GenCon Reports '13

[vegietarian18]

Main Event Day 1

5, 4, 8, 3, 3. Those are the number of wounds that my opponent or I had left to take at the end of each of my games. These were probably some of the closest and most interesting games I have ever played and definitely the most competitive. Looking on the armies that made Day 2, I probably played in the top 50% of builds there, maybe even higher than that, but given the matchups, armies, and quality of players I faced, I don’t think I could have made it with something much weaker.

My build was:
10th x3
Raelin
Nakitas
Otonashi

I wanted to play something complex with difficult choices and strategies that weren’t obvious. I thought Redcoats and Nakitas fit that bill. Wait Then Fire makes podding almost a necessity, but the real difficulty in this army comes in covering the Redcoats’ weakness to range with Smoke Powder, and knowing when to set up Engagement Strike pods at the front of an army. I got pretty good at it in my practice games, but ended up facing only one army where my ability to set up Smoke Powder mattered.

Game 1 vs. sixthflagbearer (Dividers x5, Major Q9) on Stygian Rift

sixth made Day 2 with this army last year, and Redcoats are terrible against Q9, so this was going to be a tough match. Luckily, I won the first initiative and was able to set up 3 Redcoats on height and one on shadow all in Raelin’s aura. Q9 Quiglixed one, but I took two Wait then Fire shots of four and one of three, and got 3 wounds. Q9 moved on to the lava height with his next turn, but failed his shots on my Redcoats. I knew I had to make a big play, so I triple engaged Q9 and forced him to stay on lava. I didn’t get any wounds and he killed the Redcoats, but Q9 died and the match got a ton easier. The Dividers hung on for a long time though, just slowly busting through my limited number of Redcoats. They hit a fair number of divides but I was just getting more attacks than him. There was one big turn where he killed three Redcoats on OM1 and got me down to less than a squad, and things got very tight from there. I finally got him down to a single Divider, killed it with Raelin, but he divided! Besides the Kyrie, all I had left was one Nakita, so things were really close. Luckily, he moved one Divider on to height but into Engagement Strike, and I got my first Engagement Strike roll of the game to kill him. The other got a wound on Raelin, but Raelin took him out (either through forcing him to stay on lava or a normal attack, can’t remember).

1-0

Game 2 vs. Pickle4192 (Braxas, Stingers x3, Marro Warriors) on Burial Marsh

My army has literally no answer for Braxas, and this game showed it. I fell for a Stinger trick, where he put OM1 on Stingers and put them on low ground, and I attacked them instead of Braxas. Even though I had height on those guys, I should have still gone for the dragon for a chance at a few wounds. Once Braxas was on top of me, I had almost no chance. Braxas rolled 11/14 on Poison Acid Breath, and survived a constant Wait Then Fire the whole time she was doing so. I was able to pull the Nakitas out of the fray and they made the game a lot closer than it should have been. They killed Braxas, and the rest of the Stingers, but eventually died. The Marro Warriors were all he had left when he killed the one Redcoat Braxas didn’t get.

1-1

Game 3 vs. Dragonslayer (Heavy Gruts x3, Nerak, Tornak, Raelin) on Ticalla Sunrise

This was a tough, back and forth match that I thought I was going to lose at multiple points. I led with Raelin and Nakitas, and set up a great Engagement Strike pod on Wannok side, but forfeit control of the glyph to the faster moving Heavies. I think it was the right move though, since I got four wounds on Raelin as his screen advanced. Then, the 10th rolled in, and started blasting Heavies, but Raelin made it difficult to kill anything. I got a few kills, but most were from Engagement Strike. The big turn that won me the game was a Wait Then Fire that freed up my one 10th in range of his Raelin just in time for him to take my last shot, which killed her. Nerak fell shortly after, as did the rest of his army. It was a tough matchup for him, but he played it well and made it close. All I had left at the end was a 1-life Raelin and 7 Redcoats.

2-1

Game 4 vs. Filthy the Clown (Frost Giant, Knights x3, Thorgrim, Otonashi) on Flash Fire

The Frost Giant barreled towards me, and I foolishly wasted an OM setting up a Nakita Engagement strike shield on all three routes to Raelin (since I wasn’t planning moving her). He still got to her, and he still had height. Battle Frenzy let him swing down twice with seven dice, and she was gone. A couple turns later, so were two Redcoats and two Nakitas. Filthy made a joke about using Bayonet, and I was really dumb and actually took his advice. I did finish off Frosty, but he killed two of my 10th with Dying Swipe. I had about eight Redcoats and one Nakita to take on the rest of his entire army. I was feeling like I had just blown my shot at making Day 2. The dice gods didn’t want to see that happen. I won a few big initiatives, was able to gun down Knights before they got to me, which allowed me to limit his attacks, and somehow pulled the win from nowhere with just two Redcoats and the last Nakita remaining.

3-1

Game 5 vs. Rollitontop (Mezzodemons x4, Major Q9) on Stygian Rift

I was expecting him to play it the same way sixthflagbearer did (leading with Q9), so my round full of OMs on 10th turned out to be poorly placed when he led out with Mezzos. My Nakitas should have been up there giving me Smoke Powder, but I didn’t react to his figure placement and they weren’t. My quantity of attacks won out though, throughout rounds and rounds and rounds of fighting, and he switched to Q9 with 3 Mezzos remaining, while I had 2 Nakitas, Raelin, and 6 Redcoats. Again, my army has no answer for Q9. I got an early wound from a 4 skull Wait Then Fire blast, but he didn’t take wounds for quite a while after that. He Quiglexed through the Redcoats, one by one, at which point I switched to the 2 Nakitas to mix things up, and a random 2 skull roll met with a 8 defense whiff put Q9 a wound from death. I had some huge blocks, then Raelin flew in, but couldn’t finish him with a couple shots of four. He finished off the Nakitas, but went down to a Wait Then Fire from the final Redcoat. Raelin then was left to finish the Mezzos. She got the first strike and killed one, but the second fell much harder. There was some really crazy die rolling and a tons of shields between us both, but eventually the kyrie came out on top with just two wounds. The multiple lives was a big advantage for me since I was able to risk disengage and lava damage to maintain my height advantage.

4-1, heading on to Day 2!

Main Event Day 2

Game 1 vs. Pickle1492 (Braxas, Stingers x3, Marro Warriors)

Unfortunately for me, Braxas regressed to the mean from the awesome performance Pickle had with her against me Day 1. I flew her in on a death run, trying to just kill one Nakita and get as many Redcoats dead as I possibly could. Luck just wasn’t on my side, as Braxas went 3 for 9 on Poison Acid Breath, failed to kill a single Nakita, and died after just three turns of attacks from low ground. The Marro fought hard, but couldn’t make a game out of it with the majority of the enemy still alive. Five Redcoats and a once wounded Raelin still stood alive when the final Marro Warrior went down.