My Couple Battles at the 520 Bloomington Tournament

[BullwinkleJMoose]

Hi everyone, while visiting my brother who lives in Bloomington I decided to swing by the 520 Point Tournament that was being hosted. My memory is not perfect so the reports are probably less descriptive that other people's. I figured I would post since I did not see really any others from last Saturday's event.

Since I was at a complete blank as to what I should bring for an army, I decided to search this website to see if any armies looked interesting. I looked into some tournament winning builds that used either Krug, Q9 the AI, or Zelrig but ultimately decided to use an interesting winning 4th Mass build. Yeah this might be a little cheesy to look at other people's builds but I was pretty overwhelmed by the possibilities.

The army that I decided to play was 5x 4th Mass, 1x Marro Warriors, 1x Morsbane. With 25 figures, I would have to drop 1 figure and would be entering each battle at almost a 40 point disadvantage but I still thought that the army was very solid. I could have swapped out Morsbane for Kaemon Awa but felt that Morsbane better covered the 4th Mass weaknesses. I never considered Concan in the build and feel he is far inferior to either of these 2.

1st Round: Opponents army (EternalThanos86-I think):
3x Mohican River Tribe, 2x Axegrinders, Migol, Darrak
Glyphs: +1 Attack
Map: Turret Rocks

When I saw my opponents army, I figured that the army mathcup favored me relatively significantly. With only 2 squads of Axegrinders I only had to kill 5 before they would be attacking under full strength. I also thought my defense could hold up against 3 attacks of 2 from the MRT. In this game I sat 1 4th Mass. The game began with both of us heading for the 1 glyph. Interestingly, we both rolled a 20 for the opening initiative. I won the reroll and with my 6 movement Marro Warriors was able to be the 1 to 1st claim the glyph. My marros were able to inflict a few wounds on the axegrinders before I was forced to bring forth some Mass. With my range advantage and ability to take casualties I was able to hold the attack glyph for a large portion of the game. The majority of the action occurred away from the glyph near the choke point in between the river towards the middle of the map. His army was hurt a decent bit by the water since it impeded both his MRT and Axegrinders from becomming adjacent. I think only 1 MRT was ever able to get adjacent to any of my figures. Overall it was pretty 1 sided and I do not recall how many points I had remaining. I never moved Morsbane or a few 4th Mass squads, I would guess I had maybe 300 points left at the end, maybe a little less. (1-0)

2nd Round: Bye- Unfortunately my 2nd Round Opponent had to leave, thereby leaving me with a bye. I caught the end of his 1st Round Matchup in time to see his Protector army annhilate his opponent's Charos. I felt pretty good matching up my Mass vs his Protectors since Protector's really shine vs heroes, that being said I still wish he did not have to leave so we could have played it out. (2-0)

3rd Round: Opponents army (Playa- I think):
Braxas, Raelin, 3x Deathreavers, Syvarris, Isamu
Glyphs: +8 Initiative, Wound
Map: Road Rampage (I think)

When my opponent placed down his army, I figured it would be an interesting battle considering the really high rankings of pretty much his entire army. I imagined that from my opponent's perspective with a core of Braxas + Raelin that Morsbane would be 1 of the last units that they would want to see. I was somewhat underwhelmed by the glyphs that we drew and did not plan on making much effort to go out of my way to capture either of them. Whereas my 1st Round map favored my army, I felt that this map favored my opponent's army a decent bit.
My early order markers went on the Marros and Morsbane with my opponent putting his early one's on his Deathreavers and Syvarris. I felt the 1st initiative was going to be important but unfortunately I lost it. As a result, his Deathreavers were able to take advantage of the road bonus and were able to get height on Morsbane before he could get onto the bridge. 2 attacks of 2 ended up inflicting 2 wounds. I then disengaged and ran past his deathreavers in an effort to get Morbane in range of a Negation attempt on Braxas. Both disengagement rolls turned up skulls and by the end of Round 1 he was down to 2 life. Morsbane was able to end his move adjcacent to Syvarris and inflicted 2 wounds to the Elf but the negation attempt on Braxas failed. The next round I won initiative, inflicted 1 wound on Syvarris and this time rolled a 19 that negated Braxas. With Morsbane negated and Syvarris down to 1 life, I felt that Morsbane had won me the game before my opponent had even taken his 1st turn in round 2. Morsbane died very soon after and the next 30 minutes were basically my army slowly killing his rats. His rats kept blocking my attacks of 2 and 3 dice and some rounds would end with me having only killed 1 or 2 rats. I could have been taking shots at Syvarris since he only needed 1 wound but with him on height and backed by Raelin, I figured I would play it safe and simplify the game since I did not mind trading casualties. Eventually I killed off his rats and was able to get on the bridge and take down Syvarris. Overall Syvarris and the Wound Glyph killed probably 300 points or so of my army. He then brought forth his fully healed Braxas but with only 1 attack of 5 Braxas went down extremely fast. In fact Braxas did not kill a single unit with him failing in 3 attempts vs the 1 4th Mass he was near on the bridge. Raelin also died very quickly and the game ended when I used the wound glyph to finish off Isamu. (3-0)

Round 4: Opponent's army (Clarissmus- I think)
Tor-Kul-Na, 3x Nagrubs, 1x Dund, 1x Krav
Glyphs: +1 Attack, +1 Defense
Map: (I don't remember)

Having never played with or against TKN before, I figured it would be an interesting battle. I was aware of his abilities and everything but figured going against him would be informative. With my opponent being the only other undefeated player, I knew it would likely be a tough matchup. I had caught his previous game where he pretty much annhilated a Nilfheim and MIcrocorp army so I knew his army posed quite a few challenges. The Krav and Dund slightly concerned me, but I figured if I could handle TKN that I would succeed. My opponent began by moving forth Dund and his Krav and I moved forward with my Marros and Morsbane. I was able to capture the +1 Defense glyph early on. In the 1st Round a few Marro went down but they also were able to take down 2 Krav. For the next Round I continued to move Morsbane towards the main portion of my opponent's army and since my turn ended near Dund I took a roll and pulled off a negation. Negating Dund was not a huge part of my strategy but at least I ensured my order markers were safe. My next few turns were used on Morsbane who unfortunately missed 3 or so negation rolls on TKN. By this time my opponent was able to engage Morsbane with TKN and a nagrub and inflicted 4 wounds in a single turn. WIth my my final order marker on Morsbane and likely his last attempt before dying I attempted the negation and this time rolled a 19. With Dund negated, the Krav down to 1, and TKN negated I felt the game was pretty much over. As expected Morsbane died on my opponent's turn but the damage had been done. With TKN negated, my strategy was to focus on the nagrubs in order to reduce the number of attacks per turn I could face and to reduce chances for TKN to heal. Eventually I pretty much exterminated the nagrubs and then began to focus on TKN. With 4 wtf's per turn I was able to damage him although it took a little longer than expected. I do not recall how many 4th Mass I had remaining at the end, I would guess somewhere in the 7-12 range? As a funny observation, as our match was winding down I could hear multiple onlookers debating whether or not Morsbane was overpowered or underpriced. (4-0)

Unfortunately, at this point I had to leave. It was roughly 4pm and it likely would have taken multiple hours for the winner of the loser's bracket to face off against me, who would have then needed to defeat me 2 consecutive times. Overall, the Tournament was a lot of fun and it was enjoyable to play against some new faces