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dok May 6th, 2009 09:50 AM

dok's battle reports
 
At last, I have battles worth reporting. The Mile High City has been graced with the presence of lonewolf, and last night we got together for a couple games of 'scape. We set up Moss Creek Road and got to it.

Game 1:

dok
Romans x3
10th x2
MDG
NGS
MBS

lonewolf
Gladiatrons x4
Blastarons x2
Raelin

It was startzone-stuffing squadscape at its best, and I got my butt handed to me pretty good. I made an early mistake of pushing NGS too far forward and allowing him to get engaged inside Raelin's aura. At that point I basically sacrificed him to buy time to get the rest of my army arranged. NGS did his job as a tank, even if MBS failed to get any paralyzing stares on Raelin in the process.

It was the sequence in the aftermath of NGS's death that swiftly cost me the game. I was feeling pretty good about my setup as I had two blocks of Romans sitting 6 hexes from Raelin, with the 10th right behind them. I figured that lonewolf would have to break through those Romans in order to get at the 10th, and in the mean time I'd be hitting with 4 attacks of 2-4 attack dice. Mike surprised me by continuing to ignore the Romans, and simply shooting with his Blastarons (including a few on height 3) at my 10th, sans homing device. In the first turn of this, he managed to kill 3 of 4 Redcoats clustered around MDG. (Some might argue this is why Redcoats suck.) I scrambled and managed to get some shots in, but I was down to 1 Redcoat 2 turns later and that was pretty much the game.

By the time he killed MBS, I had only taken out 3 Blasts and 4-5 Glads. I still had all my Romans (and MDG), but it was pretty painfully clear that they wouldn't be able to get it done without ranged support, so I resigned. It might have turned out differently if more of my 10th had survived that first exchange, but unless I got him under a full squad of Blasts, it wasn't going to matter.

In retrospect, it was clear that I should have advanced with the Romans and engaged as many Blasts as possible. Lonewolf was really only concerned with my ranged figures, so I may as well have used the Romans more aggressively. That, and the early mistake with NGS, was two mistakes too many against this player/army combo.

It was a real pleasure to see lonewolf play the 'trons. That army involves making a huge number of decisions every turn, and watching lonewolf crank through it all as he moved 8 figures and picked his targets was fun to watch. I can see where people trip up when playing them, but in the right hands, they are really tough.

Game 2:

dok
Knights of Weston x3
Sir Gilbert
Nilfheim

lonewolf
Deathreavers x2
Braxas
Laglor
KMA

The first couple rounds turns were spent with lonewolf spooling out his rats and me assembling my knights in a column on the road. Then things settled in with Nilfheim taking on rats, while the KMA fired in from the next zip code. Nilfheim managed to freeze 5 rats in 3 turns and open up the path; I did expose him to elevated Krav at one point (my only blatant mistake of the match, probably) but managed to escape with only 2 wounds.

The Knights, freed from the Deathreavers, took over, and swiftly worked down the road and brought the pain. I lost a couple knights in the process of killing the Krav and two more rats. At this point, I felt really good about my chances, but then Braxas began her reign of terror. She killed 5 knights in her first two activations. Still, I felt pretty good, as I managed to get a couple wounds on her with Nilfheim's approach and ice breath, and the next turn would presumably see me fly over and bring Nilfheim's 6 attack into play.

But then came the key turn of the game, as lonewolf brought Braxas to Nilfheim, and put an all-skulls roll on me against a single shield, killing Nilf in one shot and denying me my next OM. In one roll, I went from favorite to severe underdog. Gilbert and the remaining knights put up a valiant effort, getting several wounds on both Braxas and Laglor, but in the end it was to no avail.

So, I have tasted defeat in Heroscape, and twice in one evening. But the thing is, losing to a player as talented and gracious as lonewolf is actually a lot more fun than beating a weaker opponent. Thanks for the experience, lonewolf.

Jexik May 6th, 2009 11:22 AM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Thanks for the report, dok! I like losing to good players too because you actually have an opportunity to learn something. Sounds like you kind of just had a tough break with Nilfheim in that second game. That has been my experience too. About 3/4 of the time, he'll just go crazy and kill 300 points, but every now and then, he's a dud.

lonewolf sux, imo.

(I'm actually 0-2 against him too).

Too bad I can't get my revenge against him this summer at GC.

lonewolf May 6th, 2009 06:46 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by dok (Post 814096)
So, I have tasted defeat in Heroscape, and twice in one evening. But the thing is, losing to a player as talented and gracious as lonewolf is actually a lot more fun than beating a weaker opponent. Thanks for the experience, lonewolf.

