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August 23rd, 2007, 06:32 PM
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Lonewolf's Gencon Battle Report (Complete)
Lonewolf's Gencon Report:
Wow, my son and I both had a great time in all of the tournaments at the Gencon. We were both extremely excited about coming to the con and had been playtesting a lot over the prior month. We are both very competive and try to always play a good game with few mental mistakes. I am fine with the dice beating me, but I am not OK with me making bone-head moves and losing the game for myself. That said, we both made it a point before hand that we were going to shake our opponents hand both before and after each game win or loss and certainly congratulate anyone that beat us and wish them luck. This is one of the great things about Heroscape...98% of the people that play it are good sports and take winning and losing well. I really appreciate the community for this. Overall for the weekend I went 18-3 in 5 events. I was signed up for another win-a-wave, but my wife called me 5 minutes before to tell me that her dad had a heart attack. Clearly che needed emotional support and I wasn't going to wait three hours to give it to her, so I gave up my seat in this event. (He is doing fine now!) On to battle reports..... Slugfest I'm starting with the Slugfest. The tournament that we play-tested the most for was the Slugfest. No reason in particular why, it was just the first event that we started with and the one we ended up feeling the most confident about in the end. We went through it with at least a dozen different armies before we realized which one was the best. After that nothing could match up with it. My son and I both used the same army and it was 4x Knights of Weston + Alastair. Some of the reasons that I like this army for this event. #1 No order marker worries. #2 A potential of 5 attacks per order marker, 4 at 3 dice and 1 at 5. #3 The knights of Weston major weakness is their move. This doesn't come in to play in a Slugfest game. #4 If I face any 'big' beast like Krug or Charos, I can wait until order marker 3 and then exert Alastair to get two attacks of 5 in addition to all of the knights attacks. If I win initiative, I can do two more attacks of 5. #5 I can hold 'big' beasts down with the knights because they won't want to disengage them. Game # 1 (Weesel) Weesel was easily my toughest opponent of the three I faced in this event and he is a really great guy on top of it. Weesel brought a SoM army that I was totally unprepared for. First off, he had Tor-Kul-Na. I asked if I could read the card since I wasn't familiar with his abilities and I was scared after that! Next he had 3 sets of Nargrubs. I think that this was his whole army. Luckily we get matched up on Arctic Divide. This map helps me because there are places that Tor-Kul-Na wont be able to fit his double sized base, and thus won't be able to stomp me. I quickly try to find these places as the game begins. His order markers are all on the Nargrubs since they bond with Tor-Kul-Na. We both spend a couple turns getting up to height. He ends up getting one of the glyphs and I get the other. (I don't remember, but I don't think either one played too much of a role in the game.) My strategy from the beginning was to feed Tor-Kul-Na one knight at a time, until I could figure out a way to kill him. I worked on killing off some of the Nargrub while I tried to play this strategy out. The big turn of events happened when I won initiative and realized shortly thereafter that there were only 4 Nargrub left on the board. I look over at the order makers and they are all on the Nargrub. If I can kill all 4 Nargrub, he is going to lose his next 3 order markers! I took a look at the board and it was possible, but I would have to get some good dice rolls and also exert Alastair to get the last one. As things worked out, I was able to get all of them, effectively giving me two free turn to surround and attack Tor-Kul-Na. It worked out perfectly, and with all of the attacks I was able to take him out. I really dodged a bullet on this one. Tor-Kul-Na is perfect for this event....and would have had an easy time with my army on a flat map. I lost three knights in the game that lasted about 30 minutes. (1-0) Game #2 (Unknown) My opponent brought to the table a SoM hive + 9 Marro Drones + Ne-gok-sa. We played on the Ashonqurk Fields map, although it wouldn't have mattered what map we played on, he wasn't going to beat the knights with that army. I personally can't imaging using 160 of my 400 pts on the hive. I don't think the Hive is playable in 400 pt games. I think he might have respawned 1 drone during the game. The Hive on the other hand will be great fun in 800 pt games. He only has 9 drones, so I know as soon as I kill 1, I have reduced his special ability to swarm by one. The game starts and we both head towards the center of the map, me with my knights and him with the drones. I don't particularly like to engage Alistair until it is on my terms, so typically, I have him walk in circles and stay behind the knights. We finally get engaged and the battle ensues. I manage to take the defense +1 glyph and he gets the initiative glyph. Once I had the defense glyph, I really felt that it was only a matter of time Drones with 3A 3D versus knights with 3A 5D. He rolled a couple times for the swarm attack early on, but never after we engaged. This made it a pretty lopsided affair. I lost 1 knight while killing his 9 drones. Alastair also sustained 3 wounds....