Illinois Crew's GenCon 2008, '09 and '10 Battle Reports

[Jexik]

I'll keep this as a running thread, and add to my post as I play in more events. Hopefully my friends KaBoomboomboom and Worldturtle will also share their experiences. It is the first time any of the three of us have been to GenCon.

Thursday

Today I did the Deathwalker Jumpstart at 5:00. Because it's a strong and fun army to play, I went with 3x Gladiatrons, 2x Blastatrons, Raelin, and Isamu for 450 points and 22 hexes. I was mostly thinking that I'd avoid trying to get the Deathwalker and kill people as they tried to get it, and if I did have the numbers to grab it, 9 range B-trons would be hilarious.

Game 1

I was playing against a young player with Charos, Elite Onyx Vipers, and some Venoc Vipers. We played on Embattled Fen, and the glyph was Gerda (Defense +1).

He started off by splitting his order markers up, and I went straight for the glyph with my trons, moving Raelin up on OM 3. It took me awhile to take everything down, and I lost most of my Glads, but it really wasn't a very fun or close game for either of us. I felt really bad after this game.

Game 2

This game was a completely different story. I was playing against gamjuven on Jungle Swamp Road, which is a pretty awesome map for my army. On the flip side, he was playing almost the exact same thing! 3x Blasts, 2x Glads, and Laglor. The glyphs were uninteresting- Initiative on his side, and Lodin on mine.

He won initiative, so he therefore got a much better jump on DW9K. He got an explosion shot off against Raelin and some nearby blasts but only managed to kill one, and put a wound on Rae. I had her in a pretty nice spot next to some jungle, and I did my best to keep my guys in range of her and take potshots at his glads, making sure to use my maximum range as often as possible.

The big turning point in the game was when he took control of DW9K permanently on the following round. He put two OM's on him too, and I took one 2 die pot shot at him.

2 skulls.

1 shield.

His dice were kinda like that for awhile. His shields were just not showing up for him, and I pushed him back to the hill on his side. He made a real close game of it at the end with Laglor, killed my Raelin, and left me with just 3 glads and 3 blasts and Isamu at the end.

Game 3

Next up was lonewolf on Little Rampart. Instead of his usual G's and B's, he was running with Q9, 3x Marro Stingers, 2x Deathreavers, and Isamu. He had just won a similar close game against his clone army. The Glyphs turned out to be Valda and Lodin. Valda does little for my army, so I largely ignored it, but lonewolf did not.

He won initiative and set his rats out right away to take the move glyph and set up a nasty wedge in front of DW9K, taking an explosion attack, but not stealing the card right away. He hit a few of my guys, but only one gladiatron died.

From there on, I really felt like I had my hands tied behind my back. This map's water and jagged height requirement to get up onto the Ramparts made it hard for me to replenish my forces quickly, even with Raelin's support. I moved them out too slowly because I couldn't bunch them up over the humps, and I could just never get them rolling.

Another big problem was that I just couldn't get height advantage at all with the 'trons. Blastatrons really thrive on any attack bonus, but I was very rarely able to attack with more than 2 dice, which just wasn't cutting it against 4 defense rats and a 7 defense Q9.

I only managed to kill 7 Deathreavers, which gave Lonewolf a win so big that he managed to secure the trophy ahead of my two friends who each won their heats.

I went 2-1, but we went 8-1.

[Rifier_Ace]

Thanks a lot for the battle reports Jexik. I enjoyed it.

[Worldturtle]

On the advice of Jexik and Kaboomboomboom (hencefore abbreviated to "k-boom"), I modified my original idea of sacred band and Marcus to:
4 Squads Tenth Regiment of Foot
Marro Warriors
Marcus Decimus Gallus

My idea was that I would use the now speedy Redcoats to secure Deathwalker 9000 early for a big point boost. Marcus, in addition to providing the super useful speed boost, could also be used as a meaty glyph holder or as an excellent buffer to a pod of Redcoats. The Marro Warriors would provide a tenacious late-game clean-up unit or speedy glyph grabbers.

My first game (gah! I forgot his name! I specifically asked too. I'll fix this as soon as I can) was against:
Elite Onyx Vipers
Major Q10
Raelyn (RoTV)
Venoc Warlord

We played on the fancy new Jungleized Highways and Dieways. Definitely one of my favorite maps, but I was a little worried about playing ranged figures on such a busy map. Things looked bad as my opponent made an excellent play for Deathwalker 9000 with his elite onyx vipers. He bombarded my starting zone while my men were still milling about there, killing three fourths of my marro warriors and killing a redcoat.

