D2-D3 12 army Round Robin

Nice armies! With a skilled general, I think the goblins could do all right, otherwise I'd go for the Reptiles and Goliath, Elementals, or Beasts.

The Goblins look pretty strong to me off the rip, too. I might swap the Frost Giant and the MotH to try and even it up a bit. However, I think the strongest army is easily the Death Chasers

Fire Titans are my first pick. Death Pursuit also looks very strong. New Beasties could be nasty if they get favorable matchups.

I'm actually really hoping to end up with the Death Knight army for at least one round. I really like the idea of flying Hawthorne in with Theracus and ransacking the starting zone, and then catching up with the Venoc Warlord's 7 movement once the Death Knights get a head start. Sending Zetacron out 7 spaces to get one big shot off sounds fun, too.

Looks like a blast! I've played very similar versions of a few of these, and I particularly like the Warforged Hunting Party.

I would say that the Mezzodemons look really strong, but there are only 3 other armies in the pool that don't have a Special Attack or some kind of auto-wound power (New Beasties, Death Pursuit, Goblin Swarm). That hurts the Goblin army as well. Actually, only 3 of the remaining 8 have just one Special Attacker / auto-wounder. The rest have at least 2. I'd hate to be the Goblins or Mezzos going up against the Wyrmlings....

I had to add a couple more armies as we were supposed to have 5 players. I added a 5x Phantom Knights + Dupuis army and two others that werent played.

We only ended up with 4, and could only play 2 rounds. Here were the results:

Jess (League of Shadows) d. Mechabeast (Wolves)
Phantazm (Phantoms and Dupuis) d. Killercactud (Fire Titans)

Jess (League of Shadows) d. Phantazm (Warforged - he had Q10 instead of MotH)
Mechabeast (Scarcarving Demons) d. Killercactus (Goblin Swarm)

Both of my games were on If you can take the Heat by Dignan, and both of Jess' games were on Northern Ruins by Tom. The dungeon and shadow really helped her win her games. Both of Jess' games came down to 1 or 2 Drow remaining.

Craig whooped me the first game. Shurrak pretty much crapper out and I couldn't screen his Phantoms from Moltenclaw. I did enjoy Burning Breath, though.

My game with Mechabeast was much closer. I thought Mezzos was a nightmare matchup, and he was destroying me early. But the Bugbears and Frosty made a big comeback once he finally ran out of Exo markers. He won with one Mezzo and Isamu left.

I'll update this two more times in case anyone is still reading, as I play through the rest of the matchups in a bit of solo-scape. The initial blog post now contains all 15 armies exactly as they were available.

I played the Reptiles and Goliath against Elementaly, My Dear Watson on If You Can Take the Heat. The Water Elementals really loved the swamp water as one of the Hydras and Rhogar approached. I felt confident that I could break through with the Hydra, using Rhogar to heal along the way. The Hydra even picked up and used a Potion of Healing, but all that swamp water made the Water Elementals very tough. They basically teleported all over the map and shot at the Hydra relentlessly, killing it and only losing a single Water Elemental. However, I had Kurrok placed at the front of the start zone, and Rhogar made it to him and landed 2 wounds before my Elementals could dispatch him. Still, one Water and 2 wounds on Kurrok seemed a pretty good trade for Rhogar and a Hydra.

Then Eltahale came.

Eltahale Thunder Stepped and Thunder Rammed everything in sight. An initiative switch meant she could get at Kurrok before I could wall him in, and a 7-die attack killed him instantly. She then Thunder Rammed through all of the other Elementals at an alarming rate. The game was over before I knew it.

Then I played Relentless Assault vs. the Wyrmlings on Northern Ruins. Theracus flew Hawthorne into the fray early, and he started hacking up Wyrmlings before he backstabbed the Death Knights. The Black Wyrmlings were spitting at him a lot up to this point, but only managed 1 wound. They then turned their attention to the charging Death Knights who were nearly across the map (they ignored Theracus completely). Again, the Acid was really failing the baby Blacks, and the Death Knights retaliated. The Blues joined the fray to get in some decent sized normal attacks, and the Reds started frying DK's with fire. The Dumutef was killed by a Blue, but then Mittens and Zetacron started coming, and there were a couple resilient Death Knights left.

The Wyrmlings were able to kill all but one Death Knight before Mittens made it to their side, and a White hit a big shot on Zetacron to one-hit-kill him after he'd shot a Wyrmling or two. Mittens was able to dispatch the traitorous Hawthorne while sustaining a couple of wounds, and he, Zetacron and the remaining Death Knight managed to get the Wyrmlings down to just 3 Whites before he and Zetacron fell, leaving a lone Death Knight against 3 Whites. That Death Knight proved resilient indeed as his armor held true time and time again, and his Soul Weapon passed through the thick hide of each White Wyrmling, cleaving all 3 of them through the heart. Relentless Assault wins with a lone Death Knight remaining, even after a Hawthorne Backstab.

The last 4 armies (Dwarves, Arrow Gruts, Death Chasers and Predators) will be played soon!

Not having looked at your results, I would pick the Angry Miners, Scarcarving Demons or Death Pursuit to do well...

Here are the results so far...

