6/30/2025 - First 2 Day Tournament of the Edition
Hey everyone!
I had the privilege of attending my first 2 day tournament of the new edition of MESBG a couple weeks ago, and (spoiler) since I won, I figured I had no excuse not to do a write up about the weekend!
Northern California's A Red Sun Rises event is their yearly 2 day event, hosted in June at Great Escape Games, in Sacramento. I was present there last year, however did not do very well, so clearly I unbiasedly did not write about it (I was also being very lazy at the time). This year, their 36 ticket event sold out, though there were a few drops, which resulted in 29 attendees day 1, down to 28 day 2. The event allowed the Armies of Middle-Earth Book and was using the Matched Play Guide, using the Veto system with randomly created pools of 3. Legacy was not allowed, just because it needed a bit more review and the call was made to hold off on it (also in part of the books being leaked almost 2 weeks early, while legacy had only been out for a week).
I had the pleasure to drive up with one of my local Southern California players, Clyde, and talking MESBG for a few hours while listening to The Two Towers was far more enjoyable than my usual solo driving, and also met up with another Southern Californian, Devon, who had flown up ahead of time, so as to not have to get up at 3AM to drive up! With the pedal to the metal, we arrived at around 8 AM, and hung around until the event started a couple hours later. I got some time to speak to some of the NorCal locals, Nathan and Tyler of Down Down to Podcast Town, Brandon, a fellow Isengarder, as we spoke about the merits of the Isengard Troll, and bemoaning his intelligence 8, John, who had brought a whopping 12 Knights of Minas Tirith with a Reclamation list, and a few others, and then Eli, a Washington player who had travelled down with his double Chief Black Gate list to destroy the free peoples.
My list:
Naturally, I was playing White Hand, because, what else would I take. I have been getting a tremendous amount of practice with White Hand in the new edition, with roughly 120 games played leading up to this event, along with countless games last year running Isengard Orc+Hobo spam. I, to my shame, did include a few Uruk-Hai, but it just happened to be because of a few extra points lying around. I did pick up the Orc Shaman, as I personally felt (pre-legacy) that a second source of transfix, with the flexibility of an alternate fearless or even enrage beast was very very good, and added a big tool to White Hand's Arsenal. Naturally, some views have shifted with Legacy as an option in most events, and I will be going more in depth on the full White Hand roster in an upcoming post, but without it, I am very happy with how the list turned out, and it's impact on games. The numbers are good, allowing me to hold objectives easily, and body out things. The Crebain add great mobility, along with two chiefs able to Heroic March me up the board. I have lots of bows, and while I do not normally like bows, given my horrible performance on average with them, the event being veto did allow me to play into 3 night scenarios, though only 2 had actual shooting.
Before I knew it (as I waited impatiently on a chair twiddling my thumbs pining for glory, donned in my cloak of many colors), the event was in swing, going through the pre-event TO info session by Kevin, the awesome TO that has run most of the NorCal events I have gone to.
Game 1:
My first match saw me against Gio, playing Breaking of the Fellowship.
From there, it was just a slog. The Fellowship attempted to cut through as many Orcs and Hobos as they could, and ultimately broke White Hand, while only suffering a few elf losses in return, however White Hand was able to spread out to the other 3 corners, and ultimately still held a majority of the battle corner, while Saruman suffered a last turn shooting wound from Legolas for a 10-4 Win to White Hand. Grima was having a field day, and managed to sap roughly 8 or 9 might throughout the whole game.
Game 2:
Game 2 saw me paired up against an Umbar, piloted by Max. I had read the new rules for Umbar and it's profiles, however I had only spectated one game of theirs, and not seen much list building, so was not fully sure of what to expect.
I took a first look at the number of models in this army, and was actually a fair bit concerned. Having 1 more model than me, with less bows but also a ton of S3 throwing (the bane of Wildmen), I was pretty concerned that in melee, this army would start chunking me down very very fast. We were handed a pool that reflected that concern, with Retrieval, Storm the Camp and Assassination. Max banned Retrieval, which was fair, as I had a lot more mobility, and Grima or the Warg Rider could disrupt the opposing object, and I had the models to screen his infantry force, along with him wanting to shoot me more. I banned Storm the Camp, as, without even remembering Assassination was Night rules, I was concerned that I would not be able to score more than 1 VP through Grima, due to the model counts we had. That left Assassination, a fairly even scenario, as we both had tools to get our target killed, though I had a slight advantage in the potential that Lightning forces an engagement.
