AdeptiCon 2024 Oak & Iron Tournament Recap

AdeptiCon 2024 is an annual miniatures gaming convention in Shaumburg, IL (west of Chicago). This year nearly 9,000 gamers descended on the convention center to play a myriad of games. Among those was a tournament for Oak & Iron by Firelock Games. This article is a post written by guest author Erich Goebel, the winner of the tournament. It covers the details and thoughts behind his winning squadron. Erich also brings a great recap of how his 3 rounds in the Oak & Iron Tournament played out.

Preparing for AdeptiCon 2024

When list building for the Oak & Iron Tournament at AdeptiCon I needed a squadron that could field an answer to the following critical questions.

1. How can I play for the scenario?
2. How can I crack a Galleon’s Fortitude 4 Hull?
3. How can I maintain maneuverability while firing at full strength?
4. How am I going to manage fatigue?

“Leftenant” Erich Goebel’s Squadron

Playing the Field….er. Ocean?

Unlike Firelock’s other games (Plunder, Valor, etc.) Strike Points in Oak & Iron (O&I) feel weighty, with your squadron retreating as soon as you have more Strike Points than ships. Within this calculation, each ship that is lost not only gives you Strike Points but also reduces the withdrawal threshold. Every single point matters under these mechanics and the scenarios in O&I are an “easy” way to put an extra point on your opponent for pressure. My prediction was that most lists at the tournament would feature 3-4 ships, meaning I only needed to serve out 3-4 strike points to secure a win and if I could net 1-2 from a scenario, I would only need to deliver 1 ship to Davy Jones.

Selecting an Admiral

In my opinion, the scenarios in O&I favor the attacker or the defender too strongly and are easily taken advantage of. One way to pursue this is to always guarantee that you could pick whether you are the attacker or defender – by having the highest admiral at the table. An admiral value of 3 means you are playing French or English (don’t talk to me about Spanish), two factions I quite enjoy playing out of the Pirate faction. I ultimately decided to go with George Monck over the Frenchie, Jean II for several reasons:

• I will be playing English for the Summer of Plunder 2024.
• Jean Bart has Persistent which is a good rule, but requires me to be losing to use it.
• I wanted the English faction benefits of SKILLED SAILORS and EXPERT GUN CREW. And I have already won a tournament with with French (Historicon 2021). Coming in at 8/75 of my points for the list.
• I had high confidence that not many others would pay to bring an Admiral Level 3 so I could dictate deployment (a whole separate article could be written on this point) and importantly, the scenarios and their Strike Points would be under my control.

Ship Options

The Sloop I took was my “Objective Ship”. Clocking in at only 5 points with two downgrade cards, the Sloop’s only purpose was to pad my Strike requirement and to run objectives with the same speed Sailing Large and Windward. The Merchants downgrade helped in this regard, as my opponent would have a harder time capturing the ship should things go awry.

Escort: If you build around being the Defender, this is an easy free Strike Point

Breakthrough: Easy Strike Point coming down to maneuverability without dying

Encounter: Up in the air, but depending on your opponent’s list, being Defender can dictate your opponent’s deployment.

Helms Deep has but one weakness…

At 75 points, the tournament allowed Ships of the Line, which are difficult to dish damage to, but the Galleon? That thing scares me. Being recently released I predicted I would have to go up against the 4 Fortitude monsters several times over. Luckily, the Galleon has one major weakness – its speed. In all honesty, it isn’t hard to beat a sailing large speed of 2/3 with seamanship, and 4 with full sail. If I move consistently 3/4/5, I could outmaneuver one easily.

Sitting across from Jake Farris, it became clear that our lists were remarkably alike. Both English, both featuring a 3rd Rate and a secondary cannon ship (4th/5th rate) along with a smaller vessel. After deliberating over my choice of the 4th rate for some time during list building, I suspected he might not have been able to afford as many upgrades but likely possessed a similar initiative hand – indicating a potential Lee Gauge Fire.

Thus, I opted to be Defender, allowing me to deploy downwind and potentially capitalize on this card against him. This strategic decision proved accurate, although the card didn’t significantly impact the game. He chose to deploy far from me, upwind, positioning us for a potential exchange of broadsides as early as turn 1 had we both maneuvered accordingly.

