Official Battle Reports Thread - DFW Team Tournament 3/07

[Velenne]

There were 21 teams vying for the Texas Trophy (insert pic here), a great venue, and overflowing prize table. More importantly, there were some great battles. Here they are...

[Velenne]

Team Sojourners consisted of myself and ole' pal Luke. We fielded:

Luke:
Braxas - 210
2 x Rats - 80

Me:
Nilfheim - 185
Dumutef - 25
Me-Burq-Sa - 75

In my last tournament, I discovered the welcome simplicity and ominous intimidation brought by fielding dragons. I also believe that one key to success in a Team Tournament is to eliminate one of your opponents as quickly as possible- giving you 6 order markers to 3. The dragons afford your team a great deal of mobility, decent range, and most importantly, the ability to bring the brunt of your army to bear quickly against a single opponent.

This army's biggest weakness is its dramatic reduction in effectivness against Large and larger heroes. Short range and low defense must also be accounted for. That said, our biggest enemy was Q9. In practice games, he was brutally effective at shredding our dragons.

There were no less than 15 Q9's at this tournament.........................


Still, we knew we'd be seeing, y'know, at least 1 or 2 of these right? (Ahem) So we developed a great strategy whereby, if we drew the Summoning glyph (a 2/7 chance), we could bring the big soulborg under both our dragon's combined melee attacks and bring him down within a round. In practice games, this was very effective.

What do you mean there's not going to be any summoning glyphs at the tournament?


Match 1

Our first match of the day was against Team T2D2 on Global Warming. This was our dragon's weakest map. It's size and openness exploits our dragon's weaknesses very well. To make matters worse, we wordlessly abandoned our strategy and led with the dragons, leaving the cricial rats behind.

The Rev and his partner did a great job of exploiting our mistake and tying down our dragons. Using their 4th mass, knights, sentinels, and Concan to wreak heavy wounds, it suddenly looked bleak for us. Things got even worse when Braxas couldn't spit on the broad side of a barn from the inside. Out of 18 rolls, she killed 3 figs... This one was quickly over- a round slaughter.

0-1

Round 2

Team Sojourners sat down at Rÿchean's Cliffs of Astrid Canyon and faced off against the ironically-named Team Strength in Numbers who fielded Jotun, Q9, Kelda, and Deadeye Dan. Each team quickly rotated counter-clockwise up to the heights on either side of the map. Saintbygrace made the mistake of leaving Kelda behind while trying to move Q9 to the top of the mountain. I swooped in with Nilf and barely finished the job, but not before taking some heavy Quiglix damage and dodging Deadeye's instakill shots.

The plan at that point was to back up onto our hill and force them to come to us for fear of losing on points. Sadly, Nilf couldn't dodge another round of Quiglix and it didn't look like he'd make it out of range. Braxas saved the day, coming around the back side and tying up Q9 from the top level of the map. A few lucky rolls later, the big robot was dead and Joton was swinging his tree at the black dragon. This wasn't going to last long.

With SaintbyGrace out for the count, his teammate was left his full attention on Jotun. It was very close, but we managed to eke out a win here even after finally losing Nilf.

1-1

Round 3

We faced Team Fouroak on Longscaper's Forgotten Garden map. They fielded Nilf, Krav, Finn, and (you guessed it!!) Major Q9. We knew that this map was very tricky for our dragons against an opponent fielding a lot of range. It's narrow and there's just nowhere for such big figs to hide. But we got lucky...

Little Oak led with Nilf while dad charge Finn down the road. This allowed us to take advantage of the overextended dragon:



Nothing can stand against the combined strength of two dragons.

We ignored Finn.

That left Q9 and Krav in reserve. Apparently they really wanted Finn's bonus, so the Krav took a few potshots at his backside. Agents. Can't trust 'em.

The rats did a great job of keeping them off the bridges, forcing them to hold just outside their start zones. But Quiglix and Krav combined for 6 attacks of 3 and Braxas fell quickly to the onslaught. A few bad placements on my part led to Nilf taking a few hits before reaching his target. But the dragons weren't the MVP's of this game.

