Deroche

(Pseudo Battle Report that is...cough cough. Self-indulgent, long-winded prattling that scratches my occasional itch to write.)



Heroscape Evangelism

I'm the lone Heroscaper in my main gaming group. Actually, not quite -- one of our members actually has every single Heroscape item ever released (emphasis on the word "single.") He thought the purpose was to be complete and hence quite never grasped what it meant to be competitive. As such, he's never really gotten into Heroscape and I can't say I blame him if he's usually only fielding one card's worth of common squads the few times he's played. And yes, I've told him a thousand times what he needs to do about it...and I give up.

So our little group of four typically gets together once a week and we try to get to the table one or two of the million unplayed games we own in our collective collections. We primarily play Euros, and Heroscape certainly hasn't been a part...

MUSINGS

510 points. 12 hexes only.

Putting the hero back in HEROscape, right? Meh, not so much. Okay, a little, but not enough if you wanted to WIN a tournament.

My first reaction was that this would be a great format to run Firestorm, but been there, done that.

Another thought was a compromised version of dok's cheeseheads 2010 Gencon winner; that army had some nifty heroes, but you run it with seven rats instead of 12. Then I thought of Minionsx3/Atlaga/Raelin, which brought me back to wanting some kind of auto-wounding for something annoying like Minions, so droping a squad of rats for three black wyrmlings might be a good thing perhaps in dok's build if I wasn't going to run Firestorm. Turns out that was a stupid thought on my part after play-testing it a bit: If you want to maintain a screen via scatter for your Hydra, those extra three rats are far more valuable than some auto-wounding BWs. Yeah yeah, I know...I'm still...

(Semi-battle report/observations/musings)

I don't think I've ever anticipated a tournament as much as the Heat of Battle event we just had here this weekend in Louisville. Then again, that's not really saying much given that I've only played in three tournaments total so far, so it's not like I have much frame of reference.

So why the excitement? Because this would be my first chance to attempt an all-melee army. As I discover more about this game, I've learned enough to know that many consider ranged armies are for wussies and because I have absolutely no clue whatsoever on how to safely advance an all melee force across a map, I've also learned I'm not too proud to be that wussie. Range range range, I love me some range. But the thought of getting to start close to my opponent with a mostly intact melee army was far too great a temptation to ignore -- I just needed to decide what to play.

And I already knew what I wanted to play, but the collective...

Louisville March 2011 Tournament Report
Dragon Wars

Being relatively new to Heroscape and excited to play in my second official tournament (and to put the awful January tourney behind me -- I managed to only go 2-3 with the winning GenCon 2010 Main Event army; Dok is now refusing to return my calls), I decided to wield:

Someone Give Me a Clever Name For This Army Because I Don't Have One
Stingersx5
Othkurik
Isamu

This army was suggested by killercactus in the pre-tourney thread (and I think by Dok as well in a PM...you know, back when we used to be on speaking terms) so why not let brighter minds dictate what I'll play. The gameplan with this army is simple and straightfoward: attack attack attack the opponent's dragon. I knew people would bring some high point dragons and with the partial scoring format, each wound would be worth more than any Stinger I lost in exchange, assuming I could keep that to a minimum. Equally...