Max set up aggressively along the mid-line, however I decided to hang back a bit, both so that I could get Lightning and Gale Winds to do something, but also to try and take out some Black Numenoreans with shooting, something made more possible with Night rules. Choosing my target, I considered where his heroes were, and ultimately decided to pick my Yellow Chieftain (within the central block) as my Assassin, and his Hasharin as my target (on picture left of his line). Later I learned that these same models were chosen in reverse for my opponent, with the Hasharin attempting to kill the Yellow Chief.
The first turn allowed me to Lightning, and I ended up taking out 6 models, and put a wound on Dalamyr, which postured that he was my target. This prompted my opponent to have to start moving forward, as the rest of my army stood back, with some repositioning of the Crebain and Warg Rider to the solo warband led by the Red Chief.
The second turn saw me Gale Winding, and the three turns of approach allowed me to pick off 4 Numenoreans. On the fourth turn, my opponent moved first and moved into melee range, and I opted to engage rather than shoot, attempting to start surrounding their lines with the few model advantage I had earned myself. The duels from that point were unfortunately very one sided. A lot of Numenoreans and Corsairs were forced into shielding as I started to surround and prompt 2v1s (4v1s with Spear supports), and disrupt with Crebain, as my red warband started moving around the rock to come in on the flank (they never arrived, getting caught on a stream of defenders blocking the path). My banner coverage helped a lot, and Saruman played a key role in going after my target, transfixing the Hasharin to disable Preternatural Agility to allow for the Yellow Chief to grab the kill.
Through the struggle, Dalamyr also received a wound, but I was unable to finish the kill. My opponent did manage to grab a wound on the Yellow Chieftain, securing him some assassin points, however it was the Numenorean Marshal that managed it, not the Hasharin. Ultimately, I came just shy of breaking, while my opponent was reduced to less than a quarter of his force, the game taking 4 turns to end on the roll.
With my Assassin securing his kill, remaining alive, but wounded, and breaking my opponent while wounding Dalamyr, the game ended with a solid 18-3, VPs sorely needed, and also being massively impactful later on in the event.
Game 3:
Game 3 saw me facing Jonathan in the dreaded mirror match of White Hand vs White Hand.
Jonathan was building much more out of the Isengard Battlehost and I believe a Mordor Battlehost, so was far more limited in what he could take, with no Dunland presence. Make no mistake though, an army of 59 models, with so much fight 4 and a comparable amount of bows, especially at S3 is not a walk in the park, especially with us both still having access to Saruman, Grima and the superpowers. The scenarios we receive are Seize the Prizes, Esocrt the Wounded and Clash by Moonlight. My opponent banned Seize the Prizes, a fair call given my greater mobility with Crebain able to screen objectives, while I ban Escort the Wounded, because I think it is an awful scenario (and will die on this hill). We play Clash by Moonlight.
In deployment, we both opt to put Grima with the opposing army, my Grima going with the Orc Captain, and his Grima going with the Oathmaker. Both of us deploy that warband first, terrain being able to hide Grima from likely Saruman deployments. I Jonathan's lightning a little more than he respected mine, leading to me being far more spread on deployment, with chiefs in position to march to recover, while he was more clumped up. I did initially forget to take a picture of the board, leading to a gap of models (hint hint on what happened). I also took a rather rough picture missing some backline models and Saruman, but the picture still shows relatively what I went for, maxing out at basically 8 warrior models in any one clump.
We finished deployment, and I was able to take the first priority. Saruman had an opportunity to address Grima, however I opted for the lightning. I was able to hit a total of 14 models with the lightning, killing 9 and wounding an Uruk Captain, though failing to take out the banner. Grima slunk away to hide in the meantime, getting to a position that his Saruman could not see him.
