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Adepticon Story Encounter Tournament (Ramos)


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As requested by someone on the Wyrd Place Facebook group, here is a write up of my experience playing and winning the Adepticon Story Encounter Tournament. I had played in the team tournament two days prior, and walked around the hall during the Master's tournament, and saw Ramos precisely zero times on the table, and did not even hear anyone mention playing as or against him throughout the whole weekend. Since Ramos is my favorite Master, I wanted to play him for at least the majority of the tournament to prove (mostly to myself) he can still win games in GG18 (even if it is in a weird encounter format) and not give in to the urge to main Sandeep for the whole thing. 

 

Round one: Ramos vs 4 Horsemen Levi 
Punish the weak, Covert Breakthrough, Take One for the Team, Recover Evidence, Show of Force
Standard Deployment

Leader: Ramos - Cache:(5)
   Arcane Reservoir 2ss 
   Vox Populi 1ss 
Brass Arachnid 4ss 
Joss 10ss 
   Bleeding Edge Tech 1ss 
   Open Current 1ss 
Kandara 7ss 
Envy 8ss 
   Imbued Energies 1ss 
Union Steamfitter 6ss 
Arcane Effigy 4ss 
Mobile Toolkit 3ss

The story encounter was all about herding your cat markers (deployed with your crew) into base contact with your enemy cat pillars (deployed similar to guard the stash but allowed to be 2" from center line instead of on it). Interact and pass a TN 10-14 WP dual (TN depended on the suit of a card flipped every turn) to move it 5". VP every turn a cat marker is touching an enemy pillar it wasn't before. The board had a ton of large blocking terrain, and a river running diagonally the length of the board. 

We both took Punish the Weak and Take One for the Team. I almost didn't take Ramos for this one, knowing punish was going to be a significant liability, but decided to try it anyway. Once I saw I was playing Levi I basically decided I was going to need to keep up with killing minions/peons to not let him pull ahead. Keeping my crew (read Joss and Ramos) bunched up a bit meant Levi was unlikely to be throwing his Abominations into the mix and causing all sorts of aura nonsense. He did quite easily pick off the Brass Arachnid, Steamfitter, and Effigy though, scoring him two points for Punish, and me two points for Take One on the Effigy. I managed to keep up on kills (aboms and a spider that Mech Rider summoned turn 2 or 3). Kandara and Envy were on the other side of the board babysitting another cat, scoring with it turn 2. Joss and Ramos spent most of the game running denial, pushing his cats well into my deployment zone, and Ramos throwing out strike markers and turning one of his 5 viable models into a peon for the turn, unable to cat herd. In the last 30 seconds of the game we knew it was over and I decided to use pneumatic fist on the dead rider for funzies, and managed a moderate, nearly killing it. Luckily I didn't pull severe, because that was his sucker, denying him that one point. Interesting choice on a 10 stone model, very hard to score more than 1 point. I had guessed he took sucker, but forgot all about that at the last second and almost gave up a point. Final score 5-2.

 

 

Round 2: Sandeep vs Wong 
Surround Them, Dig Their Graves, Inescapable Trap, Set Up, Undercover Entourage
Flank Deployment

Leader: Sandeep Desai - Cache:(7)
   Arcane Reservoir 2ss 
   To Behold Another World 1ss 
   Enlightened Soul 1ss 
   Decoy 0ss 
Kandara 7ss 
   Imbued Energies 1ss 
   Human Guise 0ss 
   Killswitch 1ss 
Envy 8ss 
   Imbued Energies 1ss 
   Decoy 0ss 
Ice Dancer 6ss 
December Acolyte 7ss 
Soulstone Miner 6ss 
Union Steamfitter 6ss

Wong brought Mctavish, Sammy, First Mate, and 2 Swine-cursed.

This encounter we had to interact with engaged enemies to give them "Covered in Cat Food". Whoever gave out more got a VP, and the 4 cat markers placed 6" from each other would charge 7" to the highest cat food-ed value target.

I took Undercover on Kandara and Set up on a swine-cursed (got lucky on which one), he took Undercover on First Mate and Surround Them. The board had lots of big blocking terrain and HT4 walkways.

This one came down to a numbers game. Sandeep summoned Banasuva, a metal and an ice gamin turn 1, essentially making it a 10-6 model count. Banasuva sat in the middle of the board with the vision upgrade blanketing a HT 3 6" aura with a lesser version of chatty (enemies can't interact without first discarding 2 cards). Being out activated and unable to interact without ditching cards made it incredibly difficult to score on the strat, McTavish bullied my fire genie early on and killed him, but Sandeep just brought him right back, thanks to the Steamfitter picking up the Red Joker used to summon him, and someone getting off Arcane storm to let Sandeep take an action. Werepig charged in to do what werepigs do, giving me the opportunity to Set him Up. Steamfitter had dropped a scheme marker under the guise of making Envy better, that happened to be 4" from the pig. After burning useless activations, I made him wrap up all his activations, then Ice Dancer and the summoned Metal Gamin dropped a marker (thanks to the vision upgrade that lets him do it same turn as being summoned). 3 VP turn one. For the rest of the game I refused to kill that pig, and pinned him against a wall with 4 models that kept covering him in cat food. I unburied SS Miner way off in an abandoned corner, and used him and the summoned ice gamin to make it look like I was going for Surround as well, taking any suspicion off of a possible entourage. McTavish and Wong were sorta made useless at a range due to lack of a viable target, without moving across the board. Kandara is :-fate[-] to hit with regen and revenge, Sandeep is Impossible to Wound, most of the other people were out of sight. So he shot into Banasuva a bunch and missed almost every time. Wong had the same problem but got a few shots in, killing little or nothing. I realized First Mate was his Entourage when it leaped next to Sandeep (who had jumped onto a high walkway to get a vantage point on a swine cursed who was lurking in a corner for surround them). This just so happened to put him in my deployment zone. So Sandeep paralyzed him with his gada, placed 6" away on the ground, and pulled the First Mate off the ledge (4 damage from falling) and let Banasuva clean up what remained of the pirate silurid. Due to terrain and deployment, the Acolyte and Envy declared exactly 0 attack or interact actions the entire game, but they did a great job of babysitting the far right side of the board, stopping my opponent from trying to flank with the few models he had. As time ran out, I burned more useless activations (still making it look like I did surround them), and after he was out of models had Kandara burn Imbued Energies for an 18" sprint into his deployment. Final score 8-0

