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dok's battle reports

As always, a great battle report. Just a comment on the Blade GrutsX2-- I want to beat the Deathreavers, not join them...
 
Here's a quick battle report for the November 20th Game Day.

This was another pooled draft event, with the point total once again being 550 points. I wanted to play the zombies this time, so I built a draft pool with figures that the zombies like to play with or against, along with some counter-counter figures. I ended up with:

240 Zombies x4
120 Nakita Agents
120 Agent Skahen
120 Omnicron Repulsors x3
200 Omnicron Snipers x2
60 Darrak Ambershard
140 Axegrinders x2
1000

Game 1
Opponent: Longshot (Mogrimm, Shurrak, Raelin SotM, Tandros, Atlaga, Protectors x1, PK x1, Erevan, Torin, Otonashi)
Map: Eggbeater (move and wound)
I played: Zombies x4, Nakita Agents, Agent Skahen, Darrak Ambershard, Otonahsi
Longshot played: Axegrindersx2, Mogrimm, Tandros, Raelin SotM, Omnicron Repulsors x1

I won the d20 and took the zombies first. Longshot responded by drafting the Axegrinders and Mogrimm. I chose Otonashi and Darrak next, leaving me lots of options for my last 240 irrespective of what Dave chose next. He took Tandros and Raelin SotM, leaving me with the fairly obvious Skahen/Nakita pick. I think I got the better of the draft, but the only mistake I can really point to on Longshot's part was drafting Tandros (and Repulsors as filler) in stead of taking Shurrak.

I lost opening initiative, but still managed to take the glyphs due to Longshot splitting his early activations up. I quickly had my zombies in prime positions, attacking with height advantage on dwarves and repulsors, but I only managed 2 kills in my first 9 attacks of 3v4. Longshot surprised me by flying Raelin up and using her for some whirlwind attacks. It was a smart move since I was concentrating on taking out Dwarves either way.

Still, I managed to whittle down the Axegrinders, and I moved up the agents to pick off a couple that were in spots where the zombies couldn't claim height advantage to take him down below a full squad. At that point, the squadscape math was just too slanted in my favor. The zombies cleared out the squaddies, and then the Nakitas and Skahen finished off the heroes. Darrak and Otonashi never took an OM. (I'm now 4-0 with Otonashi, the order marker-less wonder.)

1-0

Game 2
Opponet: Wild_Imagination (Kurrok, Fire x3, Water x3, Air, Earth, BlackW, WhiteW, RedW x2, BlueW x2, Charos, GSW x2, Isamu, Otonahsi)
Map: Trouble once Lurked Beneath
I played: Zombies x4, Nakita Agents, Red Wyrmling x2, Blue Wyrmling x2, Black Wyrmling, White Wyrmling
Wild_Imagination played: Kurrok, Fire x3, Water x3, Air, Snipers x1, Repulsors x2, Isamu, Otonashi

I once again won the d20 roll and took the zombies. Steve responded by grabbing Kurrok and the Fire Elementals. I started gathering his wyrmlings, starting with the reds and blues. Steve then grabbed the Water Elementals (and Isamu? Notes are not clear), and I grabbed the Black Wyrmling and Nakitas, leaving me only to take the white wyrmling to fill out my 550 while Steve picked from the rest to fill out his army.

This is a tough draft for me to evaluate. The Fire Elementals are brutal against zombies, but only three is not going to give you many triple-sear turns, and by going for the elementals Wild_Imagination let me take a run at his wyrmlings, which gave me a strong counter to the elementals. I think I would have countered the zombies with Charos and Axegrinders, and added Greenscales and whatever else looked good from there next. But there were no obvious good options.

I led out with the wyrmlings. Despite losing initiative I was able to grab the glyphs, due to OM splitting by steve. The black and red wyrmlings quickly thinned the ranks of the fire elementals and snipers. At that point, I switched to the zombies, who took basically every OM from there on out - I think I activated the wyrmlings twice after the first round. I was rolling terrible attacks, but Wild_Imagination didn't really have many good attack options, so things proceeded slowly.

Eventually, though, the lack of kills started to wear my army down. At one critical point, Steve had revived himself back up to two Fire Elementals, and I was down to 4 zombies and had lost both glyphs to water elementals. However, my attack dice swung back, and I managed to take out both those fire elementals and the remaining repulsors. By the time I killed Kurrok I had nine zombies on the board again. The Nakitas never left the start zone.

2-0.

Due to some delays and an early end time, I only got two games in, which was a bit disappointing. I never got to use my dwarves, snipers, or repulsors. That's actually two straight events where I've included the repulsors in my draft pool and never used them. Still, I added six figures to my list of figures played (Red/White/Blue wyrmlings, Darrak, Nakitas, and Skahen). Once again, I really enjoyed the variety and strategy of the draft format.
 
Here's a report of my three games from our pooled draft gameday on January 15th.

I figured I'd give Arrow Gruts a roll, so I went with:

160 Arrow Gruts x4
75 Swog Rider x3
85 Ice Troll
50 Nerak
120 Krug
150 Mimring
25 Sahuagin Raider
10 Otonashi
120 Omnicron Repulsors x3
200 Omnicron Snipers x2
995

I didn't test at all with these figures, and it showed, big time. In the previous drafting events, I've gone with armies built around some of my favorite figures, and I felt like I had a great handle on exactly what I wanted to get out of every draft. This time around, I didn't really have a strong sense of how to use the figures in my draft pool, and it led to me having a lot more indecision and, in my opinion, I came up with much weaker drafts (vis a vis my opponents).

Game 1
Opponent: Daniel (Warforged Soldiers x2, Omnicron Snipers x2, Granite Guardians x2, Quasatch Hunters x2, Marcu, Otonashi, Siege, Heirloom)
Map: Burial Marsh (Heroic Rune and Talisman of Defense)
I played: Krug, Warforgedx2, Quasatchx2, Sahuagin Raider, Marcu
Daniel Played: Omnicron Snipers x4, Siege, Otonashi

Daniel opened the draft by taking all four squads of Omnicron Snipers. I took Krug and the Quasatch Hunters. Daniel took Siege and Otonashi, leaving the rest for me. In retrospect, I'm not a huge fan of my draft; I think the repulsors would have been a better counter-draft than the Quasatch, given that he really wasn't going to have many non-soulborgs to kill them with. Snipers whiff a lot, and I probably could have taken some OMs with the EMP pulse.

I opened the action by tossing Marcu on the central defense glyph, and Daniel immediately tagged him with 5 wounds using the snipers. I sent the Quasatch out to do their techno hatred thing, but they failed to get a kill in their first three attacks while the Snipers hit on 3 of 4. Daniel was making use of the height and getting a lot of 2 double skull rolls. Seeing that the Quasatch had crapped out, I sent Krug into the fray... only to have him die from four attacks from the snipers without even getting an attack in.

At this point, I had killed two of twelve snipers while losing Krug, Marcu, and 4 of 6 Quasatch, and I was about 90% sure I was going to lose. However, the warforged soldiers managed to survive their approach, and started grinding through the Snipers with great efficiency. Once I was able to tactical switch onto the high ground, and from there I was able to get a long run of blocks.

The next few rounds were sort of a blur for me, as I carefully avoided giving the snipers height advantage and just rolled with the WFS. Somehow, I managed to get all the snipers killed and two wounds on Siege while only losing three Warforged. Siege killed another Warforged, but a key initiative switch and an OM mistake by Daniel (giving up a Siege attack to get Otonashi into a safer spot) gave me a chance to finish the job. The Sahuagin raider never moved, but it would have been an interesting final stretch with the Raider rolling five attack dice against Siege.

1-0

Game 2
Opponent: kpucblek (Cyprien, Crixus, Capuans x2, Me-Burq-Sa, Grok Riders x2, Nakita Agents, Gorrilinators x2)
Map: Eggbeater (Wound and Move)
I played: Cyprien, Nakitas, Crixus, Capuansx2, Sahuagin Raider
kpucblek played: Arrow Gruts x4, Krug, Mimring, Swog Rider x3, Otonashi

kpucblek won the roll but elected to pick second. I opened things by taking Cyprien, and Chris took the Arrow Gruts and Krug. I considered denial drafting the Swogs, but I figured I needed more offense than that, so I took the Nakitas and Crixus. After he took Mimring and the Swogs, I took the Capuans and the Sahuagun Raider, leaving Otonashi for him. I think kpucblek had a great draft here, as the Arrow Grut core was probably the strongest option overall. I thought Cyprien was clearly the best figure out there, though, and a great matchup for the Arrow Gruts, so I'm not so sure that I should have drafted Krug in stead.

Amazingly, things started about as badly for me in this game as in the last. I led out with Cyprien, but he whiffed on everything, attack, defense, or otherwise, despite having height advantage much of the time. By the end of the first round, Cyprien was dead, having taken down one solitary Arrow Grut. Ouch.

Things didn't get much better for me in the near term, as Mimring held up on defense to my Capuans and firelined three of them in two OMs, in addition to wounding Crixus. I eventually manage to get two surviving Capuans up to the high spots, and finally start actually rolling defense.

At this point I was comically far behind, but like last game, the comeback got going. Crixus cleared out all the arrow gruts on the move glyph side of the map while the Capuans belatedly took out Mimring, and the Nakitas took out the swog riders. At that point, the arrow gruts didn't have enough juice to really hurt the Nakitas, and they only killed one before all the Nakitas on that side of the map were killed. The Nakitas tried to play hit-and-run, but Krug chased the Nakitas down. Crixus cleared out the last Arrow Grut and Otonashi, making it a showdown between a 2-wound Krug and a 2-wound Crixus.

Obviously, that's not a good situation for me, but I placed Crixus in a spot where Krug would get first strike on OM 3 if he gave up height advantage. Chris took the bait and attacked, and I got a return attack of 5, an initiative switch, and another attack of 5. Those two attacks totalled three wounds, putting Krug at five wounds. Krug then got two big hits on even ground, which led to one wound each thanks to OSD. I was able to run around to height for a third attack of 5Av3D, but it was not to be, as I only took him to 7 wounds. Of course Krug delivered two wounds in the next OM to finish the game.

I never fully recovered from Cyprien's total strikeout to start this game - the closest I got after that was the final margin, with Krug clinging on by one life. It was a very solid game by Chris using the often tricky Arrow Grut combo. He definitely made Mimring worth it, got a lot out of the swog rider bonuses in the mid-game, and used Krug when he was impossible to ignore.

