Playing in my first individual tournament in a long time.

[4thstringer]

I'm headed to Charlottesville for a small tournament today to represent the guild.  I'm actually thinking about running Sonnia (who I rarely run at the casual level due to the whole "well that was only fun for one of us" problem).  The first round is ply though, so I might change my mind.

I'll try to put an update in here tomorrow with what happens.  I am secretly really competitive and tournaments bring out the worst of that in me, so I might be too salty to report.

[lusciousmccabe]

Good luck!

[Ludvig]

Best of luck! Please report no matter how it goes.

[admiralvorkraft]

Good luck!

They can't ply you if they're burning to death.

[4thstringer]

Ended up getting second place with a 2-1 record.   My one loss was in a Sonnia v. Parker matchup where I was dumb about the schemes I took but my opponent played a really good game.  

[Franchute]

Congrats!

Did the Parker finish first? How about your other games?

[4thstringer]

6 hours ago, Franchute said:

Congrats!

Did the Parker finish first? How about your other games?

Parker finished third.  Later today I will put a rundown of how my other games went in detail, but my first game was a 10-1 win and my third game was a 6-0 win.

[Impact UK]

8 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

Ended up getting second place with a 2-1 record.   My one loss was in a Sonnia v. Parker matchup where I was dumb about the schemes I took but my opponent played a really good game.  

Nice going, any chance you can post the results.

[thewrathchilde]

10 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

Ended up getting second place with a 2-1 record.   My one loss was in a Sonnia v. Parker matchup where I was dumb about the schemes I took but my opponent played a really good game.  

Did you Sonnia the whole way through?

[4thstringer]

I don't know many last names, but I can give factions-

Casper playing neverborn-(lynch, Pandora, Lilith)(2-0-1)

Me in second (sonnia x2, Nellie) (2-1)

Owen in third with Parker.(2-1)

After that it's mostly guesswork

4th I think was Justin with Lilith (and maybe other stuff, didn't see his round 2)(2-1)

5th Eric (my brother)(zipp, ulix, Wong)(1-1-1)

6th  a guy from Richmond that I didn't play and am blanking on his name playing Lilith went 1-1-1

7th-John from my meta went 1-2 and ran asami then misaki x2

8th Matt went 0-3 and took the spoon I saw him run mei one round, don't know otherwise.

9th was Ally who dropped after the first loss due to illness.

 

 

[Impact UK]

27 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

I don't know many last names, but I can give factions-

Casper playing neverborn-(lynch, Pandora, Lilith)(2-0-1)

Me in second (sonnia x2, Nellie) (2-1)

Owen in third with Parker.(2-1)

After that it's mostly guesswork

4th I think was Justin with Lilith (and maybe other stuff, didn't see his round 2)(2-1)

5th Eric (my brother)(zipp, ulix, Wong)(1-1-1)

6th  a guy from Richmond that I didn't play and am blanking on his name playing Lilith went 1-1-1

7th-John from my meta went 1-2 and ran asami then misaki x2

8th Matt went 0-3 and took the spoon I saw him run mei one round, don't know otherwise.

9th was Ally who dropped after the first loss due to illness.

 

 

Just interested in what other crews you had in the pool to come up against, cool to see Parker roll in at 3rd.

[4thstringer]

ok- descriptions of my games:

Game 1- Ply, flank, vendetta, set up, inescapable trap, SOF, surround them.

I took sonnia with no more masks, cherufes imprint and Cherufes parting gift, Child, Grimwell with LLC, Frank with wade in, Queller, investigator, effigy, papa

Opponent (Matt) took Mei with just arcane res, rail golem with imbued, joss, 3 rail workers, 2 metal gaiman.

My opponent set up in 2 chunks on either side of building, with rail golem and the workers on one side, and mei, joss and the gaiman on the other.  There was a forest kind of in the middle, and some more houses and scatter around there.  I set up to push sonnia into the middle and start blasting things.

First turn I block off the way forward for mei, joss and the gaiman, and blast all the rail workers down to 1 wound, I think putting an incidental wound on the rail golem, before putting up a flame wall to make him take the rail worker around the other side of the forest, splitting his crew.  I think the rail workers had HTK because I was unable to get them dead, (after they patted out their fire).  Mei ran ahead of the slower joss and the rail workers, to set up a charge the next turn of frank.