Then his vipers frenzied. I think it is safe to say that what happened here decided the fate of the whole battle. Instead of jumpstarting Deathwalker, he continued to fire at my men with him. I think he frenzied twice in a row, fortunately for me, his successive attacks proved significantly less effective. The next turn, I ran a few Redcoats up the road and killed his vipers with my bayonets.

With one giant death robot down, things were looking good for me, but I wasn't out of the woods just yet, as Major Q10 marched forward. My thinly armored Redcoats shredded under his machine pistol. So I advanced with Marcus and made a play to jumpstart Deathwalker myself (I also snagged the unique attack glyph). Under the threat of all these heroes, Major Q10 moved forward into Bayonet range, and I brought him down.

At this point, I had simply too many Redcoats remaining for the Venoc Warlord and Raelyn to deal with. They did cause a good amount of damage before they went down though. Killing a fair number of Redcoats and Marcus.


My second match was against Dustin. It turned out that my giant robot problems were not over. He fielded:
Major Q9
Major Q10
Raelyn (SotM)

We were on Embattled Fen, a map that I'm not particularly fond of due to the vast low area in the center of the map. In the middle of that bog of death was the defense glyph though. I was going to need that if I hoped to survive.

Dustin flew Raelyn out as I charged forward with my hydrophilic Marro. In a sign of the bizarre dice rolls to come, I quickly killed Raelyn with a pair of attacks that she completely failed to block. I was feeling pretty good, then Q9 showed up.

My Marro were rapidly disintegrated. The defense glyph did little. Q9 then preceded to lay into the redcoats in my starting zone, causing severe casualties. We went back and forth a couple turns, me mostly loosing redcoats and Q9 mostly effortlessly deflecting musket-fire. Mostly.

One roll, I got one skull and he got seven shields. The next, three skulls and no shields! A moment later, another lucky attack slipped through and Q9 fell, but not before I was down half my Redcoats and Marcus had been pretty badly injured. I had a couple turns to catch my breath. So I tried to push Marcus forward to take the Defense glyph, I figured he'd hold it a little better than a Redcoat.

Once Q10 got into range though, things quickly went from bad to worse. Marcus died rapidly. Then Q10 deftly wove around my troops, using his machine pistol to devastate my Redcoats. Desperate, I dove three of my last four men at Deathwalker and Jumpstarted him. The high defense deathwalker wasn't falling to machine pistol fire and forced Q10 to run in and Rocket Fist it. As deathwalker went up in flames, so too did my dreams of victory.

Or so I thought. Dustin, showing true sportsmanship, reminded me that the units riding in deathwalker survive! Here, it got down to the wire, three redcoats standing three spaces from Major Q10. Luck was on my side, as two of my men survived wrist rocket bombardment and brought down Q10 with their mighty bayonets!


My last game was against Joe. We played on Turret Rocks, and he brought this force to bear:
Ornak
Brunak
Iskra (with Retches in tow)
2 Squads of Heavy Gruts

Joe opened with the most radical play of the entire day. Using Ornak's Red Flag of Fury, he had Brunak run Iskra forward, then had Iskra summon her retches adjacent to Deathwalker 9000 in the middle of the map. As he then took an immediate turn with them, he was able to jumpstart Deathwalker on his first order marker!

Man.

That was so completely wicked.

Ah, I guess there was more to it from there. In the meantime, I had been marching some Redcoats towards the obnoxiously hard to reach attack glyph. However, they very rapidly got murdered by Brunak and Iskra. I regrouped here and managed to swarm Iskra with a few Redcoats led by Marcus, who killed her.

As Deathwalker started punching big holes through my dudes who where noobishly clumped in a few instances, I repeated my swarm tactic and Brought down Brunak. With the big red troll out of the way, I was able to grab the attack glyph and then things really started to pick up for me.

It was still very back and forth, with deathwalker doing a number on my troops until at last a combination of waiting-then-firing, height, and the attack glyph enabled me to break his defense. I immediately set upon the retches that popped out, and killed two of them before they got to do much damage.

After I finished off the last Retch, it was basically done. I had height, the attack glyph, and a river separating his orcs from my redcoats. I ended the Jumpstart with a final round differential of 200 points. The weakest of the four first place finishers. But hey, I'm not complaining!

Great games all around, close games all around. I look forward to playing everyone again! Tomorrow it's off to the main event, where I expect to be owned! :P

[KaBoomboomBoom]

Hello everyone.