1-1

Game 3
Opponent: Chief (Mezzodemons x4, Deadeye Dan, Wyvern x3, Fyorlag Spiders x2, Master of the Hunt, Theracus, Siege)
Map: Burial Marsh (Heroic Rune and Talisman of Defense)
I played: Mezzodemons x3, Krug, Arrow Gruts x2, Nerak, Swogs x3, Otonashi
chief played: Deadeye Dan, Spiders x2, Wyvern, Omnicron Snipers x2, Mezzodemons x1, Sahuagin Raider

I chose first pick and took three squads of Mezzos. chief countered with Deadeye Dan and the spiders. I figured I may as well play the Arrow Gruts, so I took two squads and Krug. chief added a Wyvern and the snipers, and I added Nerak and the swogs. After that we just had filler left. I am happy with the early part of my draft, but I think it was a mistake to pick up Nerak in stead of just more Arrow Gruts. Six is just too few.

I led out with the Mezzodemons. I noticed chief had OMs on Deadeye Dan, so I hid behind trees to force him to move so that the Ullar Rifle wouln't be in play. I was able to take the defense glyph and take out Deadeye Dan by the end of the round.

Round 2 saw the snipers get into the action, but both sides had pretty poor attack dice for the round. In round 3, The spiders hit entangling web to take a Mezzodemon OM, and the Wyvern pulled a Mezzodemon off the defense glyph. I decided that I couldn't risk leaving the AGs on low ground anymore, so I labored to get Nerak, the Swogs, and the Arrow Gruts assembled on one of the high grounds. I did, but the snipers took out the Arrow Gruts that were rolling 4 defense with surprising ease. At this point I was out of exoskeleton markers and only had one Arrow Grut, but that was enough. The Mezzos finally managed to take out most of the Snipers, and Krug took out one Mezzo, disengaged, and took out the Wyvern on the glyph. Krug got taken out by the snipers, but the remaining Mezzos cleaned up without too much trouble.

2-1... first place in the round robin, I guess.

Overall, I thought I really struggled with the draft, and as a result I struggled managing my armies in the games. I had some bad runs of luck in the games, but I probably would have been able to weather those if I had done a better job drafting my armies.

Still, I had three really close, exciting, tactically intense games, and you can't ask for more than that. I continue to think the pooled draft format is the way to go.
 
I put off doing a battle report from my disastrous draft event from March and ended up misplacing most of my notes, but I will attempt to reconstruct things as best I can.

The thing I've learned over and over again about Heroscape is that the most important thing I can do is make sure I know my army really well and I'm comfortable playing it. This is even more true in draft events than in normal events, I've found. In the first two draft events we had in Colorado, I filled my draft pool with my favorite and most familiar figures, and I had extremely strong results. In the third event, I went with some figures I'm less comfortable with, and I took a loss.

In this event, I again decided to play figures I didn't know very well. This was compounded by the fact that 3 of our 4 maps for this event were custom Elginb creations that featured a ton of height, which definitely changes the style of play considerably. All in all, it was an unfamiliar situation for me, and the result was predictably mediocre.

My army pool, which was pooled with my opponent's for 550 point draft armies, was:

Snipers x2, Brutes x4, DED, Izumi Samurai, Goblin Cutters x5, Repulsors x3.

Game 1
Daniel (Charos, Braxas, Nilfheim, Su-Bak-Na, grubs...x2?, Moltenclaw)
Daniel played: Braxas, Charos, DeD, Izumi, Otonashi
I played: Nilfheim, HSBx3, Cuttersx2, Repulsorsx1

I don't remember draft order, but I know Nilfheim was my first pick and the Brutes were my second. Then I realized I had miscounted points and couldn't take a third squad of cutters, leaving me with the Repulsor final pick. This sort of bonehead decision characterized my day.

The map had a massive central height feature that didn't use castle walls, but was very castle-like aside from that; it had ladders and a central bridge and required walking figures to climb the sides to reach the center.

I opened with Nilfheim, and the early going went pretty much as I had planned. Nilfheim went crazy with the Ice shards, killing Braxas and a couple Izumi. I had to disengage from Charos a couple times to keep the shards going, but I managed to give Charos a couple wounds before he took Nilf down. Nilfheim had gotten one big normal attack on Charos with height at the end of the run, but Charos blocked it.

At this point is was the rest of my army against Deadeye Dan, one Izumi, Otonashi, and a slightly wounded Charos. The Brutes and Cutters worked their way forward and around the height. It took a while, but eventually I did maneuver a Brute around to get height on the last Izumi, and took him out, along with DeD and Otonashi. At this point, I had lost several cutters and brutes, all to Charos, but I was in command... or so I thought.

There's not really much more to describe in this battle. I attacked Charos a lot. Charos didn't die. I had Brutes on height attack Charos at least 6 times, and never recorded a wound. Charos basically counterstruck the rest of my army to death. It happens. The repulsors tried for the miracle win at the end, but Charos hunted them down fairly easily.

The end of this game was pretty unlucky, but I never would have been in that position if I had thought through the draft more clearly.

Game 2
Elginb (Jotun, Charos, Rhogar Dragonspine, Kozuke Samurai, Zetacron, Roman Archers x2, Iskra, Rechets, Repulsors x2)
Map: Arcane Sanctum
Elginb played: Cuttersx5, Jotun, HSBx1 (sit a brute)
I played: Charos, Zetacron, Repulsorsx4, Izumi Samurai, Deadeye Dan

I think I screwed up the draft pretty horribly again this time. Basically, my head was still spinning over what Charos had done to me the round before, so I took Charos when Elginb gave me the first pick. This let him take the cutters, which were clearly the prime pick given the pools, plus Jotun, who is a good Charos counter. I then focused on taking away the only filler that would fit in his army (Deadeye) in stead of drafting to make my army stronger. Basically, I put myself in a big hole before the game began.

Elginb summarized this one on his end, and did a good job of it. I thought I played a pretty strong game given the situation I put myself in with the draft. After forcing Jotun to run and hide, I managed to clog the map to a sufficient degree to limit the effectiveness of the cutters, and I was able to kill them at a fast enough clip that it basically came down to the big guys at the end. Fighting cutters can be frustrating, but if you play it correctly you can often get another attack in after killing the first cutter. The key to beating them is to get two kills on at least some turns.

Statistically, the way things played out in the Jotun/Charos showdown (unwounded Charos on height versus 4-wound Jotun; Jotun attacks on the third turn with Charos return attacking with height and having a chance to win initiative for another attack with height), I was a comfortable favorite to win. It didn't play out that way, but again, I blame my own poor drafting for putting me in a situation where I could get snakebit at the end.

Game 3
Wild_Imagination (Brave Arrow, MRTx2, Axegrindersx2, Protectorsx2, Guilty McCreech, Mogrimm, Mindflayer Mastermind, Atlaga, Isamu)
Wild_Imagination played: Axegrindersx1, Mogrimm, MRTx2, Mindflayer Mastermind, Deadeye Dan, Izumi Samurai
I played: Protectors x2, Cutters x4, Brave Arrow, Guilty

The map had two large castle features that towered over each startzone, and a central area with some jungle in it. I figured the Protectors would love this map.

Steve opened with the MRTs, which was a solid option and made the protectors a bit less attractive. I drafted four squads of cutters (a good counter to the MRTs, I think), and denial drafted Brave Arrow. I think the latter was a mistake; I probably should have taken the Protectors right there. W_I took the MFM (a decent Cutter counter, thanks to mind blast) and Deadeye (denial drafting to take away my filler?). I took the Protectors, and, with my last startzone space, took Guilty, leaving me at 520, 30 points light. Steve took Mogrimm and a squad of Axegrinders, being just short of having the points for a second squad. I drafted Isamu and Otonashi but couldn't place them, and W_I finished out with the Izumi.

I figured I had this one in the bag unless something weird happened, and it pretty much worked out as I hoped. I opened with the cutters en masse. I had trouble killing Mohicans despite numerous mob attacks early on, but eventually broke through and thinned them out. The Mindflayer blasted an order marker off the cutters, but by then he was tied up and I felt comfortable moving out the protectors. The protectors jumped straight onto the extreme height at the start of the third round and disposed of the MFM with combined Arbalest. After that, it was basically the Protector show. They jumped ahead to the high ground on the other side, where they could hit every remaining figure, and disposed of the remaining MRTs, Mogrimm, the Izumi, the Axegrinders, and Deadeye Dan. I think they were only even attacked twice; once by Deadeye's UAR and once by a Mohican.

So... those were my only 3 official games that day. I played another unofficial game with Daniel, but kpucblek and Eric were both playing so I couldn't get another game in. Between the draft, the maps, and the low numbers, I got very few games in considering how long I was there. This event sort of soured me on the rolling rumble format, but the next event I played in very much redeemed it in my eyes. I'll get to that report soon; it should be more fun to write than this one, which was a bit like a root canal. But hey, what sort of man am I if I only report on my winning events?
 
Just because you wrote this, dok, does not mean I now have to write one for my disastrous showing at My Time to Shine a couple weeks ago. ;)

Another quality tourney report.

This event looks like exactly what I fear from Rolling Rumble, and is one of the reasons I'm reluctant to implement it. Even if things had gone differently and you'd ended 3-0, who wants to play only three games?
 
I think there were a few factors that led to so few official games being played at this event.
  1. The location. Elginb did a nice job getting four maps put together in his apartment for the event, but due to space constraints, it took longer than usual to collect stuff and move to another map.
  2. The draft. Draft formats are a bit slower, owing to the draft; that's just how it is.
  3. The fact that, for whatever reason, everyone went squad-heavy this time. Only one of the six armies in my three games had fewer than 16 figures in it, and four of them were in the 20-24 hex range.
  4. The maps. I think the maps encouraged a more defensive style of play and limited attacks to a large degree. spider_poison made the same point recently.
  5. Low numbers. Because we had so few players, one game taking a long time would result in a bunch of dead time before re-pairing could occur. With better numbers, this effect would not be felt. I actually played an unofficial game at the end just because neither of the players I hadn't played were available.
For an example where these factors were not in play, check out the New England rolling rumble events, or the heroes-only event we played here last weekend. Heck, despite the fact that everyone (except 2 people) got 8 games in, we were still limited by numbers. Mista actually had all eight of his games done by 2:30 or so, and that's with a lunch break built in. In a non-RR format, he would have spent a bunch of time waiting between games that we managed to avoid.
 
Yeah, the RR tourneys we've had in the Northeast have been a great success. No waiting around, just play, though at the same time we're a little loose with the pairings. If you're a 3-1, you're supposed to play another 3-1, but if one isn't available you can play someone who is close enough so you don't have to wait.
 
Subscribed!

Nice battle reports dok! As I read them more, I'll come up with more detailed responses...

Spoiler Alert!

*clearthroat* :) :lol:
 
OK, this should be a more enjoyable report.