In return, his Saruman blasted my Shaman and 8 friends of varying persuasion (orcs and wildmen), but only managed to secure 2 kills and a Shaman wound. Sometimes lightning pops off, sometimes I does minimal work.
As the lines moved up, I found myself able to position on either side of the central rock with some bows, as my opponent and I started trading shots. I managed a fair few kills, while only receiving a few in return, as my opponent took the middle and presented a line of uruks to contend with me. During the approach, he managed to sorcerous blast my Grima, however I opted not to address his, going for Gale Winds and other impactful plays before taking him out as lines clashed. As the lines clashed, I saw an opportunity to slay his banner, utilizing a channeling, and the remainder of Saruman's 2 might to bring the 1 to a 3 on a Flameburst to take it out, securing me banner points, as long as I kept mine safe. This turned out to be a game winning decision, with over an hour left on the clock.
With my better banner coverage, and a few lucky duel rolls, the Uruks and Orcs of the opposing White Hand started falling in droves, along with one of the Uruk captains. I also had an opportunity to gank Saruman with 3 Crebain, and also cause a long term distraction, and opted to do so.
Saruman did in fact, roll a 6.
From there, we just kept brawling, however it was very clear I would not get to the middle, so just focused on not breaking, ultimately succeeding while breaking them, killing 2 heroes and having banners while they had none, versus the Uruks holding the middle by double and getting a hero kill, for a 10-5 Win. A solid end to day one, going 3-0, with myself sitting in Second Place, as one of three undefeated players. It was also during this game that the TO, Kevin, finally realized that my shiny cloak that shimmered a bunch of colors in the light was meant to represent Saruman of Many Colors, and not some weird tournament player habit.
Post Day 1:
I rewarded myself by grabbing an Airbnb room (that was pretty bad), rather than sleeping in my car, as I had planned to do to save a few bucks. Since I was in contention for winning, it was a good choice to rest. A ton of the attendees headed out to a local joint, Lefty's Taproom, for some food and drinks, and I got to hang out and talk about the state of the game and a lot of list building subjects with some buddies.
The next morning, I rose on no sleep, because I doomscrolled on my phone until late, and have started waking up at 7AM naturally again, which is odd since I have had no alarm set since January. I headed over to the hotel that Devon and Clyde were staying at, and discussed the upcoming day, then we headed over to the store for day 2.
Game 4:
Game 4 had me paired against Joseph and his Radagast's Alliance, another undefeated player who was currently in first place.
There is not much to say about this list, as it is pretty clear cut. Big monsters, a lot of mobility, and some magic and magic resistance to drive it home. I knew from the get-go that this was going to be a very tactical game, that would require me to position as perfect as I can get in order to avoid losing important heroes, or objectives. We were handed Convergence, Stake a Claim and Treasure Hoard as our scenarios. I banned Convergence, as I was concerned that the Eagles would be able to grab all 4 objectives and just fly away the whole time, or come upon one half of my list with their full force for a game shattering lead. My opponent banned Stake a Claim, an auto ban against my army, as his list would be unable to cover the objectives in a meaningful manner. This resulted in us playing Treasure Hoard. I did almost ban Treasure Hoard, as the map was really rough for my army, but I prayed to the gods of RNG and managed to win the deployment roll off to avoid having to ford a river. Deployment was nothing special, just fitting as many models as forward as possible, with March available as I could get it.
Turn 1 saw me tossing a lightning out to hit Radagast, Gwaihir and an Eagle, resulting in a wound on Radgast, which required 2 fate and a might in order to save, which was massive in the long run, while Saruman ran forward to grab the central objective, Red Chief led his buddies to the right one, and a few Hobos ran left to go around to the other. My opponent in turn grabbed the central objective and his left (my right), but failed on his right (my left).
Going into turn 2, I failed on my right, while engagement began in the center, and I positioned to grab my left the following turn. I was able to send crebain up to tie up the objective holder on his left (my right), and also into the one that failed on his right (my left), which delayed it a couple turns from digging. I ended up losing the yellow chief due to some poor positioning, while he still had might, but I forced out more resources from Radagast in the form of a channeled Transfix to stop Saruman's impending Channeled Sorcerous Blast, and a might from Gwaihir on a Heroic Move, so I traded 2 might for 2 might, which was fair.