It was the rats. Yes, even though Nilf and Braxas managed to bring down the Krav and deal 3 wounds to Q9, the robot managed to kill my King. This left us with a Dumutef and about 6 rats.

We continued to ignore Finn.

Boosted by an attack glyph, Luke surrounded the soulborg and started chuckin' 2 dice at his 7 defense. Lo and behold, 1 got through!! Just when we thought all was lost, we managed to snatch victory.

Oh ya, but we had to kill Finn first.

2-1

Round 4

We drew that cursed Global Warming map again. Worse, we had to sit across from Team Grungedoc. Let me tell you, if you ever have to play these guys, bring some rubber gloves and a bottle of antiseptic. There's no telling what they've been into...

They brought out Laglor, Krav, and Johnny Shotgun with Gilbert, Elgrim and knights. This time, we were going to stick to our strategy no matter what.

It paid off. We slowly inched our army up the left flank. Me-Burq-Sa and the Dumutef assisted the rats in forming a flesh wall for our dragons. Slowly and methodically, we picked apart the knights while managing to stay clear of Krav fire. 2 rats got extremely lucky against the agents, forcing ninthdoc to bring Laglor closer.

In the end, this strategy (and not having to fight Q9...did I mention there were like 15 Q9's at this tournament? Out of 21 teams?) won the day. Our dragons took some major damage, but held up well.

3-1


This put us in 6th place, just outside of the final playoffs. 3rd-5th place had the same record, but faced opponents with higher final rankings. All in all, a great day!

[feekonea]

Wow, sounds like you had a lot of fun. I read how you were going to post you battle reports here over in the events thread, so I rushed right over, and low and behold, theyre here. Great reports, and Im glad you had a lot of fun.

[markwars]

Tenacious Scape and the Hex of Destiny (Lil Newbie and myself) had a rough go of it. Our team consisted of...

Lil Newb's team:
Kaemon Awa
Tagawa Archers x 2
Marro Warriors

markwars' team:
Krug
Arrrow Gruts x 2
Swog Rider x 2


Round 1 vs RyRun (the eventual champs) on the map that Rÿchean had developed. Not a good way to start the day in terms of competitiveness.

Their army had the first of many Q9's that we faced. They also had rats, Nakitas, Krav, and Laglor. LilNewb was an initiative rolling fool in this game so we had the first two moves of every round but the one that I won. Too bad that's where our dice luck pretty much stopped.

I went left with an advance of Arrows and Swogs and Newb went right with his Marros and Tagawa. We had a some pretty good early shots, but it was absolutely astounding how many shields Ry and Run were rolling. It was like Dice Jesus and Dice Buddha were our opponents. They always got EXACTLY the amount of shields they needed. There were four and five skull attacks on Q9 that were being ignored. Rats couldn't be killed. Krav and Nakita's? Fuggidaboutit.

The battle on the left side of the board featured Ry and myself battling it out. The Kravs kept picking off my orcs though and eventually I had to concede that side and make a move for Q9 with my dormant Krug. Ry's rats hopping on the Lodin and Astrid glyphs wasn't helping me either.

The battle on the right was a lot of Newbie shooting shots at Q9 and never getting much heat on the big guy.....until Krug arrived. When Krug did finally get to the robot he dispatched of it in no time, but he didn't last much after that. And though my team's rolls started to get better it was much too late. To his credit LilNewb played the last stages of this game like a true master. How he made it as close as he did, 3 markers to 6 is a testament to his made skills. Still though, we lost.

0-1



Round 2 vs. Four Oak

Since Velenne played them he pretty much already described their army and their tactics because we also played them on the Gardens map.

I made a serious mistake and advanced Krug too early. Had I held back I don't know what would have happened, but as it was the game came down to their lone Krav vs. our lone Marro. The Krav won.

