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Orion72
Underboss
1917 Posts
    
 | | 12/11/2005 9:56 AM |
| I know Newtoncain will be posting the full tourney report later, but I wanted to get down what I had and what I faced while it's still fresh in my rotted brain.
I dropped the CG idea at the last minute and went with:
Epic Rikka 143
Sword Archon 82
Couatl 42
Trumpet Archon 124
Justice Archon 32
Cleric of Dol Arrah 45
Cleric of Yondalla 14
Aramil 13
I had three very close losses and a bye. In my defense, I was operating on very sleep (excuses excuses [:I])
First match: Assault: Scott (Gunthar)
Epic Elminster
Drizzt
Ulmo
Guenhwyvar (killed)
Nebin
Ialdebode (killed)
Jozan
Devis
First round, Elminster failed two SR rolls to lose disintegrate on my Sword. Quick cast, this time it stuck but I made the save.
I took the bait and waylaid Rikka in to kill his tilegrabbing 'Bode, after he obligingly blocked his own charging lane from Guen by moving up Nebin. Rikka soon found herself facing Drizzt and Ulmo with Guen in the flank. She scored a crit on Guen, only to roll a 1 on Conceal (Nebin's blur). This was the first of 3 important 1's Rikka failed me with.
She offed Guen only to be flanked by Elminster. By the time the cavalry arrived, shes was dead and time was called. We both figured I probably would've won had we played to the end, Rikka and the Sword were my only damaged guys.
Match 2: Cave of Pain: Matt
King Snurre (killed)
Fire Giant
Fomorian
Ettin (routed)
Ravager (killed)
Forest Troll
This should've been my best match-up. As it was, the Trumpet's Peal only routed the Ettin. The Fomorian later routed but rallied.
Rikka routed when out of sight of CoDA, then attempted to rally under him. She could only fail on a 1.
She rolled a 1.
At that point, she was all I had left offensively. Matt still had the half-dead Fomorian and Fire Giant.
Match 3: Plunder: John (weren't there 18 Johns out of 17 players?)
Epic Elminster
Evermeet Wiz
Greenfang Druid
Dire Bear (killed)
Crow Shaman
Eberk
Rikka (killed)
Cleric of Order
9 summoned Timber Wolves (killed 4)
This one I just plain forgot the basic rules of fighting spellcasters. Base them! I went after the wolves instead of killing the summoner, allowing John to grab tile points like crazy.
Ah well, live and learn.
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Gunthar
Commander
2938 Posts
| | 12/11/2005 3:57 PM |
| As you saw, I went the unique route. I had a couple other combos pulled, but wanted to see if I could win some with them.
Round 2: Vs John
Human Blackguard
Steel Predator x2
Iron Golem (Epic)
This was one of those oddball games. I simply avoided the Iron Golem at all costs and went after the Balckguard and two predators. It worked. I ended up feeding my "fodder" pieces to the golum while keeping Elminster, Ulmo and Drizzt on the move. Had I not given up Guen, Devis and Ialdabode, he woulkd have been able to base Elminster the round I nailed the Blackguard.
2-0
Round 3 vs. Matt
Dark Nage, Gauth, Mongrelfolk, and a whole lot of Beholders.
This one was intense! As it was plunder, I decided I wanted two kills: the Mongrelfolk and one of something, anything else. The only problem: I had the corridor tile, sure, but also the Mushroom Tangle and Creeping Tangle. That's WAY too much open space. First turn, I use my nice intiative bonus to go first, moving Elminster to find this nice, little crease where I could see his Gauth, but neither of the two forward Beholders. Say hello to a quick-cast Disintigrate. [:D] I sent Drizzt and Guen after the Mongrelfolk while sending Ulmo up to soak some damage and garner some tile points on teh creeping tangle in the "traditional" tile-gabbing spot up teh left sideline. My corridor tile was in the middle of that blocking some LOS. The one wall I did have made him use his telekinetic slide to get an eye beam off on me later. Elminster didn't get off much else. He tried, but I wasn't making the eye resist rolls. I ended up leaving Guen's 33 points on/in the corner blood rock tile, scoring nothing, but leaving her weaker saves out-of-danger too. Drizzt then ran up and based a Beholder, taking one swing and retreating next round in to the corridor tile and scoring points. When El got to the creeping tangle on the left, Ulmo ran and camped on his assembly tile. I soaked damage for another round, garnering points on three tiles. We finished the sixth round after time was called. I won with under 20 HP on both Drizzt and Elminster. Jozan's heal for 5 gave me the flexibility to put El out there one more round, which gave my the victory.