The following turn, red managed to dig up the objective, while Saruman blasted Radagast and his Eagle mount into the dirt, forcing out his last fate. I lost both crebain holding up his eagles this turn, but managed to start positioning around my left treasure, and to start denying all movement on the eagles, and impending Beorn who was making his way in Bear form.
Going into turn 4, I finally managed to grab my left objective, and also compelled Gwaihir to drop the central one, and passed the one from Red onto a Warg Rider who left, luckily so, as the right side fledgeling came over to fight his warband. The left side fledgeling finally dug up his objective, now that the crebain were finished, and Raddy attempted to start running away as a few of my warriors moved around the house from the right to attack. Luckily, the red chief survived the fledgling barging, and now the end game began.
At this point I started to consolidate my resources, bringing all 3 of my objectives and the one I stole from Gwaihir over to Saruman, while my opponent opted to cut his losses with his fledgling on my left side and hide on the far edge behind a building to secure some VPs.
From there we slogged on, with me killing the right side fledgling and bringing that objective over to Saruman, killing Gwaihir and Radagast, While Beorn limped away with 0 fate and 1 wound remaining, with me not wounding the last fight of the game that would have broken the Alliance, but being broken myself on that last turn as well. Ultimately Saruman became the Lord of the Rings, and collected 5 on his person, with the only remaining on the hiding Fledgling, for a 13-5 win to White Hand. This was definitely the most tactical game I had to play, and the most energy intensive. As this game happened, Clyde was playing against the final undefeated player, but lost, avoiding having to face me in the finals!
Game 5:
The final game of the weekend saw me facing Nicholas and his Watcher Moria, with me sitting in first place going in, and him second.
I had seen Moria a couple times, and of course, I had played Depths quite a number of times so far, so I knew I was going into a bit of a grind. For paying for the Watcher and 2 Bat Swarms, 50 models is still a solid number of Goblins. And then the pool from hell came. The dreaded combination of Lords of Battle, Contest of Champions and Sites of Fell Power. 3 Scenarios I really did not like when presented with this list. My opponent had to ban first, banning Contest of Champions, which was unexpected to me. The conclusion I arrived at, that seemed to make sense to my opponent was that the Watcher cannot be the Champion, since it does not deploy, preventing it from being in the middle, which is something the Champion must do, however it could still play a pivotal role in denying my Champion any play, and keeping Saruman occupied all game, I think it likely to have been my hardest Scenario to face this list in, and was prepared to ban it myself regardless of the Champion eligibility of the Watcher. Presented the choice of Sites and Lords, I opted for Sites. I think I could competently fight this list in Lords, due to Fight Value and bows, however I felt more comfortable in my ability to play Maelstrom.
I cannot remember who won the initial priority roll, but my opponent ended up arriving first. In Sites, I have found that first or second both have their merits. My opponent arrived well in terms of proximity, however he was a bit too tight, allowing for the eventual lightning play. Grima arrived with Durburz and ran directly in front of him, cautioning him against moving into battle, like a good advisor. I took a picture both of when they arrived, and the start of second turn after I had arrived and The Watcher. I did miss when my final warband of the yellow chief arrived, however he later came on behind the Oathmaker in the bottom right corner. As Saruman arrived, he smote down 6 goblins with Lightning, and both him and the Shaman arrived on the East/West edge in order to cut off the goblins and play for the back objectives. The oathmaker and red chief arrived on the North/South edge, attacking the gap created by Lightning. The Watcher arrived at the start of the second turn to attack the Hobo party, far far away from Saruman, who had chosen him as his target. To note on the pictures, my opponent did have the old Watcher base, and using the oval was cleared ahead of time, both with the TO, his previous opponents and with me. I was not going to make him go buy a base on the spot and rebase him in front of me, and ultimately, because this board was fairly open, I was not super concerned that it would matter.