0-2




Round 3 vs. Team IQ

This was another father/son combo and yet another army with Q9. These guys were super nice and were really a lot of fun to play with. We played on the same Canyons map that we played Round 1 on and this time faced Charos, Raelin, Q9, and Thorgrim.

I charged Krug early this time and got to Q9 early. Once I locked him down I chewed him up, and poor Team IQ....they just could roll skulls when they needed them. Charos then got caught, surrounded by Arrow Gruts, Marros, and Tag. Archers. It ended fairly quickly, mainly because Lil Newb turned into a Skull rolling machine. He was amazing.

1-2




Round 4 vs. DflynRod

This game was another repeat map because we were back in the Gardens. Dflyn had Krug, Arrows, Marro Warriors, and rats. Rod had....you guessed it....another freakin' Q9 (our 4th of the day) and Kaemon Awa.

I predicted before the game that the end would come down to both Kaemon's and a bunch of rats. I was not wrong.

Early on I held Krug back to see what Q9 would do. Once he had posted himself to a bridge I moved Krug in and kicked the crap out of Q9 (Krug's third Q9 pelt of the day), but sadly Krug was snuck up on by another Krug and dispatched. LilNewb did his level best to remove every unit from the board, but eventually his Kaemon Awa fell to our opponent's Kaemon Awa.

1-3



So in the end we got pwned pretty much. :P Perhaps it would have helped if we had actually played together once or twice before the tourney, but since Lil Newb lives hundreds of miles away that wasn't possible. Both of us had showed up just to have fun though, so it wasn't so bad. And at the end of the day I got to come home with a giant Sterlite container (that will be the home of my Swarm of the Marro sets when they come out) and a pack of Wolves and 4th Mass.

Woohoo!

[Double Oak]

My army, Q9 and Finn, sons army, Nilf and Krav Magna Agents

Had tested this army quite well, felt very confident. Worked great on every map we tried, only map we hadn't built was Longscapers Forgotten Garden Map. What are the odds of us playing on that one more than once?

With that prep in mind, what map do we play on first? Longscapers map, forgotten Garden. Played team Deadeye Punk with Nikita's, Krav, Vikings, Marros (?), Deadeye Dan and a couple of others.

Our army actually matched up well against them and we felt good about it except for the fact that they rolled very, very well and we did not. Anytime the Viking warriors successfully bezerk charge several times in a row to successfully engage and wipe out your agents and Nilf goes down without putting a hurt on anyone, ya know it isn't going to go well.

Team Deadeye Punk were great to go against and a lot of fun.

0-1

P.S. Since we got wiped out early, we did a rematch for fun and wiped em out. In the rematch game, even though we beat them, their Deadeye took out Nilf with a sharpshooter 19 shot. Continued bad omens for the day on Nilf. For some reason they were not interested in our offer to go best of 3 for the official match game. Still 0-1

Second game, new table, same map. DADGUM why didn't we build and test Forgotten Garden!!!

Took on Markwars and LilNewbie. Krug, orc archers, swog riders on team one, Kaemon Awa, Tagawa Archers x2 and Marro Warriors.

Krug comes out to play and gets shredded by our ranged units, followed quickly by the archers and swogs. Tagawa Archers go away fairly quickly as do all but one of the Marros. At this point we have Major Q9 and 2 if not all three Krav's against LilNewb's Kaemon and one archer - nooooo problem this one is done.

Unfortunately Kaemon didn't get the memo and took out Major in two turns (OUCH) and pretty soon we are down to one Krav against two rapidly cloning Marros and are staring 0-2 in the face. Manno vs. Maro comes down to a brave but suicidal charge by the last Marro who almost gets next to the Krav but dies in the process. After almost snatching a loss from the jaws of defeat, son pulls it out and we are 1-1.

1-1

Game three, back to our first table, guess which map we got to play for the third straight time....................

