Hi, I’m Stephanie, and Goonhammer has kindly allowed me to tell you all about my first Clash of Kings! Clash 2024 was the biggest Kings of War event ever, hitting 200 ticket sales this year, with players fighting six rounds for many illustrious prizes.
I started playing Kings in January of this year after a fairly long wargaming break, and absolutely love it. It’s delivered on the promise so many games make of being simple but deep – there are people who literally only play Kings at Clash every year, and yet still do fine because the rules are that straightforward (think Old World style rank-and-flank, but a given unit acts as one entity rather than individual models). I’m gonna be using game terms throughout this report, but will try to keep things as clear as possible for any new faces.
We were playing in the home of modern wargaming – Nottingham, England. Nottingham High School had kindly agreed to let the Clash team use their venue, allowing the event to be bigger than ever, and it was an absolutely stunning venue. If you’re on the Kings of War Fanatics Facebook page, you definitely need to check out the drone fly-throughs (just ignore the bit where I attempted to swat the buzzing thing without realising what it was; I really hope they edited that out!).
Now, with this being a premier Mantic event (the makers of Kings and a buncha other games), players were encouraged to bring Mantic models. A quirk of Kings is that it’s model-agnostic – you really can use anything, as long as it’s representative. A friend of mine took an army of gnomes to represent goblins, my partner Ben took atompunk-styled Halflings with some old Warjacks thrown in, and I decided that for this premier Mantic event that I would not only buy, but buy and paint a GW army. I am not very intelligent, but at least our armies looked pretty. Our fourth team member took Mantic’s Northern Alliance and used the actual models for them. Boo, hiss, letting the side down. He doesn’t get a photo (because it’s 3am and I can’t find one).
The army I took was Varangur, who are essentially Warriors of Chaos in general style. They combine lightly armoured marauding units with beefy elite troops, and have access to some really powerful stuff. But, their army list shares a lot of units with their goody-two-shoes counterparts, the Northern Alliance. Northern Alliance have some really strong unique stuff of their own, so tend to see a lot more play than Varangur. We’re number two, though, so we try harder. All that means is that nobody knows what my stuff does, though, which is fine by me!
I painted my stuff pretty much all in the week leading up to the event. This required a lot of time off and frankly dangerous levels of sleep deprivation, to the point where I was hallucinating by Thursday. I haven’t done anything really stupid to my health for the sake of wargaming in a really long time, so I was allowed to be a little idiot as a treat. Not an experience I plan to repeat though – tripping hard while painting fine detail on like 30 idiots isn’t something I’d recommend.
For the Kings players reading, here’s my list:
It’s pretty much straight from the mind of Tom Robinson, a very skilled Kings player who plays for the Northern Kings team (who run their own two day event, which you should absolutely go to). You basically just yeet at people – between Scout and your fast units, you’re usually hitting home on turn 2, and are trying your damnedest to convert that into powering through to a win. Snow Trolls are phenomenal pieces. Frankly, they’re too good, and I expect them to receive a well deserved biff with the nerf bat in the yearly update due next month. They pull double duty as both sources of Inspiring and body blockers, and are excellent at both. I’d say the weaknesses are that it lives and dies by the success of its initial charges, and by the output of the Chimeras, who represent a large chunk of list, as well as absolutely needing to take a commanding attrition lead in scenarios focused on Unit Strength.
I went into the event wanting a really solid result, after some rough early outings. I’d accumulated a lot of rust from my time out of the hobby, and definitely wasn’t the tournament junkie I used to be, having grown up and stopped being a border-bouncer across most of Europe and the states. So, this was the weekend where I wanted to properly test myself, and I approached things with high expectations for my performance.
Now, onto the stuff folks actually want to see – the games!