Going into the second turn, I won priority and took it, leading to a heroic move from Durburz and a captain near the Watcher. I responded with a Saruman calling a move, as my guess was Durburz was going to use his once per game movement rule in order to run with the goblins away from Red and towards the other side objectives, so I wanted to get Gale Winds in before his heroic move from the captain. I had guessed right, and Durburz used his rule, as I followed suite with Gale Winds to mitigate the bonus, neither of us calling with me. The goblin captain, being unable to escape, opted to engage, falling upon my trapped wildmen near the edge. Saruman's part of the army started forming a line to fight the impending Goblins and Bats, while sending a crebain to the far corner objective. I do not know why, but something told me to go for the Watcher this game. It was a horrible mistake. I moved in a bunch of hobos, and moved the Oathmaker to a safe 6.1" away, while Yellow arrived, and the remaining goblins moved up towards Saruman and Co.
Then came the pain. The Watcher proceeded to roll 6 shots the first turn, and kill 6 hobos, benefiting from the dark of night to wound me on 3s. He then proceeded to roll a 6 in combat and kill 5 more. From there, the Goblins kept moving forward and Saruman's group started clashing with them and the bats, while more hobos flutily engaged the Watcher, who rolled 5 shots turn 3, and killed 4, while also rolling another 6 in melee and killing 4 or 5. From that point I decided enough, and started running the Oathmaker up the board to the far corner objective, as I knew I had made a horrible mistake and was going to break, and he was both my most expensive non general model, and fearless, so perfect to hold that one, this being the right call, as the Crebain I sent ran away.
The bloody battle continued, with ultimately us both quartering each other on the last turn. On that last turn, I got crazy lucky that Grima passed his courage test without Saruman's help, in order to sandbag the bottom left objective to only be double, while the Watcher cleared off his objective, and the Oathmaker took the top right. Saruman faced off with a sole brave goblin the final turn, winning the duel but failing to slay him, resulting in only double at the top left. It ended as a 6-6 draw, with each of us having 1 uncontested objective, 1 by double and both breaking with no leader wounds or kills, and our expensive models unwounded.
Because I was in first going into this final game, based on tiebreakers, drawing out resulted in me maintaining first, while Nicholas earned second place, in a hard fought and bloody battle. I have rarely had a game where both players quarter ever, let alone this edition, which seems to have one army start snowballing at a certain point. Coming in third place after us, was Tyler of Down Down to Podcast town. My fellow SoCal players came in 6th (Clyde, playing Army of Erebor, going 3-1-1) and 22nd (Devon, playing Battle of Fornost, going 2-3 - Blame Cirdan). Despite Cirdan losing the tournament, Devon managed to swing Best Painted, so ultimately, the only loser was Clyde (who did a 50/50 on whether to face Cartdalf Shire in Storm the Camp or Retrieval, rolled into Storm the Camp and 0-0ed for a draw) - (all love).
With that final draw, the event ended, and I was blessed with a fantastic opportunity... to buy more hobos. I now own 168 of them. No it is not a problem, I can stop any time I want (this is a cry for help). I plan on making the Warriors of Rohan into Dunlending Warriors, in an attempt to get some more variety with what I have, or flat out replace them, as the new sculpts are pretty cool.
From there, I sat and talked about the event, matches, and how much Dragons are dumb, asked about some upcoming NorCal events, so I can steal their League (I now have 2 podiums out of their 3 events I've attended this year), and bid farewell for the drive back, talking more with Clyde while Return of the King played in the background.
For those of you that are BCP Subscribers, you can see the matches, lists and placings at https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/event/wZ0EHMEh5MMb
With that, my first 2 day event of the edition was concluded! It was very exiting to get out to one, as I was still disappointed in missing Adepticon, and having already bowed out of making it to Ardacon this year. I am attempting to make it to Nova, but still have yet to lock down the necessary funds. Hopefully no matter what I should be at Clash on the Coast. I would love to bring the hobos to the highest levels of NA this year, and show everyone why Uruks stink!
Check back soon for a bunch of White Hand analysis between the profiles and army itself, and all the information I have gathered thus far this edition.
See you!
-Scott
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