Turn 2. he wins init, and charges frank, taking him down to the HTK (this is where her not having upgrades was a mistake, my opponent talked about how hes not sure why he did that after the game).  Queller buffed frank, and frank tried to flurry her in response( keeping el mayor on sonnia), and she leapt away on a missed first attack, but not until after I had plyed her with someone else.   The child moved his flame wall to mess up the rail golems angles again.  Rail golem used locomotion to walk up into engagement with Sonnia.  Sonnia did some small damage with her sword to draw me some cards on the rail golem.  Grimwell hit the rail golem, getting me my first vendetta point. The last rail worker ran towards the corner.  I'm not going to mention him again, but he dropped one marker in the corner for a point for surround them.  Metal gaiman and joss started making their way around to the house to get involved, then I dropped the flame wall in front of them, and put one up where they were going, so they needed to come back around the house or work their way through the speed bumps I had there. I score ply and show of force for 3-0

Turn 3.  He wins init again, and the rail golem kicks imbued energies to try to end sonnia.  Despite positive flips, he misses every attack (I had a great hand) with the 2 locomotion attacks, misses two of the non locomotion attacks, then hits the last one and RJs the damage for something like 9 damage, 7 after stone.  I activate the brutal then sonnia to attack the rail golem and heal most of the way up while putting a fair amount of damage onto the RG.  Papa plys the RG, Grimwell gets papas bonus, between frank and grimwell I finish off the rail golem with a moderate lobotomy (getting the rest for vendetta), Joss gets close enough to charge next turn, with the gaiman trailing.  Mei flails kind of sadly against the queller.  I end the turn getting SOF and ply again, and with 2 13s and the RJ in hand. and it is 7-0 at that point.

Top of 4, I win initiative, grimwell walks up to Joss and I do a lobotomy with a rj damage to put him at hard to kill, and then companion into frank to kill him.  We call it at that point, give him the 1 for surround them, and give me the full 10.

It feels bad when you take a competitive list against a fun list.  I enjoy playing, and my opponent was a fun person to play against, but winning like that isn't what I was looking for.

Game 2:

This game I was punished for my good luck and hubris so far.  Owen is a good and experienced player, and a tough opponent, but I felt pretty confident playing into parker, despite not having faced him in a while.

It was corner deployment, with Guard the Stash, Guarded treasure, dig their graves, public demo, take prisoner, and something else I'm not remembering.   I took the Same Sonnia list as last game, and took dig their graves and guarded treasure (more on that later)

I took the same list.  I would have switched out the investigator, but I was worried about laz, and have considered the queller as an anti viks whirlwind tech.

My opponent took parker with oathkeeper and some other stuff with the emissary, wokou, bandito, sue with return fire, doc, trapper, obedient wretch.  During the game the wretch summoned a rat king.

The board had houses right in the worst spot for corner deployment in all the corners except one, but I was so worried about his trapper I let him set up first.  That may have been a mistake, because it was hard to unpack my sonnia push game.  I was still able to get sonnia up far enough blast once, putting 5 on the emissary, and three on the doc and the wokou.  I then walled off the way to the middle of the board for my opponent.  I think his sniper puts 2 or 3 damage onto my Queller.  My opponent used his wretch to get activation control, and thus was able to use parker to push push the wokou into a spot around the next building and then she was able to charge  with her massive charge range.  Ok no big deal, wokou is min 2, right?  My hand is garbage, but I have stones if need be, and I am def 6.  Well, with her plus flips to attack, despite me forcing neg flips, he hits a crit strike moderate for 5 and then a moderate for 4.  I stone both (down to 2 stones), with I think moderates for each.  Ok, fine, Ill get her out of there next turn. 

Turn 2: he wins initiative, I think it was like an 11 or something so I don't stone it.  He activates the wokou, hits high cards on those plus flips again and then double moderates repeatedly for damage.  I'm down to like 5 life after more stones.  I actually have a pretty good hand, but if attack the wokou I can't cheat the attack flips.  If I push her out with Grimwell, I won't get to heal her and am afraid I am going to get shot to death by parker.  So instead I use the brutal to buff Sonnia, and think sonnia should be safe unless my opponent gets really lucky on shots into engagement.

What I didn't account for is that parker had oathkeeper and a free walk for dropping an upgrade.  So with those two, he is able to charge in for three attacks, and make the wokou take one more attack.  I have a pretty strong hand, and a stone left, so I am able to avoid some of the attacks.  But the extra (0) to make the wokou attack is the end of it, and Sonnia goes down.  On those defense flips, I don't think I ever flipped higher than a 5, so my hand is largely depleted at this point, but I think his was too.  (Flipping all those low cards tells me that it was worth it to not try to hit the wokou with sonnia's sword, as I would have just missed three times, though I'm not sure that would have been worse at that point)).  Something happens that lets him push parker back, which keeps me from going for an early counter assassination.  He summons a rat king back in his corner, which is able to get pretty close to the area after his jump to a scheme marker and a walk.  I kill the wokou for a dig point with frank after a few pushes, put grimwell on the other marker, and he is able to get the bandit to the guarded treasure marker with frank.  I start sneaking papa towards sue and parker, to hopefully blow up on them.  The queller I think charges the bandito, and does three damage to him.  The child tries to heal the queller  unsuccessfully.  

