m running Mortuary Cults and their scoring options suck. Skeleton Skirmishers would be ideal but don’t have Open Order so can never score. Skeleton Horse Archers can adopt Open order and are probably my best bet, but they’re quite expensive per wound and fragile. Tomb Swarms are interesting but I can only take one unit in core and need it in my bunker. And at 117 points for an ambushing unit in Special, that’s just too much. The last option, and one I considered a little is Necroserpents, they fit the bill pretty well. but at 114 points for 3 of them it’s a big ask. I love the idea of being able to ambush them behind my opponent to score, but they’re very vulnerable to shooting and I can’t control when they would ambush on a board edge. If you’re one of the sickos who likes Necroserpents this was the event for them, I just don’t think they’re any good.

So after looking at the scoring options, at the end of the day I’m going to stick to my standbys, Skeleton Warriors and Ritual Blade Ushabti. Now, these are core choices I normally take but they do gain something in this comp pack. I’ve taken to being more aggressive with my Tomb King infantry and having these being scoring means I can attempt to march walk them slowly up the board, and hopefully score with these very durable units.

Another thing to note is that this mission pack has several missions that reward you for killing monsters. This is bad news for Mortuary Cults. I have to take 2 Tomb Scorpions and they’re pretty vulnerable at T5/3W. There is nothing I can do about this. If they take ambush they can sit in it as long as possible but I’d not count on them living. This type of packet reveals a weakness of Mortuary Cults, you don’t have a ton of options. I’d like to take more banners or scoring units but I don’t have good options for them, and I’d love to skip scorpions this time around, but I can’t.

The List

Battle at the Beltway [2000 pts]

Warhammer: The Old World, Tomb Kings of Khemri, Mortuary Cults

Characters [760 pts]

High Priest [205 pts] - Level 4 Wizard, General, Hierophant, Ruby Ring of Ruin, Earthing Rod, Necromancy
High Priest [445 pts] - Level 4 Wizard, Necrolith Bone Dragon, Lore Familiar, Serpent Staff, Talisman of Protection, Illusion
Mortuary Priest [110 pts] - Level 2 Wizard, Battle Standard Bearer, Necromancy

Core Units [705 pts]

5 Ushabti [252 pts] - Ancient (champion)
33 Skeleton Warriors [197 pts] - (Hand weapons, Shields, Nehekharan Phalanx (0-1 per 1000 points), Master of Arms (champion) [Death Mask of Kharnutt], Standard bearer [War Banner])
3 Tomb Swarms [111 pts]
5 Skeleton Skirmishers [25 pts] - (Hand weapons, Warbows)
5 Skeleton Skirmishers [25 pts] - (Hand weapons, Warbows)
5 Skeleton Skirmishers [25 pts] - (Hand weapons, Warbows)
5 Skeleton Skirmishers [25 pts] - (Hand weapons, Ambushers)
5 Skeleton Skirmishers [25 pts] - (Hand weapons, Ambushers)
5 Skeleton Skirmishers [20 pts] - (Hand weapons)

Special Units [140 pts]

Tomb Scorpion [70 pts]
Tomb Scorpion [70 pts]

Rare Units [395 pts]

Casket of Souls [135 pts]
Casket of Souls [135 pts]
Screaming Skull Catapult [125 pts] - Skulls of the Foe

I’m not going to say too much about the list here, you’re welcome to read more, a lot more, about it

The Meta

You can see here that the spread of armies was okay, a lot of warriors but otherwise not too much of anything. The biggest surprise was only a single Bretonnia player but other than that I think this is about what’s expected for an event this size.

The Warriors lists started the event strong but seemed to fall off by the end. It was interesting to see a lot of Warpfire Dragons and Gigantic Chaos Spawn, both of which seem pretty good. The High Elves having 3 players was also a little surprising, each list maxed out their character slot and also took a fair bit of shooting.

Prep

I wish I had done more. I’ve had a lot going on after the Nova Open and I just didn’t make time to get in much Old World. I played a couple casual games, and one tournament prep game with the list. What I was able to confirm in these games is that I like taking a level 4 general on foot, and a second level 4 on dragon. Being able to risk your dragon in combat is a pretty big upside and the Tomb King dragon is very good.

I did need to do some painting. First up I didn’t have a dragon painted so I was happy to get that done, though I found the painting itself pretty laborious. The other thing I needed to paint was Skeleton Skirmishers and 20 of those went far faster than the single dragon model.

