Heroscapers - Colorado 3/6/10 tournament results

Quote:

Originally Posted by killercactus (Post 1032813)

Someone out there in CO needs to knock dok off of his perch!!

Yes, we're all very frustrated about his undefeated-ness. We're all secretly scheming together to take him out next time... we may have to use a lead pipe in the study, though.

This was probably my favorite tournament so far. I felt a lot more comfortable with the set-up than the last two times, and we all managed to get more games in (some got in 7 or 8 games???? Wow). And even though I came in 3rd (for the 3rd tournament in a row, dagnabbit), I felt like everyone of my games were competitive.

My army was Spider-man, Major Q10 and Stingers X3. Spider-man and Major Q10 are two of my favorite characters in the game, but I wasn't sure teaming them together would make for a competitive 495 point army. Normally I avoid using the tournament dominating units (like Stingers or Glad/Blasts), but they seemed like a good common squad to make up for Spidey's and Q's weaknesses (I almost took the Harquebus). I also considered using the exact same army Nacho brought (Thanos, Marro Warriors, Deathreavers x3), but when I found out he had come up with it independently, I decided to bring this one. In my pre-tournament scrimmaging, I found that almost all of my match-ups wound up being very close, so I wasn't going in with high expectations to dominate, just with expectations of having a chance against almost anybody.

Round 1 on ??? vs. Eric (Nilfheim, Krav Maga, Finn, KoW, Theracus)
We played King of the Glyph and I'm actually not sure if I technically won this game. The winning conditions were that, if you had an unengaged figure occupying the centrally placed Brandar Glyph at the end of your 3rd turn occupying the glyph, then you won the game. Now, my interpretation of "turn" was was the entire turn, which involves flipping two order markers over (for instance, if I won initiative and I've flipped my 2nd turn marker, the turn isn't over until my opponent, who lost initiative, turns over his 2nd turn marker). But the rules can be interpreted to mean that victory could be had even if your opponent hasn't turned over his turn marker. If that's the case, then I stole a victory from Eric.

Eric immediately flew Theracus onto the glyph and brought along Finn as a bodyguard. And then I sent Spidey out to hang by them. Eric concentrated on Spidey while I brought my Stingers closer and took pot-shots at Finn and Theracus. They went down fairly quickly (Finn was placed on the Krav), but Eric moved Nilfheim up and took the glyph before I could get on it. Again, Eric kept focusing on Spider-man using his special attack. Now this is where the dispute came up-- he managed to kill Spider-man and, at one point, was unengaged at the end of his 3rd turn occupying the glyph, but not before I flipped my order marker for the same turn. We talked about it, and I impressed upon him my interpretation of the rules, and then brought some of my stingers adjacent to Nilfheim. I then went on to take out Nilfheim and the rest of his army. 1-0

Anyway, I'm especially concerned about having cheated Eric in this game, because I'm definitely responsible for his loss in his second game. He was playing on my freestyle map, on which I had placed two glyph: Summoning and Healing. I chose those glyphs thinking they would be good for King of the Glyph, which is what I thought the map was best for. I didn't want to designate my own map format, however, and dok picked my map as a Capture the Treasure map. Well, Summoning is not the best glyph for Capture the Treasure, and when Eric played it, his opponent summoned his Hero holding the glyph on the first turn and proceeded to win very quickly and very easily. After than, I replaced the Summoning Glyph with the Wound glyph. So, if it wasn't for me, Eric might have ended the day with a 3-3 record instead of a 1-5 record. Sorry, Eric.