Velenne and Luke brought out Braxas and Rats on team one and Nilf, Me-Burq-Se and a Dumultuf. Poor strategy on our part gets Nilf out by himself and a Finn doing very little if any good. Nilf did make a daring move to engage Velenne's Nilf but didn't inflict a single wound just like he had done on 2 out of 3 attacks on those dadgum rats. He died shortly thereafter.

Poor strategy and really poor rolling put us on our heels with a Major surrounded by rats and one agent hiding in the hills. A late rally however where a risky move or two paid off and we dropped Braxas, Nilf and Me Burq Se in rapid succession. All of a sudden, we went from about to get wiped out to sitting in the drivers seat! Major and Finn against 4 rats and a Dumutulf - we got this in hand! That was until Major whiffed and died to a RAT!!!! I was despondent, made even worse by the fact that it was the first attack and three order markers sat on a dead Q9 leaving Finn a sitting duck. He survived three attacks but we lost initiative for the 27th time in a row and the next attack took him.

Great, great battle. We both made tactical errors that could have cost us the game, in the end, the better team won.

1-2

Battle 4, guess which map we got assigned to?

A quick protest to Grungebob got us swapped to UPC's castle map, (a map we had practiced ad nauseam) against team Sinpuff. Here where we had our strategy down (as opposed to repeating the same mistakes on Garden map), we dominated. My sons Nilf finally caught fire and wiped out one of the armies (Kaemon and someone else (maybe Q9?) in rapid fire, while I ignored Krug till we could concentrate all of our fire power on him. In the interim a lot of Orcs and Swogs died as well.

Team Sinpuff were great sports in a one sided outting, by the end of the match we had lost Nilf and that was it. Even Finn lived in spite of our best efforts to get him killed.

2-2 for the day.



Lessons learned - Nilf stays home next time and Finn dies from friendly fire right off the bat! Son harped on me starting before church today till I agreed to battle test the new army (bought new character on the way home last night), and between new characters and corrected strategy, hopefully with the lessons learned we are ready to go next time!

P.S. Thanks to Rod for a post game outting and to all for the good competition.

[SinCollector]

I'm starting in reverse order. Our armies were Krug, 2xSwog, 2xArrow Gruts for me and Q9 and Kaemon Awa for my partner.

Yep, the Oaks whooped us. A big part of the problem--Q9 dying on the first turn. Not the first round, the first turn. Kaemon Awa followed shortly after. So, it was down to me with just Krug, Swogs and Arrow Gruts. Yeah, that wasn't happening. Krug couldn't even do any damage when he had some wounds.

I think we could have played this a lot better in retrospect even after the Q9 loss. With about 12 games of HeroScape between the two of us leading up to this tourney, we've still got a lot to learn.

Now, the reason I started in reverse order is that I believe the loss of Q9 was karmic. In our second game we also wiped out a Q9 in the first turn. That Q9 belonged to LilWis--whose Airborne Elite hadn't dropped yet . . . meaning she was out of the game on the first turn. Wisinger's humongous rat horde kept the game moving(pun intended) but there wasn't a lot he could do with just 4xDeath Reavers and Krav Maga vs the both of us.

Game 1 just sucked. I couldn't get my Krug to fit on a bridge I need him to travel down. My partner and I played terribly and rolled poorly. It was a complete debacle, probably better told from our opponent's point of view,

[Jonathan]

Okay, we played 4x4th Mass and Charos/Izumi, and went 4-1! Hot dog!

Anyway, Game 1:

Against D'Flyin Rod - Krug-Arrow Gruts-Deathreavers-Marro Warriors/Q9-Kaemon Awa.

Playing on Velenne's "Crux", we played on both sides of the map while DFR split their forces. The rats were annoying and managed to tie down my 4th quite a bit, but thankfully I had so many of the Mass that I was still able to get some real business done as well.

Kaemon Awa fell very quickly, because he is scary, and my 4th managed to get height on him. Q9 fell soon after, due to 2 whiffs in a row

We almost killed off Krug, then he stepped on the healing glyph (how did we forget about that?!?) and we had to kill him all over again, but not before he got Charos down to 1 or 2 life as well. Marro fell soon after.