This last weekend, we played the Heroes only format with Gencon 2011 rules; i.e. 550 points, Marvel allowed. Knowing the local scene, I figured marvel would be a popular choice, but I decided that I would be playing a non-marvel army designed to counter Marvel. After a few quick games of testing, I had it narrowed down to one of three options:
  1. Jotun, Krug, Cyprien, Sonya, Isamu
  2. Jotun, Krug, Black Wyrmling x6, Marcu
  3. Q10, Krug, Raelin, Black Wyrmling x6, Marcu
I enjoyed playing the first version a lot; Cyprien led out and grabbed a lot of treasure, Jotun followed, and Krug closed. I was worried about tracking down the Surfer if Cyprien died, though, and I was a bit worried about a no-range army on at least one of the maps. In the end, the third army just seemed like the best Swiss army knife build. I hemmed and hawed until five minutes before game time, but in the end Q10, Krug, Raelin, Black Wyrmling x6, Marcu was my final choice.

Game 1
Opponent: Daniel (Captian America, Venom, Siege, Black Wyrmling x2)
Map: Wintergreen (4 treasure glyphs)

Daniel scored a win over me in our previous game, so I was gunning for revenge here. Daniel led out with Captain America and the Black Wyrmlings. Two BWs were no match for Q10, but Captain found an attack rune and a belt of Giant Strength, which led to a very dead Q10 despite 8 defense dice. However, by then I had already shifted my OMs to the Black Wyrmlings, and Cap wasn't able to kill many of them (thanks to Raelin) before he was acided to death.

Venom followed and did manage to thin the Black Wyrmlings out a bit, but the acid got him just as he reached Raelin. Krug finished Siege without incident to end the match.

Game 2
Opponent: GeneralRolando (Hulk + DW7k + Raelin)
Map: Sculpture Garden (4 treasure glyphs)

Roland is a good player, but I wasn't too worried about this one. With a bunch of high-defense, high point/wound figures, this army was basically a black wyrmling buffet. DW7k (predictably) died in two shots. GR was clever with Hulk's placement and tried to string me out and leave me getting single attacks per activation, and the map does provide some good nooks and crannies to aid him in this effort, but it was really delaying the inevitable. I was able to spread the wyrmlings out, and he could only kill one per OM. My d20 was pretty hot, and the Hulk only killed 4 wyrmlings before biting the dust. Q10 wounded Raelin a few times before the BWs finished the job.

Game 3
Opponent: Mista (Hulk + Krug + Black Wyrmling x2)
Map: Tell Tale Forest (2 treasure glyphs)

Tell Tale Forest is Generalrolando's RotV+RttFFx2 map. Like most maps from that set, it's pretty solid. One notable feature is the two high hills in the center of the map. They have lousy sight lines but do offer strong defensive spots for single-spaced flyers.

Mista was one of the four Colorado Springs guys to come up for the event, and he was the one who had the most success. I wasn't too scared of the Hulk, again, but I knew this army gave me more to fear with Krug backing him up.

Mista opened with his wyrmlings, but I anticipated this and led out with Q10, who once again did his job and prevented the opposing BWs from doing anything. The Hulk came in next, and of course I switched over to the BWs. At this point, my d20 caught fire, and Eric wasn't even able to take out Q10 before the Hulk was reduced to a puddle.

As Krug lumbered up, I took the chance to put Raelin on the central perch, and had Q10 get a couple early shots in. Angry Krug managed to kill Q10, but my Krug got in and prevented Mista's Krug from getting any shots at Raelin. My Krug got angry and finished the job pretty quickly.

Mista was a really solid player and ended up beating everyone else at the tournament. Although I think I had a structural edge in this game, I felt bad that the d20 pretty much decided things. Of course, it cuts both ways, as I would discover later.

Game 4
Opponent: Bonesnap (Jotun, Sonlen, Mindflayer Mastermind, Zetacron)
Map: Tell Tale Forest

Bonesnap was another of the C-Springs crew, and the most active one on Heroscapers. He brought a pretty solid army that had a couple big guys that could render my BWs impotent.

Nathan led out with Zetacron, but Q10 just popped out of the startzone, went for a normal attack at max range, rolled four skulls, and dropped Zetacron. That made things a bit more difficult for Bonesnap. Still, Jotun did his job, coming quickly across the middle of the map and taking out Q10 in round 2. I put Raelin on the central perch again, and was able to screen her with BWs, although Jotun did give her a couple wounds with wild swing. Bonesnap pulled out the MFM and did some mind blasting, but never managed to erase a numbered OM.

By then, Krug was in the middle of the fray, and angry Krug killed Jotun and the MFM in quick succession. Sonlen put up a good fight, but the BWs managed to take him most of the way down. Bonesnap tried to outflank my position to approach Raelin, but I had the next OM on angry Krug, who was able to finish Sonlen off in one turn.

Game 5
Opponent: Seth A (Captain America, Red Skull, Rhogar Dragonspine, Deadeye Dan)
Map: Viper's Paradise (1 Treasure Glyph)

Although it wasn't quite as bad as with GeneralRolando's army, this was definitely another Black Wyrmling buffet. I decided to put an OM on Marcu to take the glyph, and was rewarded with a betrayal - my only betrayal in ~20 games with Marcu, although I rarely give him the chance. Anyway, I shrugged it off and went to work with the Wyrmlings, who only lost one figure to Deadeye before he died. Raelin+jungle+height gave my wyrmlings 8 defense at times, which limited the effectiveness of shield throw, and Cap died soon after. Seth was down to Rhogar by the time I ran low on wyrmlings, and Q10 finished things without incident.

At this point, we broke for lunch, having realized that we were going to get a full round robin in with time to spare (except for kpucblek, whose games were taking a long time).

Game 6
Opponent: Mad Celt (Silver Surfer, Captain America, Isamu)
Map: Blacktop (2 treasure glyphs)

Sean was the elder statesman of the C-Springs crew, and I'm very happy that he made the trip up. On paper, this was definitely another Black Wyrmling Buffet. In practice... not so much.

At the outset of the game my BWs could not hit anything with acid breath, managing to kill Isamu (who Sean led out with) but not much else - I think I managed one wound on the Surfer and none on Cap. On the flip side, I rolled successfully for defense with the wyrmlings once in my first six attempts, despite mostly working with height and/or Raelin's aura.

With my initial plan stymied, I moved Q10 out. The Silver Surfer took a Cosmic Force Blast shot at Q10, in Raelin's aura. 5/6 skulls, 1/7 shields, bye bye Q10.

Then I moved Krug up. At this point I figured I was a gonner, as the Surfer could probably plink me to death even if I took out the Captain. However, Sean had is OMs loaded up on Cap, so I at least had a puncher's chance. I took 1 shot at Cap on height, got counterstruck, and then turned to the Surfer on level ground. All in all, I took 3 attacks of 4 and 2 attacks of 8 against the Surfer, and got zero wounds to show for it. Mad_Celt rolled 4 shields twice in a row to defend against angry Krug.

So, that was that. I'm pretty sure this is the worst I've ever been hit in the face with the dice. I just had to laugh at points in the game. Overall I had pretty good dice luck in this tournament, but my bad luck got heavily concentrated in this one match. In 80 tournament games, eventually it's going to happen. As a side note, I'm now 0-2 against the Silver Surfer; I'm no worse than 0-1 against any other figure in the game.

Game 7
Opponent: varidice (Thanos, Dünd, Finn)
Map: Wintergreen

varidice was the fourth and youngest of the C-Springs quartet. He was no slouch, though - anybody that can code up a Heroscape dice-rolling iPhone app earns some nerd cred from me.

Thanos + large figures is actually a potential problem matchup for my army, but that's more if the large figures are something with a bit more punch than Dünd. Still, my early OMs were mixed between the BWs and Q10, both to lessen the potential for a disastrous Paralyzing stare, and so that Q10 could get the Doggin out of the way so that Thanos would get fewer chances to return.

As it turned out, I was able to get the matchups to line up the way I wanted. Dünd missed his big stare opportunity on the wyrmlings to open round 2, and Q10 took him out with wrist rockets shortly after that. Some hot rolls on OM1 of round 3 from the wyrmlings spelled an end to Thanos with two unrevealed OMs on his card. This gave me two turns to rush across and start in on Finn. I ended up winning initiative and taking Finn out before Justin even had a chance to roll to bring Thanos back.

Game 8
Opponent: kpucblek (Q9, Spider-Man, Krug, Raelin, Otonashi)
Map: Viper's Paradise

kpucblek's games were taking much longer than everyone else's (seriously, dude, Q9+Raelin? Who plays that?) so there was only a couple games going at this point, as most people had completed their round robins. At the end of this game, it was just us playing. It had a bit of a feel of the finals, as a win for me would give me first place (on head-to-head over Mista) while a loss would mean Mista was the only 7-1 player and would take the win. kpucblek, for his part, was 1-5 on the day (ironically, Mad_Celt was his only win) and was playing the spoiler.

This was another opportunity for a revenge game, as Chris had taken me down the last time we played. However, I was going to have to earn it. Q9 scares the bejezus out of my black wyrmlings. I stashed them behind the ruin in my startzone, and hoped that I could figure out a way to neutralize Q9 before I had to bring them out. All in all, I wasn't a big fan of the matchup.

Chris started by charging Krug up the middle, while I moved Q10 out and started making him angry. I was planning to run and retreat as needed and hopefully interpose with my own Krug as needed, but with kpucblek's Krug standing on the far side of the river, I realized that I could position Q10 such that Krug couldn't get adjacent, or cross the river without going the long, long way around. At this point, Krug was sort of a sitting duck for the wrist rockets. Chris, already feeling deflated, switched over to Spidey, but not in time to prevent Krug from going down.

With Spidey coming across the gap, I switched over to the Spider-Sense ignoring black wyrmlings. Spidey got a wound in on Q10 on the way by and two wounds on Raelin, but that was it before the acid got him.

At this point, it was just that pesky Raelin+Q9 combo to contend with. I had managed to get Krug pretty far around the map already at this point, and Q9 was occupied killing the visible Black Wyrmlings anyway, so it wasn't too hard to get Krug the rest of the way to Raelin without getting killed. Angry Krug disposed of Raelin and Q9 in turn, and Chris conceded rather than try to win with Otonashi.

7-1, first place.

It was great getting so many games in so quickly - I got my first five games played in something like two and a half hours. If we had had 13+ people there, I bet a few people could have gotten in a dozen games. All in all, a good time, and I look forward to the Tournament of Champions event we have lined up next.
 
GENCON 2011 HEAT OF BATTLE

I had planned to take Thursday morning off from ‘scape and tour the dealer hall. I just stopped by the ‘scaper section to say hi to people first. Well, they had an odd number for HoB, and I had generic tickets in my pocket and two 450 point armies in my bag for my afternoon win-a-Tundra… so I figured why not get playing right away. Of course, this meant I never got more than an hour at a time in the hall all weekend, but I did get to play a ton of scape.

