Historicon, the good, the bad and the trolls

I am always amazed that there are so many great games that go on under one roof during Historicon.  Part of the reasoning behind this revolves around the fact that they cover all ranges; fantasy, historic, modern, sci fi and include land, air and naval battles.  Seeing those 1:200 scale WWII air combat games was really neat as well as seeing the huge composite battles with so many well painted armies.
This event hosted a doubles tournament with five tables.  Most players had completely painted armies which is always a plus from an aesthetic point of view.  I was surprised by the number of evil players, I think there were three all good army, and one mixed out of 11.    Our player extraordinaire, Mr. Snack Crumbs, actually took time to take pictures during his two games (there was a oversight, his team only played twice) and posted about it here.  I did not play the same teams as they did.  This was a warm up event before the Grand Tournament up at NoVA at the beginning of September.  The rules and event for which can be found here.  Now, on to the comments and info..... More beyond the break.....



As a note, the host of the event instituted a house rule changing how forces reach 50% break point and how the scenario win points were calculated.   Usually a force breaks when the entire side( both players) reaches  50% of the total army left, the host changed that to per player, not per side.  Which is a little wonky if you and your partner bring different styles of armies or if one was matched up with this type of army.  As an example: a regular army 3 warband ish 600 pt army is partnered with a player that brings a seven or eight model high point per model army.  At this point all your opponents have to do is concentrate on the numerically smaller army, break it, then your whole side is broken.  Which then triggers the end of the scenario.  Another change was how an objective marker was claimed.  Instead of model count around the objective they used the points value of all the models around the objective.  If your opponent has 10 eight points models and you have one 90 point model, you win the objective and get two points, your opponent gets one for "contesting" it.  Which means a player can swoop in at the last minute with a high point model or any combination of models and claim the objective with fewer models.  This makes those low model count armies (eg. all hero or all monster, or one big monster and some filler models) more viable in a greater number of scenarios.

 We brought an army of elves, dwarves and radaghast on sleigh.
Our games were, for the most part, good.  Game one was To the Death versus a moria and goblin town  army on a ruined laketown style board (no water).  We got started late and we took way too much time setting up.  The extra time did not help us, we deployed horribly and our opponents took advantage of it.  The opponents were attempting to isolate and kill my smaller model count army to break our side, which combined with a bad deployment may have happened.  My partner spent most of the game trying to get his units into combat and I spent it trying to get my banner to the combat area.  Both my team and our opponents kept knocking over the buildings while rolling and moving, which was rather comedic.  Unfortunately we had to stop playing with no clear winner, we ran out of time.  I actually do not even know how many units we killed, although our team lost maybe 10 models out of 63.
The army was something like this, This is about right, not perfect:

 Moria
Warband 1  
Moria Goblin Shaman
1 Gundabad Blackshield Drummers
4 Warg Marauder
6 Gundabad Blackshield with Spear;

Warband 2  
Gundabad Blackshield Captain
6 Moria Goblin Warrior with Spear;
6 Moria Goblin Warrior with Orc bow;

The Trolls
Warband
William (Bill)

Warband 1  
The Goblin King
12 Goblin Warrior
----
Warband 2    
Grinnah
12 Goblin Warrior
----
Warband 3    
The Goblin Scribe
12 Goblin Warrior
----
Warband 4  
Goblin Captain with Two-handed axe;
12 Goblin Warrior
----
Warband 5  
Goblin Captain with Two-handed axe;

Warband 6    

Moria Goblin Captain

1 Cave Troll

Game two was Domination against a Gondor with warriors/knights/boromir/faramir/damrod/ partnered with Azog/Narzug/Bolg/fimbul plus 3 hunter orcs on an osgiliath ruins style board.  In this game it was fairly easy to break the Azog army (see above about low model count armies) and win with more objectives captured. One objective was captured with a high points cost model( hunter orc vs the bunny sleigh).  This was an older brother and his younger sibling, we gave as much advice as we could to the younger sibling (playing Gondor).  He had a good handle on the mechanics of the game, but still needed some pointers on picking targets, in the ways, when to charge, who to charge etc.  Overall it was a fun game with players who really like playing. We tried to them helpful even if it was not to our advantage.
The army was something like this:
Warband 1    
Damrod, Ranger of Ithilien
6 Warrior of Minas Tirith with Shield;
6 Warrior of Minas Tirith with Spear;

Warband 2    
Boromir, Captain of the White Tower with The Banner of Minas Tirith;
3 Warrior of Minas Tirith with Bow;
9 Knight of Minas Tirith

Warband 3    
Faramir, Captain of Gondor
6 Warrior of Minas Tirith with bow;

Game three was Storm the Camp against a mordor army of trolls(one drum) with a couple of filler orcs and an Angmar army with Bhurdur, cave trolls, a shade and the witch king on horse.  We lost horribly.  Had we just stayed inside our deployment zone and let the 9 inch movement trolls come to us things would have been different. We decided to head on out to meet them,   which, again, was a huge mistake.  Considering that more than half our army was only moving 5 inches, the other team, literally, marched right around us.  While we had some units in the back they could not move fast enough to make a difference.  One brutal power barge was really all that was needed to cut off the returning army from the deployment zone and outnumber what we had there or could get there later in the turn.  Game over.  We really should have stayed in our deployment zone, but there is no real fun in sitting back and shooting.  If we had, maybe our opponents would not have been bored.  I think we had 2 actual combats.  I think there was also one death on each side, an elf(h2h) and an orc(arrow). This was by far the least enjoyable match for a multitude of reasons.
Here was the army from the best I can remember:
Angmar
Warband 1  
The Witch-king of Angmar with Horse; 3 Extra Might; 8 Extra Will; 3 Extra Fate total 3M/18W/3F
3 Cave Troll
Warband 2  
Shade
Warband 3
Buhrdûr, Troll Chieftain

Mordor
Warband 1
Mordor Troll Chieftain
6 Orc Warrior with Spear;
1 Mordor Troll with War Drum;
3 Mordor Troll