(two of them were exertions) He now has Ne-gok-sa and the hive left. I flood Ne-Gok-Sa with the knights and the whole thing is over pretty quickly. I only lost 2 knights in this game, that lasted about 20 minutes. (2-0) Game #3 (Unknown - Nephew of Unkown in game #2) My opponent brought to the table 5 zombies plus Isamu + Dumetef + ????. We are placed on the the desolate watch map. Since there is a road through the middle of this map, I immediately am a little worried about the Dumetef kicking some knights up. I am not at all worried about the zombies. I play tested them a lot against the knights and they never did well. My opponent wins initiative and has the first two order markers on his Dumetef guard. I realized after he made his first move that I could place a knight on the space after the bump in the road and his Dumutef would have to leave the road in order to get past me. This worked out great. He moved the Dumetef to the high spot next to the road and unsuccesfully attacked a knight there. Next order marker, I surround him with knights and off him. Meanwhile I have taken a single knight and secured the attack glyph. From here, I know that I need to swarm the zombies, deny them high ground and keep them from attacking all on the same level. I only make 1 mistake and enable 3 zombies to combine their attack and kill a knight, bringing one zombie back. I continue to exert Alastair as often as I can and make short work of the zombies. With a defense of 3, I see no reason to save Alastairs option to exert unless there is no one to attack. I also feel strongly that once you start to attack the zombies that you must continue to attack them as fast as you can until they are all destroyed. 4 Knight attacks, + Alastair is great for achieving this result. In most cases, I was rolling 4-5 attack dice with height/attack glyph and rolling 4-5 defense dice with height. The zombies never really had a chance. I lost two knights in this game that lasted about 15 minutes. (3-0) Prize is Marvelscape! + a GenCon HS shirt. More events to follow. I have to post them soon before I forget what happened!!!! Heat of the Battle This the event that we did the least amount of playtesting for. No particular army came to mind when I was imagining how this event might play out. There was a lot of posting about possible Q9, Nilf, or Braxis + Lots-o-Deathreavers for this event, so with that said, I started to devise a counter to that army. I went with my old faithful, the Gladiatron/Blastatron combo, but it didn't seem to do so well. I tried the vampire army, they did OK, but if Q-9 was in the mix, I was in trouble. I finally started to think about units that could disengage and that led me to the Gruts. From here, I figured that regular gruts just didn't have enought attack power to take out any big hero and there defense was also weak. This led me to Heavy Gruts. I don't really play them much but they seemed to be a nice fit for this event. 5xHeavy Gruts was 350 points, so I just needed someone for them to bond with....Nerak. It play tested pretty good and I felt like it would be at the least a competitive army. Scaper_Dude agreed and used the same army. Some of the reasons I like this army for this event: #1 Bonding with Nerak - so potential of 5 attacks per turn #2 Disengage - I can attack the figures I want and get away from those I don't want to be attacked by. #3 Decent stats 3A & 3D. #4 No Worries about order markers I have a lot less recollection of this event, so I'll document what I can... Game #1 (TheMainMan) I think we are played on Ashonqurk Fields. He brings a swarm of Marro Drones to the dance. I wasn't really thinking there would be a lot of other swarm armies, but this is most of what I faced. I really feel like this matchup is a toss-up and could have gone either way. TheMainMan played his army perfectly against me. He got a couple swarm rolls at the beginning, but didn't get many later and thus I was able to eek out a win. It could have gone either way with a couple dice rolls. (1-0) Game #2 (ChaosChild) ChaosChild is one of the nicest guys I met at the tournament.....he is truly a class act! He brings an army of gruts, Grimnak, and 1 set of Heavy Gruts. The Heavy Gruts proved to be a bit of a challenge for us to keep track of. Charles had his heavy gruts marked with a black stripe. We played on the Arctic Divide map, but it didn't really matter as we had very close to the same army...both could disengage and they were all gruts. This game, like my first could have gone either way. Halfway through the game, I look over at my dead figures pile and notice one of his Heavy Gruts. I point it out and let him know that he probably targeted and killed his own Heavy Grut with one of his attacks. Neither on of us caught it until now. I know we should have, but the entire map was filled with gruts and I think we both lost track. Realizing this error, I tell Charles to put the Hvy Grut back on the map where it was as if it had never been attacked. I figured it was bad enough that he wasted an attack on his own guy, he should at least be able to put that figure back in to play. He refuses, saying it was his mistake. I insist saying that it is the Right thing to do. He still won't put it back in to play. I tried! This is important because as we got near the end of the game, he ended up having 1 heavy grut left and I had 2. I was able to get the attack glyph with one and use the other to take out his heavy grut. This match could have gone either way as well, especially if Charles had put the other Heavy