Utah NHSD Battle report and 100th post!

[Tiranx]

Utah’s NHSD tournament put on by UtahScot was my first tournament ever. My wife surprised me by registering me for the tournament three days beforehand! I suprised her by entereing her the next day. It was a wonderful experience and a real treat getting to meet some of the people from the boards. Even though it was a good drive from Rexburg, Id I would do it again in a heartbeat. Just as a reference my army was,
3x Deathreavers
Major Q9
Braxas
Eldgrim the Viking Champion

Round 1 on Road Rampage
My first opponent was Ryan, another first time tournament player. Ryan was a kick to play against he had,

1x Marrden Hounds
2x Stingers
Su-Bak-NA
Sonya Esenwein
Rechets of Bogdan
Iskra Esenwein

I was pretty confident against this army, however, I was owned by it. Ryan won initiative and led with his Hounds. Who decimated my rats. I had never played the Hounds before and it was Ryan’s first time playing them. He rolled amazingly with their plague ability decimating my rats. (wait you say, their plague ability doesn’t work against the Deathreavers because of their soulborg status. Yup, wish I remembered that during the tournanment.) I couldn’t believe that one squad of Marrden Hounds decimated over half my rats. I took revenge with Q9 killing his hounds.

The same time his hounds were wasting me I grabbed the +2 speed glyph with a rat and later got the glyph of Thorian Speed with Q9. With high defense, an intimidating attack, and a bad reputation I thought Q9 would be perfect to sit on the glyph. Ryan was a little disconcerted that I took that glyph because he had just spent a full rounds worth of markers on his Singers. Unfortunately, Q9 was only sporting one turn marker and lack of activity was his undoing. Three fully juiced Stingers made expensive scrap metal.

I don’t remember how Braxas went down but I am sure it was to those stingers with their newly realized range. After that it was pretty much cleanup for Ryan. Su-Bak-Na, both vampires, and the Retchets all stayed in the starting zone laughing at the slaughter. I learned a valuable lesson about spreading out my order markers too much. Time to read “Whats in a marker” again.

Even if we had played the Marrden Hounds correctly, Ryan would still have won. He was a superior tactician and deserved the win. Coincidentally, he took the tournament and Imax’s sweet dice tower home as our first place winner in the tournament.

0-1

Round 2 on Fire Isle

My second opponent was Landon. He was quite a bit younger than me and I thought I could take him down with no mercy. This was another false assumption. Landon had,

Sgt Drake (SotM)
Venom
Spider-man
Dead-Eye Dan

I took the glyphs early with my rats and Eldgrim. Defense +1 didn’t help much (we wont mention that I forgot to apply that for the whole game) but Initiative +8 let me go first practically for the whole game. Before I could get my rats there Landon put Dead-Eye Dan on height. This height was on molten lava so he was slowly dying without my help. I decided to risk a few rats and engage him but they melted at the end of the round. Not wanting to risk more rats I brought Q9 to take him out in one solid blast. Somehow good ol’ Dan defended and then returned fire with a D20 roll that once again made expensive scrap metal. At the end of the round Dan’s boots wore out on the molten lava and he fried.

Without Q9, Braxas was my only hope. I rashly sent him to Landon’s starting zone so that Drake, Spidey, and Venom would have to weather some poison acid breath. All three attempts were failures and my opponent quickly brought Venom and Spidey over to take out the dragon. I kept trying to surround them with my rats but their web swing lets them sneak out with no leaving engagement rolls. Braxas fell in two rounds and all that was left was Eldgrim and a bunch of rats. Spidey webbed Eldgrim from range and venom turned exterminator.

Although I lost and was humbled, this game brought one of the highlights of the tournament for me. While Venom and Spidey destroyed me, my rats through a concerted effort, slew mighty Drake all by themselves. After that Venom terminated the rest of my army. Good job Landon!

0-2 record

Round 3 on Hide and Seek

My opponent this time was Bryon who was sporting another four man army,

Krug
Major Q9
Major Q10
Crixus

After two losses and one of them from a four hero army like this one, I was fairly apprehensive. Hide and Seek was my map to rule and my army was built for the choke points however. This map only had the healing glyph so the rats turned to fodder for this game. With Q9 and Q10 leading the charge I swarmed them with rats and more rats. The rats surprisingly put a wound on Q10. Q10 responded by cleaning up his part of the rats and taking some shots at my Q9. Very quickly, more rats took their original allies spots and took Q10’s range away from him again. This allowed my Q9 to come up and dispatch Q10.

With Q10 down Q9 came to avenge his merciful brother’s demise. Both majors traded blows doing little damage. The firing continued into the next round where Bryans Q9 failed to defend himself but didn’t die. We quickly realized that both of us were running our Majors to the healing glyph and that if we didn’t kill the other it would come down to an initiative roll to see who would get it. Lucky for me my Q9 finished off his. This was especially significant because Bryan won initiative on the next round. With the initiative and a taste for vengeance Krug quickly engaged my Q9 but without any wounds on him he just didn’t have the strength to penetrate the 7 defense.

