DS' Battle Reports ~ New 2/9/19!

[Dad_Scaper]

Thanks, AV. As I've said before, everything I do on this site - from this thread to the C3V and the SoV, even to my decision to become a TD - flows from how much I enjoy these tournaments, and this is my favorite format.

I'm glad you enjoyed reading the report.

Two updates, by the way:

1. I should have mentioned that AliasQTip made awesome tourney sheets for us to use. I'm so embarrassed to use my homemade ones now that we get his sometimes, which are pro. Thanks, AQTip, next time I'd rather you & the Mrs. joined us, but I was glad for the great forms.

2. I found John's form. So he is innocent.

[Dad_Scaper]

DS’ GenCon Tourney Reports:

Every single person I played with was an excellent sport, even KidScaper. If your name appears below, it was a pleasure to meet you and great fun to get to play against you, win or lose.

Assassin’s Creed (Identify one of your opponent’s 3 heroes as your target; you win when your target dies)

The two best candidates for this event seemed to me to be Cyprien and Tul Bak Ra. KidScaper grabbed the vampire for his army; I was glad to take the teleporting beatstick Marro with his massive melee threat range.

My army:
Tul Bak Ra
Mogrimm Forgehammer
Migol Ironwill
Axegrinders x2

My thinking being that if you pick TBR, I have a fully operational dwarf army to come at you, and if you don’t, you will have me in your start zone, beating on my target, on my 2d or 3d OM. Fearless Advantage would dictate which hero I targeted.

Round 1
Quasatch Playground (Ticalla Sunrise? I got them confused all GenCon long.)
10th Regiment of Doom
Krug, Mimring, Frost Giant, Arrow Gruts

I traveled half way across the country to play, in my first GC event ever, against one of my buddies from NoVa, who I see regularly at Savage. It was good to see him.

Mimring was an interesting choice in this format. He’s a bit fragile, and I had my Fearless Advantage against him. 10th Reg. targeted Mogrimm, but the battle was over before it began. OM 1: TBR teleports halfway across. OM 2: TBR teleports the rest of the way, puts a couple wounds on Mimring. OM 3: TBR finishes him off.

I knew I’d be able to get one or two of my opponents off-guard this way. 10th Reg. was the first, but neither the last nor the most experienced.

1-0

Round 2
Burial Marsh
KidScaper
Q10, Rats x2, Thorgrimm, Cyprien
I couldn’t believe it! Not only do I see this guy at Savage all the time, but I’d just spent 10 hours in the car with him! And he sleeps in my house!

I targeted Q10. KidScaper knew what was up with TBR. He also targeted Mogrimm, but he took the precaution of surrounding his heroes with Rats in his start zone. He opened with Rats, keeping Q10 shielded while making a play for the Unique Attack glyph in the center of the map. I sent out TBR, whose Mind Blast dropped a wound or two on Q10. But KidScaper used the Rats to keep TBR engaged, and put a few wounds on him with Q10. There was a back-and-forth battle near Q10 while dwarves and rats struggled for the glyph. Ultimately TBR prevailed, overcoming a Thorgrimm-backed Q10.

2-0

Round 3
Quasatch Playground
Vegietarian
Romans x3, NGS, Marcus, Cyprien
I targeted Marcus. Vegie played well, targeting Mogrimm (or Migol? Not sure.), but he left some open hexes next to Marcus in his start zone. TBR raced across the board and – in a theme that repeated in this tournament – my opponent opened with Cyprien, but brought him back to deal with the faster TBR. The one or two attacks TBR got on Marcus before Cyprien could arrive were too much of an advantage. Marcus’s 6 life lasted for a while but, in the end, TBR killed Marcus before Cyprien could kill TBR.

3-0

Round 4
Fomox
Nilfheim, Cyprien, Rhogar Dragonspine, Marro Warriors
I targeted Nilfheim. He targeted Migol, which made sense, considering the power of Chill Touch to ignore his auto-shield. Again, my opponent opened with Cyprien, and again, I responded with TBR. Fomox, seeing the danger, shifted his OM’s to Rhogar, who both healed Nilfheim and put quite a few wounds on TBR.

Not enough, though; again, Tul Bak Ra was the better assassin.

Fomox commented after the game that he should not have come back to play defensively. I suspect this is true; Cyprien may not have been quite as fast as Tul Bak Ra, but he has Chill Touch and he would have had a decent chance of killing Migol before I killed Cyprien. I think we, as Scapers, just get alarmed to see our opponents in our start zones, which is something I was taking advantage of all afternoon with this tournament.

4-0

I won! 4-0 after a 4 round tournament!