When tournament of champions was announced this year, I decided I was probably going to play the heavy gruts, so I had borrowed them from other Colorado ‘scapers for that event. I figured I would play them in an event or two before that, just to practice. My HoB army ended up being:

50 Nerak
120 Grimnak
280 Heavy Gruts x4
450, 20 spaces

Game 1
Opponent: Nicktheant (Warriors of Ashra x5, Q9, Marcu)
Map: Fulcrum

I won the placement roll and elected to place first, covering the central high ground. About halfway through placement, we remember to place the treasure glyphs, which means the spots I had planned to place Grimnak and Nerak suddenly became non-empty. Still, I can’t complain with the high ground. Q9 had one of the sub-hills on the side, with WoA all over the level 2 terrain.

In round 1, Grimnak and the Heavies quickly bore down on Q9’s position while Q9 tried to free himself up for shots on Grimnak. Nick took Q9 off the high ground, but failed to kill Grimnak and ended up getting engaged by heavies with height. Attacks of 5 offed Q9 early in round 2.

At that point, I figured I would chomp one WoA a turn while keeping Grimnak packed in heavies, and cruise to the win. However, Nick put an OM on Marcu and managed to take down Grimank. This led us to a very drawn out finish to the game, where the WoA were attacking up and couldn’t do much, but just refused to whiff on defense. We ended up going to time; the final result was 9 Heavies and a 2-life Nerak against 2 Warriors of Ashra.

I think Nick made a mistake to move Q9 off his early perch, but he’s a solid player and one I would have to contend with a couple more times on the weekend.

Game 2 (1-0 vs. 1-0)
Opponent: Brownsfan82 (Zombies x5 + Cyprien)
Map: Trailblazer (not sure on the glyphs)

Brownsfan said as soon as we sat down that he figured he’d have to face either Heavies or Wait-Then-Fire eventually. This was the truth, as there was at least one exact copy of my army, and at least two 10thx6 armies and at least two 4thx6 + Eldgrim armies.


I won initial placement, although Ben said he would have preferred first move anyway. I had my heavies owning most of the high ground, with Nerak and Grimnak together on one end of the map. Brownsfan opened with Cyprien trying, and failing, to chill Grimnak. Grimnak responded by failing to chomp Cyprien, but the Gruts did a pretty good job killing Zombies. Ben’s next OM was on zombies, but they failed to do much, mostly attacking up on elevated heavies or heavies in Nerak’s aura.

This was the pattern for the rest of the next two rounds – I would whiff on the Chomp on Cyprien (seven times), but the Heavies were gradually getting the better of the zombies. On the second turn of round 3, I chomped Cyprien. At that point there were four zombies left and about 10 Heavies, plus once-wounded Grimnak and Nerak, and Brownsfan conceded the match.

Game 3 (2-0 vs. 2-0)
Opponent: Turkeyclubsamich (10th x6)
Map: Trailblazer

I was placed on the same map, map #1 in the very corner of the Heroscape block. It turned out that the software wasn’t randomizing map draws at this point, so the top seed was always being put on the highest map. They fixed this for later events, although I did get one last game on the corner map two days later. (It ended up being a good map for me. ;))

Once again, I won the placement dice-off, which isn’t quite as crucial on this lava map but is still pretty nice. TCS went for a couple shots on Grimnak at the start, but I had the 10th engaged quickly. The fighting was intense, with extra attacks and height giving me the better of it, but heavy losses both ways. TCS left several figures on the hot ground to avoid giving up more height. At the end of the first round, there were already 8 dead Redcoats and 4 dead heavies, and lava claimed another 3 Redcoats (out of 5) and 1 heavy (out of 3).

As the game progressed, my attack dice just got hotter and hotter. I had long streaks of 2 dice or more on attacks. TCS was doing pretty well killing Heavies on his end, but the tide was clearly against him. There were 4 Heavies to go with Nerak and a wounded Grimnak at the end. He was frustrated by the dice (which definitely slanted against him) but took it well all told. Turkeyclubsammich and his friend Rollitontop were two of the breakout elite players of this year’s events.

Game 4 (3-0 vs. 2-1)
Opponent: Mr. Migraine (WoA x4, Raelin, Fen Hydra, Marro Warriors)
Map: Guardian

Apparently my strength of schedule took a hit in the previous round, because I ended up paired down, while Rollitontop played Spider_poison in a battle of the other two undefeateds. If I could win my match, there would be a one-game final; otherwise, the winner of the other game was going to be the only undefeated player and automatically champion.

Unlike my previous games, I lost the opening placement roll. Normally, this would not be so devastating in a mostly melee-on-melee matchup, but with the four battlement-protected high spots on Guardian, being able to force Raelin and the Hydra to take a different spot would have made for a completely different game.

The early game consisted of mostly Warriors against Heavies. I chomped three in the first round but only managed one more kill, against 4 dead gruts. I was really concerned at the outset of the second round, since MM had cleared a path from the Hydra to Grimnak, but after winning initiative he elected to keep the Hydra on his perch and attack with WoA instead. After that, I continually single-engaged the Hydra while attacking elsewhere, limiting the kills on Hydra activations to just the single grut.

I was running around chomping warriors like crazy, but the WoA attack dice were extremely hot, and attrition was definitely not in my favor. Despite almost never giving up height advantage (except for the Hydra-engager), Mitchell had a ton of 3-skull hits. I was able to sneak up a heavy adjacent to Raelin on several occasions, but after getting the fourth wound I just couldn’t punch through with the kill.

Although I killed three of four Marro Warriors and all but about four warriors, the one Marro Warrior on the perch with the one-life Raelin, the Fen Hydra, and the remaining warriors gave Migraine the (full card scoring) lead over my Grimnak, Nerak, and ~5 Heavies. At this point the pod was secure and there was no way for me to get at Raelin or the remaining Marro Warrior with the Gruts without going through the Hydra and remaining Warriors of Ashra. I tried to set things up as best as I could, but in the end walking into the teeth of a Hydra is usually a death march. It was.

3-1, tied for fourth place.
 
GENCON 2011 WIN-A-TUNDRA

I don’t own any Tundra, and I wasn’t counting on winning any other events, so I wasn’t messing around in this event. I only had one other army in my box for the day, and it was flowchart Mass. 4thx5 + Eldgrim + Samuel Brown.

Quarters
Opponent: Worseley (Q9, Q10, Fen Hydra)
Map: Trailblazer (Wannok and Kelda)

Worseley had only brought one army that day, although it had served him pretty well in Capture the Flag. I was happy to be on the lava field map against three figures with very expensive wounds.

In the first round, I got on height and had some very hot dice, putting three wounds on Q10. I claimed Wannok, and Worseley ended up killing Q10 with the wound. The Hydra tried to follow up, but when he moved towards the low ground mass, I quickly trimmed heads and ended up WTFing him to death at the end of the round.

Worseley played Q9 more conservatively than the others, but I matched his patience by slow-rolling the mass outside of the big soulborg’s LoS. By the fourth round, I was ready to move a bunch of 4th onto the lava height in view of Q9. It didn’t take many rounds for him to go down.

The dice definitely slanted my way this game, although these big heroes aren’t that scary to the 4th without Raelin or screening figures to support them.

Semifinals
Opponent: Worldsenemy (Stingersx3, Raelin, Q9, Isamu)
Map: Crystal Watch (Wannok)

Raelin+Q9 is always going to get the attention of the 4th. Stingers aren’t quite as intimidating, but they’re no picnic either.

I opened by throwing Eldgrim on the wound glyph. In retrospect this was silly, as he died very fast, and I could have simply killed him with Wannok wounds. Sam Brown ended up taking the Wannok wounds instead.

Worldsenemy threw Raelin next to some jungle brush on the lower side of the map. I kept leaking out 4th onto the symmetrical spot to attack her, often getting two attacks but rarely getting three. The other 4th, coming out of the startzone, had to be content sniping at advancing stingers or taking shots at the Raelin-protected Q9. For his part, Joe kept picking off the 4th that were within range of Raelin. He rocked me off my perch a few times, but he couldn’t maintain the position and I would come back again. Still, Raelin remained unwounded through the middle of the third round. I was taking out stingers but didn’t like my chances against Q9 if I couldn’t get past Raelin soon.

In the fourth round, I finally got some wounds on Raelin, and then things changed very quickly. At the beginning of the fifth round, I managed to get a full squad to survive in position with height on Q9, and was able to WTF Raelin and Q9 to death in a single OM. After that, cleanup went quickly.

Finals
Opponent: SuperflyTNT (Grimnak, Nerak, Tornak, Heavies x2, Blades x1)
Map: Convergence Ticala Sunrise (Move + Heal) (Pete talked us off Convergence)

I opened by throwing Eldgrim on the move glyph. SFTNT advanced Nerak to start, and I quickly tagged him for two wounds. Nerak burned the heal glyph, but I kept wearing down the heavies wherever their defense was lowest. Pete contested where he could and used Tornak to absorb most of the punishment. Pete was rolling like a champ on defense, but I was able to replenish and just keep firing away, waiting for a letdown. Eventually I found a way around and WTF’ed Nerak to death in the fourth round. At this point, the orcs finally overwhelmed the 4th on the small level 2 hill in front of their startzone. Still, from even ground I was able to wound Grimnak and force him to use the potion of healing. At that point, there just weren’t many orcs left, and Grimnak couldn’t do it alone, dropping to WTF in a couple rounds.

Winner Winner Tundra Dinner.
 
GENCON 2011 3-PACK DRAFT

The three pack draft format allows you one master set, or one large expansion and one small expansion, or three small expansions, at least one of which must be unique. I played two packs of Warriors of the Ghostlight Fen (PKs + Fen Hydra + S-Raider) and the wave 4 pack (Morsbane+X17+Sudema+Parmenio+Valguard).

So… this was the worst tournament performance of my life. Where to begin. How about:
- I created my build to complicate the draft involving RotV, but never faced anyone who brought RotV.
- In my practive games, the Fen Hydras sometimes went undrafted.
That gives you a sense of how excellently prepared I was. OK, on to the games.

Game 1
Opponent: Mecha Toad (Wave 2 Heroes + Ninjas and Samurai + Gladiators and Agents)
Map: Fulcrum

Mecha Toad opened the draft by taking Krug. I drafted the Nakitas and one squad of PKs. If you’re asking “dok, why didn’t you take a Hydra? Or two? You were on Fulcrum for goodness sake”, then your head is clearer than mine was that Friday morning. Mecha Toad took a Hydra and the Ninjas, and I responded with the second squad of PKs and, in an effort to denial draft, MBS. If you’re asking “hey dok, why leave room to draft the other Fen Hydra instead of denial drafting a non-bonding MBS that can’t stare down Krug or the Hydra?”, then… well, you know. MT took the S-Raiders, and with only 110 left, I took Morsbane.