The Day of the Event

The story of my tournament really starts at 1pm the day before. I’d spoken to my friend Peter and planned to drop my army and display board off at his place before getting a train to New York. I had to be in New York for a concert which would be ending about 11 hours before Battle at the Beltway would start. The concert was awesome and timing worked out pretty well. It was at “The Theater at Madison Square Garden” which has the advantage of being right next to the train station. It was too late to catch the last train bound for DC that night but Amtrak has an overnight train. It leaves New York around 11:15 and then sits in Philadelphia for 3 hours. So it can arrive in DC shortly after 6. This work out okay, I didn’t get any sleep until or after Philly but I did get about three hours of shut-eye.

After getting to DC I grabbed us coffee and got an almond croissant (the best pastry) and walked over to Peter’s. We were splitting an Uber that day so I walked over, and when the Uber came we loaded up our armies and my board and headed to the site. It’s a pretty short drive so we got there with plenty of time and checked in. The event started on time and round one pairings went up.

Round 1 - Peter, High Elves - This one time, at Base Camp…

And yes, this is the same Peter I just came with. We’ve played each other three events in a row and well, can’t say I was surprised when we were paired round one. Our last two games had been a draw and a lopsided win for me, surely this third matchup wouldn’t bring balance to that record, would it?

This mission is where I feel most hurt by my lack of scoring options. The mission is to control the table at end of the game, and to do that my game plan is to win some key fights/kill some key units, then spread out using my early regens to have a larger board presence. If possible I want to advance my Skeleton Warriors or Ushtabi into the enemy’s backfield so I’ll keep an eye on that in deployment.

Deployment went pretty well, the Ushabti plan to march directly to the corner they’re facing as I get 3 bonus points if they end the game there. It’s a lot of points to put into that but I think it’s worth it. His Silver Helms left that side of the board quite quickly and the center of the map became the focus of the game. I think the game was really decided on turn two.

Peter had moved up with his army, both the dragon and the large unit of Swordmasters. Importantly the Swordmasters had his level 4 and by marching them he got them into dispel range of my part of the board. My spells on turn one were pretty underwhelming but I ended the turn with the board looking like this.

I had a Crystal Column blocking his dragon but crucially he was in dispel range of my Illusion dragon and rolled the 7+ to dispel it. With that gone his dragon was able to charge mine and killed it in two rounds of combat. I had trouble casting spells in my second turn and that pretty much was that. His dragon killed mine on my turn and was able to reform and go into the rest of my army including killing my general before the end of the game.

I think this game was illustrative of a few things. First, Mortuary Cults are unforgiving. The Column of Crystal being dispelled was likely and I had no plan for when that happens. Second, any magic that relies on magic will have higher variance than a list without it. I didn’t get hit by bad miscasts this game, I just had a lot of trouble casting my spells. Which is incredibly rare in this list but can happen. I rolled pretty bad spells on my Necromancy wizards, which ended up not mattering much but I needed to play this game safer and not set myself up to lose to a 7+ dispel roll.

I did take some small solace in hearing that this was about the only game where the Swordmasters were good.

Round 2 – Joe, Dark Elves - Give em a left…errr a right?

This is a flank attack mission. I don’t have any great flank units in this list so my plan is to flank deploy all of 20 points of Skeleton Skirmishers. This is another game where my game plan is to be aggressive with the Ushtabi and Skeleton Warriors, I want one of those units to take out an enemy for the objective point and I think that’s pretty likely. My opponent will get a point for killing one of my war machines or a monster, and there isn’t a lot I can do about that but I will be conservative with my Tomb Scorpions.

Joe was the one Dark Elf player in the event with a great looking army. He had a Dread Lord on a dragon and took a mix of units including a Cauldron of Blood and large unit of Witch Elves.

The game started off well for me, I used my shooting to start to pick apart his two units of Cold One Knights. Meanwhile his Dragon had flown over to my flank to hide from my caskets behind some (mushroom) woods.

I ended up getting aggressive with my dragon in the middle of the table, they took down one unit of Cold One Knights then were charged by the Cauldron. This was risky for me as there was an Ogre Blade on the character, but only one hit got though to damage my dragon. It then mopped up the Witch Elves. Meanwhile his dragon had been in my flank but I didn’t give him any good charges by using my Skeleton Warrior and Skeleton Skirmishers to block for my other units. He ended up flying over my Skeleton Warriors and at this point I was able to shoot the dragon down with magic missiles.