Great guys, very easy-going, and we'll probably be on the other side of their beating next time.

Game 2:

Against Krunkanova - Q9-Raelin/Krav Maga-Syvarris-2xRats - on UPC's "Team Castle" map.

Reavers got Attack +1, we got Lodin - shenanigans. Anyway, Krav + Q9 + Syvarris were pelting away, working Charos down and knocking off random Mass, until we finally turned the tide by sheer brute force. I finally ran down Casanova's rat on the glyph, and then it was just Q9 running and gunning for Charos. The dice fell in Charos' favor, and we won.

Game 3:

Against Max - Tornak-Grimnak-2xBlades/AE-2x4thMass - again on "Team Castle."

I think this time they got attack +1, we got Initiative? Regardless, shenanigans again. The AE dropped on the first turn, and got initiative And Max was actually going to be able to use the grenade effectively - amazing! I was enjoying the moment, even though it was really bad for me. Thankfully, 2 of the grandes whiffed, and we only lost 4 4th Mass.

Charos charged forward, tried to take a bite out of Grimnak, Grimnak charged past unscathed and chomped a sad little Izumi. He went down the next round, but his terror resonated still. The blades on top carved up a few 4th Mass, but eventually fell to a numbers game, and the opposing Mass fell to a rampaging Charos and the very nasty counterstrike.

IMax mounted a Tornak + Blades charge on the ground, but the odds were against them. We won the game, but had a blast playing this great father-son team. Gave me hope for the future!

Game 4:

Against LongBiscuit - Tarns-Theracus-MeBuqSa-Zettians-Marro Warriors/2xTagawaArchers-Krav Maga-Izumi - on LongHeroscaper's "Astrei Gardens."

So many figures!!! Aah! Long started the day off by flying a Krav to the bridge. We advanced, they advanced, I got the move glyph, a 1-wound Theracus took the healing glyph (great move) and then proceeded to not die.

I think that's the them of this game - units not dying when they are supposed to. 10+ attacks on Theracus, countless attacks on the Tarns, and nothing. Finally, in the last moments of the game I thought "They're going to win this thing on points!" so I started trying to concentrate on individual squads, and the dice finally went in our favor. The enemy Izumi made a valiant last stand but could not handle the might of Charos.

Game 5, The Finals:

Against Ryrun - Laglor-Nakitas-Deathreavers/Krav Maga-Q9 - again on "Team Castle", again with opponents getting the Attack glyph on their side.

With glyph and Laglor's aura in hand, the mighty range of Vydar were able to chew down Charos in a few rounds, and then basically made short work of our remaining forces. Q9 actually did quite little, as Laglor turned into a killing machine, once attacking at least 8 times in a row. Granted, I defended successfully 6 of those 8 times, but it still hurt.

We finally filled most(?) of the Nakitas, Laglor, and the Reavers, but Q9 was untouched and Funrun had all of her Krav left as well. We left the field feeling totally whupped, but at least we felt it was warranted.

All in all a great day, and I must thank my fantastic wife for her most-excellent gameplay that took us from the middle of the pack into second place!

[markwars]

So there were only 5 teams?

[Codeman]

Finally some battle reports are coming in…. but where are the pictures? I see Velenne took at least one picture…. Where is everyone else’s? The photo lab?

[InfinityMax]

I didn't take any pictures, but I'll try to remember what we did.

Our armies were:

Me:
2 squads of blade gruts
Grimnak
Tornak

MiniMax:
2 squads of 4th Mass
AE

Game 1 versus Team Strength in Numbers. They were running:

Team 1:
Q9
Kelda

Team 2:
Deadeye Dan
Jotun

I don't remember when the AE dropped, but I know it was early. This was kind of a short game - the orcs tied up Q9 while the ranged figs blew holes in his guys. Dan smoked a few orcs, but mostly ran away. We did manage to bring their Q9 to 1 life, just to see Kelda heal him back up. So we killed him again. I tend to think Team Strength in Numbers might have done better if they had actually had numbers.