3-0
Round 4 vs. Dave (Loremaster)
Elminster (non-epic)
Champion of Eillistraee
Archmage x2
Frenzied Berserker x3
This was the matchup I least wanted, especially in plunder, which was rolled for the format. Again I wish I hhad had more enclosed tiles. This was really hard to place tiles in anyway. I kept wanting to set up as normal as there not only were no huges on the board, there wasn't even a single large-based figure in this match. He also had Dimension Doors on three figures with which to get an early tile-point lead. Non-epic He ended the first round with all three big casters on my side of the board. Epic Elminster and Guen went right toward his casters and the rest went left, toward the berserkers. I was able to disintigrate and mangle non-epic El, but ate three Mordy's swords on Epic El while pulling one Archmage off a tile to get it on there. I had been able to seriously damage one Arcgmage already. Okay, I need a bit of luck, but I'm still in it. One berserker goes DOWN in a hurry when flanked by Drizzt and Ulmo. I ran Ulmo by the berserker, hoping a 29 AC and conceal would get him around. It didn't. But Ulmo was still going strong. Drizzt ended up dying a bit later, but Ulmo was on a tile and had Ialdabode flanking the berserker. the othe rberserker had gone after El and Guen and Guen mashed her but took the Death Strike. Critical initiative time and I have a +2 bonus. I rolled a F'in THREE! [:(!] That was game. He was able to blast Guen, killing her and the berserker needed two hits to kill Ulmo. 25 AC and conceal from Nebbin could yet save me, but no, he hit both times and beat conceal both times too.
3-1
Elminsters with Archmages were all over the field, and two mega-Beholder bands were too. Everyone was trotting out their epics for the first regular time and not many huges were used.
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Champion of Prit(Wemic vindication is here)
Minneapolis/St. Paul area
Completed trades: Aspect of Cheese (Love that moniker), Tickparasite, Elderthing, Lalato, Sodj, Grimoire, SmilinIrish, Zeb, RWarehall,Link, wikkawikkawa, Auramancer, Rommers, HK, Ivid5,Qillan_dvra, Puggins, Arcabius, Ironfist Boulderbender, Robby, Corim Danex, monster_slayer, DNDJUNKIE, Kelemvor, Krush, ckissee, Massawyrm, hockey fan, Wish, Uninspiring Lieutenant, vtloon x2, Vrecknidj, Darthpoke, WakeXX, AnarionZell, lycusmike, papabear5 and umpteen local trades with board members
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Teach
Sneak
140 Posts
| | 12/12/2005 12:11 AM |
| | I'm planning on writing up a report about this tournament but I can tell you this, I'm glad I didn't face those beholders. But I wanted to post this first. I was wondering what people thought about trying to put together a Minnesota/North Midwest Open in January or February, right before War Drums comes out as kind of a "last hurrah" for 12 fig limit/ tile play. I'd be happy to help set it up if help is needed. But I wanted to see what people thought about the idea. I'm excited about the new rules, but it would be neat to have one final big tournament using the old rules. | |
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Avatar of the Tank
Newtoncain
Commander
2985 Posts
Land of 10,000 taxes
| | 12/12/2005 7:49 AM |
| Tourney Report from the Monster Den 12/10/05 500pt Epic/Extreme
I had the duty to run the last DDM tourney of the year at the Monster Den this last Saturday. The format was 500pt extreme/epic w/ tiles. We had 17 players show up. Unfortunately I forgot (my bad[:I]) the final standings print out but do have everyone’s war bands.
Gunthar-Elminster (epic), Drizzt, Ulmo, Guen, Nebbin, Devis, Baldy and jozan.
Brad-Nightwalker, Lich, CS x 3 and Orc Skelly x 2
Chris J-Death Slaad, Hezro, Vrock, Blue Slaad, Red Slaad, Abyssal Skul x 3
Matt J-Forest Troll, Ettin, OR, Fire giant, Fomorian and King Snurre
Cyber_Urza-Dark Naga, Gauth, Beholder x 5 and mongrelfolk
LordRahl.333-Mina, HRD, LBD, LDD, Black dragon, Green Dragon and KS
SquirrelBoy-Beholder x 5, Dark Naga, HEHB and Kobold Champ
John K- Steel Pred x 2, Iron (Epic) and HBG
John the Elder-Archmage x 4, Elminster and Xeph x 2
Loremaster-Elminster, Archmage x 2, FB x 3 and CoE
Pauper.-Elminster(epic), Archmage, CoDA, Longstrider, Pegasus, Aramil, WER and Xeph
John M-Elminster, GFD, EM(9 x timber wolf as summons), Rikka, Crow shammon, CoO, Eberk and Dire bear
Aaron-Elminster, Archmage x 2, 1/2lingwiz, Ragnara, and Xeph x 3
Toby-HGD, Mordenkainen, PoT, PDK and CoM
Patrica-Balor(epic), AoL, CS x 4 and Ryld
Orion 72-Coualt, CoDA, Aramil, Rikka(epic), CoY, Trump Archon, Sword Archone and JA
Teach-LSD, AFS, 1/2Orc Pally, Coualt, JA, Gith Monk, Marut and Trump Archon.
