My tourney experience from Looking for Games in Frederick, MD

[4thstringer]

So I went to my first non-hardcore tournament last weekend, in Frederick Maryland.  John- (Arli on the forums) was the TO and with myself we had 6 players.  It was a 35 pt fixed faction tournament, and went three rounds.  I was running Neverborn and made it my goal to play a different master for my three different games (Otherwise I tend to play Lucius for everything, and I am trying to get past that)

 

Game 1

 

I was matched up against Bruce and his Sonya crew.  He had a death marshall, 2 stalkers, the purifying flame, Sam with upgrades and Sonya with upgrades(but not the flame wall nor the summoning upgrade.  This would be important later).   I was running Nekima as a leader, with true mother, and Barbaros with rapid growth, a black blood shaman, and 3 tots.  

 

The strat was extraction, with deliver the message, assassinate and entourage (and one more that I dont remember).  He announced deliver the message, and I went with entourage and assassinate unannounced.  The board had a altar dominating the middle which you pretty much had to be up on to get into the extraction points starting area.  There was a forest in the deployment zone for sonya, and a could other pieces of scenery that didn't end up mattering too much.

 

First turn, he bunched up in the front of the altar with most of his crew, which I advanced tots up both sides, with nekima on the left, and barbaros to the center right, while the BBS went up the middle cautiously.  The nature of the altar kept most of my models hidden, but barbaros only had cover and was staring down the nasty Sonya/sam double team.

 

Turn two, I was able to spend a stone to get the first turn, and charged barbaros at one of the stalkers, while getting a lot of the rest of the team under black blood range.  Barbaros hurt but didn't kill the stalker, and then put up the challenge to cause problems for the rest of the group.

 

Sam then double "burn them out"'ed Barbaros,    A tot ran up into the black blood range as well, but was dispatched Sonya.  Sonya also did more damage to Barbaros, but the BBS was able to get him healed up before the burning could wipe him off the table, while getting Sam pretty low on health.

 

Nekima swung up the flank, only to be engaged in a forest by the death marshall, who had boxed the damaged Witchling Stalker.   The last tot sprinted up to Sonya, again into black blood range.  The purifying flame tried to charge nekima, but failed his willpower roll for challenge from barbaros.

 

Turn three, the message was delivered by the death marshall and the tot.  Nekima did a whole lot of nothing to the marshall and the stalker, and they did minimal damage to him.  Barbaros killed off the 2nd stalker.   Sam did very little and Barbaros was reduced to so little life that I couldn't afford to pustule him.  The BBS started moving forwards so that he could feed/grow the tot.  Sonya used inferno to kill off sam and barbaros.  This left only 3 models in the extraction zone, which meant that I was able to get those points over him for the first time.

 

Turn Four I had a killer hand, and Nekima started off by killing the Death marshall and the witchling stalker.   The last unengaged tot killed the Purifying flame, while the the tot attacked sonya, hitting twice, was then grown by the BBS using a corpse marker, and then the new nephilim finished off sonya.  we resolved the game at 8-5.

 

Round 2

 

My second round found me matched up against a Tara wielding Resser, who goes by Master Squid on the forums.  I wanted to run a thematic crew with Lucius at the lead, so I ran all mimics.  I had Tannen (with unnecessary duplications) and graves, the scribe, Lucius with secret assets, a beckoner, and a doppelganger.  My opponent had Tara with a full boat of upgrades, karina with her summoning upgrade, a nothing beast and 3 void wretches. 

 

The strategy was headhunter, and the schemes were LITS, protect territory, spring the trap, take prisoner, and one other awful one that I don't like.  I took protect territory and spring the trap.  and revealed PT.  He revealed LITS and PT.  Deployment was corner.

 

So as corner usually goes, we were pretty bunched up to start, and he started spreading out almost immediately.  the Nothing beast and a void wretch held the middle, which had a huge ridgeline across it.    Tara went to my right, while another void wretch and karina headed towards the other corner.

 

I approached the middle with tannen/graves, the scribe and lucius, and sent the beckoner and tannen after the left corner.  I then split the doppelganger and tannen off to try to slow down tara. 

 

Beckoner and graves were able to movement trick each other quickly towards that corner, and held off and eventually killed Karina and the void wretch.  Lucius and the scribe were able to hold up the nothing beast with red tape before killing it.  The scribe then went to hold up a summoned guild autopsy, while lucius focused on killing void wretches and collecting their heads.  His hidden sniper was essential to this, as they were trying to drop markers everywhere, which made lucius and some judicious stone use incredibly handy.  He kept pulling up the markers almost as fast as they were dropped.  Tara slaughtered the doppelganger and tannen, but they were able to hold her up, spring the trap for 2 and prevent her from being able to run her schemes for more than a point.

 

In the end, Tara was all that was left on the board for my opponent, and I was able to pull in 8 total points (missing one from spring the trap  and one from headhunter as we didn't even engage until turn 3).