I led with Morsbane, who whiffed on three negation attempts on the big guys before getting shredded by the ninjas. I moved out the PKs to take down the ninjas, but ended up losing two PKs in the process myself. In round 3, the Fen Hydra moved up and finished off my PKs without incident. Mecha Toad moved up Krug and sent him barreling at the Nakitas. There was really no way to play hit and run (like you told me, this was Fulcrum) so I just tried to kill Krug before he got there. That didn’t work.

The dice during the game were in MT’s favor, but really, this pales in comparison to the massive edge I handed him before OMs were placed. This was really an unfathomably bad draft by me, and I earned the loss for it.

Game 2 (0-1 vs 0-1)
Opponent: Nicktheant (Racknar’s Vision + Warriors and Soulborgs)
Map: Breach

This was my second and not last game against Nick on the weekend. He opened by taking Nilfheim, and I carefully considered for about a millisecond before drafting Q9 and a Hydra. He took the other Hydra and a single squad of PKs, we filled up to points (Theracus/WoA/S-Raider for me; rats for him) and we went at it.

Nick put his early OMs on Nilfheim and went treasure collecting. He did get a healing potion, which is great for him, but while he was busy I steamed my hydra across the map, and cut down his Hydra in the startzone with one of those dreaded 4x5A reach attack turns. In the next round, Nilfheim went after the Hydra, took 3 wounds, healed them, took 3 more, and finally finished off my Hydra. Q9 did the rest of the work without taking a wound.

Game 3 (1-1 vs. 1-1)
Opponent: tomcollins2000 (Golem&Wyrmlings x2, D3 heroes)
Map: Common Ground (initiative and 20-sider)

I continued to learn the harsh lessons of game 1 by opening my draft with a Fen Hydra. TC took the other one and a Red Wyrmling. I took the other Red and the Black. TC followed with Eltahale and a squad of PKs. I took the second black and a white. TC finished with a white and the S-Raider. I cleared out the two blues, and after considering an Iron Golem, X17, and Morsbane, settled on Evar Scarcarver for my last 110.

I opened with a pure wyrmling advance, taking out the S-Raider and (after a couple rounds) the opposing wyrmlings, and getting two wounds on the Fen Hydra in the startzone with an elevated attack of 5 from a blue. This was the last and only good thing that happened this game.

My black wyrmlings managed only 1 wound on Eltahale in six acid attempts, while she casually killed off the wyrmlings and collected the healing and defense treasure. While this was happening, I sent my Hydra across the map to finish his hydra, which had advanced a bit but was still on low ground. With two full turns of elevated reach attacks of 5, I managed a grand total of one more wound on the Hydra. Eventually I decided that Eltahale was a more important threat, so I sent the Hydra after her. 4 attacks of 4 did only one wound, and Eltahale responded by Thunder stepping for 6 skulls and one-shot-killing my Hydra.

Still, Evar Scarcarver is pretty strong in cleanup, at least once frost rage is active. However, I lost initiative as soon as they were engaged and Eltahale took Evar out right away.

tomcollins was very cool about the whole thing and assured me that he had been on the other end of games like that. At the end of the day, I already wasn’t going to win this event, so this was just another great bad beat story for the vault.

Game 4 (1-2 v. 1-2)
Opponent: Mecha Frog (Swarm of the Marro)
Map: Breach

Of the four games, this one had by far the most interesting draft. I had the higher roll and had to pick first, which I definitely perceived as a big disadvantage. I picked Q10, and Mecha responded with both Fen Hydras. I took the Stingers, and Mecha responded by taking the Phantom Knights. I took Swarm Raelin, and we each took a squad of grubs.

I think Mecha Frog got a much stronger result, but every way I look at it, this was almost unavoidable. If I take a Hydra, he takes Q10 and a Hydra*, which is probably at least as bad as what happened. I need the stingers as a response to the Hydras, but the PKs are sitting there as a counter-draft to the stingers. I’m left counting on Q10 to take out the PKs and at least put a dent in the Hydras.

Anyway, this one was over fast. I got an early elevated attack of 5 on a Hydra with Q10, but nothing came of it. Mecha Frog sent his Hydra to the treasure, which turned out to be a potion of healing. He then continued to kill Q10. Then the PKs beat the stingers.

* Actually, Mecha told me afterwards that if I had taken one Hydra, he would have taken a Hydra and Sonlen in the hopes of working some healing. This would have allowed me to take Q10 and a squad of PKs in my second round, setting me up for a Q10/Hydra/PKx2 army against, probably, Hydra/Sonlen/Stingersx2. That would have been a lot better!

1-3 final record. I’d only lost two games in an event once, and never 3 before. Still, I was philosophical about it. One loss was just cruel dice, but the other two were learning experiences about the draft. Anyway, I went back to our hotel, had a snack, and cleared my head for the main event that afternoon.
 
I had barely started the championship writeup when they it was time to put up the tray tables, so it might be a few days for that. It depends on how my son is doing - poor guy's had a fever for three days now.
 
Excellent reports.

Congratulations on your Tundra. I wept when I saw you took some lumps. Very sad.

Good battle reports are one of my favorite things on the site. Thanks for sharing.

Also...
Spoiler Alert!
 
GENCON 2011 3-PACK DRAFT

The three pack draft format allows you one master set, or one large expansion and one small expansion, or three small expansions, at least one of which must be unique. I played two packs of Warriors of the Ghostlight Fen (PKs + Fen Hydra + S-Raider) and the wave 4 pack (Morsbane+X17+Sudema+Parmenio+Valguard).

So… this was the worst tournament performance of my life. Where to begin. How about:
- I created my build to complicate the draft involving RotV, but never faced anyone who brought RotV.
- In my practive games, the Fen Hydras sometimes went undrafted.
That gives you a sense of how excellently prepared I was. OK, on to the games.

That's very interesting. I've found practice for draft events to be very spotty. Each draft, each combination of units, players, and maps is so unique that it is tough to gain too much from a few matches.

At the last draft event we had (which used this format) I brought a very similar pack setup. The hydras definitely buttered the bread in my games. Based on what armies typically end up with (usually only two cards worth of commons and limited mass ranged armies), hydras typically perform fantastically. Conversely, for the same reasons, I found the PKs to be underwhelming.

I'm a big fan of the draft events. While it yields some odd ball results, the games and armies are typically very wild and unique. Great report.
 
I wept when I saw you took some lumps. Very sad.
Yes, the sympathy I received after those results was overwhelming. :lol:

In my practive games, the Fen Hydras sometimes went undrafted.
That gives you a sense of how excellently prepared I was. OK, on to the games.

That's very interesting. I've found practice for draft events to be very spotty. Each draft, each combination of units, players, and maps is so unique that it is tough to gain too much from a few matches.
I agree in the abstract, but my point is more that I didn't properly appreciate the strong points of my draft pool. Which is particularly silly given that I've got lots of experience with Hydras.

(Interesting side note - my opponent had a Hydra in all six of the games I lost at Gencon.)

At the last draft event we had (which used this format) I brought a very similar pack setup. The hydras definitely buttered the bread in my games. Based on what armies typically end up with (usually only two cards worth of commons and limited mass ranged armies), hydras typically perform fantastically. Conversely, for the same reasons, I found the PKs to be underwhelming.
Yep, I agree with that assessment.
 
I would *love* to have contributed something that clever, but I can't take credit for Dignan's remarks about the hydra. ;)
 
Main Event...

... or, "sure, you can look at Tor-Kul-Na’s card".

The reverse the whip format is really a brilliant format on Rÿchean’s part. It doesn’t work quite as well for shorter events, but the idea of making someone prove the worth of their army for 5 full games and THEN try to beat that army is a great self-correcting mechanism.

My plan was to try to dial in the weakest army that I thought I could make day 2 with. The way I figured it, it was easier to sneak in at 4-1 on day 1 playing weaker armies than your opponent than it is to sneak in at 4-0 on day 2 playing weaker armies than your opponent. Obviously, it was also going to help to play an army that you think you know how to play better than other people. The army I settled on (pretty much right away, and I never changed my mind) was:

220 Tor-Kul-Na
90 Marrden Nagrubs x3
80 Raelin RotV
100 Krav Maga Agents
10 Otonashi
500, 16 spaces

Taking that piece by piece:

Tor-Kul-Na and the grubs: First, he’s not as bad as people seem to think he is. Jexik has it right when he puts TKN&grubs at B+. But if you went by how often he gets played (particularly given that this is a figure that nearly everybody has) you would think he’s a B- or a C+. TKN has a great attack, he’s brutally tough if you can manage to heal and/or back him with Raelin, and he just wrecks medium to expensive squads on flat ground.

Another big factor that let to me choosing him is that he’s pretty tricky to play with and to play against. Trample denial is really important when playing against TKN, but it requires being able to project TKN moves, and if you’re not used to the mechanics of trample stomp, that can be tricky. People also have a tendency to gun at TKN when he has adjacent nagrubs, which is a bad idea unless you have a really high attack. It's not quite as big a mistake as shooting Q9 before killing Raelin, but it's the same sort of thing.

The TKN/grub combo has long been a favorite of mine. I considered playing some of my other favorite armies, like zombies and the firestorm, both of which are pretty tricky in their own right. I ruled out firestorm because it's too strong in some matchups while being relatively weak in others, and after you've invested a minimum of 400 in Kurrok and the FEs, there isn't room in the build to pick figures that smooth out the matchups. I ruled out zombies because I didn't think I could make day 2 with them without also playing Q9, and I didn't want to have to kill Q9 four times on day 2. Q9's gonna get lucky and refuse to die at least once.

I was pretty comfortable with the decision to build my army around TKN, but it ended up being a better decision than I had appreciated before the event. Most players are much less familiar with him than I realized. I think every one of my day 1 opponents asked to look at either TKN's card or the nagrub's card or both, and my day 2 opponents all struggled to varying degrees to use the combo effectively.

Raelin: Obviously, I don't have to justify Raelin in principle. In this army, she has her powerful KMA synergy, she has great value turning 2-defense grubs into viable screening figures, and TKN becomes absurdly hard to kill in her aura (he never died within Raelin's aura in 9 games). This army really needed Raelin to get to the level where it could consistently compete with the more squad-heavy builds. Of course, I could just play a stronger army that doesn't need Raelin to get to that level, but I didn't really like any TKN armies without Raelin for 500 points. Moreover, I like adding Raelin to the army, because it adds complexity to playing the army.

Krav Maga Agents: The Krav are in the army to deal with the worst situation for TKN+grubs: ranged figures (or any squad figures, really) on irregular terrain. With a few rare exceptions (Q9 being the obvious one) the Krav win just about every range versus range showdown – particularly when backed by Raelin. By having the Krav in the army, I gain the ability to dictate the location of the battle, and force my opponent to put figures within reach of TKN. I've filled this role in the TKN army with Phantom Knights in the past, but the points didn't work out right to do that here unless I went with only two squads of grubs and PKs, which I didn't want to do.