Jumpstart:

Here's what I ran, or should I say amassed.

6x 4th Mass.

Thoughts leading up to the army:

Hmmm. I think I want to play mass. How many points is the tournament again? 450, oh yeah. Hmmm. What works best with that? 5x 4th. Well that's 350 pts. What's 100 Points and valiant? Eldgrim, yeah but he's only 30 and is kinda janky. Thorgrim....jank. How about more 4th mass? Okay, that works and is mindless.

Game 1 - Lil' Ramparts
vs. Michael (?)
Glyphs: +2 Move, +8 Init.

2x Venoc Vipers
2x Aubrien Archers
Venoc Warlord
1x Rats
Marro Warriors


Venoc Vipers are fassssssssssssst when they have the Warlord. Fast enough where during round one Michael was able to get possession of the deathwalker. For the rest of the game I just kept trying to pound on the deathwalker. However, I didn't have height and with wait and first the best I could get was four attacks of three. After about eight unsuccessful attacks against Deathwalker I started moving a slow train of mass towards his starting zone and started assaulting Aubriens and Marro Warriors from height. Michael was taking most of this turns with the deathwalker (that was powered by three vipers - odd image.) Fortunately for me I was able to engage the deathwalker with a 4th mass, so that he couldn't explode my starting zone. However, he was able to kill a 4th at least every other round he took with the Deathwalker.

1 - 0

Game 2 - Lil' Ramparts
vs. Toby
Glyphs: +2 Move, +8 Init.

1x Templar Cavalry
1x Old Rae rae
Father Esenwein
Krav

This game was a learning experience. Unfortunately Toby didn't know that deathwalker couldn't be activated with templar, and first turn he charged them in. I retaliated and killed one or two straight off. From then on he held down the middle with Cyprien, and I tried desperately to kill the bastard with four attacks of two for the next four or so turns. However he just chomped my dudes, and felt all fuzzy. Eventually he started to move his Krav and Rae into striking range. There was a little tete-a-tete between the fourth and the krav at range for a while, until I pulled a red coats and charged one krav and rolled two skulls. With the krav gimped I started focusing on Rae now that all the Krav, the remaining Templar and Cyprien were in range. After I killed her I went to work on everything else, and eventually it fell.

2 - 0

Game 3 - Embattled Fen
vs. Cory aka Ninthdoc
Glyph - Lodin +1 to nothing really important

Kato Katsuro
3x Yari
2x Harquibus
Isamu

Tough match. Well thought out army. Superb opponent.

Once this match began I realized I had an uphill battle ahead. The ability to move eight units a turn with Kato is nothing to be scoffed at when their is a giant mechanical beast waiting dormant in the middle to be activated. The real advantages of moving and attacking with two squads a turn became apparent once Ninthdoc started using the deathwalker turret not once, but twice in a turn including with the Yari. For most of this match there was a war of attrition surrounding the deathwalker. I'd jump down into the water next to deathwalker with one of my mass in the hopes that he wouldn't be able to a) activate it b) use it as a turret twice during his turn. Most of the time, I'd jump down he'd begin with the Harquibus from height and take out the fodder. Then the Yari would man the deathwalker and kill or try to kill another 4th that was approaching. I admit that I wasn't clear on the rules involving Kato, and at first thought that there was some cloudy grey area in the use of two squads and Kato in relation to the deathwalker, however after talking with Jexik and getting the ruling from Rÿchean I see that it was a smart maneuver to take Kato and Kompany. Overall, I was finally able to pull out the match by whittling down the lower defense units by getting mass into position for effective strikes. It was close.

3 - 0

Grats to lonewolf for taking home the bomb trophy.

[Agent of Vydar]

Originally Posted by KaBoomboomBoom

Yyyyyyy Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Sssssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Sssssssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Sssssssssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Ssssssss Sss
Yyyyyyyy Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeee Ssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeee Ssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeee Ssssssss
Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeee Ssssssssss
Yyyyyyyyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeee Ssssssssss
Yyyyyyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeee Sssssssss
Yyyyyyyyyy Eeeeeeee Ssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeee Ssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Sss Ssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Sssssssssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Sssssssssssss
Yyyyyyyy Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Sssssssssss

I think a simple yes would do!
Great Job on your winning record Jexik.

[lonewolf]

Originally Posted by Jexik

I only managed to kill 7 Deathreavers, which gave Lonewolf a win so big that he managed to secure the trophy ahead of my two friends who each won their heats.

