ASOIAF: Game with Grant from Yecats MIniatures

 Great to meet and play F2F

If you're into ASOIAF and have an internet connection, you probably know Yecats Miniatures and their YouTube channel. I've visited the channel as a guest a couple of times and as I was on a holiday in UK, we agreed to have a game at his house, near London.

Read on to find out how it all went down!

Took a train from Liverpool Street station in London and in less then 30 minutes I arrived to Shenfield, where Grant picked me up.

Wargaming shed

Grant has a nice man cave in his shed with a paint station and shelves for his ASOIAF collection, very cool!

Army Lists

We agreed to play with not the most competitive lists. 

My Darkstar list:

Faction: Martell Commander: Gerold Dayne - Darkstar Points: 40 / 40 Activations: 7 Combat Units • Sand Skirmishers ( 7 ) Gerold Dayne - Darkstar ( 0 ) Quentyn Martell - Prince of Dorne ( 1 ) • Skyreach Bowmen ( 6 ) High Hermitage Sentinel ( 1 ) • Sand Skirmishers ( 7 ) Spearlord ( 1 ) Edric Dayne - Lord of Starfall ( 1 ) • Starfall Knights ( 8 ) Non Combat Units • Ellaria Sand ( 4 ) • Petyr Baelish ( 4 ) • Lord Varys ( 4 ) Built on asoiaf-stats.com/builder

Darkstar's star is on the rise, he is currently 4th of 6 Martell commanders in Stats. His Lone knight card is perfect for Outflanking, so Quentin joined his unit. Of course this is also a risk as Outflank typically is. Luckily Grant's list is limited on movement tricks and it is known, that Greyjoys don't have native cavalry. Idea of my list is to shoot the enemy to bits and when needed charge in with my Knight to either a finish a already shot enemy

unit or to counter an enemy cav or other aggressive unit getting too close to my shooters.

Grant's Balon Greyjoy army

Faction: Greyjoy Commander: Balon Greyjoy - The Kraken King Points: 40 / 40 Activations: 8 Combat Units • Ironmakers ( 7 ) Balon Greyjoy - The Kraken King ( 0 ) Reaver Captain ( 1 ) • Ironmakers ( 7 ) Victarion Greyjoy - Master of the Iron Victory ( 2 ) • Drowned Men ( 4 ) • Drowned Men ( 4 ) • Ironborn Reavers ( 5 ) Asha Greyjoy - Lady Greyjoy ( 1 ) Qarl - Asha's Champion ( 1 ) Non Combat Units • Rodrik Harlaw ( 4 ) • Wendamyr ( 4 ) • Aeron Greyjoy ( 4 ) Built on asoiaf-stats.com/builder

Grant's list was good. Two Ironmakers with Balon's ability to help them to get to 2 pillages is a scary prospect. Lady Greyjoy has been a bane for me, so that's another thing to be aware of..

The Game - Here we stand

See it in Stats here

Deployment (18")

We both left a unit in reserve with Outflank. I deployed Skyreach Bowmen behind the palisade, then Skirmishers and then finally my Knights in the middle to both for countering and taking a quarter.

Grant placed his first Iron Makers in the middle facing my Knights. I don't remember the exact order of deployment, but Asha in Reavers faced my Skyreach bowmen, not ideal, so they kept their distance. 2 units of Drowned men were deployed next and in between these units, ready to heal  etc. One of them was deployed dangerously far...

Start of the Battle

Grant allowed me to start the game, so Darkstar and his Skirmishers stayed in reserve,  but I got to play Ellaria on the Swords and dished a panic token on the Drowned men closest to my Bowmen, whom let loose on the unactivated unit (rerolls and a Vulnerable token)... at least 6 hits were scored and with the help of the token the unit was destroyed... but was not as Grant played "What is dead may never die"... but died anyway, as the Panic token secured a failed panic test! Game started very well for me indeed! And the first WIDMND card was burnt.

I was now on range to Asha's Reavers, whom smartly used either Sentinel order or Horses to escape.

I then proceed to shoot at the Ironmakers with both Bowmen and Skirmisherts, taking 5 of them down. But Greyjoy retalliation was swift indeed: Grant tried a YOLO charge needing a 6 and made it!

Asha, Quarl and their Reavers smacked my Skirmishers really hard (including a failed panic test) This made my smile disappear... for now.

Round 2. started with the arrival of Darkstar... at this point we realized, that Balon had not arrived from Outflank on R1. A very cunning tactics by Grant or simply forgotten?

Grant smacked my Skirmishers via  Swords and and only 3 models were left standing!  Varys token was used to punish the Asha Reavers. 

As the start of my turn I played Lone Knight and wrestled with the a choise: should I shoot  at the Ironmakers or try to kill the other Drowned men unit to deny healing? Finally I opted to shoot at the DM after my maneuver, but only managed a single wound on them, dice were fickle!

I then duly retreated with my 3 remaining Skirmishers and soon healed them with a Varys token.

Some more drama then followed: I had Reckless strikes in my hand and felt confident, that a flank charge from my knights on Asha Reavers would finish them...

Naturally I rolled a 1 on my charge and Asha was left standing. Ironmakers then charged my Knights and attacked them hard. We do not saw was soon played and my knights were no more. This "friendly" game was becoming very bloody and intense indeed!

Asha used Sentinel again to try and escape the wrath and arrows of Skyreach, but she couldn't get far enough and was mercilessly feathered. Victarion Iron Makers were now on 2 pillage and 2+ armour save, so Darkstar Skirmishers used their Scout openings. With my first roll I scored a lot of hits, but not a single 6 for Precision, so I decided to reroll everything and fish for sixes, this was the reasult:

Grant approved

At the end of R2 score was as follows:

Martell 4 VP: 2 from VTC and 2 from quarters

Greyjoy 2VP: 1 from VTC and 1 from quarters

R3 Balon arrives

I guess Balon commander tr on mied to imitate his NCU version by arriving as late as R3, but he did it quite well, by arriving right behind Darkstar Skirmishers, whom I had left far too close to the table edge,

Luckily I had the start and chose to use scout openings on the remaining DM unit and charged them. They were easily dispatched to their Drowned god and my Skirmishers surged forth to make some distance to Balon Ironmakers. They took horses and then charged needing a 5+ and of course they pulled it off crashing into my Darkstar Skirmishers and finishing them off with a Price of Failure card and a Vulnerable token from Finger Dance! His charge dice sure were hot! I also kindly reminded Grant, that even when you play POF, you still roll the dice for potential Crits or Precision, and he promtly proceeded to roll 4 sixes!

In the meanwhile my other Skirmishers and Skyreach shot Victarion Ironmakers finally to threads... I had two units left againts Grant's one and Balon was very far from my units... 

Martell 6 VP: 4 from VTC and 2 from quarters

Greyjoy 4VP: 2 from VTC and 2 from quarters

End Game

At this point the game result was quite clear: I was able to score 2 VP's from quarters, while Grant could only score 1 and neither of us had 5p NCUs. Balon was too far from my units to try and kill them.

So we just calculated the final score 10-6 for Martells and called it a day.

At the end score was as follows:

Martell 10 VP: 4 from VTC and 6 from quarters - 23 points destroyed

Greyjoy 6 VP: 2 from VTC and 4 from quarters - 16 points destroyed

Standard victory for my Martells

 

It sure helped, that Balon "chose" to play the Walder Frey role and arrive so late...

We then headed of for a lunch and a pint and chatted about Song and life (yes, they are two separate things)

This was the lovely loot a walked away with - having paid the iron price.

It was really great to meet Grant in person.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY!