Gen-Con Championship Winning Army

[spider_poison]

The army I used to win the main tourney consisted of 3X Arrow Gruts, 3X Swog Rider, Krug, and Raelin. I playtested quite a few other armies, and I eventually decided on this because of its few weaknesses. In my opinion, Grut Archers aren't that much weaker than some of the more glorified ranged squads (4th Mass, Krav, AE, etc.), and the bonding capabilities really put them near the top.

As for the actual games....I went 4-0 for day 1, and the two hardest matchups for me were probably against Jormi_Boced (my playtesting buddy) and lil_wis. Lil_wis handed me a loss in a win-a-wave the day before, and she's no light opponent. She used Q9, Grimnak, Marro Warriors, and Me-Burq-Sa. What scared me the most was her Q9 and her ability to use him so effectively (which is essentially why I lost to her before). Thankfully, I had Krug this time to hopefully answer Q9. Playing on Soulrazor Canyon, I rushed Krug to the other side to take on her heroes while my Grut Archers dealt with her archers.

My game with Jormi was potentially a dangerous game for me, but I won initiative rolls when I needed to the most. Using 3X Romans, Marcus, Me-Burq-Sa, and Krav on Forsaken Waters, Jormi sent out his Krav first to soften up my Grut Archers. The best answer for Krav when playing Grut Archers are the Swogs. Thanks to fast Swogs and Jormi's dice betraying him, the Krav Maga fell very quickly. After this, I knew that if Me-Burq-Sa fell, the game should be in the bag. I was able to perch some archers with Swogs on a hill while Krug was there to greet any visitors at the bottom of the hill. Had Jormi's Krav lasted a bit longer, the game could have gone either way.

Day 2: Wow, every game was a grind til the end. For the first game, I faced Dustin Sikora and his 2X Minions, Finn, and Krav on Forsaken Waters. If not the best player I faced all weekend, Dustin was certainly in the top 3. My Orcs eventually took out his Krav, but they took so long to do it that his Minions were already in striking distance. My rolls were pitiful early on, and I thought the game was over. However, one of his minions blanked on seven defense, and another rolled only one shield out of seven for two deaths. With quite a few figures on the board, my orcs were able to outlast poor rolling while his minions couldn't outlast bad rolls. Near the end, there were two minions on Krug with six wounds. It came down to the critical intiative roll (which I won) where Krug took out both minions for the win.

My second game was against Jormi's army on Forsaken Waters. Opposite from last game, Jormi's Krav mowed down tons of my figures before biting the bullet. On top of that, Me-Burq-Sa just wouldn't die to anything...and he was placed in a very strategic position for me. Just past midway of the game, Jormi's luck took a turn for the worst and Romans were dying like it was their job. Krug once again proved to be the MVP of the game taking on most figures thrown at him. I don't recall the survivors at the end, but they were minimal.

My third and final game was played against nwojedi on Forsaken Waters. He was playing 3X 4th Mass, AE, and Raelin. His AE dropped on the first turn and he won initiative...quite an ugly start for me. One AE moved onto the attack glyph, so I had three attacks of 5 dice and one attack of 4 coming at me. Even uglier was when Raelin died to a five out of five skulls roll for him. I think a grut also died before I even moved one figure in this game. Thanks to the speed of the Swogs, I was able to engage an AE and get three gruts next to that Swog shooting up on the hill. I believe only one AE died in my four attacks, but this was expected because of height advantage. With Raelin gone, my weakened orcs were easy targets for grenade attacks. Though nobody died in the three grenades, I think his choice of using them was the right thing to do. All you really can do in Heroscape is set yourself up in the best way possible. After that, the dice control what happens. Anyhow, my Swog raced up to the top of the hill and killed an AE with some Gruts following behind. After this, I knew I had to get somewhat close to his number of attacks per turn to have a chance. So, I started moving Krug into the fray. Nwojedi blanked out of 2 defense dice for his 4th Mass quite a bit, and that helped my orcs in the battle. Krug eventually worked his way to the other side and started swatting minutemen left and right. In the end, the ranged fight was virtually a tie, but Krug's help gave the orcs the edge. Krug was very busy this game, and I actually moved my Swogs only twice during the game. Left on the board were 3 Swogs, a heavily wounded Krug and one or two gruts.

So, the Orcs ended up going 7-0 for the weekend and netting tons of cool prizes. Thanks to all of my opponents for the great company, games, and competition. I'll type a bit more about the general and mind shackle tourneys later, but my fingers are a bit tired. Hope you enjoyed the read.

