Canton, Ohio NHSD 5th Place

[gamjuven]

Alrighty, my Canton, Ohio battle report for national heroscape day. First off, let me thank Hendal again for the great job of running a tournament. I know first hand how difficult it can be to run a tournament, and hendal pulled it off nicely with almost double the people! The environment was great, the maps were stunning, the food was delicious, and the gaming was extraordinary.

My army:
Blastatronx x2
Gladiatrons x3
Agent Carr

After much debate I decided on a blastatron/gladiatron army. I was debating a stinger army but figured a lot of people would be playing that army, plus I don’t like 5 range with 5 movement. While play testing various armies for happyjosiah I found that the blast/glad army performed the best. Plus I have never used that army for a tournament and new it was a good army. I decided on 2 squads of blastatrons to go with 3 squads of gladiatrons. In my experience 2 squads of blastatrons is a fine amount, when considering their above average range, and just enough gladiatrons to lose a bunch and still be able to swarm opponent’s squads and heroes and to grab glyphs. Normally I would opt for Laglor in the army as I like to increase the blastatron’s range even more, but alas he was 5 points too much. I instead brought along Agent Carr as his 6 attack should be useful should I find an enemy that I can’t shoot at (mainly sergeant drake), plus he’s a nice finisher. Although I did have carr for drake specifically, I shuddered at the thought of running into an army with drake since Carr usually will have no chance against him. Another army that I knew would give me trouble would be a 4th mass army. Even though my blastatrons have 1 more range, 4th mass can sacrifice their stand still attack and use 2 attack on blastatrons and still have a great chance of killing them. With 40-50 people at the tournament I figured my chances of running into one of these armies was probably thin (right?). So anyway onto the battle report itself.

Game 1
My first game was against an opponent whom I forget his name unfortunately. I am really sorry if you are reading this. His army was a combination of a variety of units including agent carr, 1 squad of tagawa archers, and charos. This was just the kind of army I wanted to face for the tournament. Charos I simply swarmed him with about 5 gladiatrons and shot at him with height (4 attacks of 7 will down any figure pretty quickly). The other figures I did a similar tactic and although I accidentally sent in some blastatrons piecemeal and got them killed, I ended winning by a bunch of points. 1-0 with a healthy amount of positive point differential.

Game 2 Messenger 1-1
My second game pitted me against the one army I didn’t want to face, you guessed it, Drake with 5 squads of 4th mass. How depressing. Also what was disconcerting was the fact that there were going to be no glyphs on any of the maps. Normally I wouldn’t mind as my army can handle most armies without the need for any glyphs, but against a 4th mass army, it would have been nice to have glyphs on the maps. For one the glyphs would most likely help your army, and another defense or attack would have been great. But a more important fact of having a glyph on the map was that it would force a 4th mass army to come and get you, as they would want a glyph or at least take the glyph away from you. But alas I was facing a 4th mass army on a map with a choke point and no glyphs. O well, scape on I say!

I got crushed…. I couldn’t send my gladiatrons to engage the 4th mass without getting killed, and my blastatrons got shot up no matter what I did. Perhaps I should have stayed as far back as I could have but I would only have 1-2 attack on any given 4th mass, and they all had 3 defense, but messenger was rolling well this game, and I was doing my normal business of rolling no defense and unusually not rolling any skulls. It was over very quickly. Congrats to messenger for an awesome army, 5 squads of 4th mass is daunting for any army, and he played the army perfectly.

Game 3 (2-1)
Again I forget the name of the player that I played for my third game, perhaps I should have brought home my score card. My opponent had Marcus, 3 squads of romans, 2 squads of 4th mass (curses), me-burq-sa and isamu. The map that we played on had a bunch of random height on it with snow and ice. The game started off great with me killing 4 of his 4th mass as he accidently moved them out to gain height. I tied up his romans with my gladiatrons and began shooting up his army. My opponent used marcus very well, always managing to get him to give an attack bonus to everyone adjacent including the 4th mass. He also would never go down. I can’t tell you how many times I was rolling 4-5 dice 4 times and not managing to wound him more than once a turn. He stayed alive forever and I was always hesitant to commit my entire force to get him while there were still squads of romans alive. I was rolling horribly for the rest of the game, luckily I still won. I was afraid however that my point differential was not high enough, as I just came off the game against the 4th mass that dropped my pt differential to zero. The next game I would have to do very very well in order to be able to get to the top 8.

