First off, I'd like to give a big thanks to Jormi, Darkwind, and everyone involved in setting up another fun and well-supported event. It was worth the drive.
When some people say the words "fun army" they're usually referring to something using Jotun, Dünd or some other d20 unit. I generally think of units that are flexible and have lots of little adjacency bonuses to manipulate. Wave 1/2 favorites like Arrow Gruts, Roman Legionnaires, and Blade/Heavy Gruts are the kinds of armies that I usually play if I just want to have a good time. Manipulating squad-based armies is a lot of what keeps me coming back to this game.
So, it should come as no surprise that when I heard that Jormi's tournament came to 440 points this time around, that the following lame, played out, competitive army came to mind immediately:
3x Gladiatrons 240
2x Blastatrons 360
Raelin 440
For me, it's the perfect mix of "fun squad army to move around and work with" and "army that stands a decent chance of winning games." There were at least a dozen or two other armies that I strongly considered playing, but I kept coming back to this one.
Game 1: Hoju511 (3x Redcoats, Raelin, Kaemon, Isamu) on Hot Heights
Because the glyphs were unrevealed to start in the games in this tournament, my default strategy was going to be to go 1-2 Trons and 3 Raelin most games, because then I could put Raelin near whichever glyph was more important. However, on this map, each team has a much easier time of taking one of the glyphs on its side of the map, so I went back to my default strategy for most tournament games with an army like this: placing my 1 on Raelin and my 2,3 on the Blasts. Confusing, huh?
I won initiative. Drat... not a good thing on the first round in most games, especially if you aren't racing for any glyphs. I moved Raelin up the nearer of the two rock hexes on level 4 near the high ground on my side. Hoju moved up his own Raelin up between the glyph and ruin on his side- on low ground and staring across at my Raelin. We start moving our squads up. The glyph on my side turns out to be Brandar (dud). On Hoju's side, it's Astrid. Nice.
On my early attacks, I rolled pretty badly on skulls, but I made sure to get lots of skulls and blanks for my defense rolls. His early attacks were mostly skulls, and he took Raelin down before I really knew what happened. Luckily for me though I took out some of his leading redcoats and his Raelin not too much later, as he won initiative at the start of the second round, and proceeded to do so for most of the game.
With both of our Raelins out of the way, we were able to play a bit more freely with our figures. Hoju did an excellent job of mixing up his attacks between my Gladiatrons and Blastatrons, taking good shots on the advancing Glads, and taking potshots of 2v3 (normal v. height) or 3v3 (astrid v. height) against my Blasts. The occasional WtF for extra dice happened now and then too. My mix of guys was often off just a little bit- only able to get 1-2 Glads adjacent per turn, and sometimes having to move up a Blastatron to replace a dead one.
I was often in a weird dilemma that happened in at least one of my other games. With a gladiatron, I had the choice of jumping to the attack glyph, which would surely be a death trap on hot heights, or I could move him adjacent to a Redcoat, which would give me an extra attack die on those guys anyway, as well as lock them down temporarily. Since I was low on Glads, I often opted to engage, but this might have been a mistake sometimes, as it gave Hoju temporary access to the glyph once or twice, for a significant boost to his attack power on those turns. If I didn't engage though, he would have had free access to shooting at my dwindling Blastatrons.
I felt that overall I did a pretty good job of making him come to me, and took the best attacks as they came to me, but I was generally losing guys faster. Toward the end, it came down to a cat and mouse game between 2 Blasts and 1 Glad v. Kaemon and Isamu. I only got one wound on Kaemon before losing those guys. I can't think of too much that I did wrong, but I don't think Hoju511 really made any mistakes either. Nice game!
I often put down the Redcoats, but I think they're probably the third most feared unit for 'trons to face in a tournament, behind Deathreavers and 4th Mass. Krav can be bad too, potentially. Two of the three tournament losses that I've had with Blastatrons (out of 10 games total with them) have been against Redcoats. The other was against Lonewolf playing Q9/Rats on a map that was terrible for 'trons.