Round 2 on Straight and Narrow (Eric's Freestyle Map) vs. Chief (Deathreavers x3, Raelin RotV, Marro Warriors, Finn, Zetacron, Syvarris)
This was a Capture the Flag game, but considering the size and shape of the board, it was essentially going to be a kill 'em all game (there wasn't a great way to get by either person's army). I put Spidey on my flag, got Major Q10 on the high ground, and sent my Stingers forward. Again, I got to face Theracus and Finn early on, and took them out fairly quickly (Finn was placed on Zetacron). I was scared of losing Q10 to a souped up Zetacron, so I kept him back to pick off Chief's Marro Warriors from afar while my Stingers advanced. I managed to worm my way close enough to Zetacron to take him out, but then Chief activated his Deathreavers and sludged me up big time. Raelin moved forward to make the rats that much more annoying, and Syvarris kept picking my stingers off one-by-one from the far-side of Raelin's aura. The stingers just weren't doing the job with the rats, so I brought Q10 forward and slowly started to pick away at them. I finally managed to take out Raelin, but then Chief knocked off Q10 and all but one of my Stingers, while he still had 4 rats and Syvarris. My stinger ran away to swap places with Spidey on the glyph, and Spidey methodically rolled forward, taking out each rat with his special attack. Syvarris did manage to get his shots in, but in the end, Spidey punched him out and took the flag. 2-0

Round 3 on Sidewinder Vs. Nacho (Thanos, Marro Warriors, Deathreavers x2)
This was a kill 'em all match and Nacho was playing a team that Eric and I had both lost handily to during out practice sessions with Nacho. When you're fighting Thanos, you can either try to take him out early and hope he doesn't come back, or take out the rest of his army first and hope you still have enough oomph left to finish the job when his Rejected by Death power is useless. I chose to pursue the latter approach. There were two glyphs on the board: move +2 and wind. The wind glyph was a little far out of my range, and anyways, Thanos flew up to my start-zone immediately and gained high ground. I did, however land Spider-man on the move +2 glyph. Nacho advanced his Marro Warriors, but I was able to activate my Stingers fast enough to take them out while Thanos was focusing on Spidey. Then Nacho brought up the Reavers, but they're not as effective when you're actually targetting them and not another unit through them. When Nacho was down to two rats, I think he realized what I was doing. Spidey actually went down much quicker than I had hoped, but Q10 occupied him much longer than he should have. I finally took out Nacho's last two rats as he took out Q10. At that point, I had 7 Stingers left and he only had Thanos. I actually thought I was going to win at this point. At this point, I started rolling for Stinger Drain, and kept getting it, so the luck was with me there. There were two problems I kept running into. After chasing around the rats, my Stingers weren't as centrally located as I would've liked, so I ended up only being able to attack Thanos twice per turn while moving more Stingers into position. The other issue I ran into was my short range making it impossible for me to lure him off his perch. I was able to get even ground with him (again, only two at a time), but couldn't get any extra height. So, in the end, I managed to get (I think) 3 wounds on Thanos before Nacho took out my last figure. In retrospect, I wish I had tried a little harder to put just a few wounds on Thanos early on, but sometimes you make your strategic choices, they go according to plan, and you still don't win. Kudos to Nacho for kicking my behind and coming in second place. 2-1

Round 4 on Vesuvian Vs. Revloscaper (Minions of Utgar x2, Atlaga, Taelord)
This was also a Kill 'am all game. I usually enjoy playing on lava-- I feel comfortable moving on an off of lava spaces in order to gain the high ground for short spurts of extra attack. There was also a Common Attack +1 glyph on the lava terrain, which was coveted by both of us. Any attack boost at all makes the Minions really screwy to work with. I kept Spider-man and Major Q10 camped out in the back and let my Stingers do the work. Revlo advanced both Atlaga and Taelord early, but I managed to get the common attack +1 glyph first, and managed to hold it off and on, but more importantly, I kept him off of it the whole time. I managed to take out Taelord and 3 Minions fairly early, as well as put some wounds on Atlaga. At that point, Revlo decided to take a stab at knocking Spidey off with his Bolt of Witherwood... lucky for me, it fizzled. I then took out Atlaga with my remaining Stingers, who were then quickly knocked off by his Minions. His Minions had managed to hide behind the long ruin so that it wasn't easy for Q10 to get a line on them. Instead, Spidey jumped over and engaged two of them, while the third one pursued Q10. Q10 was able to blip the free Minion, but I made a big mistake with Spidey: his Spider-sense worked against the first Minion's attack and I could choose to take an attack from the second Minion, but stay engaged with both, or I could jump away and avoid the second attack-- I'm not sure why I did it, but I jumped away, but chose to stay engaged with the one who attacked me first, but this left me on low ground. The next turn, got six skulls on me, my Spidey-sense failed, and Spidey was one-shotted. I tried to use Q10's range to keep his Minions away, but eventually he cut off my angles of movement and advanced. It ended up with Q10 engaged with one Minion, and I got lucky with my Wrist-Rocket special to win. 3-1