Game 4
Happyjosiah and I figured out that in order to make it to the final 8 one would have to have no more than 1 loss, and have a positive pt differential of at least 500. I had around 250 pts at the moment, so I had to pull off a big game in order to have a chance to make it to the top 8. I was facing an army composed of major Q9, Q10, raelin, and marro warriors. Obviously my opponent was not going for the golden nugget. I started out moving my army up towards the high ground on the left side. My opponent moved up raelin. I then moved up a second wave of gladiatrons expecting Q9 and Q10 to take out a bunch of them. Q9 moved from behind the ruin and shot at a blastatron and killed him. That was to be my only casualty for the game. Ignoring my common rule of taking out raelin first I swarmed Q9 with 4 gladiatrons and shot at him from height. 4 shots of 6 dice reigned down upon him and thanks to some unfortunate rolling on my opponent’s part, Q9 was vanquished. I now had 2 free turns while my opponent had to waste his turn markers since they were all on Q9. I swarmed raelin and took her out, and then attempted to get closer to Q10 when the round ended. I won initiative and sent everyone in to take out Q10. Unfortunately I had to jump down from my height as Q10 was still in my opponent’s starting zone, but it didn’t really matter as 4 attacks of 5 on Q10 will usually take him down since he only has 4 life and 5 defense. Again the dice gods smiled down upon me and allowed me to smote Q10 in the first order marker, again leaving him unable to do anything for a turn. I finished up and killed his marro warriors without any further trouble. This had to be one of the quickest games of heroscape I’ve played. I felt really bad for my opponent as nothing had gone his way. He was a much better sport than I would have been and accepted his lose as a gentlemen. This was a most fortunate game for me as the win gave me a 3-1 record and around 695 positive point differential, which turned out to be enough to advance into the top 8!

Game 5 playoff 3-2 Royaldoy.
Uggg, the dice gods cursed me again, I think it was due to my very lucky game previously, but I ended up having to play another 4th mass army in the first round of the playoffs. Roy chose only 3 squads of 4th mass, 2 squads of knights, sir gilbert, and isamu. Roy is a good friend from the western PA tournaments and I knew going into the tournament that he would be using a 4th mass army, he just can’t be involved in a tournament without using those cursed guys (just you wait till the melee only tourney Roy, then what will you do? Hahahahaha!). Our map was a lava board of sorts. I was already in trouble at the start since I knew I couldn’t play against a 4th mass army well but I sealed my fate when I accidentally shot at isamu and killed him, causing the his army to be valiant which added another defense die to his 4th mass (So stupid!) To go along with my stupidity came another game filled with my inability to rolls skulls or shields. I died fairly quickly. Props to Roy for using Gilbert as he should be used in this army. I had at one point considered almost his exact army for a tournament in western PA, but never could use it correctly as gilbert’s movement ability was always lost as I advanced on towards the enemy. But Roy just kept giblets back and used him to move up knights and 4th mass, then placing most of his order markers on the previously moved 4th mass, giving them their wait then fire ability, while allowing gilbert to remain unhurt and his knights the ability to also move and attack occasionally.

Round 2 of finals 4-2 Lori (Roy’s wife)
Alrighty, I may not be able to win the tourney, but darn it I will make a good showing and attempt to come in 5th. This game saw me up against Roy’s wife, Lori, and her blast/glad army. People approached and laughed at us seeing the battlefield. There were so many blasts and glads everywhere. We first decided that Lori’s army could be placed on it’s side in order for us not to be confused but gave up quickly on that as she couldn’t keep them still and their lying down position interfered too much with line of site. We instead decided to play this game like chess, with all my figures pointed in one direction, and hers the other. Her army was different than mine, consisting of 3 squads of blastatrons, 2 squads of gladiatrons, which allowed her to take Laglor and isamu. Happyjosiah played this army and he said he liked it better than my version of the army. I have to admit having laglor in my army would have been a great help and may have caused me to be able to beat 4th mass armies and win everything, but I still like my army. Of course in a 500 pt game I would put laglor in and I think my army would be much better, but anyway onto the match. It was ridiculous and fun for most of the game as we would send our gladiatrons into the fray only to get cyberclawed by each other and shot at. My greater amount of gladiatrons turned out to be my winning factor as I still had a bunch and Lori had no more. I chased isamu around for a while until I could cyberclaw him and it was over.