 

Round 3, saw me matched up with another unbeaten Resser, this time Rob piloting Yan Lo.  I had no expecience playing against Yan Lo, nor any of the other models he brought except the flying nightmares (don't remember their names.  He brought two of those, 3 ashigaru (sp?), a crooligan, Toshiro and Yan Lo.  I brought Lilith with her tree making, her upgraded sword and the charge inducing one that I never used,  with Nekima with true mother and fears given form, BBS, and 2 tots.  Deployment was close,

 

The strat was interference and the schemes were LITS, Vendetta, Bodyguard (I think), Distract, and Make them suffer.  I took make them suffer and distract, and he announced line in the sand.  I never learned his other strat, but I suspect it was vendetta.

 

There was a river with a bridge in the middle of the board vertically and a number of large trees providing cover.

 

He went first and moved a nightmare up on the left.  I advanced Lilith up, killed the madness, and put up trees to prevent 2 ashigaru and Tosh from being able to do anything productive.   He started moving around the trees.  I moved a tot into base to base with toshiro after he came around the way.  That tot was then killed by a ashigaru, as I didn't realize they could charge for 1.  A red joker later and the tot was mush.  The other ashigaru tried to make its way around, and managed to separate itself from the other two models on that half a little too much.  The BBS moved towards the center, with the plan of pustuling nekima.

 

On the other side, nekima moved in, engaged Yan Lo and the crooligan.  She tried to hurt the crooligan but failed.  yan lo then moved nekima to the other side of the crooligan and then tried to kill the other tot with his attacks, but failed.  The ashigaru and other nightmare moved up to threaten.

 

turn two, lilith was able to charge a the loose ashigaru, kill it in two, and then retreat back behind another illusionary forest.  toshiro started moving towards the BBS, who got brave and moved up to distract toshiro.

 

Nekima moved to reengage yan lo, and distracted the crooligan again before putting a nice hard hit on Yan lo.  Yan lo took more damage from Fears given form, before doing minor damage to Nekima (and suffering more damage from Black Blood)  Yan lo then went incorporal.

 

The tot engaged and distracted the nightmare.  The ashigaru stuck where he was to get the strat points, but failed to hold the tot in place..

 

at that point it was 2-1 (1 for strat for Rob, 1 for distract and make them suffer)

 

Turn three, nekima went into killing mode, and killed yan lo and the crooligan, using her black blood the best of her advantage and getting a tot for her trouble.  Lilith moved up to distract the two on her side, and the tot and the nightmare continued to fight.  The ashigaru charged nekima, but was unable to do damage.the bbs started doing damage by pustuling lilith, but then realized it was a bad idea, and just sat around to get the strat. with the tot.

 

turn four, lilith and nekima killed off the rest of the opposing forces, and we shook hands. 

 

It was a fun tournament, and all of my opponents were great to play against.  I apologize for any inaccuracies, as it has been a few days, and would like to note that my hands were absolute fire all day. 

 

John runs a heck of a tournament.

 

 

 

 

[SevenSins]

Sounds like a blast, stylish to go three different masters no matter the opposition, and it worked out well too

[Argentbadger]

Thanks for the great report, it's really interesting to see about how things go in different groups.  35SS is quite a small game; do you think that affected things?

[Math Mathonwy]

Thank you for posting - a very nice report!

Some pretty unorthodox things all around. You taking Nekima for Leader in the first game, your opponents' taking LITS in such small games and finally you taking the combo of Make Them Suffer and Distract for the final game. Though obviously at least the first and last of those worked out nicely

Congrats on the win! And for sticking to your self-imposed restriction

[Rob Lo]

Was a great tournament. The reason for the 35ss was because of a recent influx of new people and the store looking towards a slow grow league next month. It was the reason for a lot of the 'summoning is unbalanced at low points games' discussion from a couple weeks ago, here and on Facebook, all of which lead me (the Yan Lo player in 4thstringer's last game) to want to play Ressers with no summoning, 2 games of Yan Lo and 1 of Nico. Walking away with 3rd place was good enough for me for a first tournament. It also led me to thinking that so much gaming in one day is a lot more exhausting than you'd think. 

[4thstringer]

35 wasn't a big problem for us, as noone really abused summoning.  I know some people trial played Kirai and felt it went too far.  I can say that I think I would have struggled had Mourne or the Sonnia player brought summoning.  The only summon I faced was a guild autopsy in my second game (he was consistently not getting crows for Karina). 

 

Other than that, low SS games make some schemes really tricky as you have a small number of models to make it happen, especially if you are going with a fairly elite crew.  As someone that plays 50 most of the time, that definitely took some getting used to.

 

I think LITS only happened because my opponent hated all of the other options in the second game.  Protect territory is almost a given in that size game, but the rest of the options just were ones that no one likes.

 

In the third game, the Distract and MtS combo was similarly due to not liking the rest of the pool.  I abhor LITS with such a small crew, I hate risking bodyguard in tournament games due to the possibility of leaving points on the table because of the endgame situation.  Vendetta was a no go because I expected nekima and lilith to do my killing, and Nekima is way too many points to have someone to vendetta.  So I decided to make them suffer to take advantage of lilith and Nekima's murderous skill, and distract because I would be trying to engage models with my tots anyways for the strat., so I figured distract would not be too bad.  It kind of bit me in the end, as I was literally trying to keep models alive for distract (without success) but given the other options I felt it was still the best choice.