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IanB
Commander
3112 Posts
    
 | | 02/10/2006 8:39 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by Feathers
quote:
Originally posted by IanB
If you drop at the end of a round, before pairings are done before the next round, you don't take a loss in a ratings hit sense, yeah.
I don't think that's correct, my friend. Synecdoche wanted to drop before one of the rounds in the GenCon Sealed. I think it was when he got that bad draft. But he had to drop and take his next match as a loss. I believe it is expressly there to prevent people from dropping without consequence in a sanctioned tourney. I could be wrong, so maybe Derry or Guy should give us verification on that.
If he had taken the drop *before* the new build, he wouldn't have taken a loss. Once he committed to the 2nd build, that committed him to a match as well.
At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened. | |
Anson on WotC boards | |
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Feathers
Underboss
1140 Posts
| | 02/10/2006 9:43 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by IanB
quote:
Originally posted by Feathers
quote:
Originally posted by IanB
If you drop at the end of a round, before pairings are done before the next round, you don't take a loss in a ratings hit sense, yeah.
I don't think that's correct, my friend. Synecdoche wanted to drop before one of the rounds in the GenCon Sealed. I think it was when he got that bad draft. But he had to drop and take his next match as a loss. I believe it is expressly there to prevent people from dropping without consequence in a sanctioned tourney. I could be wrong, so maybe Derry or Guy should give us verification on that.
If he had taken the drop *before* the new build, he wouldn't have taken a loss. Once he committed to the 2nd build, that committed him to a match as well.
At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened.
You very well could be right. Carry on. | |
Champion of Neogi
Completed Trades/Transactions: sttmxn, Krush, jgsugden, Ayrychx2, Venport, Tysac
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jgsugden
Commander
4320 Posts
Walnut Creek, CA
| | 02/11/2006 1:12 PM |
| | I'll be there with a copy of the new rules ... don't forget to bring your Magma Keep maps! | |
Champion of Meepo _*_ Myztek on the Wizards Boards. _*_ (2206 DDM on 03/06/06)
Please note: The use of the  indicates an attempt at humor ... often a bad attempt.
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John05
Warrior
246 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 8:40 PM |
| Great game! I'm glad I made it. I had pulled an all-nighter the night before just to have time today to come and it was worth it! (I'm also glad as heck I made it to my Viva on time about an hour ago.) Lucky for me it was only 3 games...
Still sad I didn't win (c'mon... who isn't sad when they lose?), but Eric totally deserved the win. I had awesome luck (as always) but played like a fool (still need to shake off bad beginner-habits and greediness). It really would have been a travesty if I had actually won. I would have determined right then and there that LUCK > SKILL.
So with my 2nd tournament... how many more do I need to catch up to derry or feathers? 20+?
We need more tourneys!
edit - Oh yeah, great thanks to Ian, for lending me the Lolth's Sting. If I had played better, the 3 misses Eric made on the Conceal 6 would have actually been significant. | |
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elder_basilisk
Sergeant
410 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 9:30 PM |
| I had fun, but it went poorly for me. 1/3 total. I brought the young master, 4 gith monks, 3 hill dwarves, and three men at arms. As people who follow the tourney know, it was played on magma keep.
Round 1
vs. LE: Urthok, Chraal, 2x Duergar Champ, Efreeti, 7x Kobold miners. Result: victory on points when time was called.
This was probably my best game of the tournament--it was my only win, but those two don't necessarily go together. After losing initiative, I was forced to go first so I sent some fodder up the sides to ensure that I could eliminate the kobold miners on my opponent's scoring area. The idea was to force my opponent to commit his pieces before I decided whether to come in from the other side of magma keep, through the passage in the middle, or around the back, but it was doomed to failure since he had 12 activations and went first. My opponent moved the chraal through the center of the keep and sent Urthok and the rest of his band around the top to block me off and engage. In the second round, he won initiative and charged my monk on the scoring area with both duergar. In a rather singular display of luck for me, both missed. I moved my hill dwarf to the center of the choke point to block the chraal and moved up. Eventually, I killed the duergar after losing one monk and eliminating the kobold miners.
When time was called, I had run out of blockers, but the chraal was not able to rout any monks when he breathed over the young master and monks and even though trapped between an Efreeti and a Chraal and being out of stuns was a pretty bad situation for my band, I was ahead on points (2 Duergar and a 10 or 20 point assault advantage is more than one monk and most of my fodder) so I won. It was fortunate for me that it ended when it did.
Round 2: vs. Human blackguard, 4 duergar champions, 7 kobold miners. My opponent was less fortunate in his kobold miner placement and I tried mostly the same strategy. However, since my opponent just moved all four duergar and the blackguard up the center of the keep, I wasn't able to block any part of his band. Unfortunately, I realized this too late to block off access to his victory area with the monks--I had had vague thoughts of sitting on my victory area and forcing engagement on a favorable area to me when I realized that beneath contempt means that, no matter how the fodder war went, I was going to have to come to my opponent. And this was where I made the most serious error of the game.
Instead of moving my second monk forward and engaging four on four (or even five on four if he threw his blackguard into the mix early), I moved to the closest space that based a Duergar, ensuring that I would be fighting his line of four cleaving duergar with only three spaces for my monks. I then proceeded to fail my first three morale checks with the monks and have them die or route off the board and miss two unavoidable strikes and IIRC four consecutive other hits due to conceal. My opponent had a spot of bad luck as well, and lost one duergar to a 1 on a tyrannical morale check. If I recall correctly, I was down to on monk, the young master and a hill dwarf or something against a nearly dead human blackguard and two injured but functional Duergar champs when time was called. It's tempting to blame the loss on luck and morale checks and conceal were probably what did me in, but the initial mistake of fighting on the outside of the victory area rather than blocking it off (though my opponent might well have just gone and camped on his other victory area instead) made a difference; the failure to leave a spot for my fourth monk on the skirmish line was also important.
