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So... In the end, it was good fun, but kind of an anticlimax; we only had four players.

That did mean that (a) everyone got to play everyone else, and (b) I managed to get an Ancient White Dragon (admittedly with sportsmanship votes) for my other half's slightly ridiculous horde of chromatics, so I'm not complaining.

The legions were:

1st place (3 wins) - G
Jarl Horn with Frost Axe, Blackguards Mail, Rock Catching
Eshaedra with Lightning Breath, System Shock and Devotrix of Tiamat
Adult Blue Dragon with Lightning Breath

(technically those blue dragons are ours. Friday night we were looking at lists, and I said "have you considered taking a couple of blues?". No good deed...)

2nd place (2 wins) - Me
Balagos with Iron Tail Spike, Close Quarters, Legendary Resistance, Magic Missile
Adult Red Dragon with Close Quarters
Adult Red Dragon with Close Quarters

3rd place (1 win) - Tim
Lord Maximillian with Sinister Plot and Malevolent Will
Galadaeros with Acid Breath, Frightful Presence, Aerobat Amulet and Magic Missile
Elven Spellcaster with Fireball and Dispel Magic

4th place (no wins) - Damien
Umberlis with Shadow Breath and Cloak of Shadows
Nymestra with Fireball, Magic Missile, Flight and Silver Staff
Harper Legion (3 strong) with Point Blank Shot, First Strike and Elven Accuracy

I may have missed the odd upgrade, but if so, that's because it had no bearing on the games. The scenario, in particular, didn't seem to matter - by general unspoken consensus, we just ended up playing 'first one to die loses' - all but one game was a wipe-out anyway, and that one wasn't especially close, so the 'vision tokens' really didn't matter.

1st game - versus G
Well, since G went 3 for 3 and won the event hands down, you know this isn't going to go well, but it really, really didn't go well.
I had deliberately not taken breath weapons in an attempt to keep the list simple - no duration tokens, only one dial to remember, but even if I had had fire breath, I don't know if it would have helped. Maybe.

Turn 1 Eshaedra and the Adult Blue shot forwards and tazered one red to death before it could get into melee range. Next turn I managed to claw a few wounds onto Eshaedra, and a couple more the following turn - he used her claws rather than lightning breath because devotrix wasn't ready (he'd lost his action due to a need to wingover), so killing her before she fired a second everyone's-dead-dave shot helped. Unfortunately, his other adult blue managed to catch both Balagos and the other Red in a lance of lighting breath, killing Balagos and wounding the Red. The red was alread lightly wounded before, and was finished off by, the Jarl - whos ability to slam dunk dragons out of the air with rocks makes me assume he's some sort of frost giant version of Michael Jordan.

I should point out that G went on to win all three games in a similar fashion. Both subsequent games would be punctuated by cries of anguish from the table behind as the other players discovered just how terrifying eshaedra's breath weapon is.

What could I have done differently? Dunno. Any advice for facing range 4 breath weapons with melee dragons is welcomed!

2nd game - versus Damien
No real subtlty here - his lowest level unit was level 9 (one better than balagos) so I formed up into a flying wedge and wheeled gently towards the Harper Legion (on the grounds that they were the least able to get away), then hit the gas and charged. This went somewhat better than game 1, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, he sent Umberlis flying across the front of the Harper Legion - which meant that by the time it was Umberlis' go to manouvre, that space was full of red dragons and he ended up blocked badly out of position. two red dragons with close quarters (one of them a wounded balagos) charged the harper legion and....well....it wasn't pretty. One 7 dice attack, one 6 dice attack, two 5 dice attacks and two 4 dice attacks into troops with no armour and 1 health each. Nom Nom Nom. Umberlis was attacked but dodged. The mage drifted over, and blatted the dragons with fireball - which didn't do much, because three dice with no rerolls isn't great against an automatic dodge plus a dodge token. Then balagos hit her with his tail and she died. This is not surprising, given a target token and the iron tail spike. Nymmestra has four heath and no armour. "Spontaneous Existance Failure" is as close as I can get. Umberlis (aka Dragon Batman) did a bit of fancy maneuvering, but in the end got sandwiched between Balagos and the other Adult Red and got killed.

What might have changed the result?
Sending Umberlis the other way, I think. As it was, he broke across the closing battle-lines and got caught between them. He got out, but it was an unnecessary risk. More importantly, hanging back with the elves might have been better; every turn of arrowshots before I get to eat them is good....

3rd game - versus Tim
Well, he swiftly realised that with my more-or-less immunity to fireballs, and no buff spells to speak of, his wizard had no real use at all, so she spent the entire game hiding in the corner opposite where the dragons set up, trying to look unappetizing. More importantly, Max hung back to pick up a vision. All well and good, but it meant he essentially fed his three creatures in one by one. Galadaeros sped forwards (straight 5 is scary fast when it's white) and....missed with his breath attack. Then three charge tokens were spent and he took a couple of wounds. He broke past the reds but was still in Balagos' rear arc, and an Iron Tail Spike reduced him to copper dragon sashimi. Max, meanwhile drifted forwards and attacked one of the generic reds, evil plot-ing it at the same time so it couldn't fight back. It only took a couple of wounds, though, then rolled wing-over in behind him as it and balagos moved in and attacked. Max moved to the side of balagos, leaving neither with an attack, but...balagos charged. No bonus attack out of the rear arc, but Iron Tail Spike still worked, and once again, the item did what it does best and Max was (re)deaded. At the same time, the elven mage, lurking near the board edge, had pivoted to fling a fireball at the wounded generic red. The other charged and (luckily) just had space and (even more luckily) had her at the edge of range 2. Stationary elven spellcaster plus charging red dragon results in exactly what you expect.

What might have changed the result?
Not hanging back with Max and not sending Galadaeros out alone first. He had the level advantage with both but needed them to arrive simultaneously - which probably means sending Max out and hanging back with Galadaeros (since the copper wants to 'sprint' into contact to get his bonus 2 defence dice). To be honest, this was a bad matchup - Galadaeros' Frightful Presence was useless (as it doesn't work on dragons), and all the elven spellcaster's spells were useless too (I had no spells and was largely immune to weak fire attacks).



I had good fun. My main thoughts are:
a) Red Dragons are awesome, and work well as close combat powerhouses with close quarters.
b) charge is an amazing action, and is actually better on a lower level creature. At least twice in the day, an opponent didn't have an attack as I was out of range, then in my attack step I was able to charge into range and attack without suffering return blows.
c) the rear arc melee attack is superb. Anyone who's used a firespray in x-wing knows how good these are, but on a red they're amazing, especially with iron tail spike. That artefact is worth its weight in gold, and I dread to think how lethal it's going to be on Arviaturace, who has a range 3 rear arc and the ability to tail sweep as a cone attack.
d) Blue dragon breath weapons still seem to be kryptonite for red dragons. Anything that can penetrate armour is scary since bigger dragons rely on it, rather than agility, so much, but penetrating it at range 4, without needing to spend tokens (and hence still having them available to modify dice) with 10 attack dice (Eshaedra using devotrix and range 3 bonus+Generic), is pretty much a garuanteed kill of a 40 point dragon before it ever gets to attack...Coppers, greens or shadow blacks with high agility probably have a better chance, but then they are going to struggle to kill Calamity.