Game 2 versus Team Deadeye Punk. One quick note - these guys were awesome. This was easily the funnest game that day.

Armies: Heck, I don't remember. I know they had AE, Nakitas, Deadeye, samurai and Marro. There may have been something else. I'm not sure.

This one was closer than the first one, and had us worried at one point because we were strung out all over the place pressing the attack. But the orcs hauled for the attack glyph, and we held it the whole game, which helped us kill an awful lot of guys in melee. Their AE dropped late in the game and killed some key figures, but then ours dropped and killed theirs. Grimnak chomped several figs, and on his way in to take a bite out of Dan, got sniped in the head and smoked in one shot. I usually hate when that happens, but it was awesome that day. Great freaking game, made better because we won.

Another note: Thanks, CA and MadHatter. That was one of the greatest games ever.

Game 3 versus Team I Love Jonathon. Armies:

Team 1: 4 squads of 4th Mass
Team 2: Charos and Izumi Samurai

This map was tense. It was that elevated castle thing where the two armies are on opposite sides of a short bridge.

I am honored to say that we were completely outplayed. I think our dice were better than theirs, but it didn't matter because Jonathon and ILoveKrug were awe-inspiring. We got beat by the players, not the dice, and that's my favorite reason to lose.

Game 4 versus RevDyer and friend (sorry, forgot your team name). Armies:

Team 1:
2 squads of knights
Sentinels

Team 2:
2 squads of 4th Mass
Concan

These guys were really, really nice. I mean better than anyone has a right to be. For one thing, after MiniMax forgot to place order markers, they gave him a pass. That was huge, because the grenade we got off because of that killed 7 4th Mass.

Concan and Sentinels proceeded to hold the attack glyph for most of the game, but got knocked off by Tornak and some uphill fire by AE. Grimnak ate a bunch of knights before getting his butt shot off running into a hail of 4th Mass Wait Then Fire, but drew enough fire to let our 4th Mass take superior positions and gun down our opponents. This was also a great game, and RevDyer and his friend go down in my memory as the two best sports I've ever played.

We came that day hoping to win at least one, and we made it to the final round! If I was any more proud of MiniMax my head would have popped clean off. He played great (except for that thing with the markers). More than once he turned it around, and he earned every bit of his prize table score.

So, 5th game versus Team somethingorother, I forgot their name, too. Their armies:

Team 1:
Q9
Rats
Marro Warriors

Team 2:
Robodogs
Raelin
Krav

We were doing really well early on, because we took out the Krav and the Marros with minimal casualties, and Grimmy chomped every single rat. But Q9 had a lucky aura on him, and with more than 20 4+ die attacks, suffered one wound the whole game, except for a disengage as he moved up and took the Kelda glyph (like it mattered at that point). With Q9 lasting about 15 attacks longer than he should have, we weren't able to divert attention to the robopuppies, who chewed up a bunch of 4th Mass who couldn't hit Raelin with a guided missile, much less Wait Then Fire and height. I was reminded how much luck affects this game.

We were still pretty dad-gum happy with 4th place out of 21 teams. I couldn't believe how well we did, and I am so danged proud of my son that it bears repeating.

[GaryLASQ]

Originally Posted by Codeman

Finally some battle reports are coming in…. but where are the pictures? I see Velenne took at least one picture…. Where is everyone else’s? The photo lab?

we want pics and video clips. i want to hear some of the trash talk that goes on at the TX tourneys.

Originally Posted by InfinityMax

I tend to think Team Strength in Numbers might have done better if they had actually had numbers.

thanks for the Battle Report, Imax. a father-son team-up sounds great.

[Focus]

Max our team was SRX and my partner is liam_l. I learned a lot from you in that one game as it was obvious you were the better player, I hope to play you again and your son is lucky to have a great mentor.