At the end of the game I’d lost a few small things while all he had left were cold ones in the flank. Those Cold Ones had won combat pushing my Ushabti out of that flank scoring zone stopping me from getting the full 25 points.

Round 3 – Paul, High Elves Break Point

Well, three rounds, three elves. Paul was the second of three High Elf players at the event I faced and he had a beautiful high elf army. We had a prince on a dragon, another hero on a Griffon, and then a range of ranged units including Sisters, Reavers, and Skycutters. This is a pretty basic mission, the points for capturing a banner with a banner will be quite hard for both sides to score. Getting a unit into their deployment zone will again come down to pushing up with Ushtabi and/or Skeleton Warriors. It is extremely hard to break my list so I feel comfortable in missions like this, the key thing is to try and break them which can be tricky.

I started by winning the first turn which is nice, I had a good hill position and mostly moved my forces up. He moved up on turn 1 as well. Between turn 1 and 2 I’d killed most of his Silver Helms with shooting. His dragon had moved up and I’d started to get damage on it as well.

My dragon at this point was flanking and facing his backline. It ended up getting most of my points rolling over a number of backline units but it was also well removed from the rest of my army and couldn’t support me with Illusion magic.

The game really came down to a mistake I made. On his turn 2 or 3 he’d flown his dragon over my lines and was threatening a Casket of Souls. I should have let him just eat the casket, then planned to kill the dragon on my next turn with shooting, it was down to 3 wounds. However thinking I’d buy my Casket another turn by moving my Tomb Swarms in front of the dragon. Well, on his turn he charged the swarms and overran into the casket. This was a disaster for me as I now couldn’t shoot the dragon. If only I’d left the casket up as bait his dragon would have charged on turn 3 or 4, I’d probably have killed it on my next turn, and even if I didn’t it’d be sitting around. Instead he killed the Swarms on his turn, the Casket on mine, and reformed to charge again on his next turn.

This was an entirely unforced error, I’d like to blame it on lack of sleep but really I just wasn’t thinking. This let his dragon kill 4 of my units by the end of the game. I made another smaller mistake a turn or two later letting his Gryphon flank charge my Ushtabi who were in the middle of the field. It won this combat after 3 or 4 rounds as they couldn’t reform to face him. I could have easily prevented this but again wasn’t thinking.

All that said, thanks to picking up points with my dragon and shooting this came out to a draw. I think given that I made two big mistakes that was a pretty lucky outcome, On merit I think I should have lost this game. But Paul was a fun opponent and while I was really sick of 18” leadership 10 inspiring presence, it was a good game to end day one on.

Round 4 - Jackson, Vampire Counts - For the Little Guys!

As soon as I saw Jackson was 1-1-1 I expected we’d face off. We’d played each other twice at the Old World events at Nova Open and why would this be any different. So sure enough, round 4 pairings go up and it will be another undead match.

This is another mission where my scorpions are a liability. Rather than flat points these award 150 kill points so my 150 points of scorpion could give up 450 points, almost what my dragon is worth (which gives up over 600 in this mission). So, how to play this one. First I’ll say that it has players deploying on short edges and I love this as Mortuary Cults. Reducing army frontage makes my tar pits more effective and gives the enemy less room to flank me. I’m planning to turtle or push forward depending on their list, protect my scorpions if I can and take a lead in kill points to try and deny them from at least 3 table quarters.

Jackson had changed his list up from Nova and was not taking a Mortis Engine. He still had some screams and a Necromancy level 4 but also took a Ghoul King on a Terrorgheist. He also took a lot of ethereal units, these had been a problem for me at Nova. Magic missiles are good into them but 4 Spirit Hosts is 16 wounds to get through, that’s a lot of shooting. However I felt pretty confident here because of my dragon. It gets 2 attacks with magic weapons and 2d6 auto-hits with the magic weapon, it should easily be able to take down Spirit Hosts, right?

I deployed fairly far up and looking back I was over confident. I think I matched up very well into this list but I do have to worry about screams. I kept my army pretty tight to deny Jackson good opportunities to charge with his Hexwraiths, a powerful unit but one that is very fragile when I can shoot it. They had to hide in the back so both sides moved up the other units. His Ghoul King was flanking to my left, while his Spirit Hosts moved up the middle.