Grut back on the map!!!! (2-0) Game #3 (Caravaggio) I can't remember what map we played on, but I don't think it would have mattered, he had the superior army from the start. Caravaggio (Playing with an army that Funrun put together for him the night before!) had Marcus + a bunch of Romans + Me-Burq-sa. I really feel like the Romans or the Knights would have been the best play in this event after seeing them both in play. Caravaggio does a great job of placing his Romans in tight clusters so that they all get the defense bonus. As soon as the units are on the map and I start strategizing, I can already tell that I am going to lose. I wanted to see if I could make a go of it, but I would have to get very lucky to win. The game plays out as planned and Caravaggio ends up blowing out the Heavy Gruts with a well played Roman bonding army. (2-1) Game #4 (Lord Paul) This match was on the Spring Thaw match and my opponent has 1 set of Omnicron Snipers + Alistair + 2 sets of McDirk Warriors. We both place our units and he ends up with most of his units piled up on one of the towers to the side of the map. From the start, I know that I have to take Alistair out ASAP and then watch the order markers on the Omnicron and take them out too. The McDirk warriors pose no threat without Alistair. I spent the first two turns piling up on Alistair with everything I have.....many times giving Alistair the height advantage. I suffered quite a bit of losses but was able to take Alistair out. I also had 1 more order marker before the Omnicron were going to activated, so I was able to take two of the three our before they got to rain down on my Gruts. From there I was able to clean up the McDirk warriors and the remaining Omnicron without taking any serious losses. (3-1) Game # 5 (Skyknight) OK, SkyKnight was the matchup, thanks for reminding me. I think we played on Spring Thaw. Sky brought an army with zombies everywhere. Another swarm-army.....boy did I guess wrong on this event! Same deal on this one.....two swarm armies with a battle that could have gone either way. Lucky for me Sky was saving all of his good rolls to for his battle with my son. I swear that he rolled 2 attack dice for zombie attacks 4 or 5 times in row and whiffed every single time. Not even 1 skull! Before this happened it was a nip and tuck battle with each of us getting our shots in, but when the dice went bad for sky, the game turned in my favor and I was able to take out the zombie hoard. (4-1) Even though I finished 4-1 I did not place. First place was 5-0 and there were a bunch of people at 4-1, so they placed by Strength of Schedule. Apparently my opponents didn't do so well against others! I was still very happy to go 4-1 in my first official tournament! Big Ol' Monster Battle (BOMB) This event was on the last day and it was 5 rounds, single elimination. Neither myself nor Scaper_Dude had any big ideas for this event, nor were we particularly excited about it. For those reasons, we decided to play a 'fun' army for this event, instead of the serious stuff that had been going on in the days before. My son and I both used the same army and it was 3x Shades + Theracus + Dead Eye Dan. I take no credit for coming up with this army. I stole the idea from HyperactiveSloth, in the BOMB thread. The idea for this army is fairly obvious....charge in the Shades and start rolling the 20 sider. Thats about it! Dead-eye Dan really offered one more shot if the Shades all died. Some of the reasons that I like this army for this event. #1 No order marker worries. I put them all on the Shades. If they all get killed, I probably won't stand much of a chance anyway! #2 Get to roll the D20 for every adjacent Shade! Game # 1 (Cleon's Dad) My opponent had an army that consisted of Charos, KRAV, & Crixus. We played on 'Desolate Watch'. This was the perfect opponent for my army and we were on a fairly small map, so I knew I had a decent chance of winning this round. My opponent won initiative and got his KRAV moving up to height. On my turn, I engaged the KRAV with Shades.....two reasons, one to keep them from shooting other Shades with Height advantages, and two to attack them adjacently. I killed 1 KRAV on the first turn and was able to get height on the other two. The KRAV attacked the Shades the next turn, but weren't able to get it done. At this point I can move three Shades in to engaement with Charos. I only move 1 up, so that I can keep the other two engaged and attacking the KRAV. I use the Krav from this point on as a half way point for moving my Shades to Charos. Essentially I continue this strategy until I have 3 or 4 Shades next to Charos and on my third Soul Devour Roll, I am able to take Charos. My opponent had a very tough matchup in this game. The only thing I might have done different if I was playing his army, would have been to keep Charos loaded with order markers so that he could at least disengage each turn (And taking passing swipes) and avoid the Soul-Devour attack. I'm not sure how long this would have worked, but at least it would have prolonged the game a little! (1-0) Game #2 (Unknown) My opponent brought to the table a Gladiatron/Blastatron army along with Q-10 and some KRAV. This was surely payback for my success in the main event! Gladiatrons are the absolute last thing I wanted to see in this event and I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw them. They pretty much made the disengage power of the Shades useless. Basically I spent my turns trying to avoid the Gladiatrons and get in to position to try and Devour