Knuth Sleuth

Well, it had been a long time since I'd played. A baby and a new job will do that. Looking back, going for both changes simultaneously was not so wise....

Anyways, ObfuscatedHippo was kind enough to host an Immortals tourney (inspired by the Bay Area one cooked up by RoninValentia) and I had the weekend free. Woohoo!

So, beforehand, I did a bunch of theoryscaping about my immortal and it seemed obvious that everyone would bring Cyprien. That spurred a thread between OH, RV, and I. And the net was a few more changes from what they'd done in the Bay Area. OH had already put in a good group of changes like allowing ranged heroes, allowing Spiderman and Venom(!), and allowing a few large guys too, so our tourney was going to be pretty different.

Well assuming the meta was going to be Cyprien, I settled on either Venom, Cyprien, Q-10, and Torin. Torin is a fig I've always been fascinated with and wondered if I could make work. FishTako and I talked about...

So, we added a little scaper to the world. Quite exciting and exhausting too.

In the downtime associated with little ones, Black Friday was awesome for me because I got some cheap scape from Hasbro and HouseMouse. Hasbro was awesome for Wave 7 and 8 stuff and HM was great for Wave 11 and 12 stuff. Lots of fun theoryscaping.

So far, the coolest guys look like the MindFlayer Mastermind and Kato Katsuro/Ashigaru.

The MFM's ability to attack order markers is awesome. I got a dream matchup in a SEA casual game vs. Aubriens and Venoc Vipers. I got rolled the first game by a hot d20, but in the second game, the MFM killed multiple order markers and helped my mix of junk win.

Sadly, given the large number of high defense commons, this is too unreliable.

Regarding Kato, I'd love to play him without having to worry about start zones.

I've generally been impressed with the community and its one of the reasons that I play, but I have to say I'm really disappointed in this thread:

[Link]

The number of one word negative responses that don't add value and lack of community policing makes me sad. That the responses come from people with lots of "rep" makes it even sadder. From what I can tell, "Rep" is mostly a measure of entertainment value. Say something funny/cool, get lots of rep. It makes me concerned that people are more interested in being jackasses than I had previously thought.

The word 'errata' may be strong, but the general concept of game mechanics maturing/changing over time is fact and the desire for consistency in game mechanics is a worthwhile one. Being relatively new, I've noticed many inconsistencies or really "corrected" powers between waves and I too have wondered why don't...

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:
...

Ok. since it is well after the tourney, i'll write my general thoughts and then add anything i can remember from the battles later.

general thoughts:
1. i got really lucky and never faced q9. everyone warned me about him, and i got lucky not to face him.

2. rats are hard to use: having never played with them, i really didn't understand how to use them. many thanks for my first 2 opponents and their patience. eventually, i got the "run out and engage/take glyph" bit. that said, there were many times, i had to scatter, and didn't really know what to do.

3. cyprien with sonya is awesome. i didn't really understand how great 8 stealth flying was until my 3rd game. flying him around felt unfair. he could fly in and out of trouble and usually get first attack on something good. chill touch proved itself early. on the day, i nailed some big marro snake, kurrok, and krug with 6 wound kills. healing himself helped with the fractional scoring...