Dok, I had a great time playing against you and even though you lost, your strategy and game play are both excellent.

Thank you for the games!

dok May 7th, 2009 02:05 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Jexik (Post 814149)
Sounds like you kind of just had a tough break with Nilfheim in that second game.

Well, mostly yes, but also no. The allskulls/one shield hit that swung the game was pretty unlucky, but I had also been lucky to escape the elevated Krav hit with only 2 wounds. The expected hit there was almost three wounds, and could of course have been much worse. And he rolled even ground KMA shots against Nilf at least one other time, and blanked.

The reason I had placed Nilf on low ground was because I was engaged to one rat, and out of range of the other two. I chose to walk around the rat so that I would be able to hit the other two if I killed the first one. The better play would have been to disengage and take the height three perch. This would have cost me half a wound at the outset, but it would have guaranteed me three shots, and given me five defense dice against the Krav in the next turn. lonewolf pointed this out to me after the game.

And Nilf rolled pretty hot when it came to clearing out the rats. So Nilfheim had one titanic failure, but if you look at all his rolls, he did pretty good. He just had the bad roll at exactly the wrong time.

--

I only made one other error I can think of - I botched the order of attack of my knights one turn, so that after I killed the last Krav, I couldn't attack Laglor with the one knight who had been engaged to both. This being a friendly game, lonewolf offered to let me roll the attack, but at the time I was winning and not in the mood to accept charity. A couple turns later, not so much.

R˙chean May 7th, 2009 02:38 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Moss Creek Road?? cool 8)

Did I read the luck/skill thread correctly, dok. You haver only lost 3 games of Heroscape ever?

BTW, I own LW and he knows it. :twisted:

dok May 7th, 2009 02:40 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Yep, Moss Creek Road. It set up quickly and plays very fairly for a wide range of figures. It's not a flashy map, but it's a very nice one.

Yes, these were my second and third losses, although the first was with many rules wrong. But I've never played in a competitive tournament, and until Tuesday night I'd never played against anybody who posts here.

I guess I've also lost quite a few games against myself, if you want to count those...

lonewolf May 7th, 2009 08:48 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by R˙chean (Post 815443)
BTW, I own LW and he knows it. :twisted:

It is true...everyone has a nemesis and mine is you! Plus you beat up on my kid more than a couple times. You are my family's nemesis!

R˙chean May 8th, 2009 11:02 AM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Gen Con just won't be the same for me without you and Scaper_dude there. You guys will be missed.

lonewolf May 8th, 2009 12:24 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by R˙chean (Post 816282)
Gen Con just won't be the same for me without you and Scaper_dude there. You guys will be missed.

Thanks Ry. It is killing me that I am not going. It is such a fun thing for me personally to do and also such a great bonding for me and scaper_dude to do together. I can't even read the 'who is going to Gencon thread' because it just makes me feel worse about not going.

I know that I am doing the right thing by not going, but it still makes me crazy!

killercactus May 22nd, 2009 02:38 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by dok (Post 815448)
Yes, these were my second and third losses, although the first was with many rules wrong. But I've never played in a competitive tournament, and until Tuesday night I'd never played against anybody who posts here.

I guess I've also lost quite a few games against myself, if you want to count those...

Man, you sure start high up on the ladder! A couple of your first Heroscape games against a player like lonewolf, and also against some strong armies! Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to play lonewolf (I was one Scatter away from it at GenCon last year), but I have played scaper_dude, and he was very, very tough.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lonewolf (Post 816357)
Thanks Ry. It is killing me that I am not going. It is such a fun thing for me personally to do and also such a great bonding for me and scaper_dude to do together. I can't even read the 'who is going to Gencon thread' because it just makes me feel worse about not going.

I hear you. I read through that, and the Events thread and wanted to cry. I had soooo much fun last year..... oh well - I'll be back.

dok October 17th, 2009 11:23 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
So, here's a quick summary of my games at the innagural Colorado NHSD event, the Rocky Mountain Rumble.

The format was 520 point, 24 hex, marvel allowed armies. Of the 11 maps in play, 8 used standard rules, and 3 used Heat of Battle rules. Due to the rolling rumble format, you could end up on a HoB map at any time. However, as fate would have it I did not play any HoB games. (If I had known that would happen, I might have brought a different army!)

Anyway, I played:

20 Marcu Esenwein
80 Raelin RotV
180 Major Q9
240 Zombies x4
520, 16 hexes

My basic plan was to use Raelin-backed Q9 to bring the opponent in, and then just roll with zombies as long as I could. Zombies act both as a screen for Raelin/Q9 and as an agressor. Once you start feeding OMs to the zombies, though, it's really hard to stop, because every attack is a chance to bring back dead zombies.