Q-10. I did a very poor job of this and lost this game badly. In retrospect, I should have focused on eliminating the Blastatrons from this army and then dealt with the gladiatrons from there. It would have been a toss up on the dice rolls. Shades 2A + 4D, Gladiatrons 2A + 4D (Adjacent). Even with this strategy, I think that I still would have lost this match. It was over before we sat down! (1-1) Win-a-Wave This event was on Thursday and it was 3 rounds, single elimination. Since I had planned on playing the Blast/Glad combo in the main event, I wanted to give it a final tune up/practice in this event. My army was 2xBlast + 2xGlad + Kaemon Awa. The usual swarm attack was planned for the Glad/Blast and then have Kaemon Awa for late game cleanup. Game # 1 (Unnknown) I can't remember who I played or their army for this match! (1-0) Game # 2 (TheMainMan) My opponent had an army that consisted of mostly Marro drones. This was a fairly uneventful match as my opponent didn't make most of his swarm rolls and I was able to engage and take out the Drones fairly easily. (2-0) Game #3 (Ninth Doc) Ninth had an army consisting of Syvarris + Kyntela + Raelin + Deathreaversx5. Obviously his strategy would be to get his opponent tied up with the reavers and then rain down the arrows with a defense boosted Syvarris. Fortunately the Glad/Blast combo works fairly well against the rats and is good for grabbing glyphs. We played on the Highways & Dieways maps. Ninth won initiative and was able to grab hold of the glyphs at the start, but slowly but surely I was able to relieve him of those glyph using the Glad/Blasts. I was very careful to build up my forces a little instead of charging at Syvarris and giving him easy targets to pick-off. Ninth spent a couple order markers moving Raelin up and getting Syvarris in to position. By this time I had cleaned out most of the rats and was ready for my full charge at Syvarris. I did just that and was able to take out Syvarris before he was able to get setup with the all of the defensive helpers. With Syvarris gone, it was mostly cleanup and the match wrapped up pretty quick. I never got to put an order marker on Kaemon Awa during this event! (3-0) Prize is Wave-7 Championship (Day-1) I was very nervous about playing in this event and really wanted to do 'well'. 'Well' for me meant making it to day two. Anything more than that was icing on the cake for me. I spent a lot of time play testing my army and felt confident with it, but that didn't keep my hands from perspiring so much that I had trouble getting the dice to roll out of my hand. My army consisted of 3xGladiatrons + 3xBlastatrons + Raelin. The reason I choose this army is because every time that I play against it, I get very frustrated. This in itself told me that it was a very good army to play. I won't say that it is any easy army to play, but it is a very strategic army. You have many choices to make with this army and so it plays a little slower that some others. You are going to be moving 8 figures per turn and attacking with another 4 more. This in itself takes time. That said, I love playing this army. I would have rather had another set of Gladiatrons in lieu of Raelin, but I am already 1 over the 24 figure count with the units I have. I sat a Blastatron for every game. Raelin had two purposes in this army. #1, protect against the start zone ravaging that the AE can cause and #2 draw attacking fire away from the Blast/Glad swarm. Any +2 defense dice I got from her was a bonus, but she is not the focus of this army and I only put 1 order marker on Raelin each game and it was always the first. If I was playing against an AE army and they dropped, I would not have put the first order marker on Raelin, otherwise I always put my first order marker of the game on her and that was it. The plan with the Blast/Glad army is to swarm the board and control the high ground. Blastatrons have such a weak attack that they need height, an attack glyph, or adjacent soulborgs to do any damage. Gladiatrons are excellent for grabbing glyphs and holding them, even against rats. Rats can get the glyph, but then I will move my Gladiatrons and their cyberclaw around the rats so that no future rats can get on the glyph. Then I just need to kill the rat on the glyph. I don't play with glyphs normally, but I do recognize their power and the Glad/Blast army can almost always control the glyphs when played correctly. The were two major weakness that I realized during the playtesting of this army. #1 - the 4th Mass. The 4th Mass get 4 attacks per turn like this army, but they have 2 attack dice and then the potential for wait then fire. The best strategy I could come up with against the 4th Mass was to take advantage of the extra range the Blastatrons have 7 versus 6 and make sure that I don't charge this army. Every time I playtested against the 4th Mass and charged, I was destroyed badly. I knew this coming in to the tournament and would employ the strategy if facing the 4th mass. The other weakness was out of my control....maps! This army performs much better on a narrower map like Highways and dieways. All of the snow maps in the tourney worked well and all of the road maps worked well. I identified problem maps to be both of the lava maps, and Island Conflict. It didn't really matter because I had no control over what map I was going to be placed on. Luckily, I wasn't put on any of my 'trouble' maps until the second day. Some of the reasons I like this army for this event: #1 No Worries about order markers #2 Cyberclaw works