Score- 2-1

Turn 3 - I drop a marker with the effigy to try to set up a kill on the trapper, frank just barely cant get a charge lane to the trapper so walks up and attacks instead.  Leaves the trapper on one wound (a real trend this game for me).  The trapper pushes out of engagement and shoots frank in one shot down to htk.  Papa walks up and blows once, which both sue and parker avoid.  parker and the rat king attack grimwell, but his armor and def 6 largely protects him.  grimwell pushed papa into that and then did 2 damage to parker.  Grimwell tanks the two of them again, and papa blows up again, with both sue and parker avoiding the worst of it but still taking the 5 on the secondary explosion.  That leaves sue on 2 but Parker is still doing ok.  I drop a marker to try to sneak a guarded treasure in with the investigator, under the cover of pushing papa, but he sees through it and gets rid of that marker.  the queller and the child continued to be unable to hit the bandito, and the bandito did the same with them.  his emissary makes its way to frank and my effigies marker, and drops a scheme marker with his free push and drop.  He gets 1 for public demo (the trapper), 1 for guarded treasure and one for the strat, I get the strat only.

3-4

Turn 4- Man I want initiative here, but he wins it.  His trapper shoots frank, killing him.  I move the investigator into the woods to get a los on sue, thinking I can kill him with a weak, then shoot him and then get reminded he has hard to kill.  Big mistake.  He shoots the investigator twice, and kills him (I don't remember what he flipped, but the investigator went down hard).  Grimwell managed to RJ a (1) action attack on parker, but he stone the damage down to 4.  He had like 3 or 5 damage left, but doc healed him I think.  My effigy misses shooting at the trapper twice, my queller and child fail to kill the bandit and the queller is killed in response.  I think his emmisary attacks and fails to  kill my effigy.  Grimwell manages to tank parker and the rat king some more, going down to 2 wounds.  he doesn't get guarded treasure markers down.  We both get the Marker points

4-5

Turn 5.  I win initiative, and notice that his doc is within reach of grimwell and near one of my scheme markers.  I give up on getting the marker, and instead run over and lobotomize doc for a second dig point.  He kills grimwell in response.  I kill the trapper with the effigy, the child walks towards the marker.  My opponent has all the time he needs to drop 2 markers for guarded treasure and gets 2 points in the last turn.

Final: 5-7

so at that point, Owen was on top table against someone who tied my brother in the last round.  It is a coin flip to see who will face who, as the casper and my brother have the same first round scores too.  I end up getting my brother, and realize that first place is out of the question.  We talk a bit and I decide I am sick of Sonnia.  We look at our board, and there are a bunch of stone pillars and these crystals, which are sitting in larger bases, which look like they are intended to be treated as forests.  We decide that the crystals themselves should provide hard cover, but the areas around them should be hazardous.  

That seals it for me, it is going to be nellie.  I had been messing around with a list I thought was kind of silly, but potentially interesting the night before, but I had never run that list.  all that hazardous opened up a lot of shooting lanes though and it has a ton of pushes, so I decide to run it.

The list is Nellie with Alternative facts (wish I had taken editor in chief instead), delegation, and misleading headlines, PP, 2 Monster Hunters, 2 riflemen, an investigator, daschel with arrest them, and a field reporter.  

The pool was standard deploy, public executions, take one for the team, undercover entourage, Search the Ruins, recover evidence and I think covert breakthrough.  Finally some schemes I like.  I took take one on one of my riflemen, and undercover entourage.  My brother took Wong, 2 swine cursed, cranky, glowy mctavish, taxidermist, effigy.

Turn one- My hand has about 5 weaks in it and the black, so I pass a bunch of activations and he moves up a swine cursed a little to far.  My monster hunter moves up and shoots the swine cursed.  One RJ damage later with a crit strike, and that SC is dead.  I stalk the other swine cursed and mctav, and put fast on the two riflemen, and draw 2 cards with nellie.  I move dachel up enough that my opponent can walk up and blast daschel once with wong.  He does so, and daschel takes weak damage for 1.  The field reporter moves up the other side.  The two riflemen were able to each walk up once, focus as a (0), and take 2 shots at wong.  Wong takes a bunch of damage, but his armor 1 helps a lot.  The other monster hunter also shoots at him once and either fails to hit, or only does like 1 damage. My opponent is salivating at this point at the opportunity to blast into my crew.

Turn two- My opponent wins init, I think I stoned and flipped a 1 on my second.  He blasts a bunch into daschel, but the armor holds, as does my stone use.  The spark leaps gets the rifleman down to one wound, the investigator down to like 3, and does some damage to daschel, putting him down to three wounds.  I kill wong with the monster hunter and daschel, and then my opponent uses a reckless lightening bug to kill the 1 wnd rifleman.   I heal daschel some with nellie, and make all the other rifleman fast before moving nellie forward.  I push Mctav back with a monster hunter, he uses a (0) to move back up, but misses his shots (or hits once).  The second swine cursed runs around to support the taxidermist.  Cranky and Taxidermist move up to drop markers in the search the ruins circle.  