Some players listed if their units were epic or not and some didn’t.
Pauper won it all[:)].
Teach and Loremaster were in the top 4 but I can’t seem to remember who the last person[:(] was in the top 4.
We had a lot of players playing “themed” war bands[:)]. I thought Gunthar’s “unique” war band was the most creative, so he won band of the day. Matt J was a close 2nd for band of the day w/ his “Giants” themed war bandΖD].
All the players received 5 tiles (end of the year retailer kit blowout) and a repaint. Players drafted from 5 UD boosters, templates, modules and maps.
Next tourney is 1/14/06, 200pt constructed with the 8 figure limit and maps. I hope to see you all next year. If I can remember I’ll get a final standings print out from the MD (the next time I’m there) and edit this post.
Have a great holiday season everyone,
NewtonCain – out.
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They just don't know what's good in life...Conan, tell them what is good in life.
To rip the boosters. To count the minis spilled out before you, and to hear the indifference of the women... | |
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Teach
Sneak
140 Posts
| | 12/12/2005 12:51 PM |
| | Pauper(david w.) won the tournament by beating me by 6 points. Drat. I came in fourth. A beholder band came in third and loremaster came in second. | |
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Avatar of the Tank
Newtoncain
Commander
2985 Posts
Land of 10,000 taxes
| | 12/12/2005 1:08 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by Teach
Pauper(david w.) won the tournament by beating me by 6 points. Drat. I came in fourth. A beholder band came in third and loremaster came in second.
Thx TeachΖD], I edited my post. | |
They just don't know what's good in life...Conan, tell them what is good in life.
To rip the boosters. To count the minis spilled out before you, and to hear the indifference of the women... | |
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Zaukrie
Underboss
2007 Posts
| | 12/12/2005 2:03 PM |
| My wife is feeling so guilty about me not getting to play that she asks me every day if there is a tourney on the 17th. Is there?
Hmm, should have shown (if I could have), as I was building to face Elminster and others relying on "ranged" attacks with a fast moving beater band. Oh well, someday I'll get to play again.
Teach, still have your ulmo or whatever you wanted available (at work, can't remember, can't check trades will typing this). | |
Fastest dropping DCI ranking on record!
Champion of Juiblex | |
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Pauper
Sergeant
508 Posts
| | 12/12/2005 8:11 PM |
| Yes, a non-bottomfeeder's report!
I hadn't played in a Den tourney for some time, and expected I'd be a bit rusty from lack of practice. I was surprised, though, not so much by the volume of epic figures (this was the first DCI-sanctioned local tourney where epics were legal, I think), or even by the volume of Elminsters present (as you can see from the list Newtoncain provided, there were at least five, maybe six El bands in the mix), but because out of all the El bands present, mine was the only one to pair him up with a Cleric of Dol'Arrah, since I'd been posting for over a month now that the Epic El/CoDA combo was one I'd been hoping to try.
The full band I'd brought:
Epic Elminster
Archmage
Cleric of Dol'Arrah
Longstrider Ranger
Celestial Pegasus
Aramil, Adventurer
Wild Elf Raider
Xeph Warrior
Round 1 - vs John (same guy as faced Orion in round 3)
My first epic El match, and here I was facing a mirror match. This made me feel pretty good about my selection of the Pegasus and Longstrider, which I'd taken specifically for the mirror-match; if I could base my opponent's casters (and with speed 12 and speed F10 I should be able to do that pretty easily), I'd have a significant edge, I figured.
John was playing the 'Epic Buff Elminster' variant, and by the end of round 3 had him all the way up to AC36. Unfortunately, about half of his warband was still on his assembly tile by the end of round 3 as well, save for his wolf summons from the Evermeet Wizard and a couple of other figs, which I'd pretty much been able to deal with at my leisure. (His non-epic Rikka waylaid in to flank my Celestial Pegasus along with his Dire Bear, but after Elminster walked over, Banished Rikka, then quick-cast a disintegrate onto the Bear, it was pretty clear that that threat wasn't as huge as it seemed.) Between tiles and kills, I had an easy point edge, which he couldn't make up over the final couple of turns.