great on any small/medium figs. #3 Ability to cluster around large/huge heroes and get high number of attack dice. #4 Lots of units, so a couple bad rolls don't destroy my army. Game #1 (Skynight) Me and Sky had already become friends before the championship, so it was definitely nice to see a friendly face on the first match of the event. Skynight is playing Q-9 + Braxis + Laglor. This is a simple, but powerful army and it has great potential for wiping out squad figures, ie ME. We are playing on Ashonqurk Fields map. It is a little more open than I would like, but I am only facing three units, so this isn't a big worry for me. Sky wins initiative and has the two order markers on Braxis and 1 on Q-9. He moves Braxis out on the first turn, then Q-9 on the second. The third order marker her gets Braxis a little closer to the Glad/Blast gang but just out of range. I move in with the Gladiatrons and get two next to Braxis...take a couple shots and do 3 wounds of damage. Initiative....I notice sky has three order markers on Braxis....I need to take her out ASAP. I win initiative. This pretty much decides the game. I get two more gladiatrons adjacent to Braxis (total of 4 now) and then decide to go ahead and put one of my four Blastatrons adjacent to her as well for good measure. Now I am rolling 6 attack dice three times. Braxis goes down without a fight. Now Sky is in trouble because he had those three order markers on Braxis. From here I get two free turns and get my Gladiatrons adjacent to Q-9. It takes a couple turns because the map is big and Q-9 is far away. I think I only got 1 wound on Q-9 before the new round, but I had plenty of Gladiatrons adjacent to Q-9 and more on the way, so I know I can pile on and take him down. He manages to kill one of my Gladiatrons before I manage to take him down. Now all he has left is Laglor. I close in and take care of Laglor in a couple order markers. I feel really bad because I have dealt Sky a bad blow with the -500 PD, but I tell him "Win 4 in a row and you can still make it!" I was trying to cheer him up, little did I know that is exactly what he would do! +500 PD (1-0) Game #2 (MainTrainChooChoo) MainTrainChooChoo is MattsterTruckRally's brother. As funrun states, he is the 'Rain man' of Heroscape. This guy's brain runs way to fast. He was usually two moves ahead of me and always knew exactly how many dice I would be rolling and he would be rolling before I could pick them up. He is definitely a numbers guy and that scared me! His army.....Q-9 + Raelin + Cyprien + Sonya + ????. Cyprien isn't going to be as big a help as my opponent had hoped in this matchup because I have a mostly soulborg army and because I have only 1 hero for him to chill. We are playing on the 'Desolate Watch' map, so this is good news for me. It is a small map, and I know that I need to pile up on Q-9 to take him out. We place order markers...my first on Raelin as always and the rest on the Blastatrons. He puts all of his order markers on Cyprien. I instantly know what his plan is. He wins initiative and moves Cyprien out to the center of the board. My order marker is on Raelin. I start looking over the map and trying to figure out where I can put Raelin so that Cyprien won't tear her apart....I look and look and then a little light bulb comes on inside my head and I hear...."Don't move her!" Duh! Why didn't I think of this sooner. She is surrounded by units so Cyprien can't get adjacent to her and he doesn't want to be adjacent to my cyberclaw soulborgs. I put my order marker down and say "Your turn!". MainTrain knows that I made the right move and now has to decide what he is going to do. He moves cyprien to the Move glyph near him and ends his turn. On my turn I get my Gladiatron/Blastatrons rolling towards Cyprien and height. I can't reach him this turn but I can get them close. I make sure not to move any of the figures adjacent to Raelin. She is still completely surrounded by my figures. He caves and moves Cyprien in to attack some of my Gladiatrons. I defend the attack. At this point Cyprien is tied down and effectively done for the game. I do check to see if MainTrain puts any order markers on him, but he doesn't, so all he is doing now is tying up a couple of my Gladiatrons. I immediately start thinking about my next problem Q-9 with Raelin standing near by. I know that I need to take Raelin out first, so I start getting all of my Gladiatrons up to height to start the charge. I take out Cyprien with a couple of my Blastatrons while I move them up to height as well. Now I am in position to charge down the hill and take on Q-9. I know that all of my opponents order markers will be on Q-9 and he knows that all of mine will be on the Blastatrons. No surprises here. I manage to take out Raelin pretty easily, but Q-9 ends up being quite the little fighter. We go back and forth in a heated battle....at one point I rolled 5 skulls on 5 attack dice, only to see MainTrain roll 5 shields on his 7 dice to block. Things were getting very tense at that moment. I finally am able to take Q-9 out and MainTrain concedes at that point. It was a great battle and definitely had me on the edge of my seat. +360 PD (Cumulative +860) (2-0) Game #3 (Momo_the_Monkey) For those of you who don't know, Momo is the younger brother of Spider. Let me tell you that Spider has taught his younger brother how to play at a very high level. He was one of the toughest opponents that I played. Every time I looked at his units and surmised what I would be doing if I had them, he would do exactly what I