No such luck. I played a 1 game championship with Retlaw, with whom I was tied, for the tourney win:

Round 5
Quasatch Playground
Retlaw
Q9, Rats, Krug, Hydra
After careful consideration I targeted the Hydra. With only 4 life, a few lucky shots would bring him down, and it might interfere with his strategy. Unlike all my other opponents, Retlaw chose TBR, despite his escapability. Good job, Retlaw!!!

I thought my dwarves would nevertheless be able to chew through his army of Huge heroes. Unfortunately, Q9 got on a 2 hex pedestal and the dwarves just could not get the 3 or 4 skull rolls they needed to take him out. It was ugly trench warfare for a few rounds, trench warfare which I was slowly but surely losing.

At the beginning of Round 3 (possibly 4?), I quietly shifted all my OMs onto TBR, hoping to catch Retlaw’s OMs on a Q9 engaged to two dwarves. Retlaw was too smart for me, though; I wish I’d done it a round sooner. His OMs were on Krug.

So I dashed across the battlefield with Tul Bak Ra, who he was trying to kill. Unfortunately my attack dice failed me, and damn if Retlaw’s unwounded Krug didn’t get a few wounds on me, too. At the end of the round the Hydra still had all its heads, and I didn’t get the initiative switch I needed. The Hydra tore TBR to shreds on OM1 of the next round.

My dice were not very friendly to me, but Retlaw did a couple things that led to his win. He picked TBR as his target, he smartly switched his OMs off Q9, and he successfully used Q9 and the Rats to keep my dwarves from getting through. He outplayed me and it was an honor to lose to him in the finals.

4-1; 2d place.

[Dad_Scaper]

GenCon 2013 Main Event

440 points; 16 hexes, Reverse the Whip on 2d day, if you make it that far.

I went through a few different builds, ultimately settling on Tor Kul Na, the Krav, and 4 squads of Nagrubs. KidScaper and I had both earlier contemplated weaker builds than the ones we ultimately brought; my first draft was Jotun and 4 squads of Goblin Cutters. I'm not sure what would have happened if I'd brought that army, but in the end I ran with Stompy and very nearly overcame my own bad play to make it to Day 2.

Here is the first ever action photo in a tournament report of mine:


You can see I was borrowing FilthytheClown's awesome Electrified Tor Kul Na, without which I surely would have lost all my games. Thanks, Filthy!

Round 1:
Ticalla Sunrise

Xorlof
Tor Kul Na, Nagrubs x3, Raelin RotV, Marro Warriors

First of all, many thanks to Xorlof and all the other event organizers. We had a great time thanks to their hard work.

Second of all, almost a mirror match!

My notes here (and probably for the rest of the tourney) are a bit vague. I'm sure when I wrote "dice turned" I thought I would remember the significance of that note; maybe Xorlof does; but I've pretty much forgotten it by now. Oh well.

Anyway: I opened with the Krav; Xorlof opened with Raelin, soon followed by his TKN. I brought out mine to keep him from stomping through my start zone, but he'd already come pretty far forward with his, to the front edge of Raelin's aura. Meanwhile I maneuvered my own TKN toward my right flank to meet his, giving him the opportunity to get first strike but he’d have to come (a) out of Raelin’s aura and (b) closer to my start zone, where my own Nagrubs would be convenient for me and his would be far away.

He took the bait. The Tor Kul Na’s met in epic battle near my start zone. My Nagrubs were flexible: I could have one or two by TKN and still have a couple to spare to cover the Unique Attack glyph and to tie down Raelin. Xorlof, meanwhile, could not bring over Nagrubs fast enough and had to lose an OM (and some wounds to disengage, iirc), moving Raelin into position.

Xorlof’s Raelin and Tor Kul Na, down to one Nagrub, both went down and the Marro Warriors went soon after.

1-0

Round 2:
Flash Fire

Arrow Grut
Raelin RotV, Moltenclaw, Greenscales x3, Otonashi

This bumpy, obstacle-filled map was *not* a good fit for my army. Switch this map with Embattled Fen, which I played on later, and I might have won both games. *sigh* Who knows.

I spread out the Krav and Arrow Grut, who played a flawless game, set up a Raelin/Moltenclaw pod on the hill to my left. He used Greenscales to deny stomp, sometimes standing on the low ground to do so. Tor Kul Na’s dice were turning up shields on every roll, which helped when he was defending himself but hurt when he was trying to clear out the Greenscale screen. His attack dice were just *woeful*.

