Battle at the Border III Battle Report Thread

[nyys]

Post em here folks.

I will at some point...

EDIT:

For the spectators passing through, each scenario was worth 6 victory points, so when you see scores of 5-1, 3-3, 4-2, in these reports, that's where it's coming from.

[Scapemage]

One of my favorite games of the day...
Scapemage921 Vs. CurseYouKahn
We played on Ambush. I was the defender of the glyphs with 3x Dumutef Guards. In the first ound, I chose to place y Water Elemental and Wyvern. CurseYouKahn went forward with Krug first, but he was taken out by a combonation of my Water Elemental, Wyvern, and a Dumutef Guard. In the second round I chose to place Torin and my Air Elemental. The Air Elemental took up position at te crossroad. CurseYouKahn managed to eliminate a Dumutef Guard and my Wyvern before advancing with the Izumi Samurai. My second Dumutef Guard move forward, and the Water Elemental took the life of 1 Izumi Samurai. In Round 3 I places Stingers and Brave Arrow. My Water Elemental was taken down not long thereafter, and soon oly 1 Dumutef Guard remained. My Stingers finished the Samurai off. CurseYouKahn finally made a move. He advanced his Krav Mage Agents, and by avoiding my units near the crossroad, managed to reveal 1 glyph just in time. Brave Arrow diminished the Agents in short time. Nearing the end o the game, CurseYouKahn chose the right man for the job, Isamu. Isamu vanished frequently, avoiding the pursueing Torin as he managed to reveal another glyph. Toin couldn't take him out in time, and soon enough the game was over. Isamu was on a lgyph, there was revealed but uncaptured glyph, and 1 unrevealed glyph. That gave us each 3 points. Great game CurseYouKahn! By the way, thanks for those Utgar dice!

EDIT: More reports later!

[fil]

Marro Mayhem - Jay T. (5-1)
Army: 3x PKs, Brave Arrow + didn't matter.

I didn't read the rules carefully on this one until mid-way through round three, so luckily I was able to get a PK on one of the sand areas before the end of the round—thus the two half-point splits.

After that, I took the two middle sand areas while Jay struggled to get his Charos free of all the Marro I'd clogged him up with. I ended up holding three areas for the remaining three rounds with one figure/area, and it wasn't until the sixth round that he finally got Charos into the fourth area. But by then, he only had Charos and two Greenscales warriors left in his army.

I think if Jay had utilized the hive at all, the result would have been closer, but he only activated his army cards and ended up fighting the Marro forces by which he was nearly completely destroyed.

Jailbreak - SonofCurseyouKhan (6-0)
Army - Cyprien and ... well I suppose it doesn't matter.

I ended up being the defender on this map. Since this was short, here's the play-by-play:

Round 1
SoCYK had Iskra (+ Retchets), Finn, Carr and Otanashi. He wins first initiative, moves Iskra up, misses the summon.
Cyprien moves, misses chill touch, deals two wounds to Iskra anyway.
Carr moves up, whiff
Cyprien chill touches Carr with a 19, deals one more wound on Iskra.
Finn moves up, deals three wounds on Cyprien.
Zettians deal one wound to Finn

Round 2,
Cyprien chill touches Finn with an 18, whiffs Iskra.
Cyprien chill touches Iskra
Otanashi runs.
Cyprien whiffs chill, deals two wounds to Otanashi. Game.

This one left me with the feeling that the Guards/Defenders had the distinct advantage in most cases. I'm interested in hearing how the other matchups turned out. In my case, the opponent's army was wholly unsuited for this scenario, and it just so happened to play into Cyprien's strength perfectly.

More to come later ...

[ollie]

Great event! Thanks very much to Bengi and Nyys and all the playtesters.

I showed up having looked at about half the scenarios and not knowing what I was going to play. I'd thought a little about it in the car and it seemed like using 100pt increments and 30pt increments would give me a lot of flexibility while allowing me to field the units I wanted to.

