The punchline was that I went 0-2, with a win for the Bye. Bob had the conventional 1-2 by beating me (more on that later). My opponents were Circle and Cygnar.
The Circle player was insightful. He's also a past champion at some of the major conventions in the area. He's also the tourney organizer's former roommate. Needless to say, he seemed to play a lot of wargaming. He looked at my Tier 4 Blaize list and immediately put down the his Tier 1 Baldur list and picked up his Kromac Tier 1. This build felt very Darius in build style. Play style was a lot different. Three Heavy Warbeasts, one of which was the Character Beast, and Wolf Riders. Rich later admitted that he loved the Wolf/Werewolf theme. A mistake here and there left my army destroyed piecemeal and Blaize dead after 4 turns. In the final assessment, I moved too far ahead and couldn't damage enough to really kill anything. However, he rode excellent dice rolls through this game to shatter Jacks repeatedly. I gave up 41 army points and only got 9.
Game 2 was against Bob's Cygnar and eHaley. This particular game was a bust. After 3 turns, neither of us really had control of the board. Bob was halfway through his turn 4, a game where he had the first turn, the game was called on time. Because of the hard stop time, my forces never had a chance to challenge his positioning and he won based on the 3rd tiebreaker (more points nearest the control area and objectives).
I wasn't awarded any points in that game and left with a second loss. I got the third round bye, assuring me a "win". Technically, I left with a 1-2 record.
Bob got his one win from playing me. His first game was against Carver and his war-pigs. That was a close game that ended on eHaley getting killed. His third game was against Rich and his Circle. This time, he used Baldur since Bob's Cygnar was not Precursor Knight heavy and Baldur could use his upkeeps. eHaley was killed again to end Bob's hope for second place.
In the end, it was fun. Prizes were awarded to first, second, and then the two players who rolled highest and lowest. As I was consistently rolling below average, so I was able to snag a $20 gift card with a 3d6 roll of 8. The winner rolled a 16. The other three players rolled 15, 12, and 11.
The lessons learned are:
1) Hordes players brought tier 1 lists consistently. Very few were up at tier 2 or 3.
2) Few cared to bring squishy infantry, most were either hard or fast.
3) A melee oriented Cygnar Infantry list had a 40k Genestealer feel to it. Charge lanes and movement was constantly being gummed up by tarpits to delay movement.
4) Local gaming meta within our group is significantly different from the Game Kastle meta. This is important because what works within our group can fail dramatically in the tourney.
5) Consider a using the minimum of WarJacks in future games with infantry filling out all the points. At 35 point games, and 10 min rounds, it is conceivable to only use infantry since they'll start dying. The 5 min bonus should be used by turn 2 to mow down part of the opposition.
6) Use the time in your favor. Round 1 was 1.5 hours long. Round 2 was 1 hour. Round 3 was 1.25 hours. With this knowledge going into the next tourney (tentatively scheduled for the 3rd week of June), training to a 1 hour strategy might be more useful. We played to the scenario in my 2 games, but it was more of a dance to avoid caster assassination.
Final thoughts:
Blaize's Tier 4 list is effective. Crusader's Call gave me a distinct advantage in movement (+2" Charge), making the slow Centurion with reach (4 Spd) a bit more useful with an 11" charge threat. It also surprised a few with the potential combat range. I did forget about Reform, and that would have gummed up charge lanes with the 3" movement after activation. They also wouldn't have been hit twice with assault orders.
Overall, much stronger showing than last time, just not better results to show for it.
Well I need to make some corrections regarding the tourney.
ReplyDeleteGame 1: Pigs
eHaley was not killed in this game. In fact I was setting up for a caster kill on the pig using a 4 focus Stormclad and Telekinesis when I was stopped mid-turn cause of time. Over all it was still a fun game and I enjoyed facing the Pigs. Only thing that would have made it better was PAINTED Pigs.
Game 2:
This was my favorite game to play overall. Both Mike and I had set in motion some plans and modified them as the game progress. The game kept ebbing back and forth and I can't tell you who would have won being so close. Again had to stop because of time limit. Granted in all my game I was still coming under the 10 minute turn limit, but essentially you get 3 turns to finish at best. Something to keep in mind if you are player #2.
Game 3:
I decided to not play the eHaley list and went with my pNemo list. Unfortunately I was also pretty exhausted and made plenty of mistakes and Nemo got crunched. It was neat seeing the elemental furty of the Oberos battle engine and that is peaking my interest as a Hordes army.
I liked this tournament a lot better than the first one I played in but..
1)Just reinforced to never go into a tournament cold turkey. My first itme paying eHaley was Game 1 and the second was Game 2. Better to play a few games beforehand.
2)The lack of AOE was pretty obvious and if Infantry is the big stay I understand why THead is a major include in Cygnar armies.
I was happy about how the prizes got awarded. They kept two prizes for all the people that didn't place and hand everyone roll of with Highest / Lowest winning the prize. Finally Mike's terrible rolling worked in his favor :D
My mistake about game 1, I only saw the end of your match and Haley wa pulled to the side. I thought she was knocked out. As for game 2, that was definitely a time game and not as much of anything else.
Delete