Round 2 - vs Aaron
Playing in the Cave of Pain, I faced my second mirror-match of the day. Fortunately, I had the edge given that I had a couple of (at least nominal) beaters, while the only figure in his band who even remotely counted as a beater was Ragnara.
Nevertheless, it turned out to be a fun, vicious game. Round one, he noted that I had my CoDA screened by something weak, brought over his Archmage to blast the screener, then brought over his El to disintegrate my CoDA. Gone. I shook my head, realizing I couldn't let him get away with simply vaporizing one of my bigger pieces, so I then activated my Archmage, double-Melfed his Archmage, and forced a morale check, which he failed, causing him to rout off the board. Now it was Aaron's turn to shake his head.
Round two, he DD'ed both El and his remaining Archmage to my half of the board, and suddenly the game turned into DDM as directed by John Woo - spells flying, fast pieces pinwheeling across the map from one side to the other trying to find an edge. I couldn't pass a spell resistance roll to get a Mordy's sword on his El to save my life, though he did fail a save versus one of my El's disintegrates, which took a good chunk off his health total. Still, he managed to land three swords on my El which, even with the single augmented cure spell available to him wasn't going to give me much time to finish the match.
Finally it was down to his El against my El with the Pegasus and Longstrider - and a single tactical decision helped me get the win. Both Aaron and I had considered the value of including a figure with mage armor to allow El to get up to AC30. He'd gone with the Halfling Wizard, which wasn't at all a bad choice, IMO. I'd gone with Aramil, both because it was a bit cheaper (leaving me room to use the Wild Elf as my eighth activation) and because of access to ray of enfeeblement. Neither of those figures made a huge difference in the match themselves, but I'd already activated my El in round one (moving and putting up the mage armor) when Aaron wiped out my CoDA. With his aggressive play starting turn two, he never gave himself time to put up his own El's mage armor, and it ultimately cost him; with flanks, neither of the melee figures I had left was ever attacking with less than a +13 attack bonus, and they were getting a total of four attacks per round (a move-and-attack for each, plus subsequent AoOs when his El moved away to be able to throw another spell). At AC26, I was able to hit often enough to drop Aaron's El - at AC30, it would have been a much harder chore, and probably one I wouldn't have had time to complete before time was called.
This would have been the best fight of the day, if not for the final round.
Round 3 - vs Chris
Chris was taking a shot at 'band of the day' with his Slaad-and-demon-themed outsider band, but this simply wasn't a matchup that favored him, given the two Dismissals and two Banishments at my disposal. I used one Dismissal to get rid of his Red Slaad, then after his Blue Slaad saved against El's Banishment, I brought up the Archmage adjacent to El and tried again, this time succeeding. His epic Death Slaad did manage a Deadly Rend on my Longstrider, and he was still in the running if he could have done the same to my Pegasus after time was called for the final round, but I had the initiative, walked up with El, and Baleful Teleported Death-boy back to his assembly tile, icing the win.
Chris played as good a game as I could have expected, but my band just had too much outsider hate for him to deal with.
Round 4 - vs Teach
It's just not a Monster Den tourney until Teach and Pauper fight. Neither of us can remember a single Den tourney we've both been in where we didn't face each other. This, though, would be the first time we'd face off for what appeared to be the #1 slot. (Gunthar, one table over, was also 3-0, but was playing a 2-1 player which suggested that the winner of our match would likely have superior tiebreaks.)
I have to give full props to Teach for his amazing LG band - great synergies and powerful figures. With his Couatl and Half-Orc Pally CE's being broadcast at sight range by his Trumpet Archon, and the Marut, JA, and Pally all being Fearless, he had a lot of mutually-supporting figures. And of course he was playing one of my favorite figs of all time, the Aasimar Favored Soul.
We were playing Plunder, which would become significant. He won tile init and thus was able to block off easy cross-court sight lines. He also nearly prevented me from being able to place my final terrain tile - Zig-Zag - though a ruling from Newtoncain allowed me to put the tile against the far wall of the battlemat, even though doing so would not allow for a three-space path between the wall and the 'blocks' on the tile. (Newton's reasoning was that, if a tile placed against the outer wall was required to have three-space access between the outer wall and the tile's own walls, then the Rubble Assembly would be illegal in 500-point play, which made sense to me.)