Loss, -130 (Just Hoju's Kaemon and Isamu left)
0-1 (-130 PD)
Game 2: Luke B. (2x Knights of Weston, Sir Gilbert, Major Q9) on Just Passing Through
I highly doubt that many people remember my battle reports as well as I do, but Luke is the younger guy who beat me in a maddening fashion in the 4th game of the last Gamer's Reunion with a very similar army to the one he played yesterday. In that game on Fire Isles, he had killed 9 Stingers and Raelin with a once-wounded Q9 on low ground. All of those guys only managed 2 more wounds on Q9 before I lost.
Today, he had won his first round, but by not many points. We must have been one of the few 1-0/0-1 pairings this round. This time I was pretty prepared though. Knights? Q9 without Krav and Raelin? This was actually one of my best matchups against typical strong tourney units.
I started off with that 1-2 Blasts, 3 Raelin OM placement that I mentioned, and then went all Blasts for the rest of the game. With some quickly moving Jandar's Dispatched Knights and winning initiative, he took the Initiative glyph on my right side (and the side that all of his guys were on). I took the Movement glyph way on the other end- not that great for my army [Glads don't get the bonus] but still good to keep him off it. He started moving up Knights, which I locked down with Glads as best I could. I took some 2v4 potshots at his Knights on my first and second turns, and they were working. If I had any bad luck in that first game, it was totally gone now!
When I flew Raelin up, I actually had her make a 4v4 attack on KoW (which she failed) but it put her in excellent postion for the rest of the game- right on the front part of the high ground with one hex between her and that ruin: this meant that her aura extended to most of the water hexes outside Luke's starting zone, which ended up being crucial later.
From there on, it was just kind of ugly. I was blowing through and clamping down his Knights at an alarming rate, as they (or was it Q9?) inflicted one early wound on Raelin. Sir Gilbert rolled really badly on defense- he must have blanked two or three times in a row on 4 dice. Then he moved Q9 up adjacent to the water and started killing some guys, but not too quickly.
Once I got rid of most of this Knights, I surrounded Q9 and started taking 5v7 shots on him (3 trons +height) but only scored 1 wound in my first 8 attacks at that strength. But then at the end of one round, I sent one of my blastatrons in to engage, and another onto the initiative glyph.
He rolled a 20 for initiative, but then I rolled a 13+8=21. YES!
Then I blew up his Q9 with 4 attacks of 6v7 because I got more guys adjacent. My Raelin had 1/5 lives left, which is always a good sign!
Good game, man!
Win +300 (little more than 1 of each squad lost)
1-1 (+170 PD)
Game 3: Strack9 (Brunak, Krav Maga Agents, Theracus, Raelin, Eldgrim, Finn the Viking Champion) on Sniper Streams
Strack9 was playing a very original army that prominently featured the Carry mechanic. And the Krav. I could see that he probably wanted me to kill his vikings so they could go totally nuts, so I tried not to do that.
Well, I killed his Eldgrim when Theracus put him on the move glyph on my side, but not his Finn when Brunak did the same. Wound glyph was on the other side, but it ended up not being much of a factor. Brunak held it for awhile, so I put one wound on a B-tron in my starting zone once and later one on my Raelin- it would be the only wound she took. His Krav peppered my Glads pretty mercilessly.
With him setting up his Krav-raelin pod with Brunak on the other hill, and me setting mine up on my hill, I broke the first rule of playing Raelin. I activated her again. This time flying her way up to the tower that was a bit further from my start zone (2nd closest to me, I think, but one of the two in the center). With only one Gladiatron adjacent to Brunak, the lady Krav, and Raelin, I was left with a ton of tough stuff to shoot at... instead of taking 2v4 potshots at Raelin, I opted to shoot the lady Krav, hoping for a whiff, and I got one on either my 4th-8th shot! (It's actually not that unlikely, each defense roll has a ~20% chance of showing no shields). It was huge in this case though, as it convinced him to shift to Brunak on the following round. Then I got a couple more wounds on Raelin, so she was at 1 life left.