Game 1 – Richard ‘Jacko’ Jackson, Order of the Green Lady (basically Bretonnians), Stockpile
Pairings were announced a few days beforehand, so I knew that short of a redraw I would be facing this. It was a similarly fast list to my own, with some Pegasus fast chaff and a whole bunch of speedy cavalry. While it lacked the blistering threat range of my dragons, it could deliver a very upsetting charge if it hit home. Jacko’s army was lovely, consisting of old Bretonnians and a bunch of cool horse-like Water Elementals (basically think the scene from the Fords of Bruinen in Fellowship). The scenario we played was one our group had never actually tried before – basically, you’re fighting to loot the battlefield, removing counters from three central stockpiles. Naturally, we panic-jammed games in beforehand to practice, so I had a plan to pick them up late-game after clearing Jacko out.
Our patrons, Leodis Games in Leeds, had kindly gifted us some dice and stickers for our opponents – no small outlay with twelve players representing the store across three teams! Naturally, Jacko decided to use it for his early rolls. Roll to place Loot counters? Six. Roll for side choice? Six. Alright, I see the way this is going. We ended up with a pile of three counters dead centre, and two piles to the right. This made the left of the table a bit of a nonentity, which was fine by me – more concentration of resources means I can hit home harder. Fortunately, Jacko’s Leodis luck ran out for the starting roll, and I went first.
Jacko deployed pretty normally, with his chaff cleverly hidden behind cavalry to give them Cover against my shooting. We concentrated resources on the right flank, as we should, and I took advantage of a spicy hill in my deployment to get an ideal Night Raider firing line.
I slammed home really hard in turn two. Jacko, in my opinion, made an error by exploiting the hill on his side – he needed to move onto it to see my stuff, as it blocked his lines of sight, but this meant my Snow Troll and Kruufnir could go and jam them up. His cavalry loses a lot of effectiveness when not charging, and Snow Trolls are notoriously stodgy pieces, so that flank was basically going nowhere. Coupled with some unfortunate Headstrong rolls (basically a way to get back in the fight despite failed morale checks), Jacko’s centre collapsed over the first few turns.
We then played a game of two halves. A really slow grind took place on the left, while on the right, we basically just slammed our hammers into each other, with one of my cavalry units getting absolutely drowned by wetbois and my poor little foxy idiots being obliterated. However, I had more hammers by this point, and Jacko eventually floundered, without the resources to stop me just walking onto Loot counters and picking them all up.
The game ended with a decisive win for me – always a great start to an event, and Jacko was an absolute delight of a first round opponent. I’d be more than happy to play him again in the future, as I seem to recall him mentioning a new army on the way (but I won’t spoil any surprise he might have planned for his locals). One of my friends also played him later, and had the exact same opinion about how lovely he was, so he’d clearly kept his spirits up (though how many spirits were required in order to achieve this, I can’t say!). Jacko got a win both days, and ended a respectable 2-4, in 160th place.
Game 2 – Exequiel Ferreyra, Undead, Fool’s Gold
I have a lot to say about this game. Exequiel had flown over from Argentina for the event, like an absolute baller, so straight away I had massive respect for him as an ex-globehopper myself. He also had a really nice snowy army to go against mine, so of course we got put on the summeriest map possible. No sense of aesthetics, these TOs.
Exequiel himself was easily one of the nicest opponents I have ever faced in over a decade of wargaming, and stood out in a field of aggressively delightful people. I would have been quite happy to walk away from this game having been absolutely annihilated, and that was a very realistic proposition. This list didn’t present me with many good targets for my shooting, and the Horde of Revenant Cavalry – a notoriously good unit for their cost – was really intimidating. So, again, it was up to the dragon tag-team to make things work.
A quirk of this mission is the use of Bluff Counters. Basically, you have one worth two points, two worth one point, and two worth zero. You place them in your opponent’s half of the board, then reveal their value after turn three. Then, it’s a race to redeploy to the right places to score at the end of the game. As someone who loves mind-gaming people, I was like a pig in muck, and settled on a cheeky plan to make Exequiel spread out by feinting a commit on the right.