Round 5 on Cold of Battle (Lafleurhero's freestyle map) Vs. Lafleurhero (Raelin RotV, Kaemon Awa, Tagawa Samurai Archers x3, Gurei-Oni)
This was a Heat of Battle match-up. I was a bit wary of playing on a map that he had designed, but the other maps available were either ones I had played on or using formats I had already done. Under any other format, I think I would've had a clear advantage, but there wasn't anyway for me to place my Stingers where he wouldn't just place an Archer right next to it. I probably should have spread my units out a bit more, because when he placed Raelin, all his Archers were within range of her aura. So I started by using Spider-man to kill Raelin, which took a couple turns. In the meantime, he was busy slaughtering all of my Stingers. However, with Raelin gone, Q10 was able to take out the Archers fairly easily. In fact, the game could have been over early-- Q10 had managed to get high ground on Kaemon and got two amazing rolls with his Wrist Rocket special; if I recall correctly, I rolled 4 skulls and 3 skulls, respectively. But Lafleur somehow managed to roll 4 and 2 shields-- so Kaemon only ended up with one wound. Then Kaemon took out Q10. So it was Spidey against Kaemon and Gurei Oni. Kaemon continued to roll amazing defense, so I just decided to bounce to the other side of the board and take out Gurei-Oni. Lafleur understood that Kaemon was his bread-and-butter, so Gurei didn't put up much of a fight. After the cyclops was gone, it was between Kaemon with 3 life left and Spidey with 1 life left-- things were looking grim. But you should never count Spidey out... his web special finally got lucky: 3 skulls against 0 shields. 4-1

Round 6 on Invasion Vs. dok (Raeln RotV, 10th Regiment x3, Major Q9, Isamu)
This was a Capture the Treasure match-- I placed my treasure on Q10 and he placed his on Q9. For some reason, dok thought my army was a bad match-up for him. I tend to think 4 sets of attacks from range 6 outdoes 3 sets of attacks from 5 range, so I wasn't quite as excited. Still, this was a really close game. I started by advancing Spidey-- my hope was to kill Raelin or be able to engage Q9 and nullify his offensive threat, which pretty much happened, as dok kept Q9 and Raelin close. I also used Spidey to engage and slow down the advance of his 10th Regiment. This actually worked surprisingly well. My Stingers were able to claim high ground most of the time, and because dok was trying to advance his 10 Reg figures on the road, they weren't getting the benefit of the jungle defensive boost. Still, I was losing army cards at about the same rate as he was. I finally activated Q10 (while dropping my treasure at the back of my start zone) and started shooting up some soldiers. At one point, dok had advanced 3 soldiers near my treasure-- he engaged Q10 with two soldiers and sent the third toward the treasure. I was forced to disengage from the two soldiers to stop the front-runner... and ended up taking two disengagement strikes. Q10 did manage to take out the rest of the 10th Reg fairly quickly and went back on the road to kill Raelin. Q9 was finally getting into the action and killed Spider-man, but Q10 was able to get high ground on Q10 and actually dealt him 3 wounds. Each of the Q-brothers had only 1 life left and we each had one additional figure remaining (dok had Isamu and I had one last Stinger), and we were rolling for initiative. Dok won initiative and took down Q10 and my last Stinger. I'd like to say that dok won on luck, but it's hard to forget that he's gone undefeated in 3 tournaments so far... some people make their own luck; props to dok. 4-2

I really had a great time. We had a few new faces, and I was happy to see more participant maps make it into the mix. Aside from one flare up between a couple players, everybody seemed to get along and have a great time. I'm looking forward to the next tournament, and maybe earning myself a second place finish...