[Jason]

Interesting you like the Orcs, in my experiences they have gone down quickly. By targetting the Swogs 1st the opponnet is left with a bunch of 1/1's on the board

[Jormi_Boced]

Originally Posted by Jason

Interesting you like the Orcs, in my experiences they have gone down quickly. By targetting the Swogs 1st the opponnet is left with a bunch of 1/1's on the board

Well you probably should play against an expert like Spider_Poison. He has not lost with them in a tourney. He beat the best in Minnesota and Iowa with them, and he beat the best of the world with them at Gen Con.

[feekonea]

wow, congrats, you and I are different when selecting armies, because my orc armies consist of all blade gruts, no arrow, and you have proved to me that the arrows are worth it, Im still probably not going to try and use them, but I might think about it once in a while, who knows? congrats man, congrats.

[reapersaurus]

Originally Posted by Jormi_Boced

Well you probably should play against an expert like Spider_Poison. He has not lost with them in a tourney. He beat the best in Minnesota and Iowa with them, and he beat the best of the world with them at Gen Con.

I contest that belief - the best of the world were NOT at Gencon.

It was at the most the best of the east, maybe midwest of the US.

There are some serious West Coast players that I guarantee would have been in the top finihers of the tournaments, if it wasn't held so far away.

I was hoping some of the West Coasters might be able to make it to GenCon, so we could have an actual Heroscape World Champion, but that was not to be....
I think it would be great to have a concensus champion like other games have, and be good for the game.

[InfinityMax]

Good work, Spider. Ninthdoc, Rÿchean and I were discussing your army on the way back home, and we all agreed adding Raelin to an orc army was friggin brilliant. I sure wanted to see Rÿchean pull out the big win, but you're too damned good a sport for me to hold that win against you. Congratulations, man.

[Nwojedi]

yea, all around it was a great experience. But man, saturday, i was dog tired. 4 hours of sleep, wed, thurs, and friday, really catch up to you. Great game spider. I really underestimated those orcs. that grande throw was pretty critcal for me, and failed miserably. Good stuff. :P

[Jormi_Boced]

Originally Posted by reapersaurus

I contest that belief - the best of the world were NOT at Gencon.

It was at the most the best of the east, maybe midwest of the US.

There are some serious West Coast players that I guarantee would have been in the top finihers of the tournaments, if it wasn't held so far away.

I was hoping some of the West Coasters might be able to make it to GenCon, so we could have an actual Heroscape World Champion, but that was not to be....
I think it would be great to have a concensus champion like other games have, and be good for the game.

Well I am used to playing in a world championship at Gen Con every year. Most CCGs have their national and or world championships there, so I consider that the World Championships.

There probably are some West Coast scapers that could have made a run for the top prize, but they failed to attend the biggest scape event to date. It isn't Spider_Poisons fault that they didn't show up, and just because they didn't show doesn't make it anyless of a championship. There was some intense competition there.

[Jason]

"There probably are some West Coast scapers that could have made a run for the top prize, but they failed to attend the biggest scape event to date."

He's definitely 1 of the best out of the people who attended Gencon. Personally I do not see why a strong correlation would exist among those who are the best and those who were able to attend a specific convention. There is only 1 solution to determine who the truly best are:

-Online Heroscape!!!!
-Tons of games, the more games played the smaller margins of error

[Jormi_Boced]

Originally Posted by Jason

"There probably are some West Coast scapers that could have made a run for the top prize, but they failed to attend the biggest scape event to date."

He's definitely 1 of the best out of the people who attended Gencon. Personally I do not see why a strong correlation would exist among those who are the best and those who were able to attend a specific convention. There is only 1 solution to determine who the truly best are:

-Online Heroscape!!!!
-Tons of games, the more games played the smaller margins of error

If you choose not to go to the championship tournament you forfeit your ability to complain about not being the champion.

If the Patriots decide to not go to play football this year, they can't say well we would have won the superbowl if we would have played. It is completly unfair to everyone else that busted their ass all season to improve their game.

[Jason]

"If you choose not to go to the championship tournament you forfeit your ability to complain about not being the champion.

If the Patriots decide to not go to play football this year, they can't say well we would have won the superbowl if we would have played. It is completly unfair to everyone else that busted their ass all season to improve their game"

Those are 2 TOTALLY different scenarios. In order to make the Super Bowl the Patriots had to 1st win their "regionals" and "conferences" in order to qualify. Having to qualify for a tournament is SIGNIFICANTLY different than the Patriots making the Super Bowl simply because they drove there

[Grungebob]

I'm surprised at the tone taken by those who would want to crap on Spider_poisons victory. Be an adult and give the guy some kudos instead of trying to minimize his acheivement!!