Arrow Grut expertly used Moltenclaw’s funky special attack to light up the Nagrubs I tried to bring up for support, and his dice, from height, were just better than mine. By the time I got TKN up to the road next to Moltenclaw, he was too weakened from the hike up there to finish the job.

1-1

Round 3:
Quasatch Playground

Orcelfarmyone
Raelin, Nakitas, Agent Skahen, Krav

This jungle map was considerably more stomp-friendly than Flash Fire, in the last round. And the various agents simply could not do enough damage to TKN to overcome his tough defense, high life, and healing. I held the Krav back for clean up, in case I needed it, and sent out the big guy early to the high ground in the middle. Nagrubs went with him and fanned out toward the glyphs.

TKN met Raelin in the center of the map and the Nagrubs battled Krav for the Unique Attack glyph, which iirc went unclaimed most of the time. TKN, on the high ground engaged with Raelin, did not even come down to start chasing agents until the Kyrie was dead. Once he did it was game over; everything in his army was stompalicious on a flat map. I never did put any OMs on the Krav.

2-1

Round 4:
Embattled Fen

Tim
Arrow Gruts x3, Swog Riders x3, Krug, Raelin, Sonya Eisenwein

I sent out the Krav early and got many shots on height against Raelin. Unfortunately, their attack dice were ice cold. Tim eventually got his Arrow Gruts in position and managed to kill a couple Krav, on height, with only a couple shots per OM. I shifted OMs to the Nagrubs while one of the surviving Krav hid in the battlement in front of my start zone, along the big road.

TKN went toward the road, then shifted to the far side. I was hoping to reach Tim’s position before he could get his Arrow Gruts in a good position to deny me stomping, but I was not in time. He had two Swog Riders on the 7-hex high ground along with Raelin, backing up Arrow Gruts throwing way too many attack dice for me to try to approach. So, discretion being the better part of valor, I backed away with TKN and circled back toward the road.

We had played slowly, probing for weaknesses, and time was beginning to run out as TKN came to the base of the long road. Krug was coming up it, battling his way against Nagrubs. On OM3, after “2 minutes” had been called by the tournament director, I had a huge brain cramp and shifted my Nagrubs, blocking the road, to high ground to get height on Krug. Needless to say they did not kill him and, with the road now open, Krug took a couple disengages from them, went on to the battlement in front of my start zone, and killed my last Krav. With the last Krav down, I lost 100 points in full card scoring, and with the game over I lost by 25 points.

Aaargh!!!

Tim deserved the win, though. He played very well, and blocked me everywhere I looked for a weakness. Good job, Tim! Who doesn’t even have an account on ‘Scapers, as far as I know!

2-2

Ticalla Sunrise

Orcelf’s dad
Kurrock, Earth Elementals x4, Water Elementals x6

I sent out the Kravs early to try to get the glyphs and get a few shots in on Kurrock. I got one wound on him early, then a couple OMs later I got a 4 skull attack from height. The elementalist whiffed on defense.

The rest of the game was clean-up and stomping, though I was impressed with how powerful the Water Elementals are on a map loaded with water. They didn’t go down easy! Until I could catch them and stomp them into goo!

3-2

My tiebreaks were still good enough to get me into a tie for 16th place. In a roll-off, Arcus won the tiebreaker and went on to compete in Day 2. I was happy for him, though that Round 4 blunder will haunt me for some time, I think.

[Filthy the Clown]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

You can see I was borrowing FilthytheClown's awesome Electrified Tor Kul Na, without which I surely would have lost all my games. Thanks, Filthy!

I am quite happy that he found a solid measure of victory in a skilled player's hands...Much more that he did with me. Sure, the magnetized flakes within his hull caused an overabundance of rolled Shields...But I forgot to mention that you needed to use my 'special' dice in order to get the same effect with skulls.

Great reports, and when next we meet, I am hoping to actually get a game in with you.

[Dad_Scaper]

GenCon Heroes Only

KidScaper and I spent a combined 10 minutes or so picking out our armies for this event, and, unfortunately, our results followed suit.

The format was 600 points, uncommon/unique heroes only, so I ran with:

Jotun 225/225
Shurrak 160/385
Raelin 80/465
Fen Hydra 120/585
Isamu 10/595

Which left a distinct weakness in my army. I knew I didn't have range, but I thought I'd be able to overcome that with some heavy hitters. Unfortunately I had a very particular Achilles' Heel that would catch me twice, and I should have anticipated it.

Round 1:
Flashfire

Karl
Eldgrim, Laglor, Major Q10, Agent Skahen, Otonashi, Iron Golem

The cramped map did not make it easy for my bigger units to get around. But from a distance Karl's army just couldn't do much to my high-defense heroes, and my Hydra managed to get around the road to a ledge above his start zone, from which it ate Raelin.

