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This is a neater way of storing my playtests for my customs that I want other people to be able to see. I mostly intend on posting about units that I'd like to submit to the SoV.
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Masha with Deathstalkers in Hot Lava Death (Pt. 2)

Posted December 1st, 2018 at 01:46 AM by Astroking112
Updated November 29th, 2019 at 11:39 PM by Astroking112
I'm in the process of starting a HeroScape club at my college, and one of the traditions that we have so far is to let everyone vote on what the next monthly event will be. This time, they chose "Surprise Me," which @Leo Ultra and I took to mean "hot lava death." The maps that we decided to use were all meant to emphasize this theme, since we chose Obsidian Attack at Steam Alley, Deadly Encounter at Searing Pass, and Burning Barracks.

I obviously make for a fantastic tournament director.

In all seriousness, there were many people new to the game coming this time, and I wanted them to get a chance to just have some plain old fun with the game. Still, I couldn't pass up on the chance to get some playtests in, so I decided on an army that's been in the back of my mind for quite a while: Masha Shingai with Deathstalkers, since they actually enjoy his Awakened Fear ability.

The second of two games follows below:

=========

Burning Barracks by Sup3rS0n1c
No Glyphs
Astro: Masha Shingai, Deathstalkers x3, Isamu (395)
Loken: Locksley, Darrak Ambershard, Nottingham Brigand x6 (400)

Current Version of the Unit:
Spoiler Alert!


Which Units Survived?
2 Deathstalkers
~70 Points

Game Summary:
Due to a potential loop hole in the map design, I was able to jump down into water with my Deathstalkers, but immediately step onto land afterward to keep spaces clear, since double-spaced figures only have to stop when entering water with both spaces. If I misunderstood the rule, then my bad, but I don't think that it would have significantly impacted the flow of the game.

As it stood, I could not move Masha and Isamu down in the first round, and each took 1 wound from the lava field damage. Shortly afterwards I had Masha jump down and begin leading the pack over the center hill, but I quickly realized that I could not move so slowly on account of the long range of the Brigands. I then abandoned Masha for a bit, rushing a squad of Deathstalkers out and dealing a ton of havoc before finally sending Masha in to try and get a lucky hit on Locksley from height. He only managed to deal 2 wounds, and Darrak snuck up and sneak attacked him the next turn to bring him down to 1 life, which a Brigand quickly finished off. No attacks were made against him from range, for fear of Flaming Retribution.

After that, it Loken moved Locksley up onto the center hill and forced me to climb up with my double-spaced Deathstalkers, but the 7 move pulled through and they quickly mauled him to death. By that point, it was a single Brigand against a squad of Deathstalkers, and despite an attempt to leverage "the tunnel of doom" beneath the far starting zone, the Brigand could not clear out the SoulBorgs before they found their prey.

Usefulness of Powers:
To be honest, Masha did very little in this game. The long nature of the map made it difficult for him to reach the opponent, and Loken was perfectly content with attacking other figures at range to avoid Masha's ranged defenses. He only got in one attack against Locksley from height, which was nice, but not really worth the points investment.

As in the previous game, he basically melted as soon as he reached engagement. It didn't help that his Awakened Fear had no effect in this game. This is a major concern for balancing, but I'm not ready to make any changes based solely off of these two games, on account of them being rather peculiar. It's fine for Masha to be a glass cannon, of course, but I'm concerned that the move to 2 defense is too big of a nerf.

Additional Comments:
This map is hilarious, but I don't anticipate that I'll build it again. This was a fairly balanced match-up (we each lost an equal number of figures to falling or lava field damage when exiting the starting zone), but there were other games that I witnessed tonight that ended decidedly differently. Minions of Utgar + Taelord on this map perform far stronger than one might expect.
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