I had Carr inked in, see my blog for why, and after that heroes and mobility seemed to be desirable. Cyprien and Sonya at 200pts seemed natural choices and Shades x2 as well (very mobile, and good if everyone else is fielding heroes---I was surprised that I was the only one using them). That left one more 100pt slot. It came down to X17 and DW7K---both good counterdrafty units that I thought could swing a game or two with the right scenario. I went with X17. The fillers were: Izumi Samurai (given the recent trend towards melee), Eldgrim (an early addition to the roster because of the speed boost and overextend), Chainfighter x2 (I hadn't even opened any of my D1; I cracked the plastic about half and hour before the start), Marcu, Isamu, Ototnashi (with Carr, her potential 10 move seemed promising).

Cyprien and Sonya featured in every game and all the units hit the field at least twice. I ended up winning 4, losing 1 and tying 1 for a sixth place finish.

Three of those wins are, I think, more of a tribute to my army than me. I played Gorillas in the Mist against Kildawabit. Shades are perfect for that and dwarves are not. As usual, Kildawabit outplayed me (in particular I made a couple of obvious errors) and for the second time this year I got an undeserved victory against him. Against Ninja on Last Night on Valhalla, it was the Izumi that made the difference: attacking them with the neutral zombies was win-win for me: either I regenerate new zombies from Ninja's pool, or I counterstrike them and add a zombie to my pool. The last game was against Lobo on the bigfoot scenario. This was a Cyprien/Shades party. Cyprien held back Lobo's much slower army (taking out Raelin, Kaemon Awa and 5 PKs thanks to Sonya on an atack glyph and a healing treasure glyph) and the Shades scooted up at the end to claim the point-scoring territory.

Other than that, Bengi completely wiped me out on a treasure hunt game (5.5 - 0.5). I was relying almost entirely on Cyprien. He was witherwooded (witherwod?). In hindsight, I should have fielded at least one squad of Shades rather than filler heroes. The low-point heroes didn't offer enough per order-marker in this scenario; I'd have been better off trying to steal Bengi's.

The tie was against Nyys on Zombie Island. A really fun scenario, though a bit more complicated than most. I bottled it towards the end (the right choice, I think). Nyys had two points in the bank and I had the choice of running off to guarantee 3 or a Chilling Touch roll against Zelrig that might have netted me 4 (but if it failed would have give Nyys the choice of a tie or risking a try for 6-0). I hadn't understood the rules properly, so even after I'd done it it turned out that Nyys had to make it across to the other side of the board. Some unreasonable luck with Marcu and zombies could have snatched that 4th point, but it wasn't to be.

The remaining game was against Fil on the MacDirk escape map. We both switched out all of the given heroes. I lucked out here: Fil got Saylind into position to teleport her team into the point-scoring water and had three attempts before I got there to do anything about it. Two failed and I ended up edging it 3.5-2.5.

Thanks to all my opponents for the games; I enjoyed them all. Great to see everyone again and meet a few new faces as well.

[nyys]

The tie was against Nyys on Zombie Island. A really fun scenario, though a bit more complicated than most. I bottled it towards the end (the right choice, I think). Nyys had two points in the bank and I had the choice of running off to guarantee 3 or a Chilling Touch roll against Zelrig that might have netted me 4 (but if it failed would have give Nyys the choice of a tie or risking a try for 6-0). I hadn't understood the rules properly, so even after I'd done it it turned out that Nyys had to make it across to the other side of the board. Some unreasonable luck with Marcu and zombies could have snatched that 4th point, but it wasn't to be.

Yeah, in hindsight, it was bit too complicated for the setting we were playing in, which was shy we left it as the extra map in several of the rounds. Though I highly recommend every try this scenario out. Either my toned down version (without the 6 round restriction) or Velenne's (original creator) insane overrun with Zombies version. Check out the downloads section of the sight for both versions (search Zombie Island).