We set up, and got going. Exequiel started the action by piling his Zombies into my central cavalry which I used as a springboard to charge him back (due to the way charging works in Kings, it can result in much longer movements). On the right, we entered a standoff, as I waited to see if any valuable counters were on my side. The game, however, was defined by an all out brawl on the left flank, between that big block of cavalry, his elite cavalry, and my dragons (plus every other bit of chaff I could spare!).
This brawl came down to two things, in my opinion. The first was a very finicky judge call, which determined that I did have a play to get a dragon into the big cavalry unit the turn after it double-teamed the elite cavalry. Movement jank in Kings is a huge part of the game, and I was really pleased that my plan to exploit it went off, though it was a matter of extreme precision and could easily have went the other way. Having had the maths explained to me, though, I agree it was the right decision by the judges. The second was that Exequiel, having janked me right back by teaching me that engaged units can in fact declare a fresh charge even if Disordered, and thus flanking my dragon with his cavalry horde. I fully expected to lose it here, and commit more resources to slowing down his victory on that flank. But then, he rolled the dreaded Double 1 on a Nerve check. This meant my dragon not only survived, but was an entirely happy bunny, and could act normally. I feel this turned a close game around for me as due to the centre collapsing, I could pile more and more resources into the flanks until things ended. Exequiel’s misfortune was compounded by a targeting error with his special wizard, Morgoth, who didn’t take out the wounded dragon while he had the chance. I think this sealed the deal.
Eventually, I pulled out a big win, scoring very highly. This was Exequiel’s only loss of the weekend, as he did amazingly well throughout the rest of the tournament, going 4-1-1 and taking 10th place. We hugged it out after, which is something I always used to do pre-transing and didn’t realise I’d missed. Top class opponent, very much my Best Enemy of the weekend.
Game 3 – Morten Hjalen, Ogres, Control
Okay, I’m two wins in, time to face a meta bogeyman. After they took a win at the US Masters earlier this year, Ogres are a known quantity for me, with their powerful magic and very tanky units. Their simplicity belied the difficulty of the matchup here – because the scenario is won and lost on Unit Strength (think OC in 40k) in the six sections of table, the bigger number of his list meant I was already fighting uphill, and I needed to rely on my speed when hitting him.
Morten began the round by chatting about Norway with me. He was lovely to talk with, and sealed the deal with Norwegian chocolate (which I sadly later lost). We discussed Conquest, an Oslo event everyone should attend if it ever runs again as it’s a wonderful experience, and griped about our nation’s respective economic woes like proper adults.
We started off being really cagey with each other in the centre. I knew if I made a half-baked commit I’m going to get absolutely rolled, so I needed to spend as little of my army as possible taking out his stodgy chaff before I tried to take off some Siege Breakers. So, naturally, I let my tiredness take the wheel and allowed one of my Lords on Chimera to get flank charged on the left for absolutely zero reason. So smart, me.
Shortly after sending that, Morten rolled his attacks, leaving the Chimera on around 16 damage. He rolled the Nerve check.
Double 1s.
This meant the left flank went from a disaster back to roughly what it would have been without me being a potato, only now I’d accelerated the pace of trading greatly. I therefore slammed ham into him immediately, while continuing my slow grind in the centre – Nomagarok was getting Hex put on him every turn and shot by every gun I can bring to bear, meaning that he couldn’t risk healing the chaff I’m slowly chipping down with Magnilde as Hex would just damage him even more. I was tempted to take a cheeky charge into a menacing Sergeant with my Night Raiders, but decided to hold off, which I was grateful for later.
