Waterloo Game Day 01/20/07 -One man's follies

[TheMightyAargh]

Hi all,

Just wanted to recount some stories from my battles at the Waterloo Game Day last week. We played 500 point armies and I went a miserable 1 of 5 using 4 different teams. Here's a couple highlights.

Game 1 vs JAZZ (I lost)
His army - Niflheim, Saylind, Raelin, Marro, Krav
My army - Q9, Krav, Nakita, Carr (Got this team from Ninthdoc's post...very nice!)
Highlights - There was a large centre obstacle in the map (I can't remember the name). JAZZ flew in Saylind and spawned Nifl. I couldn't close in to get height so I had to back up to draw him back to my level. With nowhere to go, JAZZ flew in Nifl to confront Q9. He engaged and rolled an easy 4 shields. My Nakita protector whiffed on the smoke, then Q9 whiffed on all 7 dice. Dead in one shot!! Surprisingly, although demorailzed, I managed to make it close I still couldn't make it through. Fun game though, really exciting!

Game 2 vs JAZZ (Rematch - I won)
His army - Niflheim, Saylind, Raelin, Marro, Krav
My army - Q9, Krav, Nakita, Carr
Highlights - JAZZ went with the same strategy, but I engaged Carr with Nifl and everyone did their jobs a bit better. Q9 actually didn't do a lot better defensively, but he did pretty good. The Krav/Nakita pairing really did well and took out a great deal of his army. It came down to one Krav on one Krav at the end with a river separating us. Niether of us could move because as soon as one would hit the river the other would engage the other in the water. Basically down to luck of the dice. We must have rolled for ten minutes, each one dodging the other. At the end we had everyone looking at our game and I lucked out and JAZZ whiffed on defence. Super fun game!! One of my favourite, if not my favourite, game ever.

Game 3 vs Cherubim (I lost)
His army - KaemonAwa, Charos, Raelin, Thogrim or Fin
My army - Grimnak, Mimring, Swog Rider, Blade Gruts, Arrow Gruts, Aubrien Archers, Warriors of Ashra
Highlights - Thogrim came in first and locked up a character or two. Then Mimring and Charos locked up first and did some good damage, but Mimring lost out there. The Aubrien Archers did good work to finish off Charos, but I lost out on a number of minor players. Basically from there, KA wiped up the rest of my army by himself. I bow to KA.

Game 4 vs The brother of JAZZ (I lost)
His army - Raelin, Taelord, Minions and Snipers
My army - Marcus, Drake, 2x Legionnaires, Airborne
Highlights - This map had a raised elevation of snow in the middle. Airborne wouldn't drop for me, so he flew in Tae and Rae while the Snipers just hit the edge of the snow. I walked in Marcus and the Legionnaires and got slaughtered. Slaughtered! AE finally dropped, but really couldn't do anything. Drake manage to take out the minions. Whoopee.

Game 5 vs Ketch (I lost)
His army - 3x Snipers, 3x Deathreavers, Raelin
My army - Knights, Scots, Macdirk, Finn, Ninjas, Deathreavers
Highlights - This was a really silly game, but a lot of fun. We were both experimenting big time. Clearly Ketch's experiment was much better than mine. Basically his strategy was to gave his rats tie everything up while the snipers picked them off. What actually happened was that my rats and ninjas went in first and nobody got tied up. The problem here was the rest of my army had no range and was painfully slow...so they actually didn't need anything to tie them up, they just walked towards Ketch and got picked off on their own.

What I learned...flight, range and movement are far more important than I ever thought. All my favourite characters seem to be slow moving melee guys. And that just doesn't work too well on a variety of maps. I think I went with these very slight themes, and that doesn't often get you a competetive squad. Mixing some of those armies up would have done me a lot of good though though

I was pleasantly surprised by the ninjas and the aubrien archers though. They were really great picks. I can also see why people like orc armies too, I just wish I had more of them to make a better army. Oh, and when someone says you need more than one of a common...they're very right!

All in all, a great day with lots of great people to play against. If you ever get the chance I would highly recommend playing against JAZZ, Cherubim and Ketch. All three are very good players and all three are really make the game enjoyable.

[yagyuninja]

Sounds like fun, thanks for the battle reports!

One thing though: in your first game, you said Nilfheim engaged Q9 and then your nakita whiffed the smoke roll? Not that it mattered for this situation, but smoke powder doesn't apply to adjacent attacks (or to special attacks if you're talking about Nilf's ice breath).

[TheMightyAargh]

Originally Posted by yagyuninja

Sounds like fun, thanks for the battle reports!

One thing though: in your first game, you said Nilfheim engaged Q9 and then your nakita whiffed the smoke roll? Not that it mattered for this situation, but smoke powder doesn't apply to adjacent attacks (or to special attacks if you're talking about Nilf's ice breath).

Ah that's it! I'm trying to remember all these details. Nifl was adjacent, so the Nakita couldn't roll. I was trying to think how that all worked itself out. Not quite as amazing as it would have been with two whiffers, but still no shields on 7 dice stinks pretty bad.

[yagyuninja]

Yes, yes it does.

I've actually only played Q9 once, and he was killed in one hit by Jotun. (See battle report here) No matter who you're playing, it's pretty scary to see your life number in skulls coming your way. Those shields just don't pop up that often, do they?

[ariealaviator]

Nice reports. To bad you didn't have a wining record.