I figured roughly the same strategy would work on HoB maps, if it came to it. Marcu was an extra card for HoB, a glyph-grabber, and wound glyph insurance.

Game 1
Opponent: Seth A (Raelin, Charos, Cyprien, Kelda)
Map: Can't See the Jungle (Unique attack and Lucky 20-sider)

The glyphs were great for him and bad for me, however, he wasn't happy to see Q9. He opened by putting Cyprien on the Unique attack glyph; I put Marcu on the 20-sider glyph, simply to deny it from him. Things quickly settled into a dice-fest as Q9 dispatched Raelin, Cyprien, and put 6 wounds on Charos before going down. Kelda hit a 20 to bring Charos back to full health, though, and Charos killed my Raelin not too much later. However, this was really too little too late, as the zombies onslaughted Charos to death, and finished off Kelda shortly after that.

1-0

Game 2

Opponent: Eric (10thx2, ratsx2, Iskra, Rechets, Crixus, Morsbane)
Map: Mayan Ruins (wound glyph)

The game opened up with some redcoat and rat movement from Eric, claiming the wound glyph. (Eric held the wound glyph nearly the entire game, but all he got out of it was a heavily wounded Marcu.)

Q9 got to work killing redcoats like it was his job. I was starting to think he was going to dominate the game nearly singlehandedly, but Morsbane's 17 put the kibosh on that idea. Q9 used his remaining OMs in that round to kill Morsbane using attacks of 5 from height, before he could negate Raelin, too.

At this point, I put the rest of the OMs for the game on zombies, and just let them go to work. At one point I was down 4 zombies or so, but I took out the redcoats and got some back. Iskra and the Rechets proved tough and nearly finished the Raelin job the Redcoats had started (despite me only allowing one to get adjacent) but I eventually finished them, and started working through rats.

Eric still had Crixus and 5 or 6 rats, and a sliver of a chance to win, but rather than waste a ton of time finishing the game, he resigned so we could get to some more games. Eric's a solid player and ended up only losing one other game all day.

2-0

Game 3

Opponent: Elginb (Mittens, Venocsx3, MRTx2, Aubriensx2)
Map: Forsaken Swamp (wind and initiative)

The glyphs were pretty irrelevant here. Elginb said right at the outset that he had been really afraid of playing zombies with his army, and for good reason. Still, he put up a good fight, and this was definitely my closest game of the day.

Things started with some exchanges between Q9 and the MRTs/AAs. Q9 and the zombies took out about 2 of each, but I had no dead zombies at that stage so I couldn't get revives. I was staying in Raelin's range pretty well, and I think Dave recognized he wasn't going to be able to out-snipe Q9, so he got busy with the Venocs.

Things started slow in the frenzy department, but a timely initiative switch combined with a couple frenzy rolls made things really interesting really quickly. Elgin managed to outflank my entire position, kill Raelin, and put two wounds on Q9. The zombies quickly stepped in and eliminated all the nearby vipers, but with no Raelin and a weakened Q9 I was now forced to play the slow-moving horde while Elginb's remaining range gnawed away at my army.

At one point I had lost half my zombies, and I was nearing that tipping point where the horde stops being effective. However, a key initiative switch allowed me to close on the Aubriens and effectively squelch the threat. With only vipers remaining and a healthy host of zombies knocking on the door, Dave conceded the match. It ended up being his only loss of the day, which doesn't surprise me at all. That army has crazy speed and is really dangerous, and he played it well.

3-0

Game 4

Opponent: Bubbles (Capuans x2, Spartacus, Crixus, Retiarius)
Map: Common Ground

With only 6 squaddies to play with, I sort of felt like I had to screw up to give Bubbles a chance in this one. However, I actually did just that, leaving a hole in my zombie screen that allowed Retiarius to get at Raelin and kill her. That at least allowed the gladiators a pucher's chance.

Still, it was just a matter of time before the zombies turned Retiarus and all the Capuans. I actually won initiative early on despite giving up 11 points (glyph plus Capuan bonus), which didn't help the gladiator cause. Spartacus only managed one kill before onslaught took him down. Crixus spent the entire game on "initiative island" - in the end I bottled him up with zombies and let Q9 finish the job.

4-0, first place.

It was a lot of fun getting out and playing new players in a competitive setting. I can't wait for the next chance. So far, my record remains unblemished against players who haven't finished second at the Gencon championship. ;)

GeneralRolando October 18th, 2009 03:15 PM

Re: dok's battle reports
 
edit- my battle reports

http://www.heroscapers.com/community...733#post938733

If we meet on the battle field next time i'll have my hand at you.^^


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