League of Shadows
Bad Moon Rising

League of Shadows
Warforged Hunting Party

Phantom Knights
Fire Titans

Scarcarving Demons
Goblin Swarm

Reptiles and Goliath
Elementaly, My Dear Watson

Relentless Assault
Wyrmling Swarm

Death Pursuit
Angry Miners

New Beasties
Predatorial Instincts

Maybe it's just that I have next to no experience playing Dwarves and a tournament under my belt with the Deathchasers, but this game was rather lopsided. Deathchasers just cleaned everything up, and the Ogre Warhulk was on fire. Mogrimm's Commander Strike never hit, and Ambershard's Sneak Attack wasn't very sneaky at all. Big win for the Orcs.

The next game was even worse. The Predators weren't a very strong army to begin with, but they really disappointed me here. The Wyvern had a really tough going of it, with almost no one to carry around, and Venomous Sting never went off. I'm not sure the Arrow Gruts sustained any losses before it went down. I thought Sujoah would at least be able to take out an Ice Troll easily, but his Poison Sting failed a couple of times, and he went down to the Troll's hammer and some arrows. The MotH's Mortal Strike was money against the Troll, right? Wrong. Beasties win with the loss of a couple Arrow Gruts - maybe not even a whole squad - and maybe one Swog.

I'm going to finish this out in a tournament fashion. Since League of Shadows won twice, I'll let the loser of the closest game back into the tournament, which was the Wyrmling Swarm (they lost with just one Death Knight surviving). Here are the pairings for the next round based on my seeding (#1 seed = most lopsided win):

New Beasties* vs Wyrmling Swarm
Death Pursuit* vs Relentless Assault
Reptiles and Goliath* vs Scarcarving Demons
League of Shadows vs Phantom Knights*

My predictions have an * by them. The Drow vs Phantom Knights and Arrow Gruts vs. Wyrmlings games will be played on a Dungeon/Shadow/Snow map (Northern Ruins). The other 2 games will be played on a Swamp/Jungle/Lava Map (If You Can Take the Heat). Predict away!

2 games played last night, and I'm already 0-2.

The Wyrmlings just SMOKED the #1 seeded Arrow Grut army. It was all down to the dice, really. The Wyrmling rolls for both attack and defense were just on fire. The first Ice Troll charged across the battlefield, failed to kill a couple Wyrmlings with 5v4's, but picked up 2 Treasure Glyphs, including a Healing Potion. However, Healing Potions and Cold Regeneration don't matter when a Blue Wyrmling throws 5 skulls at you from height. A 4/4 and a 2/3 from two more Wyrmlings killed the other Ice Troll, and the Blue/White Lightning and Ice Shards made VERY quick work of the Arrow Gruts and Swogs. There were a lot of 2/2 skulls going around. When Krug finally came out, he dispatched a couple Wyrmlings, but again their normal attacks from height piled on the wounds. At one point, Krug had 7 wounds and was adjacent to a White and a Black. He threw 1/9 BOTH TIMES (and one of those was 1 skull 8 shields). Wyrmlings win with all 5 White and 3 Black left in a landslide.

The second game really made a believer out of me in the Mezzodemons, though I think they were helped by the map. Eltahale came out first, and Scarcarver countered her, trying to eliminate the biggest Special Attack threat. However, before Scarcarver even got an attack off, a Thunder-Stepping Eltahale took high ground on Evar and rolled a 7/7, killing the Frost Rager in one shot! She took a wound from Thunder Step, and then Thunder Rammed some Mezzodemons. In the next round, the Mezzos were quick to engage her, forcing her to take disengagement swipes to keep using Thunder Ram. When Eltahale was finally killed, she'd taken Scarcarver and 5 Mezzodemons with her. The thing about the Mezzos though is that even though 5 of them are now dead, they still have their 12 markers. Rhogar came out with a Hydra, hoping to try and get most of the remaining Mezzos with his Breath of Flame, but the Demons superior range allowed them to take the high ground and down Dragonspine before his Special Attack really did anything.

However, if there's one figure that can plow through Exo markers, it's a Fen Hydra, and there were two of them left. This map though (If You Can Take the Heat) is pretty tough on double-hexers' movement. That, coupled with the Mezzo's 4 range, meant the Hydras usually had low ground. Despite that, the first Hydra blew through Mezzo markers like crazy before it died. I think it took 7 markers with it. The next Hydra blew through the remaining markers while only taking one wound, and picked up some Bracers of Teleportation along the way. It moved up out of the swamp onto a piece of higher ground to use the bracers next turn to get to the Mezzo starting zone now that the markers were gone, but a Mezzo picked that moment to climb up and throw a 3/4, which was followed by a defense whiff and a dead Hydra. With 4 Mezzos and Isamu left, the Raiders jumped in the water and hid in the jungle brush, readying their ambush. The Mezzos just laughed however and used their Clouds of Poison to wreck both Sahuagins in one OM. Mezzodemons win with 4 Mezzos and Isamu left.

Tonight I'll play at least the other 2 games, and maybe the semis and final.

Go Wyrmlings! And the Mezzodemons are already the new unit I love to hate...

Mezzodemons are still really strong against Special Attackers as long as you can get rid of the Special Attack while they still have a few members left. The problem in tournaments is that those Special Attackers are usually really well protected.

Yeah, you need a strong anti-special unit. I'm thinking teaming them up with Eltahale might be just the ticket, since she can slip in and assassinate the Q9's and Q10's of the world. How about:

Eltahale - 140
Mezzos x4 - 260
Krav Maga - 100
Total = 500 pts

What about Morsbane? He actually has a pretty good chance of negating Q9 or a Dragon before he dies (dragons moreso - Queglix Gun is tough, but he'll get a few turns in).