[Cleon]

Army: Hydra x3, Kaemon, Rats x3, Kaemon, Guilty, Isamu, Otonashi, Marcu.

1: Darkmage7a; Underdark Springs, 4pt.
2: Mombo101; Treasure Hunt; .5pt.
3: Phin; Water World; 4pt.
4: Warlord Alpha; Stone Statues; 3pt.
5: Scape Mage; Gorillas in the Mist; 5pt.
6: Jimmi (Mini Lobo); Marvel; 3pt.

9th place; total win pt. - 19.5

The .5 may have been dropped.

Prize: Gorillas and Hounds

[Scapemage]

Those rats still haunt me.... rats on Gorillas scenario= really easy win. ( scatter )

[Cleon]

Originally Posted by scapemage921

Those rats still haunt me.... rats on Gorillas scenario= really easy win. ( scatter )

Yeah, they're definitely a unit to have on that one.

[Jim]

Forget the reports... Who got what for prizes?

[Darkmage7a]

A great big Thanks to everyone who showed up! This was a great experience.

Special thanks to Guru and Jim for the donation to the prize table.
Thanks to Bengi, Nyys, Tomcollns for designing scenarios.
Thanks to Kildawabbit for joining in on playtesting.
Thanks to Warlord Alpha, Scapemage, Cleon, David, TheFattestNinja and Kildawabbit for some great games at the event.
Thanks to everyone who went in with an open mind looking for a good time.
Thanks to everyone nice enough to share food/snacks that day.
Thanks to everyone returned my Nagrubs back to me.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to set maps up correctly after they played.
Thanks to Valgaurd for finally dying.

Thanks to everyone who take the time to give us any feedback whatsoever, telling us what you enjoyed and would like to see again is just as valuable as lettign us know what didn't work quite as we'll as we hoped. We already have our own list of notes for next time, but constructive feedback is always welcome.

[fil]

Let's continue, shall we?

Great MacDirk Escape - Ollie (2.5 - 3.5)
Army - Six heroes.

Ollie and I are responsible for the mid-tourney rule change on this one, as we swapped 11 of the 12 heroes on this map. I kept Sudema on this one for no real specific reason.

Tactically, my plan was to run Saylind to the space next to the exit point, drop Raelin halfway and screen Ollie's side with my Cyprien.

For the most part, it worked.

I had some tough luck rolls, and only managed to summon Sudema out. Cyprien bailed next, but Saylind missed the next two summons and was taken down by some seriously-amped MacDirks. Sonya managed to escape next, and I was able to destroy one of Ollie's heroes. By then, our rounds were spent and his Sonya was left on the board. So, my points came by 3 escapees, one kill and one prevented.

This was a fantastic match. Odd by most standards, but great still. If I had it to do over, I'd have probably been more aggressive on the attack and sneak Saylind in more toward the end of the game to evac people, but X-17 was certainly a deterrent to that.

Last Night on Valhalla - Bengi (4-2)
Army - 3x PKs, Brave Arrow + access to the mess of Zombies (x6)

The goal was to kill as many Zombies as possible, one point per squad. Bengi pushed some zombies my way; I pushed some his way. He went up 5 zombies to nil pretty quick, but then his plan of pushing them all my way backfired on him. My PKs feasted on tons of zombies ... I was able in most cases, to get height on them.

In the end, Cyprien's lousy luck with chilling touch, combined with my PK's mobility and being able to take quality shots every turn netted me 12 zombies pretty quickly.

This game was lots of fun and a great concept. I wouldn't change a thing.

[tomcollins2000]

Originally Posted by scapemage921

Those rats still haunt me.... rats on Gorillas scenario= really easy win. ( scatter )

Ah but don't you love to hate them. Battle report later, but one of my best games was on heated battle with Phin it come down to his one life joton and a single PK (the paladin sculpt) on my last order of the game I dropped big joe with a lucky shot great game Phin hope to see you at the next event. More reports to come.