4th and 5th place game 5-2 killercactus
This was my favorite game of the tournament to play. Killercactus was a great opponent and it was fun playing against him and watching him play his army. He had 3 squads of stingers, Q10, 3 squads of deathreavers, and isamu. We were playing on soulrazor which has a bunch of height and a nice choke point in the middle of the map. He did not want to play my army as my gladiatrons stop deathreavers in their tracks and my blasts have better range than his stingers. He played this game almost perfectly and it was fun seeing how he played. He actually put more than one order marker on the deathreavers (which I have never seen), and actually used them. They are a pretty good fighting force against blastatrons and managed to kill a bunch. He swarmed the middle with all of his deathreavers and I began the long task of eliminating them. He also started moving his stingers up to high ground, which could be a big problem for me later. After killing most of his rats I started shooting at the stingers and managed to kill a bunch of them. He moved 2 stingers on height and started reigning death upon my blastatrons so I started t take pot shots at them while trying to reach them with my glads. I won a very important initiative roll and two incredibly lucky 1 attack rolls later his 2 stingers up on the cliffs came tumbling down dead in the water. This was a major turning point in the game as it saw killercactus losing almost a whole squad of stingers and lose his high ground. I burst through the choke point and advanced into his starting zone where Q10 and isamu sat. I got height and killed them both (only after some ridiculous rolling on killercactus’ part). One stinger got away and got onto the high cliffs. The game was still pretty suspenseful as he had a lot of height, and I only had a couple of blasts, glads, and agent carr left. If I wasn’t careful, carr could be killed in one lucky shot from height and the game could be different. Sent carr after him shooting all the way (which interestingly is the only way I ever used him in the tourney, perhaps I should have opted for sylvarris). Luckily I killed the stinger before he could do any damage and the tournament for me came to a close. The only mistake he made was to not use Q10. He had me clogged with rats for msot of the game. He should have moved Q10 up isntead of the stingers in order to take out my blastatrons. The stingers have such horrible range and they were getting shot at by the blasts without them able to shoot back effectivly. Q10's rapid fire attack would have been perfect for the blasts as the 4 attacks of 2 could have easily taken over the blasts poor defense. But perhaps it ouldn;t have mattered, killercactus almost won it anyway and played very well. It was a great game and thanks to killercactus for making it a thriller all the way.

It hindsight I should have known that a 4th mass army would conquer the day before the tournament started.
1. We had some restricted units. Ok so they really weren’t restricted, but someone who used the restricted units wouldn’t have a shot at the golden nugget. I figured that most of the top players would not use an army with those restricted units.

2. Since the restricted units comprised of Q9, AE, krav maga, raelin, and marro warriors (all basically components of the top army these days), the army that would do really well would be the army that the Q9 reign replaced which is, you guessed it, the 4th mass army. Without Q9 and the krav maga to keep the 4th mass in check, they went unhindered through the tournament. The top 2 players from the tournament both had 4th mass armies, at least they were different.

Perhaps I should have got some more anti-4th mass units in there but o well, you learn something new every tournament.

So I ended up in 5th place (very respectabiggle I think), and my only losses were to the first and second place guys who both played the army that I knew would give me trouble. I got another castle set, and a bag of chips (which I won in a dice off against Roy, haha, got my revenge!). I was glad that western PA got some great representation as we had 3 people make it to the top 8, as well as everyone else placing very close to the top 8 mark (always nice to know that your local group of players are all very good) The tournament was a ton of fun and the players were all really cool and nice. It was nice putting faces to the names from heroscapers. The caliber of play was the highest I have ever seen and I look forward to playing at canton again next year (or sooner).