Otonashi: Setting aside that Isamu is one of my least favorite figures, I had reasons to not pick him. First, games often go to time on day 1, but essentially never on day 2. This means that if Isamu is in my army on day 1, I could lose on points before I get a chance to do anything with him, but he will always get his chance on day 2. I didn't want to lose due to an Isamu dance (and I actually think I would have lost to Isamu in one game on day 2 if I had included him) so that was reason enough to pick Otonashi. Also, with the Krav in my army, there's a temptation to try to put OMs on Otonashi early in the game, to take advantage of her tricky speed. This is nearly always a bad idea, as it slows your army development, but I thought there was a chance someone would do this on day 2 (nobody did). I also could have just played 10 points light, but if I had lost on time by 5 or 10 points I would have felt pretty stupid. At any rate, Otonashi is just as good as Isamu at the only role I used her for, which is to take the first hit from the wound glyph.

On to the games...


GAME 1
Opponent: Peterparkerh (Phantom Knights x5, Major Q10)
Map: Common Ground (Move +2, d20 on the island)

While I wasn't too afraid of Q10, five squads of phantom knights can take out my army almost singlehandedly if I don't get some good stomps in. However, Common Ground is a very stomp-friendly map with the notable exception of the two central hills. I figured that if I could take care of Q10's ranged attack, I could sit on level ground and take care of the rest with stomp.

I opened with the grubs, grabbing a treasure glyph with TKN on the way out. It turned out to be a belt of giant strength – the worst glyph in the pool, but at least I was going to make good use of it in this matchup. With 8 move, TKN quickly shot to the far side of the hills and went for the attack of 8 on Q10, yielding two wounds.

Things quickly turned against me, though, as my attacks of six on the next five order markers only yielded one more wound on Q10. I was having decent luck stomping PKs, but the turn-ending attacks on Q10 just weren't getting it done. Meanwhile, the PKs, which had been concentrating on TKN, got him all the way down to 1 life. If TKN died I could kiss this game goodbye, so I healed, stomped the nearby PKs, disengaged from Q10, and ran back to Raelin's aura.

Once inside Raelin's aura, the PKs had a much tougher time wounding TKN, and I managed to heal all the way back to 6 life. At that point, the PKs had been thinned out enough that I could safely return to finish off Q10.

Saying “this could have gone either way” barely does justice to it... I was one whiffed defense away from losing several times. I told a few folks after the round that my heart couldn't take 4 more rounds like that. Fortunately for me, I would only have three more rounds like that...


GAME 2 (1-0 vs. 1-0)
Opponent 1red2blue4 (Anubian Wolves x3, Deathreavers x2, Death Knights x2, Khosumet)
Map: Guardian

1red2blue4 had just finished defeating Matthias Maccabeus's 20 chainfighter army (yes, really) on time. This was actually the only army I faced all day (or played with the next day) that didn't have at least 12 of some common squad figure. I knew that unless he got a very hot d20 at exactly the right time, I should be in control of this match. Not only was the matchup favorable, but Guardian was probably the best map for my army, due to the turrets that make a great spot for Raelin+Krav and the large expanse of flat road for TKN to work with.

In the opening OM, I put Raelin on the turret right beside my startzone, pulled TKN+grubs out in front, and began working the krav up. 1red2blue4 put his first two OMs on the rats and clogged up the turret a bit, but with only 8 rats and an all-melee opponent, I wasn't too worried about scatter and just got to killing them.

In the second round, the Anubians came out to meet TKN. On their first engagement, 1red2blue4 dropped a natural 20, giving him 2 attacks of 9v8 on TKN, but he only got two wounds out of it. Still, that scared me enough that I took to posting grubs on all the high spots in the center, so that the rest of the wolves would get held up killing grubs and couldn't get lucky against TKN.

By round 3, I had the rats in my section of the map dead, and I was nicely podded up. The rest of the battle was fairly routine, as I shot with the Krav and stomped anything that got close.


GAME 3 (2-0 vs. 2-0)
Opponent: Arcus (Zelrig, Krav Maga Agents, Axegrinders x3)
Map: Burial Marsh (+d20)

Axegrinders are pretty scary for my army, and doubly so on Burial Marsh, which is one of the worst maps in the pool for my army. Not only does it lack a good spot for the Krav to snipe from while avoiding engagements, but it's very unfriendly to double spaced walkers in general and TKN in particular. The two high road spots are the only places on the map where it's easy to set up trample stomps.

I don't own or play against Zelrig very much, and my inexperience led to a significant error on my part. Rather than spread out my figures in all three start zone pods, I put them all in two pods (on the left side). Tom won initiative and dropped two big Z-bombs before I could engage Zelrig with TKN. Fortunately, OM3 was on the Axegrinders, and I was able to kill Zelrig before he did any more damage. When the dust had cleared, there were 5 dead grubs and 2 wounds on Raelin (and a dead Otonashi). This was very bad – it's hard enough setting up a screen on this map in general, but with only 4 grubs to work with it wasn't happening at all. I was basically going to have to fight from my quarter of the map and hope my dice held up.

As it turned out, they did. While my trample stomp rolls were horrific this game, and the remainder of the grubs fell fairly quickly to advancing dwarves, my Krav were rolling pretty hot. I was consistently able to take out one or two dwarves with each activation, and I never whiffed when Arcus shot my agents with his. When Arcus stepped up with his Krav and took out my Raelin, and I was able to kill the offending agent with one of my own at point blank range. I managed to kill the second Krav and the last of the Dwarves with TKN, but not before my agents were brought down as well.

At that point, it was just one agent against my full-health TKN. On this map, though, that can be a close game. Tom kept backing away and shooting, getting me all the way down to two life on TKN before I finally had him cornered. Fortunately, I rolled 5 skulls in my first shot, ending the game.

All in all, I got the better of the dice this game; if my Krav hadn't been able to take down most of the Axegrinders then I don't think I could have rebounded from the early Z-bombs.


GAME 4 (3-0 vs. 3-0)
Opponent: Scaper_Dude (Phantom Knights x4, Raelin, Fen Hydra)
Map: Guardian (Healer and +d20)

I had been talking to lonewolf and scaper_dude before the pairings were announced, and I said that even though I was one win away from day 2, I felt like I had done maybe a third of the work I needed to get there. This was borne out when I saw who I had to beat to qualify. This was a deeply frightening build for my army to face. The PKs are Kravkillers extrodinaire, and the Hydra can take out TKN with alarming speed. I did draw the best map for my army to play it out on, but things were still going to have to fall my way.

In the first round, I started building my Rae+Krav pod on the near turret, while Scaper Dude tried to clog it up with Phantom Knights. He did slow my progress somewhat, but I was able to get my figures mostly where I wanted them.

By the second round, I had packed Raelin and the Krav in with nagrubs, so there was only one spot where the PKs could get adjacent. Unfortunately, before I could fill that chink in my armor, Brandan dropped a PK in there and managed to take out an agent. At this point, the closest turret to mine had SD's Raelin and Fen Hydra, as well as most of his Phantom Knights.

There were a bunch of PKs sitting on level 2 ground near Brandan's turret in a spot where the Hydra wouldn't be able to get to, so I decided to take a chance and send TKN outside of Raelin's aura to stomp them. I killed a couple, but the PKs hit TKN for five wounds with 3x3v5 shots on the next OM. I spent the next two OMs furiously healing and stomping to try to wiggle my way free. I managed to withdrawl back towards the middle of the map, but I was one space short of being able to get back to Raelin's aura, and the PKs managed to finish the job. Without TKN on the scene, Scaper_Dude had little to fear from my army any more, so he advanced with full force and overwhelmed Raelin, the grubs, and the Krav without too much difficulty.

Thus ended my 12-game winning streak in the championship. I congratulated Brandan on qualifying for day 2 (for the third time!). He played a very strong game and extracted the maximum value from every mistake I made.


GAME 5 (3-1 vs. 3-1)
Opponent: Tiny Timmy (Marro Drones x6, Cyprien, Sonya)
Map: Common Ground (Healer, Initiative on the island)

TJ is a Matthias Maccabeus protege and a very strong player in his own right, with a top 8 finish last year and a 17th place result the year before, both with Heavy Grut armies. I thought his army had an edge on mine on paper, although I did draw one of the better maps in the pool for my army, at least when facing an all-melee opponent.

TJ opened with two straight 9-activation turns with the Drones, and had complete command of the central height. I knew that contesting that with TKN would be suicide, so I resolved to simply defend my end of the map. I set up a ring of nagrubs on the flat level 2 ground 4 spaces away from Raelin's position in the front of my startzone, and attempted to snipe at Drones with the Krav and stomp with TKN when possible. Timmy attempted to limit TKN's effectiveness by trying to get grubs in between TKN and the drones to limit stomps. This worked at times but TKN still got his share of stomping in. The drones did manage to punch through the screen on several occasions and get to Raelin and the Krav, resulting in one dead agent.

The real story, though, was that my 4D grubs managed to defend a ton of attacks from 3A drones. Because of this, I was able to win the war of attrition and force TJ to turn to Cyprien. Cyprien rushed in and tried to chill TKN to death, but only took two life off the Hivelord, while TKN and the grubs took four wounds in return. Cyprien ran away and killed one of his own drones to heal, but this just allowed TKN to burn the heal glyph himself. After an initiative switch, one of the remaining Krav agents (finally) took the central height and dropped Cyprien, at which point Timmy conceded.

I had gotten the better of the dice in this match (in particular, the defense dice of the nagrubs had been great) and TJ was not happy with missing day 2... or so he thought. He actually left the Heroscape area after our game, so he only found out later that he had squeaked in at 16th place on strength of schedule.


4-1, 9th place going into day 2.

I really don't think I could have played a much weaker army and had a reasonable chance of making day 2. Looking at the other armies that made it, I was pretty happy with where I was. The only army that I thought was weaker than mine, head-to-head, on paper, was Turkeyclubsamich's Raelin+Krav+Warforgedx4. So in order to win the championship, all I would probably have to do was win four straight games where I was a small favorite, all against really good players. No problem, right? ;)


FIRST ROUND
Opponent: Tiny Timmy (Marro Drones x6, Cyprien, Sonya)
Map: Crystal Watch (Initiative)

The pairings were done by Rÿchean taking a stack of 16 index cards and tossing pairs of them on maps. As he got farther down the line without tossing mine out, I was more and more worried that I was going to get the rematch, and sure enough, it happened on the second to last map of the round. I had a feeling that Timmy would play my army much as I had the round before – playing it conservatively, setting up a defensive shell, and trying to snipe with Krav and stomp with TKN as I came towards him.

However, I wasn't planning on playing his army the way he did. Instead of leading out with the Drones, I started with Cyprien going on a treasure hunt. Despite one missed pickup roll, It was quite fruitful, as I got the defense and healing treasures. For his part, TKN collected the disengage treasure.