Karl smartly used Eldgrim's extra move to get the Unique Attack glyph, but it wasn't enough when Jotun lumbered out and started throwing and Smashing

Spoiler Alert!

things. I remember throwing Skahen twice, the second time killing her, and the game ended when Otonashi got thrown, too.

1-0

Round 2:
Shiver

Turkeyclubsammich
Hydras x5

Spoiler Alert!

No, I am not joking.

As soon as I looked at that army I knew I should have anticipated it. I had a lot of heavy hitters, but one enemy Hydra getting the drop on me could easily take out any one of my heroes, the big guy included.

After a lot of thought I loaded all my order markers on Isamu. My plan was twofold: One, try to get lucky with Isamu. It really wouldn't take much luck. He rolls 3 attack dice, and he can Vanish away from a Hydra that rolls a skull. Second, I wanted to force him to string out his Hydras and make them come across the board to me, one at a time.

Isamu did successfully take out one of the Hydras on decent dice, before his Vanish finally failed him. I had all my OMs on him for almost the first two rounds, and I got what I wanted.

Unfortunately, TCS got the treasure glyphs as a couple of his Hydras came across the board to me, and he was able to pop the healing glyph to prevent Jotun from killing him. The dice continued their streaky behavior for me, as Jotun could not roll a skull to save his life. Literally.

1-1

Round 3:

Quasatch Playground (maybe?)

Ryan
Hydras x3, Ornak, Marcu, Krug

Are you kidding me? Twice in a row?

I sent out Isamu early again; Ryan used Ornak to send Marcu to grab the Unique Attack glyph. I put a wound or two on Ornak but not enough. I managed to keep the initiative with my own hydra against Ryan's, and killed two of his. Jotun took out another hydra and Ornak and put some wounds on Krug. I tried to get opposition against Krug with Shurrak, and just stay away from him, but that's not really possible in this game.

The two met near the middle. Shurrak went first, Krug went second and third, and that was it.

Again I was undone by Hydras!

1-2

Round 4:

Dry Season

El Diabolo
Laglor, Q10, Thorgrimm, Raelin, Taelord

It was great to meet El Diabolo and doubly so now that he is running the multiplayer FFA format I like so much. Also he ran the kind of fun army that I like.

Isamu ran up the far side of the map, away from everyone else, and too the Move glyph.

Unfortunately for El Diabolo, his army, which looked like something I would bring, involved a fairly stationary pod, and my army had a Raelin-backed Jotun and the Move glyph. He just couldn't do enough damage to Jotun before Jotun got in there and started throwing/mauling everybody he could reach. As bad as the 2d and 3d round matchups had been for me, this one was bad for him.

Like all the others, though, El Diabolo was a great sport and I had a great time against him & all the others.

2-2

[dok]

I'm surprised Ryan had a loss - that is an awesome army and would have been high on my list of armies to play.

(Was that Ryan H. from Minnesota, a.k.a. Heirloom on heroscapers? If so, he made the finals of Heroes only last year, and was the only player aside from me to run Thanos against the many Silver Surfers. Apparently we have similar thoughts when it comes to Heroes only builds!)

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by dok

I'm surprised Ryan had a loss - that is an awesome army and would have been high on my list of armies to play.

(Was that Ryan H. from Minnesota, a.k.a. Heirloom on heroscapers? If so, he made the finals of Heroes only last year, and was the only player aside from me to run Thanos against the many Silver Surfers. Apparently we have similar thoughts when it comes to Heroes only builds!)

It may have been, dok. I don't have it in my notes if it was. I remember he played well.

It was a good game! I didn't lose by much...

[Foudzing]

Yeah the Red flag army is very very good in Heroes only, but here instead of one Hydra and Marcu I usually go with Frosty, to add some versatility, and his frenzy can be huuuuge in heroes only.

[Dad_Scaper]

GenCon Team Tournament

This format was another we didn't playtest. Still, we had a fun army picked out & ready to go. The format was 500/16, split between the two armies.

I believe one of the teams had one of the WTF armies I thought would be prevalent in this format (4th x3 + Eldgrimm, or 10th x3 are both pretty good army halves, with Q9 or whatever in the other 1/2...). So we devised a metagame-y counter army: I would play Q10 and Laglor, 260, and he would play Krav and Rats x3, 220. Maybe one of us would have had Marcu also, I don't remember.