You only killed 4 deathreavers, I had the other three in DW9000!

Between the bad map matchup for you and some lucky rolls for me, it made it tough for you to win. On another map, the result could have been a lot different.

It was great to meet you Jexik....maybe you can get revenge on me tomorrow!

[GaryLASQ]

Thanks for the battle reports Jexik. Funny thing is, I was thinking about bringing 4 Glads and 2 Blasts. And just yesterday decided to swap out a squad of Glads for Raelin. Maybe I won't do that afterall.

Anyhow, we are leaving tomorrow afternoon. See you Saturday!

Originally Posted by Jexik

Thursday

Today I did the Deathwalker Jumpstart at 5:00. Because it's a strong and fun army to play, I went with 3x Gladiatrons, 2x Blastatrons, Raelin, and Isamu for 450 points and 22 hexes. I was mostly thinking that I'd avoid trying to get the Deathwalker and kill people as they tried to get it, and if I did have the numbers to grab it, 9 range B-trons would be hilarious.

Game 1 ......

[Jexik]

Friday!

Alright, I'd like to take this time to apologize to all the poor saps who picked me in the Fantasy Draft. No matter how many times I say that I'm not the best competitor around, people keep thinking I have skill.

Oh well.

On to the Championship. Oh yeah, I played Vanilla Ice, the same army I used to win a recent small tourney in Illinois. It doesn't have much synergy, but it is pretty easy on the OM's and has a lot of tools for different situations.

4x Marro Stingers
Nilfheim
2x Deathreavers
Isamu

Game 1

I was playing a teenager named Zack. I'm not sure if he's on HSers.com or not. His army was very similar to mine (and actually the same as gamjuven's)- 4x Marro Stingers, Raelin, Sonya, and Cyprien. We were playing on Ticalla Sunrise, and the glyphs were Ulaniva (swamp side) and Lodin (sunny side).

As soon as I saw Cyprien and Raelin, I knew what I had to do with Nilfheim. Nothing. I put him way back in my starting zone and blocked him off with 3 Deathreavers. That way he couldn't get Cyprien in their for a debilitating Chilling Touch roll. I pushed forward with my rats as he moved Raelin up. I did a pretty good job of locking down his units, and I ignored the glyphs.

He put Raelin a bit too far forward, and then I went crazy with my Stingers, killing her, and later killing Cyprien, as well as his Stingers. It felt nice to win against a similarly powerful army, so I gained quite a bit of confidence in my choice.

1-0

Game 2

My second game was against matrix renegade. His army was almost as cool as he was. It was a very old school 'super krav' army: 3x Knights of Weston, Thorgrim, Eldgrim, Finn, and of course, the Krav Maga Agents. We were playing on Feylund Fountain, and there was a Defense glyph on his side, as well as an initiative glyph on my side. I actually fear melee armies quite a bit with my build, because both the Stingers and Nilfheim only have 5 range on their attacks, so they have to get into smacking range. The small map also helped make it easier for his guys to close the distance, even without Gilbert grape around.

This game was a mindfrack.

He won initiative, and overextended Eldgrim to the Defense glyph on his first turn, and started pushing his Knights towards that glyph, as well as sending some towards the other one.

I started sending rats up, of course, but their little nibbling didn't do much with Eldgrim sitting on the defense glyph. On my third marker, I flew Nilfheim up to the absolute high point on my map, menacingly.

Then he did something really smart, putting Thorgrim adjacent to Eldgrim. Not only did this boost his defense, but it made me seriously reconsider killing Eldgrim. Not only would that boost his Krav up to a ridiculous 7 move, but it meant that he'd be able to put Thorgrim on the glyph, and if I killed him, his Krav would have a permanent 4 defense. And since I had activated Nilfheim so stupidly early, I had to keep activating him because Finn and the Knights were eyeing him hungrily. Yikes.

Then matrix renegade saw why I like Nilfheim and rats so much. For several rounds, we played a fun little game of cat and mouse, with me trying to kill as many Knights without getting engaged, or even allowing him to get close. I'd periodically ice shard stragglers around the map. At one point his buddy pointed out that "it got too hot up on that hill, so Nilfheim decided to cool off" in the central fountain. Eventually, I managed to fly in and engage one of his Krav agents and claw him with my normal attack- two skulls, two shields. That happened at least once, maybe twice, and meanwhile the other agents started peppering from height. I eventually got one agent down with him though.

Then Nilfheim died.