I decided to charge his Spirit Hosts while shooting and debuffing the leadership on his Ghoul King. The Ghoul King had the item that gives it a 4+ ward and stupidity, both were very impactful this game. I’d managed to take quite a few wounds off his Ghoul King, he healed some but it was clearly in danger going into his turn 2. I didn’t manage to kill it on my turn 3, but I kept good charges out of his vision arc so the Ghoul King wasn’t going to have a good charge until turn 3. On his third turn he had to roll stupidity and with -2 leadership he failed and the Ghoul King had to go forward. It was able to scream a Tomb Scorpion off the board in one go, but after that I could kill it. But it did take a lot to kill it, the 4+ ward rolled about average and I think I ended up needing to deal about 20 wounds to the thing to put it down.

In the meantime in the center of the board everything had gone wrong for me. I’m not going to blame dice for this loss, I was clearly too aggressive with the dragon. But the run of dice I had on spells for turns 3-4 in this game was like nothing I’d seen with this list. I’ve lost to bad miscasts. I’ve never lost to getting consistently dispelled. For two turns in a row I cast Spectral Doppelganger with a +8 and for two turns it was dispelled by my opponent’s level 4 wizard. Each of those is about a 9% chance of happening, so we’re in the 1% chance of happening range. This was very bad for me but it became a crisis because on turn one of combat I had to make 7 regen saves. Having done the math the average attack from Spirit Hosts into a -1 to hit Bone Dragon is getting to the point of .22 regen saves needing to be taken. I needed to take 7, put another way there is a .0675% chance of rolling that well. I made some, I failed some, and I lost combat by a good bit. This meant I was locked in combat and couldn’t heal with him. No problem, my general and bsb are within range. They fail 4 leadership checks in a row. Then on that turn (my turn 4) Jackson dispelled 4 spells in a row. Most were not cast on a +8, but at least one was. I’ve just never seen anything like it.

But enough griping about dice. I had fucked up by moving my dragon that far up and he was able to scream it and then finish it’s last wound off in combat. I think if this combat and casting goes differently I’m in a very comfortable spot this game, but it didn’t, and I wasn’t.

Not a whole lot happened after our ~dragons both died. His units crashed into mine and my units just sort of stood there as undead tend to do. I did have to do some pretty interesting positioning to keep my backline safe but it worked out. I did also get to pick off his banshees later in the game which was crucial to get some VP. At the end of the game it was a 808 to 605 win for Jackson, about as close a win as there can be. And while the game would have undoubtedly ended differently with my dice doing better there were certainly some things I can take away form this and I think I could have avoided the loss with better play.

And I think I have three lessons from this game. The first big takeaway is that I need to understand that I can’t shoot everything. I had good tools for dealing with everything in his army. But if I’m trying to focus down a 4+ ward save Terrorgheist I’m not also going to also be magic missiling his Spirit Hosts to death. I think I picked my targets correctly, but I underestimated his resilience meaning I didn’t have as much time to shoot was I expected. The second lesson is that while being aggressive is often good, sometimes you need to let them come to you. My best magic missiles have a 36” range, Vampire Count’s best attacks have an 8” range. If I deployed a couple inches back, and didn’t move up as much I’d have gotten that extra round of shooting I wanted. Then the last takeaway is that even if you have a good matchup, like Spectral Doppelganger into ethereal units, those matchups can go wrong, and you can’t risk an expensive unit just to get it into a good matchup. My dragon didn’t need to charge the turn it did, like the rest of my army it should have played it safer, waited another turn and seen what happened.

At the end of the round I’d had a good game, I really like playing against Jackson though we’re both sick of the matchup and while I was a little bit in shock at my dice, I’ve learned something from the game.

Round 5 - Nick, Lizardmen - For Honor and Glory

Everyone was excited for this mission. The rules for winning were pretty standard, mostly just a bloodbath. But it included a menu of special abilities you could pick which I and a lot of other players loved.
- We can’t have that: Your first fated dispel is done on 3d6 and take the highest +2.
- Can’t Touch This: One of your non character or monster units gains Magic Resistance (-2).
- Tactical Genius: After Deployment, before determining who goes first, you may redeploy up to one of your units that is not a character or single monster.
- Rocket in his Pocket: A unit champion in one of your scoring units can cast Fireball as a bound spell with power level 1.
- For the People: A single scoring unit gets double rank bonus (i.e., 1 rank = 2 for combat res; 2 ranks = 4 for combat res, etc. This does NOT affect warband leadership bonuses).

