[dok]

2016 GENCON

REVERSE DRAFT

This was an open play event, which I ran. The Gencon organizers supported the event with prize dice, for which I am very grateful. We ended up with 11 participants, and a lone 3-0 champ after 3 rounds of play.

While “Take 2” and all its variants (Pick Your Poison, First Crack, Cut the Cake, etc) have been my baby for a while, I decided that I wanted to showcase my new pet format this year at Gencon. Reverse Draft is a new variant format that only requires each player to bring 1 army, but balances the armies by allowing players to bid against each other on how many figures they will sit from the army in order to play the army of their choice. The players go back and forth bidding on the army the first player selects until one player passes, and decides to play the other army. It’s a nice format for live play because the paring back of one army is a much quicker process than drafting up two armies. Plus you end up with reasonable coherent armies instead of hodgepodges. (Although it can be fun to play hodgepodges from time to time.)


I was 90% sure I wasn’t playing Tor-Kul-Na in the main event, so rather than practice my main event army I decided to give him a run here. My army (fitting the 600 point/18 figure limits exactly) was Tor-Kul-Na, nagrubs x3, Raelin, Black Wyrmling x4, Red Wyrmling x3.

I had a first round bye (just random chance, but it did make it easier for me to get the event going) so I started in round 2.

ROUND 2
Opponent: Infected Sloth (Raelin, Blade Gruts x2, Ornak, Brunak, Mindflayer, MBS, Nerak, Marcu, Isamu)
Map: Quasatch Playground

(I didn’t do a good job noting glyphs this weekend unless they were relevant to the gameplay. Since I don’t know what the glyphs were for this map, that means that they weren’t move or wound, and probably not unique attack either.)

This ended up being a pretty incredible week of Heroscape for the Ash clan, with three of them picking up event titles, including a main event title. IS was the first, as he was (spoiler alert) the winner of the reverse draft event. Nathan has, by a significant margin, the best win differential against me of anyone, and he added to it in this event.

We bidded on my army, going back and forth sitting wyrmlings a couple times until Nathan let me play it with 2 fewer red wyrms and 1 fewer black wyrms.

Early on things went very well for me, as my black wyrms took out Raelin not too long after Brunak had carried her up to high ground. Tor-Kul-Na was making his way up to bash some heads when my demise came, in the form of the Mindflayer Mastermind.

The illithid was the undisputed MVP of the game, unless you count TKN, since TKN killed more of my army than any figure in IS’s army by far. Enslave hit 4/7 attempts on TKN. Not only did this lead to the death of Raelin, 4-5 nagrubs, and a couple wyrmlings, but it also meant that TKN kept heading back away from the front and preventing me from getting into position.

Because of the way IS had positioned Burnak, MBS, and Nerak to deny TKN a double-spaced landing area, and because of the way I kept getting sent backwards, I was usually reduced to just swinging 6v8 up at Brunak. I did take Brunak out eventually, but it was far too little, too late. Mindflayer OP!

0-1 (1-1 by tournament reckoning but I don’t count forfeits in my personal records)

ROUND 3
Opponent: Mr. Chompie (TKN, SBN, grubs x4, Krav)
Map: Wendigo (Unique attack and wannok)

My second game against Mr. Chompie after beating him in draft last year. We were set for a stompy mirror. The armies were reasonably well-matched. After we bartered two grubs off of my build, I agreed to take his army.

Initially, I led with SBN and grubs. My main goal was to make sure the black wyrms didn’t get to the Krav, who I had crammed in the back of the startzone. I was largely successful with this, taking out most of the wyrms while getting my grubs worked up the hill where Raelin had set up, on the Wannok side of the map.

Mr. Chompie started bringing TKN up the middle, but thanks to the irregular terrain of Wendigo, I was able to limit TKN to a single grub kill each turn while I brought my TKN up to contest the high ground. My TKN got several whacks in at Raelin on her perch, but TKN (as he so often does for me) rolled pretty lousy attack dice, and I couldn’t take down the Kyrie.

I had secured the unique attack glyph on the far end of the map, and it seemed pretty assured that TKN would wear through Raelin soon enough, but Nathan retreated Raelin farther back on the hill to protect her. However, I brought the Krav out, and was able to eliminate the Kyrie.

With a couple Krav, about half of my grubs, and both Hivelords against just a stray wyrm and TKN/grubs on the other side, things looked very safe for me. However, the dice had other ideas. Despite having the high ground, my TKN lost the brawl with the opposing TKN when he died to a 5-wound smash. My krav got chased down too, although they managed to eliminate the last nagrubs in the process. SBN took down the last wyrm, but TKN chased down my last grub on unique attack, leaving a SBN vs. wounded TKN showdown. Again I managed to secure height, but again Mr. Chompie’s Stompy came out on top, and that was the game.

0-2 (1-2 officially) and my first two losses ever in this format. Still, I was really happy to be able to put this event on at Gencon. Good times.