Playing Jonathan Quayle’s list

Last Clash of Kings, I saw the army of Jonathan Quayle in action. His 12-drop Basilean army is very fast and hard hitting but defies a lot of Kings of War logic. Despite that, he ended number two on Clash of Kings, only being defeated by the winner due to an unlucky double one.

Previously I thought that 2,300 point armies with less than 15 drops were much too fragile in a competive environment and units of more than 300 points were likewise too expensive. Jonathan’s results defied this logic.

To see whether this kind of army actually works, I rebuilt Jonathan’s army and tested it at a local tournament. As preparation, I watched Jonathan’s match on Clash of kings. (link here)

First things first:

The Dutch local scene is by far not at the same level as the scene encountered on Clash of Kings. Not everyone can adapt their playstyle to their opponent’s playstyle, even more so against an outlier army. The current Dutch champion, Theo, usually brings a new playstyle every half year or so, be it a goblin melee army with more adaptability than you’d think or a trident realms thuul alpha strike army. He has yet to be defeated using this tactic as most of us have to find out how his army works on the fly.

This also means that this environment isn’t ideal to test an outlier army. Nevertheless, it’s the best I could, so I brought this army to the Fall of Kings Tournament, a 22-man one day tournament in Utrecht.

The list is as follows:

This is how the army looks:

I painted up the elohi in the weeks before the tournament. The rest of the models I already had, save for one phoenix, which was graciously lent to me by MistakeNot. More tournament pictures at the bottom of this blog post.

The results

This army worked well. Contrary to my expectations, this army bloody worked. Without any testing before the tournament weekend, I won all my games. Not only the three games in the tournament, but also the two battles the day before.

the two test battles

The first testbattle was against Paul’s undead. Paul played a ghoul-revenant-Soul reaver cav army which was a good counterpart to my type of army. The battle was especially tough since I gave Paul an unexpected flank on one of my Elohi hordes with his wights. That said, Paul deployed about a third of his army behind a troop of revenant cavalry on his far left flank which I managed to block using a phoenix and keep out of the fight until I destroyed the center.

In the end, it was a rather close battle due to his plethoria of fast-ish units, his solid army build and a bloody mistake on my side. The dice, however, were on my side and I managed to rout his centre and reform before his left flank broke through my phoenix and later Gnaius so I could destroy that too.

The 2nd testbattle was the evening before the tournament. Albert brought his Order of the Green Lady, which was a combination of knight regiments supported by four regiments of naiad heartpiercers. This type of army gave me quite a lot of problems in the past using my goblins or Kingdoms of Men. My current speed type army does well against short ranged shooting and movement 8 cavalry. Shortly, i sacrificed a phoenix to bait his cavalry and destroyed his army in short order.

The tournament

Battle one: facing MistakeNot’s undead. (scenario: invade) She played a long battle line with her ghouls on the far flank and a contignent of soul reaver infantry on the near flank. a pair of goreblights and horde of zombie trolls held the center. I focussed everything in the centre.

The battle was quick and dirty. Gnaus and a phoenix held up the ghoul cohorts on the far flank, the 2nd phoenix and two units of gur supported by Julius blocked the revenand cavalry for a turn and my three power units destroyed the centre. After the fights everything but the paladins turned towards the soul reavers. Unfortunately, I gave a pegasus mounted vampire a rear charge on my paladin knights, but fortunately it was hindered. In the end she did about 8-ish wounds, not really a deterrent to the noble knights.

Turn 2, the elohi and julius supported by the abbess made short work of the soul reaver infantry, the paladins demolished the pegasus-vampire and the battle was virtually over by turn 2.

Battle two: Ron’s ogres. (Dominate)

Ron has a beautiful GW ogre army. Painted to a really high standard, the army consits of two titans (mammoth and goblin slasher), two regiments of chariots, horde of shield breakers, some warrior regiments, warlock and trio of bullies.

As you can see, the centre line is dominated by a large square of difficult heigth 0 terrain. All those melee 3+ ogres don’t really mind, while my knights need their thunderous charge in order to kill the ogres. The tactic to hide behind it, may have worked.

Ron, however, made a few crucial mistakes. The first was allowing Julius a 20″ move over his lines and a 90 degree pivot so he saw all his units. moreover, the fact that he didn’t have any shooting (save the goblin slasher, I think), allowed me to spend a turn manouvring so everything was clearly within charge range and just out of his.

Instead of turn 2, I charged in turn 3. (the picture was just before this moment) At the end of turn 3, only the two titans (blocked) held the centre, all other ogres had been removed. The lony bully in the forest enjoyed a rustique view into nothingness, as all targets had charged out of his sight. I spend turn 4 and 5 mopping up the remains and in the end I destroyed the complete army while only losing my chaff and an unlucky phoenix.

battle 3, against André’s Forces of nature.

André played the army he took to Clash of Kings and which went 3-2 there. 4 greater elementals (3 fire, air), 3x surge, inc Kerris, 2 forest shamblers and 4x heartpiercers. To top it off is a horde of scorchwings. It’s a bloody list which combines focus fire from the archers with nasty surge shenigans from the 50×50’s and forest shamblers.

Scenario: push.

Note : the paladin horde has been split up here due to the hill. They align to the front half instead of the back!

This was end turn 2. My whole army was in combat save for the far unit of Gur which were carrying my tokens to the opposite side. The palain knights destroyed a greater fire elemental (flank charge), my Elohi another. The far unit of Elohi fluffed their attacks against forest shamblers, but still bloked them. Nearly all archers were disordered, be it by gur (front) or Gnaus. Julius charged Kerris, but sadly didn’t break him!

An unlucky greater air succumbed to focus fired firesparks from the phoeni in turn one and the return fire only wavered two of the big birds.

The next turn saw a greater fire rear charge Julius, but his defense of 6+ (and a lucky nerve roll of 4) pulled him through. The two archers which were able to fire did some damage to a unit of elohi, but not enough to rout them. A few wounds were done, two of my gur were routed (leaving only the token carriers free) and I could continue mauling the army. By the end of turn 4, this army was destroyed as well.

The verdict

The army worked. Apparently, a highly mobile army combined with high-powered units works wonders. The killers are the two elohi regiments, the paladin knights and Julius, all other units are to see them delivered.

Gnaeus is a strange beast. He’s expensive, but in most battles he’s been a MVP. The 50×50 base with 15/17 never at movement 9 is grand. He’s a superb blocker and can even do some damage when he gets that flank he’s hunting for.

That said, the army is far from unbeatable. A full thrash list or a list featuring a lot of 36″shooting will hurt this list. In the end, it’s a singe horde of knights and two 4+ defense hordes that do the killing. If one of these three is eliminated early, this army is in a world of trouble. Moreover, if these units cannot eliminate more than 3 targets each, you’re gonna have difficulties winning the scenario.

Clash ’24 has scarcely touched this army. The phoeni lost a point of nerve, but gain a unit strength, which is a good trade, I’d say. Otherwise, the army hasn’t changed.

It’s a fun list and I enjoyed playing it, but I don’t think I’ll be playing it this often. Most of my regular opponents cannot handle this and the games were woefully one-sided. If they learn how to deal with it, the army will crumple fast and I’m not gonna wait for that moment! That said, I’ve learned a lot to value high-power mobile units. Maybe I underestimated the Kingdoms of Men flying cavalry a bit. (Edit: Clash of Kings ’24 removed those. Darn)