 

 

Final Round: Ramos vs Guild McMourning 
Eliminate the Leadership, Public Demo, Take Prisoner, Search the Ruins, Hold Up Their Forces
Close Deployment

Leader: Ramos - Cache:(6)
   Arcane Reservoir 2ss 
   Under Pressure 2ss 
Brass Arachnid 4ss 
Joss 10ss 
   Bleeding Edge Tech 1ss 
   Open Current 1ss 
Envy 8ss 
Union Steamfitter 6ss 
Union Steamfitter 6ss 
Arcane Effigy 4ss 
Mobile Toolkit 3ss

McMourning brought, IIRC, Sebastian, Grimwell, Heartsbane, a couple orderlies, and a zombie Chihuahua.

In this round, you got a condition every time you dealt severe (later modified to moderate as well as severe). You could each turn lower the conditions across different models to do things like hand out Fast, score VP, or summon Katjoy, which is exactly what it sounds like (scoring VP as well). 

When the strat specified that only severe gave the condition needed, I decided to double down on the Steamfitters, and hand out as much Reinforced Sheet Armor as possible. With the modification to the strat, they still proved useful in picking up good cards. 

In this round, the stars aligned, the heavens sang, and I was pulling cards like I had never imagined, I mean "top decking a 3-spider-summoning card even though I was pulling at a negative" good. We only played 2 turns, and each of those turns I drew no less than 4 face cards before stoning. Opponent took Covert Breakthrough and Eliminate Leadership, I took Covert Breakthrough and Hold Up Their Forces. 

Early turn 1, Envy shot an orderly off the board, with intent to draw some attention off Ramos while he got the spider engine going. Toolkit gave [+] to damage flips to Joss before being sacrificed for scrap. Ignoring Envy completely, McMourning ran up the field early to take out Joss (basically removing Ramos' body guard). I had more than enough 12's and 13's in hand to keep Joss alive, at least for a bit. Unfortunately for him, this put McMourning in the worst possible position. Standing directly next to Joss (who had already burned his second activation from Brass Arachnid), a scrap marker, and within 6" of an unactivated Ramos with Under Pressure. Summoned 3 spiders B2B with McMourning (read DF -3) and shot in with electrical fire. Next came 2 small spiders attacking at [+], drawing cards out of McMourning's hand, then the third spider swarmed together, and the new Swarm attacked him at [+] for attack and damage, cheating in a Red Joker for damage. 

Turn 2 my hand was just as good. Opponent won initiative and moved Sebastian into position to finish off a poisoned Joss as soon as he activated (only 2 health remaining IIRC). Swarm hit McMourning again psuedo-focused, and killed him. Grimwell hit Ramos but did almost no damage. Next, Effigy saves the day yet again, walks and removes poison from Joss, chain activating him, and Joss charged in to kill Sebastian, getting him down to 3 wounds, An orderly came up to kill Joss, but only hit once, getting him down to Hard to Kill, allowing him to reactivate and finish off Sebastian. Both turns of the game I was pulling so many cards I had to shuffle mid turn, and after a single activation my opponent requested to see my discard pile (not technically allowed but I didn't care) to confirm I had in fact pulled 3 Kings and a Queen already.  

Beginning of Turn 3 I announced I was using all of my strategy condition to summon Katjoy, and my opponent conceded, given that he had killed none of my models, and had lost both of the linchpins of his crew. In my effort to deal moderates to get the condition, I ended up killing half of his crew in the first 2 turns. Due to concession, final score 10-0, final tournament dif of +21

 

These two games were my first time bringing Under Pressure and Vox Populi, but they will absolutely not be the last. Joss and an Arachnid Swarm pulling at positives for every attack is a very good feeling. Also shutting down interacts and placing hazardous terrain for 1 SS is pretty awesome.

 

This is my first attempt at a battle report, so CC is welcome, hope I didn't ramble too much! Thanks for reading

 

 

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22 minutes ago, azgadil said:

Well played Ramos. Did you ever cast Vox Populi? 

Yes. I used Shout Them Down to turn one of his Riders into a peon (thus unable to interact with his cat to score), and Strike! to block pathways to either my models or cats. It was used purely for VP denial (which is what that upgrade is for really)

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