We had, as I've mentioned earlier, an issue with losing things. So on Day 1, KidScaper left his army somewhere (the first but not last time he did so), and as we were prepping for the Team Tournament we still didn't have our Rats. A fellow Scaper was kind enough to offer to loan us some on Saturday afternoon and volunteered to bring them to the event Sunday morning, but he hadn't arrived yet as Round 1 approached. We swapped in a Hydra, which fit the price point but not the strategy, and turned in our card.

Moments after the Round 1 games were posted the kind volunteer arrived with the Rats. KidScaper asked me to try to change out our army, but I didn't think that was cool after we'd turned in our card. I don't know what the TDs would have done but, as a fellow TD myself, I didn't want to put them in that position.

So we ran with:

DadScaper: Q10/Laglor
KidScaper: Krav/Hydra

Hmm. I see we were 20 points light.

*sigh*

Round 1:
Ticalla Sunrise

The Mind: Major Q9, Finn
Schultzy: Zombies x4

It was great to meet these guys (and everyone else, too). It was a tough matchup, though. Q9 made quick work of the Krav - those evil 1 die attacks - and Horde Movement, combined with Q9, turned out to be an effective counter to the Hydra, who never really got going.

Q10 could not get any wounds on his bigger, tougher cousin, iirc. It was rough, but we took some consolation (for the nth time over GenCon) that at least we met some people we liked.

0-1

Round 2:
Shiver

Megasilver: Major Q9, Raelin
El Diabolo: Dwarves x3, Guilty McCreech

I loved this map for our army. The rough terrain made it possible for us to stay back even from the speedy dwarves, as we found our way (slowly, probably not the best way) to a position for a pod on one side of the map. At one point El Diabolo told us we had to redo our move because we hadn't done what they expected. They were rough! Again I am reminded, as I write this report, that I think multiplayer brings out the most fun in Heroscapers. The extra people around the table are really good at diffusing any tension before it builds.

Anyway.

We started with our pod on the low ground in the middle. As the dwarves started to come up on the left, and Q9/Raelin came up the right, the Krav stayed to the far left, out of Q9's range, trying to pick off encroaching dwarfs, several of whom at a time could fit behind a tree. Q10 also stayed back, but close enough to ping at Q9 from a Laglor-enhanced distance.

I repositioned Laglor to get him higher up on the hill, and he was in range of Q9. So he took a shot. Why not? And he put a couple wounds on the big robot, leaving him with only 2 life left. Next time KidScaper repositioned the Krav, he (over my objection) moved one of them into Q9's field of fire and took a shot downhill on him. Two skulls! Megasilver dropped 110 dice, or however many it is, down the dice tower, and only rolled one shield. Almost dead! Then he realized he'd rolled 111 dice, instead of 110, and rerolled them. And WHIFFED!!! Q9 went down.

It was cleanup from there, whether we deserved it or not.

1-1

Round 3
Burial Marsh
vegietarian: Braxas, Marro Warriors
vegietarian's dad: Stingers x1,000

This was another game, like the first, where we were left wondering how much different it might have been, but for the misplaced Hydra in our army. Certainly it would have played very differently with Rats x3, but the outcome may very well have been the same.

Braxas came for the Krav and, iirc, successfully gassed them all on her 2d OM. She took a head or two off the Hyda, also, before it killed her. Our long distance shooting kept the demonic Stingers at bay for a while, but eventually the Team Veggie superior numbers wore us down.

1-2

Round 4

Shiver ()

Rob: Microcorps x2, Zettian Guards
Ian: Nilheim, Arrow Gruts x1

Rob and Ian were a father & son team local to Indy, or at least within a normal person's driving distance, and to the best of my knowledge do not post on this forum.

Having *finally* playtested (see Rounds 1-3) we sort of knew how to use our army by this point. Instead of puttering around near our start zone, we raced the whole pod up the left hand side, from where we had a range-boosted field of fire across most of the map. Poor Nilfheim went down pretty early with some poor defense rolling, but this was a favorable matchup for us on a favorable map, and we rolled.

2-2

Thanks to everyone I (we) played against all Con. We had an outstanding time, and many, many thanks to the event organizers & TDs who made it all work.

Thanks, guys!

[dok]

It doesn't sound to me like that volunteer was very kind.

[Dad_Scaper]

He was a kind volunteer. Very kind. He literally went out of his way to try to help, and he probably was in time, if only I'd been a little pushy.

I honor & appreciate his good intentions and the effort he made to deliver. We had dug ourselves into this hole. I would never dream of complaining about the effort somebody made in throwing us a rope.

[OEAO]

DS, you forgot the crux of my army... OTONASHI!

Great meeting and playing you! And Arcus wasn't part of the 5-way tie, he was already in. Vegie's dad won the dice-off.