Play update and a couple random musings.

I guess I start with the "death of heroscape" announcement. It bummed me out at first, but I'm not a WOTC fan (even though they are here in the seattle area) and I'm still learning the game. So, I'm not that bummed now - just focused on adding some terrain to my nascent collection. Given the recent "hopeful" posts, we'll see how this shakes out in a month or so. I hope the HS community stays together and positions itself well to be the soul of the game.

Anyway, musings aside, I played yesterday at the Seattle Casual Day at ObHippo's. He is an awesome host with maps, figs, and everything ready. Many thanks to him for making HS great fun.

Yesterday was interesting because I played 2 games with the same matchup and learned some good lessons in order marker management. Given it is still so early, I tend to learn something each time I play and this blog is the best place to save them for me to remember.

The armies:
Me:
sylvaris 100
zetacron 160
mika connor 270
mindflayer master 370
black wyrmlings 4x30 490
isamu 500

him:
aubrien archers 3x70: 210
armoc vipers 2x65: 340
venoc warlord: 460
theracus: 500

The map was pretty long, had two tall towers, and had lots of dungeon rocks to block LOS.

Game 1: This game, he led with the archers and wiped me with them. I killed 2 archers total in the game and he never used the other guys. He frenzied pretty well and got in my start zone early. He did a great job moving his guys together and not getting over extended. I also whiffed a bunch of rolls.

Errors on my part were:
1. bad order marker management. i started poorly and kept it up. I started out with distributed order markers and didn't have much of a plan. On multiple turns, he was able to make me lose order markers.

2. poor use of my guys. the point of this army was to try some guys i'd never used before and i didn't do much. what i did do was pretty poor as guys would get an attack off and get killed. everyone got caught on the low ground and was mowed down.

The game ended so quickly, we ran it again. I did make one small change by swapping Zetacron for 2 more black wyrmlings.

Game 2:
This second time around, he was nice and led with the armocs and the venoc warlord. Theracus carried the warlord almost to my start area (9 flying is sick.) Quickly, I had 3 armocs, the vwarlord, and theracus beating on me. I did better this time, getting Mika on even ground to a chokepoint and then piling OM's on Sylvaris to kill the kamikaze theracus. I kept piling the OM's on him as he killed the armocs and eventually got to a point where only one armoc was attacking a OM as the others advanced.

The archers advanced and killed sylvaris as I switched to wyrmlings - moved them to height and whittled down the vwarlord. At this point I switched to the mindflayer and a pretty key turn happened. I successfully used his psyonic blast to knock OM's off the archers (2 in one round, 1 in another). This swing was huge for me. I ended up killing 3 archers and he only got 1 OM that round. Having height made a ton of difference for mika and a shadow tile (5d v 2d rather than 4d or 5d v. 3d) and the wyrmlings. The defensive rolls held well and I managed to chew through the archers.

I'm not sure if I would have won if he had led with the archers, but I feel I played better in the second game, so I'm happy.

Lessons:
1. making OM decisions is non-trivial. making OM decisions easy helps. losing OM's or having an OM on someone that can't attack sucks. I faced this with mika and zetacron in the first game. In the second game, I adjusted by swapping zetracron out and largely using mika to block a chokepoint and ignoring her.
2. the MFM worked to gain OM control. against low defense common units, you can really swing the tide with initiative and the psyonic attack.
3. height is more important than i thought for defense. i hadn't moved to the high ground in the first match and it showed as giving the AA's 3 attack dice was really bad.
4. theracus with the vwarlord is sick. 9 flying is just crazy. i already knew the AA's and mittens were good.
5. luck is more of the game than i like to pretend and facing a frenzy army with the mfm, the d20 made luck's role even bigger.

fig ratings:
AA's: great as usual
theracus: very cool
armocs: i wasn't that impressed, but maybe i'm missing something. bonding with the vwarlord was good.
vwarlord: this guy is tough and helps frenzy and makes guys fast. underrated by me.
mfm: impressive for low defense common matchups. tougher than you'd think.
mika: the theory doesn't match the hype. maybe if the other army had more heroes. she is good w/ 5 defense in shadow though.
sylvaris: legolas did his job. fun first time playing w/ him.
black wyrmlings: not that great vs commons, but they gassed the vwarlord pretty well.
isamu: he sucked for me. i don't expect much for 10 pts though.
zetacron: against commons, he is just a waste. really fragile. i want to love him too.