After clearing the chaff, it was go-time. I had to kill these Siege Breakers to win, and so I slammed a Chimera into Nomagarok over the head of everything else, while double-teaming the leftmost Siege Breakers with my other unit of Sons of Korgaan and Magnilde, and tying up the other Siege Breakers with a Snow Troll and Night Raiders (available due to holding off earlier). Due to tiredness, I sequenced wrong. I didn’t take the time to work out that I really should kill the Very Inspiring Nomagarok first, to make a kill on Siege Breakers more likely. This meant my initial spiky roll to kill them was rerolled into a much more average result, so they stuck around, and this meant the centre ground was likely going against me.
My central charge was eventually dragged down by a large pile of sweaty blokes in big armour, and I accepted the centre was lost. But, I’d rolled the left flank completely, and could start moving around the world’s largest building to put some pressure on. Meanwhile we’d both kinda ignored the right flank, so my Draugr were untouched and would require a big US commit to prevent me scoring my own section there. We played it out, and with a bunch of movement, ended up finishing my top of 7 with us tied at 3-3 on the scenario.
At the very end of the game, Morten went into the tank. He was working out whether he could win or whether I’d managed to force a draw, and was under the impression (as was I) that it’s the latter. But, he did the right thing, and spent the time he had left on his clock making absolutely sure. And, it turns out we’re wrong – I had forgotten that Troops of Ogres are US2 rather than US1, allowing him to take full control of his side’s centre. This takes the game from a 3-all draw to a 4-3 win to him, and a well-deserved one. This is what you should always do if you have clock left – better to be sure while the game is going, than kicking yourself after shaking hands and realising you could have won. Much respect to Morten for keeping his cool and looking at things objectively (no pun intended).
By this time, the event had overran substantially due to issues with the pairings app, and my partner had beef bourguignon in the slow cooker. I really wanted to eat, so I said my goodbyes to Morten sooner than I would like, and wished him well for the rest of the event. He went on to secure a nice 4-2 finish, taking a solid 38th place. I was pleased to see pairings up shortly after we left, and we spent the drive home and subsequent bourguignon-gorging (which was delicious, so thank you babe if you’re reading this) talking our matchups through.
Game 4 – Martin Dinsley, Forces of Nature, Push
Y’know, considering how decently I’d done, it could have been a lot worse, but I didn’t love this for me. While it’s dissimilar to the Forces of Nature lists I’ve seen in the past, missing the focus on Elementals I usually face, it had more than its share of very spooky pieces. I’m under no impressions of an easy game in this bracket. Martin had clearly earned his place here, with at least one scalp under his belt that I recognise. However, I’m really fired up to win, having had my first proper night’s sleep in several days – not enough to make up for all the damage, but enough to have me feeling human again. I’ll note that due to a clock issue we ended up using my phone, so instead of pictures of this round you’ll just have to look at my rushjob army closeups.
We were playing Push, which meant I needed to get across the board with Loot counters. My plan was to let the Night Raiders have them, as they’d be able to stay safe-ish early, and if something nasty came in for them I could just revenge kill it and be up on the trade. Meanwhile, my Chimeras went hunting on the flank together.
Martin did two very surprising things, though, which properly befuddled me. Firstly, the man had a map of several deployment options, which he showed me (though I refused to look, as it feels unfair to know his possible intentions, and I’m autistic enough that I could probably memorise them all and predict if given the chance). Deployment, to me, is key in Kings, especially reacting to what your opponent does, and it really surprised me to see a more rigid approach. That said, it saved him a fair bit of clock, and if that’s an issue for someone I can 100% see going for this as mitigation. Secondly, he stacked all his counters on his Tree Herder – I had to check if he can score them all, and make sure he knows he can’t. I offered to let him redistribute, but he kindly declined, stating that not only did he know, but it’s all part of the plan.
Seeing as I’m clearly up against some kind of 10th dimensional supermind, my initial refusal to underestimate this man was looking cleverer by the minute. We got going, and, as we’re doing Scout moves, I learned that Forest Wardens also have it. Which meant my Night Raiders were in threat range Turn 1.
For dignity’s sake, I’m going to pretend this was cunning bait. It wasn’t, but it actually worked out that way.