My stingers then tried to do their thing. On one crucial turn when I had one stinger engaged to Eldgrim (from height), one engaged to a Krav, and one engaged to Thorgrim, I decided to juice, hoping to knock them down like dominoes.

But I rolled a 3.

He killed one of the Stingers in the interim. Not dissuaded from my plan of action, I juiced again, killing Eldgrim, and another Knight or two, and failed to kill another Krav.

Then time was called. I had just 3 Stingers and Isamu left (70 points). He had 2 Krav, A Thorgrim with 1 Life left, 1 Knight of Weston, and Isamu left (260 points). It felt a lot closer than that point spread would suggest.

But yeah. Zack is a very astute and fun player to have a game with. He played his army very well, and I didn't mind losing to him. He seemed surprised to win that game and figured I'd go on to day two anyway. He made it there himself, which is pretty awesome with such a melee heavy army.

1-1

Game 3

I played playa1 from Champaign, Illinois. He played a fun army that got him major props from mrbistro. Dünd, 2x Shades of Bleakwoode, and Braxas.

I was mostly afraid that Nilfhiem would get his soul devoured, but it never quite happened. He was also rolling really unluckily on his Acid Breath for Braxas, so it wasn't all that close. It was still pretty tense though every time he picked up that d20 next to Nilfheim.

2-1

Game 4

In this game, I was playing against Eirikr on Turret Rocks. My first thought when I saw his army was, "How the hell did this guy lose a game?" He was running 4x Deathreavers, Major Q9, Raelin, and Krav. I voiced this question, and he said he got unlucky or something. Even though I once called this army "Douchenozzle" in the 520 point competitive armies thread, Eric isn't a French Canadian at all. He's a Viking. When he's not raping people in Heroscape, he's busy pillaging countrysides and burninating peasants. Pretty cool, eh?

Anyway. Since I had half as many rats as he did, I didn't want to rush all three of my markers on rats toward the glyph. I was worried that Q9 would just gun them all down. Eric played his rats well, taking the Astrid glyph thanks to my X being in a stupid spot on the first round (just 1 and 2 on them), as well as sending some up the rock, using Climb x2 to great effect.I sent Nilfheim up to height. Even with height, he later took 4 wounds from a single normal attack from Major Q9. And I didn't want to send him down towards the attack glyph because I thought he'd get sniped by frigging Krav.

I never had a chance. I think I only killed 5 or 6 rats the whole game, but I lost nearly all of my rats, some stingers, and Nilfheim. Ouch.

2-2

Game 5

My last game of the day was on Highways and Dieways: SE against jacob j_p. The glyphs were pretty minor- initiative and lodin I think. He was playing Marro Warriors, Nilfheim, Raelin, Major Q9, Isamu, and Otonashi. I knew he was with the solid Ohio group and he was playing a solid army, so I was expecting a really intense match.

But really, I think we were both at least mildly upset that we didn't really have a shot at day 2. He was a really kind and sportsmanlike player, and was paying attention every second. If he saw me pick up just 3 dice for my stingers, he'd remind me that I had height advantage, and stuff like that. He was a class act. The game was pretty laidback, and I went for the Stinger Drain way more often than I normally would (pretty much any time I was shooting at Q9 or Nilfheim) and it paid off.

Also, his luck was pretty bad. He once whiffed on 7 dice with Nilfheim (height, Raelin) when I rolled just the right number of skulls to finish him off.

Once Nilfheim was out of the way, my stingers took out Raelin and started attacking Q9, getting maybe one or two woulds. Eventually, I was down to just 3 or 4 of them, and I started sweating.

Then I smacked my forehead. I still had my Nilfheim. Between him and the remaining Stingers; Q9, the Marro Warriors, and the Ninjas died. I think Nilfheim may have died, but I don't remember. He was definitely close to death at least.

Thanks for the fun game Jacob.

3-2 (20th place because of a pretty strong schedule)

[Grungebob]

Fun thread! Thanks Jexik!

[Jexik]

Originally Posted by Grungebob

Fun thread! Thanks Jexik!

Thanks for setting up such awesome events. Speaking of which, I'm not done yet. I played 23 games of Heroscape this weekend!

FRIDAY (cont'd).

Battle over Cursed Lands (... should totally be called THE FLOOR IS LAVA!*)

*Or make it actually lava, so that you can make Brunak and Obsidian guards alright in the event too?

Aside from the burning floor, the only other interesting parts of the tourney were that it was single elimination and divided into four separate 8-man heats, much like the Jumpstart.