With 3 of his order markers on Brunak and me winning initiative, I knew what I had to do- I swarmed the bejeezus out of him, getting 4 more Gladiatrons adjacent, for a total of 5. I was again given an interetsting choice. Only two trons were adjacent to Raelin, and she had height on them. The trons had height on Brunak. Do I take 1 3v4 shot at Raelin first, hoping to kill her and then take three 7v7 shots at Brunak; or do I just ignore her, and take four 7v9 shots? I wasn't 100% sure on the math, but my math-gut said, "go for the four 7v9 shots." It didn't really matter though, as by the 3rd shot, Brunak was dead, and on the 4th shot my B-tron killed Raelin anyway. Go figure.
All of his OM's were on Brunak that round, I believe, so the rest of the game was just an anticlimactic scripted event as I hunted down his Krav and finally Finn. An army with so many heroes is in a rough spot against the Glads/Blasts.
Win +360 (7 Gladiatrons and 1 Blastatron dead)
2-1 (+530 PD)
Game 4: ?- Elffy's Friend (7x Zombies of Morindan, Isamu, Otonashi) on Hot Heights
So check this out. Not only am I playing on Hot Heights again, but Astrid is on the other side of the map, with nothing good for me on my side. (It was Ulaniva, so if I had a different army, it may have actually been about even). I'll still maintain that Hot Heights is super awesome for a very long time though.
Also, unlike his friend Elffy, this kid must have huge balls. 7x Zombies? Rad.
So, I start off with my usual moves on Hot Heights. 1 Raelin, 2,3 Trons. Instead of flying toward the hill, I sent Raelin to go just to the right of the Molten Lava hex outside my starting zone (assuming that we've got the map with us facing off, like a chess board). This way, it would be really hard for the other guy to get that Onslaught attack going on Raelin, and there'd be no way to get height advantage on her either. It also had the benefit of covering the entire center 7-hexer with her aura, and a number of other key zones on my side.
Early on, I thought I was going to lose horribly. 3 attack zombies are SCARY! I had lost about 6 'trons early, with him having a net loss of only 1 zombie.
But somehow, just by the dice turning, or me getting more dudes adjacent, I managed to blast through and push my way towards the attack glyph. I only had one Gladiatron over there though, so my first move was not to move onto the glyph with that Gladiatron. I put him on the corner next to it, so that any Zombie trying to go for the glyph would face getting clamped, or having to jump in the water first. There was no way for him to move onto it this turn. Had I put the Gladiatron onto the glyph, he could have stolen it from me with a successful 3v4 attack and Zombies Rise Again. As it was, he got a 2v4 against my Gladiatron, which I successfully blocked. I thought I was clever.
The turn after that, I swung that Glad around to engage another Zombie, and started pushing more glads that way. Once the coast was clear, I took the glyph, and it was all downhill from there, quite literally. Trons with height and a glyph are even scarier than zombies. 4 attacks of 4v3 or 5v3 >>> than 3 attacks of 2v4 or 2v6-7. He got a bit frustrated at the dice, but I think it was mostly because he was doing so well at the beginning.
Nice game man, and again, cool army!
Win +280 (~9 Gladiatrons and 3 Blastatrons dead)
3-1 (+810 PD)
Game 5: Micre (3x Heavy Gruts, Grimnak, Tornak, Isamu) on Slash and Burn
I'm normally a big fan of Dignan's maps, but I don't think this is his best work. The ruins and jungle really create a lot of choke points that give Gladiatrons or Deathreavers too easy of a time controlling the map. Micre and I felt that if you just remove the two central ruins, the map gets a lot better. You might make them relevant by putting them in the starting zones, or perhaps even on the low ground near the glyphs, but I don't like them where they are.
Apparently, I'm now Micre's nemesis. He has been doing well in a lot of Minnesota tourneys lately, but he has yet to beat me. He said that he wanted a chance to get revenge on Saturday, and was grateful that he actually did get the opportunity to do so...
Until he looked at the armies.
Glads/Blasts are pretty much a hard counter to Heavy Gruts, at least in my opinion. The map didn't help.
And neither did me summoning Grimnak (Erland glyph) and killing him on my first 4 attack rolls.
Tough luck man. The fourth time's the charm, right? Muahahahah!
*
Win +360 (~6 Gladiatrons and 0-2 Blastatrons dead)
4-1 (+1170 PD) 3rd place out of 30
(And had S_P manned up and won his last game [and the tourney] I would have been 2nd.
