Perigrin’s Return to The Old World – Tournament Report

The Old World is still a pretty new game, without a ton of data to draw from or practical experience out there. There is a lot of speculation about what is the most powerful, what works, and what doesn’t. The only way to get any concrete answers to any of this is to play more games, so I recently played at my first Old World tournament, the Return to The Old World in Newport News Virginia. This was a 14 player RTT organized by the same people who are hosting the Old World tournament at the Richmond Open. I learned a ton about the game at this event, what works, what doesn’t, what you need to do, and why a lot of the rules people complained about in the Richmond Open TOW event packet were there.

Army and Prep

Lately I have been on a bit of Chaos Dwarf kick. Something about the very brutal, disciplined sort of evil they represent just stood out against the general chaotic hordes of shouty burny men in Warhammer Fantasy. I like to play the heel in Wargames and there are few heels heelier than skull-cracking, slave taking, line holding legions of evil. I wanted to do Chorfs at the event because I was already painting them up and my Beastmen army needs a substantially larger amount of Minotaurs and Dragon Ogres to function and my old TVI style Empire army just doesn’t work in Old World like it did in 6th and needs about half of the units swapped out of it.

I ended up painting up until the night before the event, and I made a critical mistake while getting the army ready. I bought a bunch of goblins to build up and use as Hobgoblins, but decided I really didn’t want to paint 40 Hobgoblins to get ready. This was a mistake, I badly needed those 40 Hobgoblins, as we will get into in a minute. I ended up super low model count, which caused less problems than I thought it would, and super character dense and slow, which caused a ton of issues.

The Most Dangerous Creatures Under 5 Feet in Height

I ended up taking a lot of heavy infantry. I knew when I was submitting the list that it was suboptimal, Chorfs really want Bull Centaurs and Wolf Riders to give them some mobility and agency in games, and some cheapo Hobgoblin archers to deal with chaos warhounds and other super fast bastard units. I was counting on stat-checking people with the insanely powerful brick of Ironsworn by stacking Daemonology buffs on them to make them insanely high damage and hard to kill.

The Bolt Throwers and Iron Daemon were just intended to be enough shooting threat to force the enemy to engage me in close combat to get away from the damage. The Fireglaives are, in my opinion, the best weapon overall for Infernal Guard. You could make arguments for a unit with hand weapon and shield for price, and after the event I really think Blunderbusses might be less bad than I initially though at shooting, but for melee damage output the best pick is Fireglaives and I was planning on using the unit as a flank-charging threat that could soften up enemies on their way in.

As far as character builds go, the Sorcerer-Prophet was built to keep himself alive and the Warboss was given a Dragon-Slaying Sword on the off chance I could get him into combat with enemy big flying bastards or monsters. The Ashen Banner on the BSB was to make the Ironsworn less vulnerable to shooting on their way in. I knew there were some dirty, stinking elves coming to the tournament, and I didn’t want to lose models before I could start applying boots to throats with them.

The idea was to make up for the lack of Hobgoblins and mobility with sheer overwhelming force of stumpy, dwarfen arms. Sinking 800 points into one unit of M3 Infantry might seem stupid and yeah, it was, but with what I had painted it was the best idea I had.

The Event

I spent the night before the event at work, putting the last finishing touches on my army, basing the Black Orcs (the Frostgrave demon minis I was using for them are great but those puddle bases suck hard. I might try to cut the next batch I get off of their bases.) and painting my Sorcerer Prophet, Bolt Throwers, and Iron Daemon. One of my usual gaming buddies, Jessie, was also playing at the event with his Skaven. After a bit of setup we thought pairings and tables were up, and I saw the player and list that he was intended to go up against, a really heinous Warriors of Chaos list played by Squarehammer. One look at the list and I knew it was almost certainly going to win the entire event, and I said I would buy him a drink if he could win the game. Turns out that was a false start, and uh…

Round One

Confident and Hateful Chaos Dwarfs VS A Warriors of Chaos Warcrime

”WoC

Yeah so fate hates me. Just look at this list! Warriors of Chaos are my current pick for strongest tournament army in the game right now and this is a big pile of their best units, with a Chaos Dragon, 5 Drogres, a level 4 for insurance, and a bunch of wardogs to gum things up and cause me to forget how to play and make horrible unforced mistakes. I have played against Squarehammer before and love playing against him but he clearly thought about his army list a lot more than anyone else there, myself included.

