2016 GENERAL WARS
I have only entered General Wars three times in seven years at Gencon. In part this is because it’s usually Saturday afternoon and I’m usually playing semifinals or finals when it starts. However, I’ve also shied away because it’s it’s basically the most spammy metagamey format of them all, and I don’t usually enjoy that. However, fresh off my semifinals defeat, knowing I had no other events lined up for the weekend, I just didn’t feel like I had gotten my ‘scape fix. So I decided to join the cheese party, and I rolled into General Wars with a kamikaze 4th Mass build: 4th x5, Sgt. Drake (RotV), Nilfheim.
I figured that Nilfheim is basically impossible to ignore if I lead with him, so my 4th would be valiant most of the time. The only likely exception that would ignore Nilf to get at my startzone would be Zelrig, but really, who was going to play Zelrig, 10th x5, and Marcus?
Oh… right. Three people. Three people would play that. Plus another Zelrig army or two.
ROUND 1
Opponent: Nelson O. (Knights of Weston x4, Nilfheim, Gilbert, Eldgrim)
Map: Quasatch Playground
Nelson is Major Q23’s brother and Infectedsloth/ISB2/Unseenshadowz’s cousin. He doesn’t play quite as much as the rest of the clan, but he was bringing a solid knight build, one of the many Jandar knight builds in play.
The game began, unsurprisingly, with a Nilfheim duel. I managed to take height, and got a big chomp down to take the duel. Nilf sharded another 6 knights before going down, which was enough to make me feel pretty comfortable.
The rest of the game was predictable WTFing of the advancing knights. Nelson got the knights on top of me pretty quickly so I only made it up to the first plateau outside of my startzone with the minutemen; never over the middle. I concentrated my fire mostly on the knights to try to limit the number of attacks he could muster on this very long map. I won with Drake and most of two squads remaining.
The coolest thing that happened in this game, and one of the coolest things that happened all weekend, was my conversation with Rob Daviau; see the story
here.
1-0
ROUND 2
Opponent: Hendal (10th x5, Marcus, Zelrig)
Map: Flash Fire
Welp, I figured I was going to have to beat at least one of the Z-Bomb/10th piles in order to win, so here we go. This was my second game against Hendal at Gencon this year, and our second game on Flash Fire. I was looking to stretch my lifetime record against him to 4-0.
Because of the Zelrig factor, I couldn’t lead with Nilf as usual. I put my first few markers on the 4th so I could scatter my units. Fortunately I won opening init, which allowed me to spread enough to limit the opening OM majestic fires losses to 3. I kept spreading, and pinging Zelrig as I could. I lost another 3 minutemen on the next OM before Zelrig whiffed on the third shot. Luckily for me, Zelrig whiffed again on his next shot in round 2, and then Nilf brought him down.
With Zelrig’s tally limited to only 6 minutemen and a wound on Nilf, I felt very good about my chances. Nilf didn’t roll great defense but nearly matched Zelrig, taking out 5 of the 10th before getting WTFed to death. After that, it played out
like Jexik says. It was down to Marcus against a couple squads of 4th and Drake when time was called.
2-0
ROUND 3
Opponent: FilmCriticFrog (Knights of Weston x5, Gilbert, Denrick, Eldgrim, Sam Brown)
Map: Vestige (Wannok, Healer)
My second opposing knight army, and I saw at least one other that had been doing well. I think I might have been running the only minuteman army, actually - they normally dominate Jandar but I think most people shied away from the non-valiant build in favor of the knights..
I went back to my usual Nilf Kamikaze. I had wanted to bounce around and burn healer but due to the way things played out I didn’t end up out in that direction. Nilf didn’t earn his points back, but he took out about two squads worth, which I figured should be enough.
Brendan played things pretty conservatively, keeping Gilbert back and slow-rolling for a bit, before pushing up the wannok side of the map. I got out of my startzone, but only far enough to manage mostly level shots. It was usual WTF funtimes for most of the match, but I won out in the war of attrition, in no small part because Drake absorbed four Wannok hits for me. Eventually I did take Wannok and the two hills for myself, and finished off the heroes to end the match.
3-0
ROUND 4
Opponent: Cleon (Deathreavers x3, Ornak, Hydra x3, Marro Warriors, Marcu, Isamu)
Map: Flash Fire (move and d20)
With all the commons and Zelrigs in play, it was no surprise to see a Deathreaver army doing well. I figured it would be up to the WTF squads to take down some hydras after Nilf thinned the rats out.
As it happened, things went very sideways in the early going. Nilf missed his first six Ice Shard attempts as Cleon slow-rolled a combination of Hydras and rats. I was pretty worried I was going to get overwhelmed by Hydras and lose Nilf with nothing to show for it, but then Nilf got very hot. My next shard attempt, on a Hydra, was a 4/4, with a 0/6 defense roll taking down the Hydra in short order. One round later Nilf was dead, but somehow he took down two Hydras, put a wound on a third... and killed just 1 rat. Not at all what I expected, but I’ll take it!
The rats predictably restricted me quite a bit, but I did manage to take down the third Hydra while only losing about a squad of minutemen. The Marro Warriors stepped up and made life difficult for me, but I was able to get just enough minutemen clear of the rat infestation to pare back their numbers.
My free minutemen were trying to chase down the last Marro Warrior when time was called. I won with 10 minutemen and Drake against 9 rats, Ornak/Marcu/Isamu, and the last Marro Warrior. By points it was actually still a very close game, but barring some extreme Marro Warrior luck I felt like I had things in hand.
4-0
ROUND 5
Opponent: Major Q23 (PK x4, Mezzodemons x4, Hydra)
Map: Quasatch Playground (Wannok, Valda)
There were actually three 4-0 players left when the round started, but the two of us were far ahead of William099 in point differential, so for all practical purposes this was the championship game. (William099 is Mike, Major Q23 is William. It’s confusing.)
Major Q23’s army was a really smart “meta the meta” army, so I wasn’t surprised to see it do well. I knew I would need Nilfheim to do some really good work on the squads, particularly the Phantom Knights, in order for me to pull things out.
Sadly, it was not to be. Nilfheim missed most of his early shards, and William grabbed the move glyph and advanced his Hydra into (Valda-enabled) threat range of Nilfheim.
William won the key second round initiative, so instead of getting my Nilf away from the Hydra and sharding three PKs, I got tied down by three PKs. I couldn’t really justify a triple disengage from there, so I just sharded in place. Nilf managed to kill all of 3 PKs, total, before the Hydra brought him down.
At that point I needed a severely misplayed game from MQ23 to have any chance, and I got anything but. He wouldn’t even get baited into a mosh pit with his PKs, instead just sending in a couple while grabbing Wannok and transitioning to Mezzos, content to pick my units off and daring me to advance with the 4th (which would have allowed PKs to attack them with height). I tried to steal Wannok at some point but it was really pretty hopeless. I was reduced to basically grubbing for points to try to limit the margin of my inevitable defeat, which meant attacking Mezzodemons was literally pointless. I took out the Hydra and another squad of PKs while keeping Drake and a good number of 4th intact, so the margin wasn’t too bad.
I was 2-0 lifetime against Major Q23 going into the game, and man, did he ever earn his one. This was probably the best game anyone played against me all weekend. I didn’t have great luck, and the map/glyph/matchup combo was pretty brutal, but William was on point with each OM decision and figure positioning, just not giving me anything to work with all game long. He even made a couple moves which surprised me but made sense after I gamed them out in my head. It’s rare, and impressive, for my opponents to surprise me like that. Just a really great game.
4-1, 3rd overall, Jandar champ