In round 3, having lost initiative, I sent Cyprien bombing into TJ's startzone. My goal was to kill the Krav, and possibly take a shot at Raelin if I had the chance. TKN got 3 wounds on me right away, but I burned the healing potion and kept going after whichever Krav I could get adjacent to. With an initiative switch helping me out, I managed to take down the third agent by the second OM of the fourth round. With the Krav-ectomy complete and a potential initiative switch back looming, I fled my (4 life) Cyprien back towards a high spot on my end of the map on the third OM of the fourth round, rather than suicide him and give up the defense treasure.

Now that I didn't have to worry about getting sniped as I advanced, I began a steady slow-roll of Drones in round 5. I split my forces up, advancing on the high ground on both sides of the map. In round 6, TJ committed TKN toward the higher side. I put a drone in a stompable spot to try to lure him a bit further in that direction. When he advanced to stomp that drone, I ran most of the rest of my drones away from that side, put a drone on the initiative glyph, and advanced towards Raelin and the grubs on the other side of the map. When the initiative switch hit in round 7, I mobbed Raelin and the grubs with drones. TKN was too far from the action to get back in time to help, so Timmy advanced him towards my startzone instead and killed Sonya.

By round 9, I had flown Cyprien in to finish off Raelin and the last grub and heal to full life again. It was just TKN against Cyprien and a bunch of Drones. I denied TKN any trample opportunities, and TKN didn't last long to repeated drone attacks.

Although this game was a grind and took a while to play out, I found it to be a really interesting game tactically. I enjoyed how I was able to take advantage of initiative switches by attacking when I was on the tail end of the turns and giving initiative back during lulls in the action. TJ took the loss relatively well. It's a sliding scale with Tiny Timmy. (I asked him at one point whether he hated me or he just had anger issues. His answer: “both”. The funny thing is that I really kinda like Timmy. It's hard for me to not appreciate someone with whom I share so much passion for the game.)


QUARTERFINALS
Opponent: Nicktheant (Stingersx5, Nilfheim, Isamu)
Map: Guardian (Initiative and Move)

For the third time on the weekend, I was facing Nick. (I was looking for the sweep, although his brother got me in Heat of Battle.) It was an interesting matchup. TKN is strong against Nilfheim and the Krav are strong against stingers, but stingers can pretty easily beat TKN and grubs if they get the chance.

Nick started the game with nearly all of his OMs on the Krav. I went all-stingers for the first 5 rounds. I advanced them up, trying to stay behind LoS blockers. The Krav posted themselves on the turret nearest their startzone, drawing support from Raelin in the startzone. I took the move glyph with a stinger, which let me shoot my stingers from behind cover to spots overlooking the startzone in one activation. By round 2, Raelin was dead, and I was engaging one Krav each turn while taking potshots at nagrubs with the others. The Krav kept blocking attacks of 3v4, though, and I kept losing a stinger a turn to return fire.

In round 3, Nick got tired of only killing one stinger a turn, and started moving the Krav around. I finally killed one with an engaged attack, but the other two just kept killing stingers. I wasn't allowing stealth dodge to come into play, but the freaking Krav just wouldn't die. I finally killed a second one at the end of round 4. In round 5, TKN took over, and Nick mistakenly put the OMs on TKN himself rather than the grubs. Still, despite not needing to worry about healing, I couldn't kill TKN. I was taking drain rolls when I had three shots at TKN, but I missed the first roll and backfired on the second. The stingers were pretty much spent at this point, and TKN still had most of his life left.

In round 6, Nilfheim got into the game at last, and managed to get some wounds on TKN. I danced around a bit but ended up engaged to TKN (albeit with height) at the end of the round. The grubs had finished the last stingers at this point, so it was Nilfheim and Isamu against a 2 life TKN, a lone krav, and several grubs and Otonashi. I lost the round 7 initiative, and TKN took Nilfheim down to one life with that opening turn attack before Nilfheim dropped him with an attack of 7. Nilfheim then flew across the map, blocked a 4v4 hit from the last agent to stay alive, and took him out.

At that point it was something like 5 nagrubs and Otonashi against Nilfheim and Isamu. I loaded up my OMs on Nilfheim and Ice Sharded away. It was white knuckle action, as I did have to block one elevated attack of 3v4 from a nagrub that had blocked the Ice Shard attack from the turn before, but Nilf was up to the task and I never had to go to Isamu. (Incidentally, this was the game that made me very happy I picked Otonashi and not Isamu. An opposing Isamu probably kills Nilfheim with dishonorable attack.)


SEMIFINALS
Opponent: Scaper_Dude (Phantom Knights x4, Raelin, Fen Hydra)
Map: Crystal Watch (Wound)

It was a ridiculous final four – the other semifinal featured the two guys who have won more Gencon events than anyone else, in lonewolf and spider_poison. (They decided to dice off rather than play their semifinal – I guess those two really hate playing tron-on-tron games.) At this point, you have to say that Brandan is every bit the player his dad is, and they're in contention with the Schaubs for the best Heroscaping family in the land.

I definitely liked my end of the matchup here, and unlike when we played on day 1, the map wasn't going to allow scaper_dude to hide Raelin and the Krav where I couldn't reach them.

In round 1, we both moved Raelins up – me to a jungle-protected spot on the level 2 7-hexer, Brandan to the middle of the mirror 7-hexer on his side. I then started sending out the PKs to kill Raelin and the Krav. My first efforts led to no wounds, but I did claim the wound glyph.

In round 2, I managed to take out two of the Krav with PKs, and get another wannok wound (Oto and a nagrub were dead). By the end of round 3, I had put 3 wounds on Raelin, and both of us had brought most of our army forward to those 7-hexers. Scaper_Dude was getting his share of stomps on PKs which were attacking Raelin and Krav, but that was a trade I was willing to make.

In round 4, Brandan moved Raelin a second time, putting her on the higher hill where she could protect TKN as he moved towards my pod of Raelin, PKs, and the Hydra. I sent PKs up after her and got the kill, although those PKs were snuffed out by stomps and attacks from TKN. I also lost a head on my 8D hydra from a 2-attack nagrub. In rounds 5 and 6 I was using my PKs to take out the grubs and, finally, the last Krav (who had been a shield-slinger). At the start of round 7 it was TKN and a handful of grubs versus a couple PKs, Raelin, and a 3-headed Hydra. I finally moved the Hydra up, reached over, and took out TKN.

Brandan probably did a better job playing TKN+grubs than any of my other day 2 opponents. He is the only one that I allowed to get a lot of trample stomp opportunities, because he kept leading me into positions where my attack opportunities were on trample-vulnerable spots. However, the matchup just wasn't going to work for him. Knights of Weston are probably the worst matchup for my TKN army, but this army isn't much better.


FINALS
Opponent: spider_poison (Gladiatrons x3, Blastarons x2, Raelin, Black Wyrmling x2)
Map: Trailblazer (Wound and Move)

After I won the semis, I said to Joe that he's a hard guy to get a game against. I had almost gotten to play him in the last round of HoB, but I had to get all the way to the finals of the main event to finally get a game against him.

Anyway, this was a pretty good marquee matchup, and we were on map #1 in the corner of the block, so there was plenty of room for a crowd. The morning events (4x400 and Dragon's Horde) finished up just as we got going, so we had a pretty large crowd watching us play right up until just a few minutes before the end, when Rÿchean called everyone to sit down for General Wars.

Outside of some proxy and test games in my basement, I've never played with the 'trons. In fact, I've never even played against them, with the notable exception of my first ever game against a Heroscaper – a game against lonewolf when he visited Denver on business a few years back. However, did remember many pearls of wisdom I've read, like lonewolf's past comments about how Raelin-backed Krav are a problem, and you sometimes need to switch to Glads to take them out, and spider_poison's own comments about how the 'trons are often at their best against the large and huge figures that they can't lock down. For his part, Joe told me that he had literally never played a game with Tor-Kul-Na in his life.

Round 1 begain with some fairly benign spooling out of armies. I put Raelin on the highest non-lava perch and started to mobilize 'trons, while spider went and grabbed a defense treasure with TKN. He had TKN on his left (my right) near the move glyph, while his Raelin and Krav were on the other side, near the wound glyph.

In round 2, I played the Black Wyrmling gambit in the hopes of taking out the Krav. They missed their d20 rolls, though, and both were brought down by the Krav. Joe just kept feeding OMs to the Krav, and just continued to rip the trons into the next round. I was taking elevated shots at Raelin and trying to keep all the figures in Raelin's aura, but the attacks of 2 just weren't getting it done, while the agents were tearing apart my 'trons.

The key moment of the game was between the third and fourth round. At that point, I had lost four Blastarons and five Gladiatrons. I knew that if I just kept trying to do what I had been doing, I would be down below a full squad of Blastarons shortly, and I wouldn't have enough firepower to win the game. So I decided to go all-in on an initiative switch. I moved several glads outside of Raelin's aura onto low ground near the Krav, and put OM1 for the next round on the Glads. I won the key initiative roll, took height on the Krav, and managed to kill two of them with elevated melee attacks. The third engaged Krav couldn't attack any Blasts, and I was able to mob Raelin with Glads and take her out on the next order marker. I killed the final agent on a 3D whiff in the next turn, and Spider lost an order marker. The tables had turned pretty dramatically, and now I just had to defeat TKN and 4 grubs with 4 blasts, 6 glads, and Raelin.

The next round was mostly maneuver, as I pulled the glads back from the corner towards the center of the map, and TKN looked for a way to outflank and pick off some figures. Eventually Joe just had to take the plunge up the middle, taking out a gladiatron but leaving him pretty vulnerable. He failed to kill the other glad that was next to him, and on the next turn I engaged with all four other surviving Gladiatrons, and took height with the four surviving Blasts. This set me up for four attacks of 7v6 against Tor-Kul-Na. Inprobably, this only resulted in two wounds, and Joe was able to kill four Glads before I had another shot. I engaged with a Blast to set up three attacks of 4 and an attack of 2, and these much lower attacks managed to do the four wounds needed to take out the big Hivelord. My army was pretty spent at that point, but the blasts had enough in them to dispose of the remaining nagrubs and complete the win for me.

For winning the championship, I once again got a bunch of swag. I got a RotV just for making day 2, and a T-shirt for making the top 8. Top 3 all got skull hologram trophies and custom dice. For placing first, I also got a champion's plaque and both a lava and tundra set.
 
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TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

Ever since this format had been announced, I figured I would be playing Heavy Gruts. I even went and borrowed heavies from two different Colorado locals so that I would have the four squads I needed to run the standard builds. (I ended up using them in Heat of Battle, so it wasn't a waste.) I was actually leaning towards the Marro Warriors + Nerak version, but I had the figures to go Raelin + Marcu if I wanted.