I want to compliment the event in general for having really good terrain. There was less of it than I am used to for fantasy but it ended up working out pretty decently. I deployed pretty conservatively here, attempting to refuse a flank and meet him with my heavy infantry first with the Fireglaives coming in later to gum things up. I had a pretty great deployment zone hill for my artillery and I ended up positioning the Iron Daemon to meet his Lord on Big Flying Asshole. My idea was to just take the charge from the dragon ogres with suitable dwarfen grumbling and grind him down in a sustained combat, hopefully chipping one or two drogres off with bolt throwers on the way in.

So the thing about the best laid plans is that they last exactly until a unit of Chaos Hounds move across the entire table, jam themselves in front of your infantry, and the bloodthirst takes over. I didn’t get a picture of it, but Warhounds deployed in a marching column are insanely, unreasonably fast and can immediately get into your opponent’s face and cause them to make mistakes and gum things up.

I charged both units with my infantry, held back the ironsworn for some reason and decided to try to overrun the Blorcs into the Dragon Ogres, because I saw this as my only chance at getting to fight first into them and I became convinced they had impact hits. They don’t have impact hits; they have stomps, and I should really know that considering how long I have spent staring at that unit card. My Blorcs are in a horrifyingly bad position up there about to get charged by two dragon ogres and a chaos giant. It is here that the great specter of Old World reared its head: Linehammer.

The event had limited unit formations to a max of 10 wide. This was fair, but for reasons we have said before, I don’t think there is any serious risk of units much wider than that being particularly viable. The thing I learned at this tournament is that 1: You can change how wide your unit is after a fall back in good order and 2: You really should go as wide as possible if you are a great weapon unit that lost combat after being charged. It makes enemies think twice about falling back into you because you have increased your damage threat, and if you already lost a rank or two from the previous combat you aren’t losing a ton. If you have Drilled, then if they choose not to not follow up and go somewhere else you can reform into an easier to move formation. I think reforming wide to be thornier if you are expecting to eat a nasty charge is a really good use case for Drilled in general.

Drilled might be lowkey one of the best abilities in the game; it lets you stay in a compact, easy-to-move formation until you need to be better at combat. Dorfs and Chorfs both have good access to Drilled, and I think that using it well is going to be a big part of making these armies work.

Yeah so I got my ass beat for the rest of this game. I killed the two Dragon Ogres and the Chaos Giant with that unit of Black Orcs and then got flank charged, blasted by magic, and killed by dragons until I died. The last unit on the table was my Fireglaives, who survived a couple turns jammed between the two Dragon Ogres and a unit of war dogs. I also had a miscast into the S10 blast which killed 220 points worth of Ironsworn in one fuckup, which 100% didn’t help me win the game but even without that I was pretty sure I was going to lose. I really needed some Hobgoblins to clear his wolfs out and eat charges from the Drogres to let me get into better positions. I had to surrender my ability to pick fights this game and he ended up only picking good fights for his army as a result.

In the end I had killed around a quarter of his army and I got tabled. He ended up scoring 25 points, the max allowed for the round, to my one single, solitary point. He went on to win the event overall with a perfect score and yeah, obviously; this list was pure hate. Great game though, lots of good banter and generally great vibes. I ended up finishing before most other tables on account of how hard I got tabled, and took solace in the knowledge that things were going just as bad for Jessie.

Ogres feel like they are going to be a vibe check army the same way Knights or Custodes tend to be in 40k. Gatekeepers that keep armies off of the top tables but are manageable if your army is tuned to either hit first or withstand their shock attack.

Lessons learned from the absolute beating I received here:

1. A character on foot with the monster slayer USR is worthless if your opponent doesn’t step on the rake that is his unit.
2. Stubborn is so fucking good, and all of the Chorf units having Stubborn and Shieldwall makes them horrifyingly hard to shift.
3. Ironsworn are so fucking overkill, the Black Orcs and Fireglaives did nearly the same job for half the price. I should have gone for 20 Black Orcs and 40 something Fireglaives instead of taking them.
4. War dogs deployed in a marching column have a movement range of “Wherever the hell they want to be”, and are annoying to deal with.
5. Man fuck the puppet. Fuck the puppet so hard. I hate that thing. The Infernal Puppet is some bullshit and I think I managed to cast literally one spell the entire game. The puppet is evil and will whisper evil things to you, promises of power, women, wine. You can’t listen to the squalid fucking homunculus, it brings only pain and hate. Great choice for a tournament list for WoC though, I think it is going to be an auto-take in any serious WoC lists.

Lunch

The lunch break was after that, and me and Jessie went across the street to a local diner to eat hamburgers and talk about Neo-Babylonian warfare, as normal and well adjusted people do. The food was decent but I was filled with a growing sense of dread that I was going to finish this event 0-3. I had a pretty solid plan but it was looking like I had a better matchup in the next round, a High Elf list with even fewer drops than me and another big lord on dragon. I had already agreed to write about it, and it would be really funny if I just got obliterated all day.