Turn one we sent out our bands in teams - I sent the Pegasus and Wild Elf out toward the center to grab tiles, while he sent Marut after Peggy and eventually moved the Aasimar over to deal with the Wild Elf. The rest of our bands prepared to face off near his closest scoring tile, with my hope being that I could block access to the other tile he'd set up behind that one.
I won init for round 2 and, still feeling a bit jazzed from the fight with Aaron, raced in my Archmage to try a gamble - I dropped a Mordy's sword on his LSD, then quick-cast a banishment on his Gith Monk, which succeeded. (After the battle was over, Teach told me that losing the Gith Monk had really hurt - the fig had been huge for him all day.) He flipped his LSD over the top of my Archmage, finding an L-shaped cone that caught four of my figs - both the Archmage and Longstrider failed saves, and the Xeph died instantly, only Aramil managed to save, which kept him alive long enough to drop a ray of enfeeblement onto the LSD - then followed up by bringing up his Trumpet and JA and further punishing my poor Archmage. I healed up the Longstrider, hoping to be able to follow up with another heal on the Archmage the following round, but it was not to be.
Meanwhile, his Marut was pounding my poor Peggy, though I'd already raced the Wild Elf through the breach in my Spike Stones Cave onto the Zig-Zag tile sitting on the far side of the map - that Wild Elf ended up collecting 50 tile points before being routed by his Aasimar, which was way worth the investment. I tried to take some pressure off my Pegasus by double-disintegrating his Marut, and though we both forgot to have me roll Spell Resistance, his Marut made both saves, taking only 60 total damage. A Pegasus hoof dropped him down to 5 HP, still enough to threaten instant death.
Thankfully, I won the next round's initiative, quick-cast an empowered Melf's as El ran by toward the main fight on the other side of the battlefield, then winged my Pegasus onto his assembly tile to get her out of the way of the Couatl's Spell Resistance-ignoring sonic orbs. (I asked him at least three times to make a SR roll on those sonic orbs, and was reminded three times that the orbs ignore SR - silly me!)
Finally it was getting down to the nitty-gritty - my Longstrider had fallen, overwhelmed by archons, but getting in a couple of hits (including a Death Strike) on Teach's ever-weakening LSD. Then, in a match filled with key plays, the keyest play of all - Teach charged El with his LSD, basing him and hitting for 10 damage. The key was not the damage - it was the first hit my El had taken in the entire fight - or even that El was based. It was that, by charging, Teach had moved his LSD out of range to be healed by his Pally, and with time called on the next round, all I had to do was find a way to deal 10 more points of damage to the LSD and it would die on activation. After rallying my routing Wild Elf, all I had left to activate was Elminster. Looking down the spell list, it finally hit me - the Mordy's sword El was packing thanks to the Archmage. I backed off, cast the spell, and we proceeded to start counting points to see how close we were, not realizing that we were extremely close. If Teach could find a way to climb onto an extra scoring tile with his final three activations (one of which, the LSD, would die immediately, and thus was no use to him), he'd win by 19, otherwise he'd lose by 6. (Had I not rallied the Wild Elf, it would have routed off the board, resulting in a tie.) He did manage to slip the Pally up to take over a scoring space from his JA, which moved over and barely reached my assembly, but after I pointed out that the Pally had already been sitting on a scoring tile, and thus he hadn't actually increased his expected tile points for the round, that was the game. It was easily one of the best and most enjoyable DDM games I'd ever been involved in, and I felt very fortunate to be able to say that I won it.
Looking back, there was a lot of good fortune in the day, though. Not necessarily on die rolls, per se (my repeated failure to pass an SR check against Aaron being the prime example of that), but in matchups. I'd built an El band that I thought would have an edge in the mirror match, and both of my first two matches were mirror matches. Then I faced an outsider band that was close to a perfect matchup for me, and a perfectly bad one for my opponent. I didn't have to face either of the quint-Beholder bands running that day, which was a huge relief. In other words, while I do feel I played well despite my off-time, I seriously doubt I'd have gotten the tourney win without some solid good fortune along the way.
I'm a little disappointed that we're ending the tile era with this tourney - from here on out we'll be playing eight-figs and maps like nearly everyone else - but as long as the game stays this fun I'll gladly keep plugging away.
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Pauper | |
Champion of the War Wizard of Cormyr | |
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Avatar of the Tank
Newtoncain
Commander
2985 Posts
Land of 10,000 taxes
| | 12/13/2005 7:42 AM |
| | Thx for the detailed report on your win. | |
They just don't know what's good in life...Conan, tell them what is good in life.
To rip the boosters. To count the minis spilled out before you, and to hear the indifference of the women... | |
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