However, from what I saw on the weekend heading into Sunday, I was convinced that the ToC was going to have a ton of 4th Mass and 10th regiment. This makes the Heavies a lot harder to play, since the WTF squads to pretty well against them unless you draw the right map. Moreover, having just won the championship the day before, I really didn’t feel like playing what felt like somebody else’s army in the ToC.

I considered playing zombies, but I was pretty sure that Heavies would mop the floor with that, so in the end I decided to go with my main event army from the year before:

80 Raelin RotV
120 Deathreavers x3
180 Major Q9
120 Fen Hydra
500, 17 spaces

This army isn’t quite as strong in the ToC formats (particularly Treasure Quest) as it is in straight Heroscape, but I figured it was one of the few armies out there that actually had a strong matchup against both the 4th/10th armies and the orcs. (Cuttersx5 + Nilf/Zelrig/Braxas + Filler was another strong option, but I didn’t have any of those figures with me. Knights of Weston would have been a decent option as well, but I didn’t think of it at the time.) Of course, this meant that it was likely to lose in the reverse the whip round to whatever I faced, but I didn’t see a good way to thread the needle against what I expected to face. And honestly, after the day before, I really didn’t care, anyway.

ROUND 1
Opponent: Cornpuff (Blade Gruts x4, Grimnak, Nerak, Raelin, Heirloom)
Map: Crystal Watch (Initiative)
Format: Capture the Flag

Orcs and Grimnak are a scary opponent in this format, because they can outmaneuver you to the flag pretty easily. I resolved to play a defensive game and keep my big heroes tight to my flag, so that he would have to kill my army to win.

The opening round was a slow-roll, as Cornpuff advanced his army and moved up Raelin, while I took command of the hills immediately outside of my startzone. In round 2 I sniped at Raelin qith Q9’s normal attack a couple times, but only got 1 wound to show for it.

Round 3 and Round 4 were the Heirloom show. I had foolishly left my rats in a clump near Raelin and the Hydra, and Heirloom was able to bomb this clump multiple times for big attacks with force orb. I tried to tie Heirloom down, but Cornpuff wisely disengaged and just kept bombing away. By the end of these rounds, Raelin was dead, there was a wound on the Hydra, 5 rats were down, and we were both joking about how broken Heirloom is. The Hydra moved out and killed the broken guy early in round 5, though.

While all of this was happening, though, Q9 was doing work on the rest of Cornpuff’s army. He killed Raelin in round 3, and kept wearing down Nerak and the Blades as they moved in to my zone. By the time Heirloom went down, it was Q9, a 3-headed Hydra, and about 5 rats, against Grimnak and about six blades. On paper, this should be an easy win for my army, but this is capture the flag, so the finish was quite furious. Cornpuff’s BGs were rolling pretty hot, and my rats were dropping like flies at the end.

When the smoke cleared and time was called, the end-of-round totals were 1 rat, Q9, and the Hydra, against Grimnak and one Blade. If Cornpuff had won initiative to start the next round, he would have had a realistic chance to win the game by capturing the flag.

Honestly, I played this one pretty poorly, and nearly paid the price for bunching my figures up against an explosion attacker. (I did the same thing against Zelrig in the main event… when will I learn?)

ROUND 2 (1-0 vs. 1-0)
Opponent: fomox (Death Chasers x5, Nerak, MBS, Krav)
Map: Breach
Format: Treasure Quest

I had been looking forward to playing a match with fomox for a while, and this one did not disappoint.

Much like the previous round, the matchup was extremely slanted from a “straight Heroscape” perspective, but treasure quest made it interesting. I knew that trying to win a treasure chase with MBS and Nerak was pretty much a hopeless task, so my goal would be to cover up one of the glyphs and kill his two unique heroes.

fomox won the opening initiative, but he advanced mostly up the sides, so I was still able to land a rat on the central bridge glyph and pod up on the height just in front of the bridge. I then commenced shooting Death Chasers.

By round 2, there were 5 dead chasers, but Nerak and MBS kept gathering glyphs. By round 3, they had gathered all four glyphs aside from the central one (which, by elimination, must have been the belt of giant strength). MBS killed the rat on the last treasure with paralyzing stare, but I took the opportunity to finally move Raelin up and plant her there instead. Of course, this meant Raelin was vulnerable, but at least Q9 could hit anything that was attacking Raelin.

The game had been progressing fairly slow, and I became aware that despite protecting the last glyph, I was going to lose on time if I played the matchup “correctly”, and rolled my rats out gradually to protect Q9’s advance. fomox was not attacking rats (except when paralyzing stare hit), so I wasn’t getting any free moves. In order to get to Nerak and MBS in time, I had to abandon the rat shell and basically play it like an all-hero army.

This made for an exciting, furious finish. Q9 wounded MBS down to 1 life left, but MBS just healed his way back to full. Q9 then advanced over the height on my left to get at MBS again. He managed to kill MBS, but in the process he gave up height to Death Chasers and ended up getting taken out himself. Nerak tried to get away, but on the last order marker of the last round, the Hydra killed Nerak. The final tally was two Krav agents and one Deathchaser against a 3-life Hydra and nearly all of the rats. No glyphs were in play, so I won on points.

It was a funny game; normally I hate time pressure and games ending on time, but in this case I have to admit that it would have been a pretty boring game without the time factor, and it ended up being an extremely exciting game. Mike was a great opponent and I’m 100% sure that stalling for the win was never on his mind.

ROUND 3 (2-0 vs. 2-0)
Opponent: Hendal (Stingers x7 + Raelin)
Map: Common Ground (wound + Initiative on the island)
Format: Heat of Battle

I won the d20 roll for placement, and gave myself control of most of the high ground in the middle. I ended up concentrating my forces on the hill overlooking the wound glyph, while Hendal had figures all around the edges.

Raelin took some early hits to juiced stingers, but I sent the rats out to cover all the 5-spaces-away spots that had a shot at Raelin. Hendal was able to squeeze one stinger in to shoot at Raelin after that, and did eventually take Raelin down, but meanwhile, Q9 was killing all the stingers outside of Raelin’s Aura.

We didn’t finish the game, but attrition was clearly going my way. When time was called, I had lost Raelin and perhaps one rat, while Hendal had lost four squads of stingers.

ROUND 4
Opponent: Matthias Maccabeus (Dividers x7, Eltahale, Isamu)
Map: Guardian (Wound + Heal)
Format: Reverse the Whip

Well, here it was, reverse the whip, and honestly it didn’t look pretty. Oddly enough, I had managed to dodge all the 4th/10th armies on the way into this round (and there were a lot), but then, almost everything I had thought of playing would have been at a disadvantage in this matchup. I suppose playing zombiesx4 + Raelin + Q9 would have been interesting… could I have gotten through to this point with that army? Alas, we’ll never know.

I led out with Eltahale grabbing the healing treasure, while Matthias moved up the rats and put Raelin on top of the closest turret to his startzone. After a couple turns getting some Dividers in position, I sent Eltahale out and had her Thunder Step up to Raelin in the turret. Three turns of 6Av4D, plus a Thunder Ram attack of 4 (which also attacked a rat and the Hydra), couldn't do the job, and the Hydra eventually brought Eltahale down with attacks of 4v5.

With the Eltahale gambit burned, I went to my much longer shot and sent Isamu out. He got one turn away from phantom walking up to Raelin and using Dishonorable attack, but Q9's second attack (of 3?? why not use repeated attacks of 1? Oh, right, you don't play Q9 very much) came up skulls, and Isamu missed his vanish.

So, at that point, I was out of options and simply had to grind through the rats. The next several round centered around the wound glyph. I kept working figures around that end, and attacking the rats there that were not in Raelin's aura. Matthias was able to use scatter to usually limit me to a couple attacks per OM, as I was really only working on a couple rats right in that area. For his part, Ken had worked Q9 around to the low ground on the other side of the water from the wound glyph, and was shooting up on my dividers. Despite the extra defense dice, and my pretty hot divide rolls, all I was doing was killing rats, and I needed to do it at a faster pace if I was going to have any chance against the heroes when the screen finally melted.

It was a pretty casual game, honestly, because we both knew that once Raelin had survived my early run it was pretty much over. Still, when time was called, there were only 2 rats left, while I still had 7 or 8 dividers. But with an unwounded Hydra and Q9, backed by a wounded Raelin, the odds were heavily against me even if the game had been played out.

3-1, 4th place. In the end I guess I wish I had run the zombies, at least given the way things played out in terms of the armies I played against. But I have to say that I did really enjoy playing this army, and even playing against it. My TQ and CTF games in particular were both really fun, close, exciting games. I certainly don't regret not playing the Heavies, with whom I think I would have posted the same 3-1 record but had less fun with.
 
TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

ROUND 3 (2-0 vs. 2-0)
Opponent: Hendal (Stingers x7 + Raelin)
Map: Common Ground (wound + Initiative on the island)
Format: Heat of Battle

I won the d20 roll for placement, and gave myself control of most of the high ground in the middle. I ended up concentrating my forces on the hill overlooking the wound glyph, while Hendal had figures all around the edges.

Raelin took some early hits to juiced stingers, but I sent the rats out to cover all the 5-spaces-away spots that had a shot at Raelin. Hendal was able to squeeze one stinger in to shoot at Raelin after that, and did eventually take Raelin down, but meanwhile, Q9 was killing all the stingers outside of Raelin’s Aura.

We didn’t finish the game, but attrition was clearly going my way. When time was called, I had lost Raelin and perhaps one rat, while Hendal had lost four squads of stingers.

I guess that I was looking for the part where you placed your Q-9 illegally next to a ruin on height. Because Hendal is a nice guy, he allowed it.....quite a swing from the day before where you wouldn't allow SP to do the exact same thing with TKN.

Not sure why you have a double standard on that, but I am guessing that it is because winning is the most important thing for you far above sportsmanship? :(
 
I guess that I was looking for the part where you placed your Q-9 illegally next to a ruin on height. Because Hendal is a nice guy, he allowed it.....quite a swing from the day before where you wouldn't allow SP to do the exact same thing with TKN.

Not sure why you have a double standard on that, but I am guessing that it is because winning is the most important thing for you far above sportsmanship? :(
I posted about this a few days ago, over here, Mike. I was hoping to not bring up specific names and games, but if that's how you want it to be... fair enough.

It never would have occurred to me to disallow that placement for TKN to Joe if Brandan hadn't denied it to me the day before. After that, I played it consistently that way for that tournament. Do I want to play not allowing that from now on? I really don't know. I know that I felt worse about denying it to Joe than I felt about "getting away with it" the next day. Obviously you (and Brandan) are used to playing it the other way.

I did specifically ask Tom if he was OK with the placement. He said he was. I guess I would rather have it always be allowed, but I recognize that anyone who wants to enforce the letter of the rule can.
 
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