Round Two

Traumatized and Bitter Chaos Dwarfs VS The Most Elite High Elf List Imaginable

Bronsons list

Second game was against Bronson, someone I had never played against before. As you can see above, we both deployed in a pretty honest line and got ready to beat the hell out of each other. The mission this time was to control the center of the board for bonus VP and kill each other for most of our VP. I was feeling pretty confident going into this because my army was a lot tougher and a lot angrier. I once again had a deployment zone hill for my bolt throwers and the spirit of Corsica itself possessed me to deploy my cheap as hell artillery on it, even though that put them directly in front of possibly the most horrifying unit of archers I have seen so far in Old World.

The first couple turns were slow, with his dragon skulking around the flank unwilling to engage the unit with the Dragon Slaying Sword and his archers ripping my Fireglaives into pieces. I decided to try and use the Lumbering Destruction rule on my Iron Daemon and had the engine backfire, delaying its arrival into the combat, but the Ashen Banner meant that the Seaguard couldn’t hurt my Ironsworn at all as they pushed up into the center. He conceded the center early, which makes sense; he had ranged superiority with that horrifying unit of Sisters of Averlorn there.

He doubled charged my unit of Blorcs on his turn and after a TO call we determined that a character can’t move from one flank to another without a challenge, and Bronson was cool and accepted it on his Dragon. He proceeded to whiff completely, but then I whiffed harder and the Dragon’s stomp attacks killed my character, which was hilarious. I lost the combat but by less than I probably should have, Phoenix Guard are awesome but Black Orcs are better and used their stubborn to back up, go wide, and dare the enemy to follow up. Meanwhile, my Ironsworn push the Seaguard back, taking higher than expected casualties and inflicting less than I was expecting. I ended up reforming to keep my options open next turn with the Ironsworn.

After this a series of close combats happen, my Black Orcs and Fireglaives all die and I am finally able to move my Iron Daemon up. The Ironsworn absolutely obliterated the Seaguard with all their buffs on, as my wizard rolled basically all the good Daemonology spells this game. The Ironsworn were 3 attacks each, S5 AP-2, I3, WS5, T5 with a 3+ save and magic attacks, anything they hit is going to die with those buffs on.

I also got the Daemonology spell that lowered initiative, and was able to hit his Phoenix Guard with that on them and every buff active. You will notice that the unit is a lot smaller there than it was in the last photo; Daemonology makes Infantry do horrific damage. My Iron Daemon finally managed to get into combat and spent the rest of the game annoying his Dragon. He made his Phoenix Guard Ethereal with a spell, but Ironsworn have Ensorcelled Weapons and the Phoenix Guard ended up losing that combat pretty hard as a result.

The game ended after shoving his Phoenix Guard off and his dragon finally smacking my dumb cart to death we ended up having both lost most of our armies, but each had a horribly expensive unit and a lot of points in characters left on the table. We had a draw on kill points as a result, but due to me holding the center more often I ended up winning 14-12. This was a really good and very close game that just felt honest. Elves and Dwarfs, battlelines meeting and my bastard hard heavy infantry shoving over everything in their way, really fun.

Lessons learned from this very close game:

1. Dude, Black Orcs are so good. They cost half as much as an Ironsworn and are defensively the same and hit exactly the same on the charge. If you play Orcs and Goblins or Chorfs I think a unit is an auto take with the Stubborn upgrade. Easily my MVP unit every game.
2. Phoenix Guard and Seaguard are both really good units, high initiative sucks to fight into, and if I had a normal melee unit it would have been a very different game.
3. Daemonology Buffs are insanely good. They are such massive force multipliers. Magic rarely wins games by killing things with spells but buffs and debuffs do so much to make your units stronger.
4. I need to put my lord on a Flying Monster so bad.

Round 3

Idiotically Confident Chaos Dwarfs VS RATS RATS RATS RATS

Skaven

For round 3, I was matched up against Jessie, and this game was a fucking rollercoaster. I had played against variations on his Skaven list before this, but not the specific build he had brought to the tournament and never with my Chorfs.

I deployed a little weirdly because I badly didn’t want to get stuck in the woods with my Blorcs or in the ruins with my Ironsworn. My Hobgoblin bolt throwers are just out of frame on another deployment zone hill. I decided this game to deploy my Blorc warboss alone to go try to duel his Hellpit abomination because god damn it I want to use this stupid 50 point sword and have it do something at least once this game.