expected. I didn't see him make ANY mistakes during our game. His army was 4xAubrien Archers + Kaemon Awa + 2x Deathreavers + ???. We play on the Arctic Divide map. Momo wins intiative and gets that rats rolling. I move Raelin in to position. He grabs the glyphs and starts blocking my passages through the Glaciers. I spend the next 2-3 order markers trying to eliminate the rats and keep the Aubriens from getting height. Momo does a great job of positioning his rats to tie my units up and keep me out of the center of the map. Eventually I get rid of the rats and move in to the center of the map. At this point Momo is in trouble because I have the height and his remaining Aubriens are still at the bottom level. I am able to move my Gladiatrons over and take out the remaining Aubriens and Kaemon as well. * The Aubriens did not frenzy once during our game. I think if Momo had made even 1 frenzy roll with the Aubriens it would have been a much closer game. Thinks to self, "This is why I don't play Frenzy armies in tournaments." +340PD (Cumulative +1200) (3-0) Game #4 (Matrix Renegade) Matrix Renegade had already won the Heat of the Battle event and was 3-0 in the main event heading in to this event, so I knew this would be a tough match for me. We ended up playing this match on the Forsaken Waters map. (They added this map to handle the two extra players in the main event) It was a little more open than I would have liked, but the glyphs blocked the two major pathways across the map. Matrix Renegade is a really nice guy an from his results you can tell that he is a very good Heroscape player. I didn't know him very well before this event, but we became friends and kept tabs on each other the rest of the weekend. Matrix brought a hybrid army to the main event. He had Krug + 2 Swogs + 2 Arrow Gruts + Marcus + Me Burq-Sa + 2 Legionaires. Romans and Gruts, yuck! We ended up with an attack glyph on one side of the map and this is where most of the battles occured. Whenever I see the attack glyph, I absolutely make sure that I secure it to give my Blastatrons a minimum of 2 attack dice. Matrix knew this a did everything he could to keep me from it, which he did most of the game. He got one of the swogs to the glyph before I could get my Glad's there, but I was able to take the Swog out with a Blastatron and couple adjacent Glads. He had his Arrow Gruts rolling in to the fray as well and they were able to jump on the glyph after the swog. We went back and forth a little here before I took out his other Swog and so then he got Krug rolling. Luckily Krug isn't that fast, so I was able to get my Blasts and Gladiatrons to height before he made his way to the attack glyph. I made a minor mistake that allowed Krug to land on the attack glyph. This was good and bad. Bad because he had the glyph and I didn't, but good because I could pile on him. I did just that, surrounding him with Gladiatrons and occasional Blastatrons so that I could maximize my attack dice. I went all out at Krug and sustained some losses, but was able to take the beast out. At this point, I felt like I had the game under control. His only ranged unit left was Me-Burq-Sa, so I knew that I had to take him out next. I was able to do that and then work throught the remaining Romans and finally Marcus. It ended up being closer than I thought, but I ended up being victorious. +280 PD (Cumulative +1480) (4-0) At this point there was rejocing! I knew that I had a higher PD than anyone else by a large margin and that I would be going to the second day even if I lost my final match. Game # 5 (NwoJedi) If I had to describe Nwo, it would be precise and calculated. He had the right army and knew what to do with them. Nwo is playing 4th Massx4 + AE + Brunak. This was the first 4th Mass army, I had faced and that made me very nervous, I have to remind myself "Don't charge this army!". Throw in the AE and now I am really worried. The AE had always been a worry of mine with this army because of the low defense of the Blastatrons. We are playing on the Spring Thaw map. This map is pretty close quarters with lots of LOS blockers so that helps me. Nwo wins initiative and gets Brunak up to height and drops a 4th mass next to the defense glyph. I move to get the Blast/Glad gang up to height. Nwo takes the defense glyph and the shooting begins. We go back and forth a bit until I finally get all of the 4th Mass off of the high ground. I am definitely playing the range game and always trying to keep at a distance of 7 instead of 6. Nwo misses on his third attempt to drop the AE. We play another order marker and they announce that we are getting close on time. One of the observers runs the numbers for us and I am up by 110 pts. Exactly the cost of the AE! We go back and forth a little more with our attacks, but end up with the same score at the end of time. The AE never dropped. This sucks for Nwo because he took a tie in the game prior to this one and is now 3-1-1 for the day. If the AE had dropped we would have tied and he would have made the second day for sure. Again....this is why I don't play a lot of figures that require rolling a 20 sider in tournaments. I don't roll that good! +110 PD (Cumulative +1590) (5-0) Now I am really on a high....I went 5-0 on the first day and I am the top seed heading in to the next day. I look back at my card to review the day and see if I got any free passes or if I earned this 5-0 mark.....everyone of my opponents was a quality opponent. Two of them were in the top 8 last year(NwoJedi & Momo), another is in the top 8 this year (Skynight), another won the Heat of the Battle event the day before(Matrix Renegade) and the last opponent is the human calculator(MainTrainChooChoo)! I had beat (2) Q-9's and my nemesis the 4th Mass. I just wanted to make the second day, so this was all icing on the cake for me. Shortly thereafter I learn that my first round opponent is going to be my friend the Rev and he is playing the 4th Mass! What a day! What a Gencon! Next post will be the 2nd day results! Championship (Day-2) OK, like I said before I was just happy to make the second day and much of my nervousness from the day before was now gone. I forgot to include this in the first day update, but my stomach was all tied up in knots thinking about everything on the first day and so I skipped breakfast. The funny thing is that I was so in to the game that I didn't eat anything until about 5pm that day. I am taking this game with little plastic men way to seriously! Game # 1 (Rev Dyer) I know this has been said before, but I am going to say it again. Rev is a GREAT guy. He is a great player, a nice guy, and just the kind of person who is great to be around. If there is someone I wouldn't mind losing to, it is Rev! Rev is playing a 4th Mass army. He was 4x4th Mass + 2xSentinals for an all valiant army. This is a very good build and has few weaknesses. I would say that the AE could probably make a mess of this army with an early drop...as they could with most. Other than that it is very balanced with Range vs Melee and a good all around army. For my army, the 4th Mass are my nemesis. Add some Sentinals and that doesn't help either. I have to remind myself again...."Don't charge the 4th Mass!" We end up on the Highways and Dieways map....this is perfect for me! I needed something to help me out and this map plays excellent for my army. Rev has the first two order markers on the Sentinals and gets them rolling towards the middle of the map. I get Raelin in place and start rolling with the Glad/Blast. Rev does an excellent job of placing his figures on high ground always making it a challenge/trade off if I want to engage them. We go through quite a bit of back and forth action and in the early going my dice were bad and Rev was getting the best of me. Later as the game progressed the luck flipped my way and he started whiffing on rolls for the Sentinals. We ran up against the clock in our match and it was VERY close. I think that I ended up winning by +40 in this match. That said, this game was in no way decided when time ran out and could have gone either way. I felt bad beating Rev this way because there really wasn't a winner decided in the game and there could have been if we had more time. I think second day games in the Championship should not be timed. Time was an issue in two of my three games. I won one and lost one, but would have rather seen both played out to the end. (1-0) Top-4 Game # 2 (R˙chean) Now I am playing against one of the premier HS players in the tournament. R˙chean is playing Kaemon Awa + Marro Warriors + KRAV + AE + Deathreaversx3. Although there is no bonding in this army, the synergies between the rats and the ranged units still exist. We end up playing on the Hot Heights map. This is bad news for me and my swarm. A wide open map with lots of lava. Right away I know that I am in trouble. The game plays out pretty much as expected....Ry misses his AE roll the first two rounds. He sends out the rats, I send out the Gladiatrons and then we both get our ranged units up on the hills. When playing against the Reavers, I tie them up with the Glads and then take them out with the Blasts. This combo actually works really well against the rats, since they can't scatter once they are engaged. Here comes the problem....time.....I am busily shooting his 10 point rats while he is busily shooting my 20 pt Gladiatrons. Losses are about even in units, but in points I am getting further and further down. I am really not thinking about this at first, just playing out my strategy, but I have to think about it when they announce that there is 15 minutes left. I don't mind losing the Gladiatrons in order to punch through the rats and then I get my points back when I engage the Krav and Kaemon and shoot them with the Blastatrons. This strategy isn't going to work because we are running out of time. Next Ry gets his AE drop roll and now I am definitely down in points. At this point I make a decision to make some risky moves (Kamikaze) to try and close the gap on the points otherwise time is going to run out on me. I end up sending my Blastatrons out to flat ground and take 1 dice shots at the KRAV who are on height rolling 4 dice. I had already killed one of them earlier, so I needed 2 more to get the points back in my favor. I actually got 1 of them, but time ran out and I had sustained further losses as a result of my Kamikaze move. I honestly believe that the result could have been different in we had more time for this game. I have no idea whether I would have won or not, but I defintely could have represented myself much better than what I did. I certainly would not have run Blastatrons from high ground down to low ground just to take weak shots at killing the KRAV who only needed 1 shield to block. Alright....I'm done complaining! Ry had a great army and played it very well. He was a great competitor and I enjoyed the match against him! (1-1) 3-4 Matchup Game # 3 (Jormi Borced) Jormi was playing a stinger army complete with the hive. He had 5x Stingers + Hive + Guilty + Isamu. The stingers are all the rage from he new MS. 