Turn 3- Monster hunter puts some damage on he taxidermist.  Nellie pushes and slows (and forgets the damage from propaganda) Mctavish out of range.  My monster hunter gets the lightening bug down to one wound, then I get spooked about Take one for the team and move him towards the middle.  Mctav pushes up and shoots daschell again, but stones keep him upright.  Nellie pushes mctav back again and slows him.   The monster hunter kills the Taxidermist, the swine cursed moves close by to threaten the field reporter, and the field reporter turns one of his markers.  his lucky effigy moves to the middle of the board and drops a marker just across the line.  I score public executions

Turn 4- Daschel moves up and picks up the effigys marker, and the monster hunter gets the effigy down to one wound, before pushing it back.  The rifleman kills the lightening bug, and I cringe expecting Take one, but it doesn't happen.  I look at that lucky effigy expectantly.  The effigy attacks the monster hunter, and misses.  The swine cursed walks out, drops a marker, and tried to hide behind cover.  The monster hunter stalks him shoots him once, then shoots him twice more to kill him.  The field reporter flips another marker.  Mctav pushes up and shoots daschel again, down to htk.  I put some damage on cranky, putting him down to one wound.  Nellie moves forward to be ready to do Undercover entourage next turn, and I slow and push mctav with a double propaganda into some hazardous.  By the end of that Mctav is at 2 wounds.  I score public executions. 2-0

turn 5-  Mctav kills daschel and heals up to 5 before dying to two monster hunters and the last rifleman.  Cranky gets propagandad to push him away and dies, and nellie walks into the deployment zone.  His lucky effigy is all that is left, and is at one wound. - I get public executions and end of game undercover entourage.  My brother gets 0 points, but handles it much better than I would have. 6-0

All in all, it was a very fun time.  If I had played better I think I could have gotten first, but lessons learned.  I played three fun games against three fun opponents, and would be happy to play against any of them again.  

 

[4thstringer]

One thing I would note is that this was not your average tournament.  I think Owen is the only person of the people I talked to that is a tournament regular.  I know there were at least two people for whom this was their first tournament, John and I hadn't played in a solo tournament since Burst of the Worst (at the beginning of wave 5), and the three fellas from Richmond did not sound like they play in tournaments very often.  Casper didn't mention tournament play in Poland, but he only recently arrived here in the US for graduate studies, so I think this was his first game in the states.  I wouldn't look at what we faced or what happened in our games to get an idea of the tournament scene.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the tournament organizer did a great job keeping things moving too.

[thewrathchilde]

Cool- I dig me some CPT Dashel. Owen’s a good dude- I play with them occasionally when I am out there on trips for work and they are a bunch of great guys. I hadn’t seen him run Parker though- think generally I see him run Levi, Hamelin, or the occassional Jack. 

[Impact UK]

13 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

One thing I would note is that this was not your average tournament.  I think Owen is the only person of the people I talked to that is a tournament regular.  I know there were at least two people for whom this was their first tournament, John and I hadn't played in a solo tournament since Burst of the Worst (at the beginning of wave 5), and the three fellas from Richmond did not sound like they play in tournaments very often.  Casper didn't mention tournament play in Poland, but he only recently arrived here in the US for graduate studies, so I think this was his first game in the states.  I wouldn't look at what we faced or what happened in our games to get an idea of the tournament scene.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the tournament organizer did a great job keeping things moving too.

Sounds like a fun mix of people and ability.  I try to get to one tournament a month, nothing to do with being a hardcore player though, it is sometimes the only chance I get to have a game and more importantly I get to have 3 games without constant interruptions.

[4thstringer]

3 hours ago, Impact UK said:

Sounds like a fun mix of people and ability.  I try to get to one tournament a month, nothing to do with being a hardcore player though, it is sometimes the only chance I get to have a game and more importantly I get to have 3 games without constant interruptions.

It's interesting, because from what I can tell often times people can either get consistent tournament attendance, or consistent casual play.  I think life often makes it hard to do both (though I would love to, I'd really be neglecting my home life if I did).

[Impact UK]

21 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

It's interesting, because from what I can tell often times people can either get consistent tournament attendance, or consistent casual play.  I think life often makes it hard to do both (though I would love to, I'd really be neglecting my home life if I did).

For me it is about the only other thing I do other than go to work, my wife is happy that I am gone for the day (unless she decides to enter also).  My son is not old enough for tournaments yet and we have yet to advance past Henchman Hardcore.