The Setup

And the Punchline

Yeah so he got fucking run over by the Hellpit. It wasn’t even close, he didn’t even get to swing. The DSS is good but you have to put it on a character who can fly and get after people. The Hellpit proceeded to eat my bolt throwers and charge my black orcs in the flank late game.

We proceeded to play chicken with our lines for a bit; I wasn’t really willing to walk into charge range and he knew full well what Ironsworn could do in melee at this point and was also hesitant. This all changed when I had a second miscast into a S10 blast that killed 15 Ironsworn! That is 300 points worth of models dead to random chance and I am not going to lie it was the most Warhammer Fantasy thing that I have ever experienced. After that I decided fuck it, we ball, and sent my melee troops forwards at max speed.

I ended up eating a charge, with the continued total ignoring of the 1 inch minimum distance rule leading to some really messy charges and my Ironsworn giving ground and wiping half a unit of Stormvermin over the next couple of turns with just the 7 of them including characters.

Linehammer bit me in the ass a bit here and I ate a really nasty multi-charge on my Blorcs. Fortunately, Blorcs are pretty tough and they managed to hold on and shove the Clanrats off of them, the ding-dong bell wagon held on for the moment though.

After shoving the Stormvermin off the table, my Ironsworn, reduced to 5 models, flank charged his Grey Seer and broke him in combat, leading to him fleeing through his own troops and somehow not panicking them. They smacked into the flank of his Clan Rats and the Hellpit came back from eating my bolt throwers to remind me it was still on the table.

Around here I lost another couple of chorfs and ended the game with only 3 of them on the table. Nothing else of any huge significance happened after this point, with my Blorcs holding on and his small rats running off the table. Unfortunately, on the very last turn his Grey Seer rallied and turned back around, denying me kill points for it. This led to me losing the game 6 to 19. I had 2 Ironsworn and the BSB left out of that unit, and I am amazed that they held on for the rest of the game after that stupid S10 blast that killed almost all of them. I genuinely think if I hadn’t’ve miscast there I probably could have won the game by ripping his Grey Seers in half.

Oh also his warp lightning cannon and warpfire thrower blew themselves up. Such is life as a Skaven.

Lessons Learned from getting Rat Smacked:

1. If I am taking Ironsworn, only take like five. They do horrifying amounts of killing even in units that small.
2. Remember the 1″ minimum distance between units.
3. Always take your wizards sitting next to units rather than embedded within them. Having those miscasts go off in the middle of densely packed units of expensive infantry is devastating and can lose you the game on the spot. Some sort of cheap flying thing or horse is probably best if you can swing it.
4. Stormvermin are pretty good but, turns out, they don’t like to fight other heavy infantry too much. They are great at bullying things lighter and less elite than them, which is honestly thematic for Skaven but was probably unintentional.
5. Ratling Guns are really good, getting an Organ Gun for that cheap is a great deal.

Conclusion

So, at the end of this whole event I placed 12th out of 14 players. This was a pretty bad showing for the Chorfs. I don’t think this is an issue with the army as a whole, its an issue with my badly optimized list and my poor decisions. I am planning on revising the list to look more like this next time I go to an event.

The Most Dangerous Creatures Under 5 Feet in Height

This downgrades the Ironsworn and removes the Iron Daemon to shore up the mobility of the list, provide more chaff, and fit a mount in for my character. I have been debating dropping the seneschal but I really like the model and want to try out playing with him first. My Ironsworn were massively overkilling units and stacking those buffs on a 20 Blorc unit or a 20 Infernal Guard unit will provide more or less the same killing power for a lower price. The Iron Daemon is cool as hell but I think the wolf riders and hobgoblins might provide more value for the list. It has plenty of killing power, it just needs mobility and better agency. Hobgoblin Khans are pretty decent little characters and honestly the difference between a Blorc Warboss and Bigboss isn’t huge when they are embedded in a big unit of Blorcs.

As for Old World in general as a tournament game, I think that it is a ton of fun. You really need to have a plan for big monsters and I think that as people get more used to the game they are going to be less of a vibe check as people get more accustomed to fighting them. Level 4 wizards are completely mandatory though, you cannot risk the enemy casting all of their buffs and debuffs unopposed. Fated Dispel isn’t nearly enough and if something with Daemonology or Dark Magic gets to throw out all of their spells without contest they are probably going to kill you. Level 2 wizards aren’t real and don’t get to cast anywhere near a level 4, so if you are taking one make sure they give secondary value, like the Plague Priest being a decent combat character or the Daemonsmith doubling as an engineer.

Now if you need me, I will be painting Hobgoblins and converting up a lord on Lammasu. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

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