A notable threat, however, was the fireship he positioned directly ahead, poised to block my path effectively.

A Leaf on the Wind

Make no mistake, out maneuvering your opponent in O&I is key. Typically, moving faster allows you to do this and if you can manage, outranging or dodging a potential broadside can be enough to get the upper hand. I wanted my ships to have the option to go fast. With a 3^rd Rate, a 5^th Rate, and a Sloop each of my ships has the capacity to go speed 2-4 under battle sail and speed 5 with full sail. I heavily debated a French build to pick up “Swift” for free, but elected to remain English for my anti-galleon plan.

Luckily, there are a number of tools available to reload your broadsides while maintaining maximum speed. Initiative cards Reload and the English Fast Loaders allow you to reload while at full-sail. Taking an Efficient Loader upgrade card on each ship also bought me another round at shooting while at full sail or the cheeky combo with the initiative card, “Fire as She Bears” for two shots in the round. Between these three tools, I was able to stay at full-sail in all three of the tournament games while not sacrificing my capacity to reload. Additionally, I used the initiative card “Await New Orders” liberally (Truly a disgusting amount) in all three of my games so that I could react to my opponent and even play “Reload” two turns in a row.

Like Butter Spread Across Too Much Bread

Fatigue in O&I is brutal. -1 dice to any roll for each fatigue can be heartbreaking to any well-thought-out strategy. Having a way to deal with fatigue is mandatory to stay in the game. In casual games I nearly always run with Black Bart out of Pirates with the Intrepid initiative card, removing fatigue from any ships within musket of the flagship, which is typically enough.

Within this English list, however, I needed other mechanics. My choice of Admiral, Monck, allowed both of my main ships (3^rd and 5^th Rates) to ignore a fatigue when making attacks. While this doesn’t shed fatigue, it does help between shedding sessions. Sadly, I didn’t have much point budget to devote to fatigue management, so I had to rely on what I already had built in: my Reload scheme. Every turn I don’t have to spend a crew action Reloading, I could rally….and pray it was enough (along with serious damage output) to keep me in the fight.

Put Me into the Fight!

Enough about the list, here is a brief synopsis of each game and how these decisions aided the list in practice.

Round 1: Jason Klotz’s Fire Ships

Scenario: Escort
Attacker: Jason Klotz
Defender: Erich Goebel

Firstly, I was fearfully excited to go up against Jason. As owner of Timber&Sail, he has thought about the game in even his darkest dreams and is a power gamer himself. Game face on, I decided to be the Defender, a cheeky strategy, as my Sloop with the Escort Objective could just run at speed 5 for the majority of the game..I just needed to keep him away.

Jason bought 6 ships to bear with 2 fireships so from round 1 the game was hot. He positioned a Brigantine ahead of my natural sailing path and playing Dutch, was likely to throw a shoal in my face. My strategy very quickly became “run and gun” moving as fast as I could into a channel formed between rocks and an island. Hoping to force him to funnel his ships into the channel/around the island. I was lucky with a few broadsides coming through the channel and was able to knock the forward Brigantine OOA. His squadron finally caught up to me in the last turn of the game, but it was too late. Having as many tools to free reload while maintaining speed helped immensely during this game as he was moving a furious 5 speed consistently.

Funny Moment (for me): During Jason’s pursuit into the channel an event card was drawn: “Confused Captain”. At the time, his fireship was mm away from his flagship, and had he failed the Skill Test, his own fireship would have rammed his flagship – a fate he narrowly avoided (with a fortune point)! Nonetheless, Jason got his revenge in the Blood & Plunder Sea Tournament, burning me alive with firepots.

Round 2: Garrett’s Double G’s

Scenario: Break Through
Attacker: Erich Goebel
Defender: Garrett Swadder

From what intel I could gather between games, Garrett’s double galleon list was a brutal cannon list utilizing the Galleon’s defensive fortitude to outgun opponents. Deploying, I was nervous as the scenario required me to get close to the Beasts that were deployed nearby the objective. I deployed with the wind gauge and at full sail in such a position that I could react to his first few movements by creating distance with a rock or attempting to cut in close. Garrett decided to slow his back Galleon and cut in around a rock to sneak in an initial volley or two – which were successful at putting some damage on my leading 5^th Rate.

