This will be my personal view of the clan war tournament held in Wavre. Belgium on the 25th of March 2000. Probably a small tournament compared with others, but hey, what can you expect from an abandoned dungholc like Belgium :)
(Ed's note - this is Bart's personal opinion as a Belgian)
Anyway, I will split my views up into a few points I would like to comment on, so that this will hopefully be a nice, clean article. We will start with:
We had decided in advance that it would be best if we all made a little test-match the night before the actual tournament, because except the organiser of the tournament, none of us really knew a lot of the rules, or had any playing experience for that matter. It was rather an evening meant for fun, so we just threw the armies together to make one big battle (which turned out to be a big chaotic mess, to say the least). At the end most of us were quite boggled by a lot of the small details, and every so often someone had to dive into the rulebooks to look things up. But as it was a Friday evening most of us were tired anyway, so we just ended the match (I can't even remember who won. if we even counted victory points at that moment). But the fan value was great, with a lot of puns being thrown and all even if we didn't have a clue what most of our troops were doing (we could as well have played blindfolded :)
I think in the end we felt like Toku's :)
In my opinion, there were mainly two things that won or lost most battles, and those were ranged attacks and the ability/spells to stop them. Also, since this was the first real opportunity to have a few matches for a lot of us. I think those that effectively knew how to use their own strenths and use their enemies' weaknesses had a distinct advantage.
As for the ranged attack part : since most matches lasted for about 2 hours, the moment you got into contact with the enemy you practically were at the end of that deadline, so about the only things you could do in the beginning of the game was throw spells and use ranged attacks (or waste time getting into archer's row, for that matter :)
I think that most of us that included elite close combat troops were at a big loss for this reason : most didn't get any real chance to do battle and just hung around.
Cavalry and charge were also handy for this kind of event since you had a lot more chance to get into contact, and you choose what places to fight on most of the time.
I will try to make a more complete report on the different tactics used when I can, but these are the biggest points I think.
Part of Frederick's victorious Crane Army (AEG dragon clan figures in a new paint job)