You see, it was the Warden with the Lute that went in, meaning Bane Chant was off the table from here on in. As my main pieces are mostly Def5, this meant his units were going in unbuffed, and other than the Fire Elementals and monsters they really need some support to close out combats. So, while it initially sucked a bit, it actually helped a bunch with later engagements.
A thing I’ve learned over a lot of wargaming is that my brain is smarter than me, and will do clever things instinctively if I just let it. So, I just went with the first plays to pop into my mind, looking to pick off his chaff as I did to Jacko – with mixed success – and otherwise playing cagily around Martin’s threat ranges. He, meanwhile, executed his cunning Tree Herder plan, shedding counters for his other stuff to pick up, and slow-played the right flank to respect my Sons of Korgaan.
He’s arguably a little too respectful here in my opinion, as it allowed me to slow-walk the side I’m losing on, while the Chimeras tried to power through on the left, but it’s easy to say that in hindsight and it’s worth noting he was winning at this point. There would be no point in throwing away resources from a winning position, so while he later remarked that his caution cost him, it wasn’t a bad instinct for him to have.
The big moment in this game, in my opinion, came after Martin went all in on my Night Raiders, having lost some pieces to early trades – most notably his Greater Air Elemental. A unit of Fire Elementals, and another of Salamander Primes, were parked on a hill, covered in the blood of some of my Night Raiders. But, because of the way he consolidated, there was a 5mm gap at the back of the former’s flank. This meant that, because of the way charging works in Kings (check range from any point to any point, if you’re in and you can see you can move infinitely with a limited number of rotations – usually one) my last Night Raiders could go absolute miles and end up flanking. Between Thunderous Charge (1), Vicious, double attacks, and a helpful Snow Troll in the front, and a Sons of Korgaan charge into the side of the Primes, I cleared up a whole bunch of stuff and established unquestioned dominance of the centre ground. I also got my Loot counters back.
Martin’s slower pieces were now concentrated on the extreme right flank, and had a bit of a trudge to get into the game. But, they were still holding three counters, so I had to be really careful with the survivors on my side – if I didn’t, he could really easily make this a draw or even a loss by running into my side for double points.
Fortunately, the Chimeras finished their wanton slaughter on the left, accounting for the Beast of Nature, some Hunters of the Wild, and the Greater Fire Elemental by now (the latter’s death was really appreciated, as those things are wildly good and tanky as anything). This meant they could start storming across the centre, along with my other Sons of Korgaan, to go and fight Martin’s remaining forces. While the attrition back-and-forth continued, the writing’s on the wall for the scenario at this point, and I eventually ended up rolling things up on the right flank for another big win.
Martin was a wonderful and polite opponent throughout, despite just how hard the game turned around. I also respected his willingness to get as fiddly as I did with the measurements on that key central charge, working with me to calculate the exact flank gap and being very careful to make things clear to the judges. I have a lot of time for opponents who approach contested situations with a proactive and helpful attitude, and loved that I was working with him to establish a clear gamestate rather than it being about who was right.
Martin ended 3-3 for the weekend, taking 90th place and staying in the top half – a very solid and deserved good showing, and yet another opponent who I would love to play again.
Game 5 – Chris Lynch, Northern Alliance, Hold the Line
So, for those who don’t know, Chris is the No.1 ranked Kings player in the UK. He was fresh off a win at the Northern Kings GT, having went undefeated and only missing out on five wins due to my friend Jake forcing a draw with him, and was very much one of the favourites to win. Unfortunately for him, he’d somehow plummeted down to my level. Fortunately for me, he was in great spirits and was an absolute delight to play against.
My friends have heard me grumble and tech against lists full of flying things that out-threaten me for many months now, and Chris’ list was like something from my nightmares.