I was playing against Nick with Lizardmen and he was very new to Old World, I think this might have been his first event. He’d driven up with a friend who’d gotten him into the game and frankly I felt a little bad that he’d be facing my list in the 1-2-1 though I found out later he’d won two games which I think is pretty impressive with Lizardmen.

I continued the weekend trend and won the roll off. His army had a ton of scouts and skirmishers. I mostly castled up while using some Skeleton Skirmishers to deny scouting opportunities. From the menu above I’d selected the Ruby Ring and he’d taken the boost to your first Fated Dispel. And I don’t really have much to say about this game because it was something of a massacre.

Tomb Kings are very good at shooting Lizardmen with access to 2 Fireballs on top of my casters and caskets. On top of that Unquiet Spirits is just gross vs t2 skinks. Additionally his list was relying on poison to get damage in and he often had to shoot on 7s due to Casket of souls meaning he couldn’t get wounds.

Pretty quickly most of his army was gone and mine was almost untouched. He wanted to call it at that point, and we rolled out a few things (including him taking down one of my Scorpions) then called it there. I made sure we rolled for that scorpion and am glad we did because that turned it form 20-0 to 19-1. I felt bad about how one sided the game was for the end of his event when new to the game and using a underpowered army but so things go. We did chat some and it was nice to get a feeling for where he came from, new to Old World and Warhammer in general which isn’t a demographic I’ve faced much. Most new Fantasy/Old World players already play 40k or something else.

Awards and Winners

As seen from the photo at the start of this post, there were a lot of awards to give out. And I like that, it’s nice to have a ton of prizes and none of them felt superfluous. Phil with Tomb Kings won Best General. In round five he had a nail biter with Luna’s Bretonnian Exile to pull out the 5-0. Best overall went to Jarrett’s Empire which were a great looking army and it speaks to his painting and sportsmanship that he was able to win best overall at 3-1-1. Luna took second best overall with the Brets. Third best overall went to Marcus’ dwarves and even more impressively he did this at 2-3.

I was very happy as we got to the end to hear my name announced for Sportsmanship. I think it was about the only award I was in the running for with my hard list and 2-2-1 record, but winning it was an honor. I worry a lot with Cults that my opponent might not be having a good time. I played 2 friends and knew those were good games, but in all three of the games I played against new players I was worried if they were having fun and I tried to keep them engaged and be very clear in how my army’s bullshit works. And it worked out, despite not having the W-L I’d want I’d had 5 fun games against 5 good opponents and taken home the top spot for sportmanship.

Lastly and again I want to thank Todd and Yong-Duke for putting it on. This was a great event and I really hope they do it again next year. If they do you should come so we can hit 64 players!

Reflecting on the List

So, how do I feel about this list that went 2-2-1 with? Pretty good honestly. I think my two losses and my draw were a mix of dice and mistakes and I think with perfect play (however unachievable that is) I would have been 5-0. I am a little annoyed that in 5 rounds I played 4 armies with a leadership 10 18” commanding presence, and one undead army. Mortuary Cults just feels so much easier to play when your opponent is failing leadership rolls so I think that is a factor in the result as well.

I think the 6 units of Skeleton Skirmishers were amazing and I want to start all my lists with that. “Winning” deployment by getting your units lined up against good matchups is just so valuable, and then even beyond that they provide value was 20-25 point road bumps in game. People are sleeping on these, for real.

I also am still happy with the Skeleton Warriors. They usually don’t do a lot, but it’s less than 200 points of core, and I’ve never had them wiped out. They’re just shockingly durable.

The unit I’m least happy with is the Ushabti. They were perennially a weak point in my list by being so damn slow. In several matches they did nothing, and in the round three match they died because I had to try so hard to make them do something useful. But I’m not a fan of Greatbow Ushabti either. I’m starting to think I may try a Cults list with a block of 25 Warriors and then a big block of poison archers. I think the 4-5 point skeleton models are just so good for their cost.

I was very happy with the character slot. Outside of some dreadful dice, having the wizard on a dragon gives you a durable threat that nothing else in the list can match. There is some tension in your illusion caster getting into combat, but I think it’s worth it.

The other thing I’m not sure on is the Screaming Skull Catapult. The leadership debuff is very good, but only having one makes it less consistent than I’d like, and I can’t stack it. For now I think the dragon/1 catapult list makes sense, but I could see changing it up in the future. I’m starting to work on another army but will still probably play some cults here and there. Look out for more from me on the list on this site.

Battle at the Beltway Old World Tournament Report

Introduction

List Building and Tournament Pack