)
Thanks again to everyone who ran this, and to my opponents for some fun games.
When some people say the words "fun army" they're usually referring to something using Jotun, Dünd or some other d20 unit. I generally think of units that are flexible and have lots of little adjacency bonuses to manipulate. Wave 1/2 favorites like Arrow Gruts, Roman Legionnaires, and Blade/Heavy Gruts are the kinds of armies that I usually play if I just want to have a good time. Manipulating squad-based armies is a lot of what keeps me coming back to this game.
So, it should come as no surprise that when I heard that Jormi's tournament came to 440 points this time around, that the following lame, played out, competitive army came to mind immediately:
3x Gladiatrons 240
2x Blastatrons 360
Raelin 440
For me, it's the perfect mix of "fun squad army to move around and work with" and "army that stands a decent chance of winning games." There were at least a dozen or two other armies that I strongly considered playing, but I kept coming back to this one.
Game 1: Hoju511 (3x Redcoats, Raelin, Kaemon, Isamu) on Hot Heights
Because the glyphs were unrevealed to start in the games in this tournament, my default strategy was going to be to go 1-2 Trons and 3 Raelin most games, because then I could put Raelin near whichever glyph was more important. However, on this map, each team has a much easier time of taking one of the glyphs on its side of the map, so I went back to my default strategy for most tournament games with an army like this: placing my 1 on Raelin and my 2,3 on the Blasts. Confusing, huh?
I won initiative. Drat... not a good thing on the first round in most games, especially if you aren't racing for any glyphs. I moved Raelin up the nearer of the two rock hexes on level 4 near the high ground on my side. Hoju moved up his own Raelin up between the glyph and ruin on his side- on low ground and staring across at my Raelin. We start moving our squads up. The glyph on my side turns out to be Brandar (dud). On Hoju's side, it's Astrid. Nice.
On my early attacks, I rolled pretty badly on skulls, but I made sure to get lots of skulls and blanks for my defense rolls. His early attacks were mostly skulls, and he took Raelin down before I really knew what happened. Luckily for me though I took out some of his leading redcoats and his Raelin not too much later, as he won initiative at the start of the second round, and proceeded to do so for most of the game.
With both of our Raelins out of the way, we were able to play a bit more freely with our figures. Hoju did an excellent job of mixing up his attacks between my Gladiatrons and Blastatrons, taking good shots on the advancing Glads, and taking potshots of 2v3 (normal v. height) or 3v3 (astrid v. height) against my Blasts. The occasional WtF for extra dice happened now and then too. My mix of guys was often off just a little bit- only able to get 1-2 Glads adjacent per turn, and sometimes having to move up a Blastatron to replace a dead one.
I was often in a weird dilemma that happened in at least one of my other games. With a gladiatron, I had the choice of jumping to the attack glyph, which would surely be a death trap on hot heights, or I could move him adjacent to a Redcoat, which would give me an extra attack die on those guys anyway, as well as lock them down temporarily. Since I was low on Glads, I often opted to engage, but this might have been a mistake sometimes, as it gave Hoju temporary access to the glyph once or twice, for a significant boost to his attack power on those turns. If I didn't engage though, he would have had free access to shooting at my dwindling Blastatrons.

I felt that overall I did a pretty good job of making him come to me, and took the best attacks as they came to me, but I was generally losing guys faster. Toward the end, it came down to a cat and mouse game between 2 Blasts and 1 Glad v. Kaemon and Isamu. I only got one wound on Kaemon before losing those guys. I can't think of too much that I did wrong, but I don't think Hoju511 really made any mistakes either. Nice game!
I often put down the Redcoats, but I think they're probably the third most feared unit for 'trons to face in a tournament, behind Deathreavers and 4th Mass. Krav can be bad too, potentially. Two of the three tournament losses that I've had with Blastatrons (out of 10 games total with them) have been against Redcoats. The other was against Lonewolf playing Q9/Rats on a map that was terrible for 'trons.