3 attack and 3 defense for 60 points isn't a bad deal. We played this game on the Arctic Divide map. This map plays well for the Glad/Blast army because there is a lot of cover and the map is realtively small, so they can engage easily. Another advantage is that there is easily accesable high ground to give the Blasts and extra die for their attack. One of the glyphs was the attack glyph and we both fought throughout the game to control it. Both of us controlled it at different points throughout the game. This was a very competitive, strategic game and went back and forth a lot. Near the end, Jormi was running low on Stingers and decided to try juice the stingers and ended up missing the roll. This cost him a unit and his turn. This happened twice in a row and really swayed the battle in my favor. We ran short on time at the end, and I ended up out-pointing him. I forgot by how much, but it was very close. I really attribute the loss on the two bad rolls at the end costing Jormi two units and two turns during a critical part of the game. (2-1) 3rd place. Prize is Swarm of the Marro Master Set 
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#2
August 23rd, 2007, 07:09 PM
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Very cool. I recently saw what happens when knights face off against zombies, and it was the same. Despite the ability to move 6 zombies at a time, you still get a lot more out of your order markers with the Knights. The knights also have rather good defense to hold off the zombie onslaught. Point for point, you get more knights as well.
I'm interested to hear about the Gladiatrons and Blastatrons that worked so well. Since that army used 25 hexes, what did you usually drop? A G-tron or a B-tron? Quote:
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#3
August 23rd, 2007, 08:27 PM
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#4
August 24th, 2007, 08:55 AM
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Great report, thank you so much for sharing.
Just another reason I need to make it to Gencon next year. How did your son do in the slugfeast? I am not sure how it works, just 3 games and you won prizes? That is wicked cool sounds like Hasbro is doing amazing things to help the game ( along with Grungebob, Truth , and the whole supporting crew behind it all ). I really like the snakes for the slugfest battles, where there any snake armies fielded that you saw? did they do well that you saw? Of course when you have a bad game with the 20, they don't so well. I have a friend who prefers no range battles, so we have played a lot in the past, but not with all the new guys out there. Yea that is funny, bringing the hive to the game in a 400 pt. army, he just got it, and wanted to use it! Great Report, again, thanks Heroscape - The Game I Have Waited My Whole Life For! GenCon - a must for any true Scaper!
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#5
August 24th, 2007, 10:54 AM
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#7
August 24th, 2007, 12:43 PM
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What's a "slugfest" battle?
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#8
August 24th, 2007, 12:46 PM
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#9
August 24th, 2007, 01:23 PM
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Your son must have been very excited with his first win, that is just to cool. I got to go to Gencon when I was 14, but my friends parents ( or mine ) didn't have a clue what we where doing there ( they understood it was D&D - a game we loved ) - but to go with your dad and be in the same tourneyment, I think you got another life time gamer on your hands. That is just too cool,
Thanks for sharing. Heroscape - The Game I Have Waited My Whole Life For! GenCon - a must for any true Scaper!
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#10
August 24th, 2007, 01:32 PM
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Laglor attacks....2 skulls plus Vydar symbol 4th Mass....Whiff Laglor attacks....2 skulls plus Vydar symbol 4th Mass....Whiff Laglor attacks....2 skulls plus Vydar symbol 4th Mass....Whiff Laglor attacks....2 skulls 4th Mass....Whiff This changed the entire game and was enough to put Sky in to the top 8. Nothing would have made me happier than both of us being in the top 8. The funny thing is that I played Sky in my first match of the main event and got a +500 victory. Sky, being the funny guy that he is, when sitting down to play my son says, in his best accent.... "My name is Skynight, your father destroyed me, prepare to die!" It was an incredible week to share with my son! We will always remember the good times we had there!
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#11
August 24th, 2007, 01:35 PM
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I think this is how Scaper Dude (My son) did in each event...
Heat of the Battle (3-2) Lost to Spider_poison and ??? Win-a-Wave (3-0) Main Event (3-2) Losses were to Funrun and Skynight - both top-8! Slug Fest (1-1) Lost to Damja Win-a-wave (1-1) Lost to Spider_poison Big-Ol-Monster Battle (2-1) Lost to R˙chean Almost all of his losses were to top notch players! I guess he ended 13-7.....edit!
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#12
August 24th, 2007, 01:39 PM
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AoCS Comic,AoCS: Finding of Steve, AoCS Holiday '08, AoCS: Holiday '09, AoCS: Conflict Brewing, Chedwick and Sven Comic Blog
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Linear Mode