My mind, this round, colourised
Given that the scenario needed me to be in the middle of the board, I wasn’t going to be able to dance around these birbs forever. But, I did have the tools to take off the Regiments if I had to, and had plenty of practice into combined-arms Northern Alliance lists in the past. Chris spent a lot of time trying to predict and react to my deployment, which served him well, but meant I could get a lot of board presence early on.
That said, he’s still a gunline, and while we traded shots in the opening he had a lot more shooting than I do. My Sons of Korgaan narrowly avoided a Waver, though, and I decided he’d committed enough for it to be go-time early on. Chris said after the game (if I remember correctly) that my commit was probably right, but I should have focused harder on taking out one Ice Elemental Horde, rather than gambling on taking out two. I agree with him in hindsight, and definitely see how I could have allocated resources better, but sometimes we have to take the knocks to learn from them. On the right, I slow-played things with a cheeky Chimera in cover, and the Night Raiders held things off on the left with mass shooting.
Sadly, my aggressive push didn’t pay off. In the midgame, I lost a lot of resources, and some deftly managed chaffing means I couldn’t respond as brutally as I’d like to. My fate was, to my recollection, sealed by two big Wavers – a high-roll on the right hand Chimera, and some Night Raiders on the left. I don’t remember the target numbers required, but it honestly doesn’t matter – dice happen, the mark of a player is how you mitigate them. My play to that point had contained errors, so going ‘oh, dice did it’ just removes agency from me to fix things. My goal became mitigation, and to make choices that kept me in the game. Magnilde, having unwisely charged early to annoy some Pack Hunters, got herself into the more open centre where she’d be Hindered less often. A cheeky attempt to kill the Thane by using Bring Me Their Head on her for Duellist didn’t work out, so she gave up and went for tastier birb-like prey. Meanwhile, I made a clever positioning decision on the right that stopped my remaining Chimera getting shot by Ice Elementals, meaning Chris had to use Serakina’s Wind Blast to try and finish me – which ended up failing to do so. While the play to kill it was definitely still odds-on, the fewer chances someone has to succeed the better, so that was definitely a nice moment of ‘oh hey, sometimes the old knowledge comes back’.
The writing was on the wall, though, and I was eventually pretty much tabled. I consoled myself with the fact I hadn’t been 21-0’d – a fate Chris inflicted on at least one person I know of – and we had a nice postgame chat. It’s worth noting that Chris was an absolute delight to face across the table, as though we’d met in passing I’d never had the chance for a proper conversation, and I’d love to square off again at future tournaments. Sadly, due to timing issues with the round (the app was still taking 3-5 business days to generate pairings), I was feeling the pressure to get packed up, but we still parted as friends (I hope, though he may secretly hate me for all the horrible stories I told him). Chris went on to continue his rampage and finished 5-1, taking 3rd place and retaining his crown as current UK number one.
Game 6 – Clément Caron, Ogres, Pillage
My friend James had actually played Clément the round before, beating him with his gnome Goblins, and had some brief advice for me – specifically, ‘watch out for the Crocodogs’. I’m fortunate enough to have seen them before, but was actually decently confident regarding the rest of his list.
The shooting felt like sad times against me, and there were fewer Siege Breakers than last time. While the Stealthy aura from the Boomer Chariot is annoying, it also presented a big thing for my Chimeras to charge if needed.
We had to get going really quickly, as the round had once again been delayed by issues with the app (a near-constant during the event, which caused substantial overruns), so I barely got a chance to talk with Clément. This was a shame, as he was a lovely fellow, but the poor guy seemed a bit knackered by the weekend overall – it was probably a mercy for him not to have to listen to me natter in really bad French.
This rush also meant we didn’t spend too much time looking over lists, but our pre-game walkthrough of what’s what made things fairly clear. However, I don’t think Clément realised just how annoying Stealthy was going to be for him. He got the side of the table I really wanted, and while I was emotionally recovering from that, the game began.