Meeting him in the middle, I raced my 5^th Rate through his broadside path and was able to get a critical hit on his rigging, reducing his half-sail down to Anchored. Solidifying his fate, the Galleon was met broadside to broadside with my 3^rd Rate, designed to crack it with my Fast 5^th rate looping around its Stern for a Raking Broadside. Despite this, his Galleon kept firing on all cylinders with a very well-timed Bravado initiative card (Spanish Dog!). Overall, it wasn’t enough to stay in the fight with an OOA Galleon and the Strike Point from the scenario that my Sloop just sailed straight for. Again, all of my free-reload tools were to blame for the win here, allowing me to sail as fast as possible to take advantage of the window in Garrett’s formation to isolate one Galleon from its mate.

Round 3: The Man in the Mirror: Jake Farris

Scenario: Encounter
Attacker: Jake Farris
Defender: Erich Goebel

Sitting across from Jake Farris, it became clear our lists were remarkably alike. Both English, both featuring a 3rd Rate and a secondary cannon ship (4th/5th rate) along with a smaller vessel. After deliberating over my choice of the 4th rate for some time during list building, I suspected he might not have been able to afford as many upgrades but likely possessed a similar initiative hand – indicating a potential Lee Gauge Fire. Thus, I opted to be Defender, allowing me to deploy downwind and potentially capitalize on this card against him. This strategic decision proved accurate, although the card didn’t significantly impact the game. He chose to deploy far from me, upwind, positioning us for a potential exchange of broadsides as early as turn 1 had we both maneuvered accordingly. A notable threat, however, was the fireship he positioned directly ahead, poised to block my path effectively.

This is a great example of being PsyOps’d by your opponent. You see, a week or so earlier in Discord Jake asked if the initiative card “Careful Aim” allowing rerolls on failed criticals can be used with a Fireship. He also had a Strict Captain, which gave him a potential free fortune on the Fireship potential detonation. Basically, he built the perfect specimen for blowing one ship up, and without a doubt I let it pry my anxiety.

The games begin!

Turn 1 of the game I go full-sail rapidly toward the fireship; I have to sink it before it sinks me. Based on our deployment, this created a massive amount of distance between our forces which gave me the freedom to focus on the white whale of a fireship. Between both the 5^th Rate and the 3^rd Rate, his Fireship, which had cut in ~turn 3/4, could not hold and I was able to remove the threat. However, his force was closing in and I had to spend 3 turns to get my team turned around to meet him broadside to broadside.

Flipping my original formation to meet his, I had my 3^rd Rate firing on his 4^th Rate, which following a few broadsides ended up crippled. It was a tight game on rounds and was very close to coming to a draw due to time. The MVP this game was the Expert Gunners upgrade, giving me just a little more power behind each 3^rd Rate broadside to close out both crucial encounters (Fireship and Cannon-Finale).

Await New Orders

Overall, the O&I Tournament was a (cannon) blast, and my opponents were some of the best people I have met in the hobby. There isn’t much I would change about my list moving forward, save for utilizing my sloop slightly more than a glorified buoy. I do, however, think with an increased emphasis on Deployment and turn-to-turn Maneuvering, Oak and Iron is a premier tournament game that rewards thinking ahead and offers many small-decision points that add to a grand strategy that I find rewarding.

A special thanks to Josh Shivak, who ran a very smooth tournament with pre-decided deployment areas, scenarios, and terrain, and Jason Klotz for allowing me to write this guest article and provide a fantastic resource for all Oak & Iron Fans. And thank you to Firelock Games for sponsoring the tournament and giving out some awesome prize support!

Written by Erich Goebel

Additional Content Suggestion:

• How to Prepare for an Oak & Iron Tournament: Top 10 Tips
• 3rd Rate Ship: Ultimate Guide for the Oak & Iron Ship
• Galleon: Ultimate Oak & Iron Ship Guide
• Fire Ships: Ultimate Guide & Top Strategies for Oak & Iron

Product Recommendation:

• The new English 3rd Rate Ship and Galleon models were the premier two ships in the tournament. They are available directly from Firelock Games for $18 per model. Get yours now!
• New to Oak & Iron? Pick up the Oak & Iron Core Box and get 6 ships, core rules, dice, tokens and everything you need to play.