Q9 made a quick escape and risked an engagement hit to get to the healing glyph and then take height. The engagement strike was a blank and Q9 was as fresh as his first day off the factory floor. I brought Eldgrim out to snag some hight behind Krug and keep him pinned with something a little more enduring than the rats. Crixus finally decided to act! He rushed forward but quickly retreated as Braxas came forward and tried to melt him. After realizing that he couldn’t just hide Crixus the whole game Bryon asked me how much life Braxas had. After frowning at the 8 life he asked how much defense Braxas had. After hearing 3 defense his frown turned upside down and Crixus charged with a gladiatorial war cry hitting Braxas for five wounds! Braxas retreated but miscalculated the distance she could go to be a turn away from Crixus and still try to melt him. Crixus Charged over snowy hills, following Braxas’ blood trail and hit her for another two wounds.

At this point I realized my chanced where better with poison acid breath than with a straight attack due to Crixus’ one shield defense. So, the D20 came back out. My wife who finished her game early came over and gave my dice a good luck blow. With sweat on my brow and shaky hands, I dropped my dice down the dice tower to see it result in a natural 20! Crixus melted and Braxas cried in relief that the evil masked human was dead. All that was left was Krug.

Krug continued to kill rats and my Viking. He was only getting stronger with each successful nibble by the rats. Forgotten with the Crixus/Braxas drama Q9 rounded a glacier and let it’s guns fly putting two wounds on Krug and bringing him quickly closer to death. Finally taking height again and using a normal attack, Q9 blew Krug into troll slime after two turns.


The tight glacial passes were perfect for my army and the mighty heroes of Bryan fell. It must be noted that Bryan rolled some amazing defense dice. If our attack rolls were as awesome as our defense rolls, the game would have ended in four rounds. Bryan also slaughtered my wife’s army after this game.

1-2 record

Round 4 Also on Hide and Seek

My last opponent was Heroscapers own UtahScott who put the tournament on. Scott was sporting a medieval outfit,

Sir Gilbert
Sir Dupius
Concane
1x Templar knights
1x Knights of the Western Front

Not to bag on Scott’s army but I really thought this was going to be an easy win. Wrong! Scott made me work for every point. I have never played the Knights before so this was a very fun experience and I can see why a lot of people swear by the knights. The game started with Scott winning initiative and leading with knights who bonding with Sir Gilbert snagged some extra movement (just have to mention that whenever I play with Sir Gilbert I give my squads one or two bonus movement consistently. Scott usually got anywhere from two to five! I watched him do the same thing against my wife, usually it was more of the five extra movements instead of the twos.). I followed by sending my rats to plug the holes again.

With the knights normal attacks on all accounts I stopped placing turn markers on the rats and let them take the hits to scatter and keep the ranks full. This effectively kept the knights off my big guns and let me shoot and acid breath into their ranks. Braxas greedily devoured the knights while Q9 blasted Sir Dupius. I overextended Eldgrim to get him to the healing glyph and make sure that no heroes would come back stronger. The Templars charged and killed the greedy dwarf…I mean Viking. The rats took out two of the three Templar knights leaving one that I forgot was hiding behind a glacier. After Q9 finished Sir Dupius the game looked like it was going to be pretty one sided. NOT THE CASE! The last Templar with courage and knightly honor charged with 8 movement and speared Q9 in the back. Scott rolled four skulls and I joked that if I whiffed, Q9 was a goner. It was a big fat hit-me-in-the-gut Deathwalker style whiff!

Scott really got some momentum after that and was starting to thin the rats out. Without Eldgrim, Q9, and most of the rats, my army was starting to look pretty small. Time was running out and Scott and I were playing as fast we could to try and snag points from one another. Sir Gilbert almost took out Braxas but a lucky normal attack finished off the would be wurm slayer. The rats luckily finished off the last Templar and with second on the clock Braxas melted Concan as he tried to kill more rats.

2-2 record

The tournament was an absolute blast. UtahScott did an amazing job of organizing the event and the participants were all good sports. My wife was pretty apprehensive to go to a tournament and play, but after her first game she was addicted. I came away with Einar’s Flag Bearer and my wife won two Ticalla Jungle bushes that she gave away to one of the younger kids. One of the kids (I can’t remember who) gave my wife an Agent Skahen because his family had already gotten one. I greatly appreciated that!

Not only was the event well organized and the prizes were great, but Mike, the owner of the game store, didn’t have us pay for an entrance fee. We said thanks by buying a RttFF and a Munchkin expansion. If anyone missed out on this years even make sure you RSVP early next year. I know that we will be making the drive next year.