So yeah. I like Krug, and will use any excuse to play him in a tourney. He's one of the few non-flying units that likes taking damage. I thought about playing the MacDirks or Zombies, but that was a little too outside the hex. When almost everything is flying, almost everything is an expensive squad figure or hero. You know what likes to kill those and also flies? Minions. They bring the beats.

Krug
3x Minions of Utgar

Game 1

On Ticalla Sunrise, I played Lonewolf's nephew, who was using Charos, Braxas, Marcu and Isamu. As much as his uncle is a fierce, uncompromising competitor complete with non-disclosure agreements signed at his game days, this kid is just out there to roll some dice, hang out, and have a good time. We both had fun with the game.

He led with Braxas but had done a shotgun spread with his order markers, leaving her on low ground. My Minions snagged a move glyph and proceeded to axe pretty much everyone questions.

"Is your head still attached to your long, snakelike neck?"
"No," Braxas, Charos, and Marcu replied.
"Did you see the Heroscape booth at GenCon?"
"No."

Isamu got hot feet and melted.

1-0

Game 2

I played Stacey from Illinois in my next game. I had met her and her family at one of GaryLASQ's previous game days, so it was nice to see a familiar face at the con. Apparently my Krug idea wasn't that original, as she was playing him too. She also had Charos, Iskra, Rechets, and Marcu.

This game was pretty close, but the game was largely decided early on when I caught her Krug without any order markers on him, and on low ground. Did I mention that I had an attack glyph? I scored 3 wounds on him, and then I rolled 4 out of 4 skulls with one Minion, which killed him. Charos lasted awhile, but eventually got beat down by Krug.

2-0

Game 3

I played a guy named Derek on Turret Rocks. He had 2x Minions, Raelin, and Mimring. Great, the one map where flying is nearly a requirement, and I'm the dope who didn't bring as many fliers. Although the attack glyph is an obvious bonus for my army, he had Minions too, and we traded blows for awhile, and then Mimring scorched some guys. He took the glyph back from me, and I sent Krug down to deal with him.

But he was getting burned, both from ground, and Mimring. I was stuck way too low and Derek wasn't foolish enough to put Mimring on the edge of the cliffs. I lost badly enough that he won the trophy, much as I did in the Deathwalker event.

2-1

SATURDAY

I did a win-a-wave. I played 3x Gladiatrons, 2x Blastatrons, Isamu, and Raelin- the same army as I played at the Deathwalker event. I'm living proof that playing a "tournament winning army" doesn't mean that you'll win a tournament. Some people are just better at the game than you and I are.

Game 1

I'm not sure who I played in this game, but it was on Embattled Fen. He was playing Marro Hive, 4x Marro Stingers, Otonashi, Isamu, and Guilty. He was either a player that was honestly new to the game and took time to understand what was going on, or was doing it strategically. I don't know. The guy rolled the d20 like a madman, always rolling for stinger drain and rebirth with pretty good success rates. Since I usually like to slowly roll up the trons, this long map and the Hive really changed up my game plan, but thanks to a good Raelin position and a Defense glyph in the center of the map, I eventually pulled it out with some crazy Gladiatrons-buzzing-down-the-road-with-their-own-turn-marker-antics. And he finally failed Stinger Drain.

1-0

Game 2

I played Draconious on Winter Holdout. It might be a map that I remade, but I always lose on the darn thing. I'm jinxed or something. He had 6x Redcoats. He went for the move glyph, and I went for Defense, putting Raelin in a good spot to protect the glyph holder.

I was kicking major tail for a real long time, until it came down to when I only had about 8 guys left, and he had 8. In one crazy turn, he killed 2 of my 4 blastatrons, and 2 of my remaining 3 Gladiatrons. Some of the Blastatrons even whiffed on 5 or 6 defense dice. Then it was down to just my Raelin, Isamu, and 4 Redcoats.

Time was getting close, so theoretically, I should have just ran away and hid behind a ruin. But I don't play that way. I'm way too used to playing every game to its finish at home, so I tried to kill everything, but only got 1 or 2 of them before Raelin died. On the flip side, I think that if I did try to run with Raelin, I would have been facing 3-4 attacks from height on one turn, which probably would have been a faster way to lose.

1-1

[Rifier_Ace]

20th place isn't to bad Jexik, probably a lot better than what I could have done against some of the best players in the US. Good job.

By the way Jexik, do you know how Jormi and Rev did in the main event? I haven't heard anything yet.

[Velenne]

They bring the beats.

Your new title: "I bring the beats."