I’m gonna be honest – this was a mega-close game to finish the event on, and I was really feeling the exhaustion I’d racked up over the week beforehand again. So, I don’t remember this one as well as I’d like, and I apologise to Clément here for not doing his very skilled play justice in my summary.
I was able to commit very heavily early on, taking out Nomagarok, the Boomer Chariot, a Horde of Shooters, and putting a bunch of damage on a bunch of other stuff. His counterpunch, though was absolutely devastating. I overestimated the likelihood of a Chimera breaking through on the left flank, and thus ended up with it getting destroyed by counter-charging pieces, while losing a decent amount of my committed pieces in the centre.
Fortunately, I had reserves, and so we kept battering away at each other with abandon. My second Chimera made it to Clément’s backfield, while Magnilde went on yet another hilarious rampage, exploiting every silly rule she had to get into extremely annoying places and poke things that did not want to be poked. I don’t think I actually used Legacy of Herja at any point, but the threat of just getting the zoomies and going 20” across the board meant Clément was under constant threat. Combined with some key rolls in various places, including a very impactful failed Headstrong check (hearkening back to Jacko’s woes), I was able to keep things really tight until the final turns.
At this point, we reached the situation below.
Now, you may notice something off on the left. That beige smudge was my Draugr, who, despite me barely mentioning them up to this point (I actually ctrl-F’d at this point in writing and was baffled how few times I’d done so), had been racking up objective points for me all weekend simply by being so weak and unthreatening that folks just ignored them. Here, they were holding an objective that Clément had no chance of contesting with his available resources. My backfield Night Raiders were also holding one underneath their base, so I was on two. Because Ogre characters are all large enough to have US1, Clément was also holding two. But, with the position of his dinged-up Siege Breakers, I could maybe have finished them up with a Night Raider charge – and, if they’d survived the Berserker Bully hitting them back, I might even have won the game.
However, I’ve spoken in hypotheticals there for a reason – and not just because of the equal number of things that could well have went against me earlier on. Sadly, the roll for turn 7 said no, and Clément and I had fought each other to a standstill. With barely any models left alive on either side, we ended up with an exact tie on scoring, and walked away heads held high with a draw. Clément was a lovely opponent to end the weekend playing, and I only wish we’d met when we were both less tired. Due to the ever-present timing overrun, we had to dash straight off, but I’d love to get over to a French event sometime to play again. Clement ended 3-1-2, and placed a solid 63rd.
I, meanwhile, was all done for the day. I hadn’t acquired my emotional support 4-2, ending 3-1-2 instead (the off-brand version of 4-2, I suppose), and placed 61st – not what I was hoping for, but on the plus side I was top of the 69TPs club. Nice.
My friends had also performed solidly, with Leodis Knights (our team) taking 13th place on the team leaderboard, and getting closer to all of us qualifying for the end-of-season Masters invitational (as stands, three of us are in, with only our Goblins player left – and he’s well on the way to smashing his way there). Sadly, the Leodis contingent didn’t repeat its acquisition of the coveted wooden spoon this year (not even the best at being the worst, smh), but overall a great time was had by all.
While the logistics going to hell was an absolute pain, I still got to play against six delightful opponents, from four different nations, all of whom I’d never played against before. I adored the venue and had a lot of time for the hardworking judges, and will definitely be back next year – though this time with a hotel, so we don’t have to worry about the finish times so much. Sadly we weren’t shown much of Clash of Kings ‘25, so it doesn’t look like we’ll know too much until the book’s release in October, but what we did see indicated that evolution not revolution would continue to be the approach (with the potential spice of Command Dice, though as an optional rule they’ll live and die by their adoption in the community).
For now, it’s onward and upwards to the next event, which I’ll try to do better at photoing if folks end up enjoying this read. I’d like to thank the judges, my opponents, and the Leodis crew for a great time, and will be frantically brewing up revisions to my lists for the next event we’re at in October. Cheers for reading, and I’ll see you all in the brave new world of Clash ‘25!
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