Loss, -130 (Just Hoju's Kaemon and Isamu left)
0-1 (-130 PD)
Game 2: Luke B. (2x Knights of Weston, Sir Gilbert, Major Q9) on Just Passing Through
I highly doubt that many people remember my battle reports as well as I do, but Luke is the younger guy who beat me in a maddening fashion in the 4th game of the last Gamer's Reunion with a very similar army to the one he played yesterday. In that game on Fire Isles, he had killed 9 Stingers and Raelin with a once-wounded Q9 on low ground. All of those guys only managed 2 more wounds on Q9 before I lost.
Today, he had won his first round, but by not many points. We must have been one of the few 1-0/0-1 pairings this round. This time I was pretty prepared though. Knights? Q9 without Krav and Raelin? This was actually one of my best matchups against typical strong tourney units.
I started off with that 1-2 Blasts, 3 Raelin OM placement that I mentioned, and then went all Blasts for the rest of the game. With some quickly moving Jandar's Dispatched Knights and winning initiative, he took the Initiative glyph on my right side (and the side that all of his guys were on). I took the Movement glyph way on the other end- not that great for my army [Glads don't get the bonus] but still good to keep him off it. He started moving up Knights, which I locked down with Glads as best I could. I took some 2v4 potshots at his Knights on my first and second turns, and they were working. If I had any bad luck in that first game, it was totally gone now!
When I flew Raelin up, I actually had her make a 4v4 attack on KoW (which she failed) but it put her in excellent postion for the rest of the game- right on the front part of the high ground with one hex between her and that ruin: this meant that her aura extended to most of the water hexes outside Luke's starting zone, which ended up being crucial later.
From there on, it was just kind of ugly. I was blowing through and clamping down his Knights at an alarming rate, as they (or was it Q9?) inflicted one early wound on Raelin. Sir Gilbert rolled really badly on defense- he must have blanked two or three times in a row on 4 dice. Then he moved Q9 up adjacent to the water and started killing some guys, but not too quickly.
Once I got rid of most of this Knights, I surrounded Q9 and started taking 5v7 shots on him (3 trons +height) but only scored 1 wound in my first 8 attacks at that strength. But then at the end of one round, I sent one of my blastatrons in to engage, and another onto the initiative glyph.
He rolled a 20 for initiative, but then I rolled a 13+8=21. YES!
Then I blew up his Q9 with 4 attacks of 6v7 because I got more guys adjacent. My Raelin had 1/5 lives left, which is always a good sign!
Good game, man!
Win +300 (little more than 1 of each squad lost)
1-1 (+170 PD)
Game 3: Strack9 (Brunak, Krav Maga Agents, Theracus, Raelin, Eldgrim, Finn the Viking Champion) on Sniper Streams
Strack9 was playing a very original army that prominently featured the Carry mechanic. And the Krav. I could see that he probably wanted me to kill his vikings so they could go totally nuts, so I tried not to do that.
Well, I killed his Eldgrim when Theracus put him on the move glyph on my side, but not his Finn when Brunak did the same. Wound glyph was on the other side, but it ended up not being much of a factor. Brunak held it for awhile, so I put one wound on a B-tron in my starting zone once and later one on my Raelin- it would be the only wound she took. His Krav peppered my Glads pretty mercilessly.
With him setting up his Krav-raelin pod with Brunak on the other hill, and me setting mine up on my hill, I broke the first rule of playing Raelin. I activated her again. This time flying her way up to the tower that was a bit further from my start zone (2nd closest to me, I think, but one of the two in the center). With only one Gladiatron adjacent to Brunak, the lady Krav, and Raelin, I was left with a ton of tough stuff to shoot at... instead of taking 2v4 potshots at Raelin, I opted to shoot the lady Krav, hoping for a whiff, and I got one on either my 4th-8th shot! (It's actually not that unlikely, each defense roll has a ~20% chance of showing no shields). It was huge in this case though, as it convinced him to shift to Brunak on the following round. Then I got a couple more wounds on Raelin, so she was at 1 life left.
With 3 of his order markers on Brunak and me winning initiative, I knew what I had to do- I swarmed the bejeezus out of him, getting 4 more Gladiatrons adjacent, for a total of 5. I was again given an interetsting choice. Only two trons were adjacent to Raelin, and she had height on them. The trons had height on Brunak. Do I take 1 3v4 shot at Raelin first, hoping to kill her and then take three 7v7 shots at Brunak; or do I just ignore her, and take four 7v9 shots? I wasn't 100% sure on the math, but my math-gut said, "go for the four 7v9 shots." It didn't really matter though, as by the 3rd shot, Brunak was dead, and on the 4th shot my B-tron killed Raelin anyway. Go figure.
All of his OM's were on Brunak that round, I believe, so the rest of the game was just an anticlimactic scripted event as I hunted down his Krav and finally Finn. An army with so many heroes is in a rough spot against the Glads/Blasts.
Win +360 (7 Gladiatrons and 1 Blastatron dead)
2-1 (+530 PD)
Game 4: ?- Elffy's Friend (7x Zombies of Morindan, Isamu, Otonashi) on Hot Heights
So check this out. Not only am I playing on Hot Heights again, but Astrid is on the other side of the map, with nothing good for me on my side. (It was Ulaniva, so if I had a different army, it may have actually been about even). I'll still maintain that Hot Heights is super awesome for a very long time though.
Also, unlike his friend Elffy, this kid must have huge balls. 7x Zombies? Rad.
So, I start off with my usual moves on Hot Heights. 1 Raelin, 2,3 Trons. Instead of flying toward the hill, I sent Raelin to go just to the right of the Molten Lava hex outside my starting zone (assuming that we've got the map with us facing off, like a chess board). This way, it would be really hard for the other guy to get that Onslaught attack going on Raelin, and there'd be no way to get height advantage on her either. It also had the benefit of covering the entire center 7-hexer with her aura, and a number of other key zones on my side.
Early on, I thought I was going to lose horribly. 3 attack zombies are SCARY! I had lost about 6 'trons early, with him having a net loss of only 1 zombie.
But somehow, just by the dice turning, or me getting more dudes adjacent, I managed to blast through and push my way towards the attack glyph. I only had one Gladiatron over there though, so my first move was not to move onto the glyph with that Gladiatron. I put him on the corner next to it, so that any Zombie trying to go for the glyph would face getting clamped, or having to jump in the water first. There was no way for him to move onto it this turn. Had I put the Gladiatron onto the glyph, he could have stolen it from me with a successful 3v4 attack and Zombies Rise Again. As it was, he got a 2v4 against my Gladiatron, which I successfully blocked. I thought I was clever.
The turn after that, I swung that Glad around to engage another Zombie, and started pushing more glads that way. Once the coast was clear, I took the glyph, and it was all downhill from there, quite literally. Trons with height and a glyph are even scarier than zombies. 4 attacks of 4v3 or 5v3 >>> than 3 attacks of 2v4 or 2v6-7. He got a bit frustrated at the dice, but I think it was mostly because he was doing so well at the beginning.
Nice game man, and again, cool army!
Win +280 (~9 Gladiatrons and 3 Blastatrons dead)
3-1 (+810 PD)
Game 5: Micre (3x Heavy Gruts, Grimnak, Tornak, Isamu) on Slash and Burn
I'm normally a big fan of Dignan's maps, but I don't think this is his best work. The ruins and jungle really create a lot of choke points that give Gladiatrons or Deathreavers too easy of a time controlling the map. Micre and I felt that if you just remove the two central ruins, the map gets a lot better. You might make them relevant by putting them in the starting zones, or perhaps even on the low ground near the glyphs, but I don't like them where they are.
Apparently, I'm now Micre's nemesis. He has been doing well in a lot of Minnesota tourneys lately, but he has yet to beat me. He said that he wanted a chance to get revenge on Saturday, and was grateful that he actually did get the opportunity to do so...
Until he looked at the armies.
Glads/Blasts are pretty much a hard counter to Heavy Gruts, at least in my opinion. The map didn't help.
And neither did me summoning Grimnak (Erland glyph) and killing him on my first 4 attack rolls.
Tough luck man. The fourth time's the charm, right? Muahahahah!

Win +360 (~6 Gladiatrons and 0-2 Blastatrons dead)
4-1 (+1170 PD) 3rd place out of 30
(And had S_P manned up and won his last game [and the tourney] I would have been 2nd.
Thanks again to everyone who ran this, and to my opponents for some fun games.