Despite my luck, the game was still fairly close and if you play a good game, you should be able to make up for some bad luck. Obviously, either my game wasn't good enough to make up for the turns of fate.
Game 3: The mirror match. My opponent was fielding the exact same warband I was. I guess there's really only one way to get four giths in a 12 activation warband and four giths is probably better in that format than three and something else. It was the first time I'd played a gith monk band against a gith monk band and I realized that it's quite possible to avoid engagement--engaging out of range of the young master wastes your monks abilities and in order to engage in range of your young master, you need to move your master to within the threat range of the opponent's monks. This means risking losing initiative (if you move your YM last) or, at the very least, probably losing your lead monk since you move up and unavoidable stun and, in return, your opponent moves two monks up and unavoidable stuns twice, killing the one monk. (Then you move two and do the same and he moves the last monk in and puts 30 damage on one of your monks--the first person to fail morale loses).
Thinking on this now, it seems it would have been wise for me to have moved all of my band together up towards my victory area and hoped to get ahead on points by killing the fodder that my opponent had halfheartedly directed at me. But that's not what I did. Since my opponent had split his monks--one to grab assault points, one by his young master (who was close enough for me to base but not to base and attack) and two more on the other side of the keep, I moved up to base his young master at the end of my turn and moved my YM to be in range to give me CE when attacking his YM. I then won initiative (in this match, I think I won more than my share of initiative rolls, but missed more than my share of attacks and while I may have only missed my share of morale checks, my opponent ended up not missing any which made a big difference). Unfortunately, I had made a mistake when I moved my YM up. I was only in range to have the CE on one monk when I attacked his YM. And I foolishly did not use a stun on the second unavoidable strike, thinking that there was no point if I wouldn't get the CE damage. (If the YM had failed the save, he would not have been able to move or to grant my opponent's monks his CE). My opponent made the stun save and the morale check with the YM, moved up a monk and stunned mine. I failed the stun save and he moved his YM away. And, ultimately, that was the game right there. My other monks weren't in a position to pounce immediately since I had only had two monks left when I saw the opening and decided to stick my YM's neck out. And I hadn't quite thought it through enough because I chose the square that I chose in order to be further away from my opponents' monks. BIG mistake. If I was going to hang my gonads out on an initiative check like that, I should have at least made sure that winning it would let me kill his YM. Instead, I went half-assed and lost. Predictable, but it still stung to lose that one. In a mirror match, there's no real excuse. You don't have a bad matchup. If you lose, it's either you or the dice. | |
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John05
Warrior
246 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 9:54 PM |
| Nice report! But the report thread hasn't even come out yet!
Eric needs to start that, since he won. | |
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Aravis
Underboss
1155 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 10:05 PM |
| I think ill write up my report here. Then copy it to the Results thread just so I can keep the stuff fresh in my memory. Here we go! First off I came to the Tourny with 2 figures. Namly 2 Man at Arms, their cards, and my Dice. So where was the rest of my warband..in the mail! So Derry and the others offered to let me borrow minis that I needed. Thanks Derry for that!
My Warband: Young Master
Githzerai Monk x4
Man At Arms x4
Hill Dwarf Warrior x2
Match 1: John Wang (John05)
Warband: Death Slaad
Blue Slaad
Drow Cleric of Lolth
Lolth's Sting x8?
Round 1 and Setup: He won init and set up on the side B. Then he let me go first. Basicly we shuffled around fodder units and he started to MW the Slaad's. He also blocked off a huge chunk of the middle corridor with his massive amounts of Stings.
Round 2: More shuffling..I get a Monk on tile points.
Round 3: He won init and whent first then he cought ALL my Monks in 2 Chaos Hammers! I was like...wow Im dumb. Oh well thats what I get for not being very cautious! After taking both hammers I moved up with my Auto Crit Stuns to kill the Blue Slaad (2 Crit Stuns and YM moved up and killed).
Round 4: I won init and went first. I used 2 Auto Crit Stuns on the Death Slaad, he passed morale and both stun saves! Ouch! He then moved up and tried tons of Ghost Step flank charges, or some combo of that. A few hit here or there killing 1 monk.
Round 5: He wins init..crap. Basiclly for me its game over. I had like 1 monk left..
0-1, He will have a much better report than I. Dont remeber the whole thing to every detail :(.
Match 2: Michael Derry (derry)
Warband: Cleric of Gruumsh
Eye of Gruumsh
Red Samurai x3
Orc Warrior x5
Round 1 and Setup: Comeing..food just arrived..
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jgsugden
Commander
4320 Posts
Walnut Creek, CA
| | 02/11/2006 11:58 PM |
| I'll copy to the report thread as well, as my review is brief:
My first match was against Elder_basilisk.
His report is mostly correct with a few corrections - I had 6 kobold miners and 1 blue. The blue was a super hero in later 2 matches, but in this match, he was marginal. Additionally, we had equal victory points, as my kobold miners managed to occupy the victory area on the far side of the map for the entire game, and my chraal and blue combined to fill up the central one towards the end of the game.
This game had three important runs of luck: In the first, I had bad luck when I wiffed badly on attacks against his gith monk, as he mentioned. The next series of bad luck was his, when he couldn't get past the conceal on my duergar champions for a prolonger period, even losing 4 hits (including an unavoidable strike) in a row to the conceal of the duergar. The final bad luck trend was mine, when I had a number of costly misses where the odds were in my favor to hit.
I feel like this was a match that could have gone either way. Seeing all of his unavoidable strikes used against my creatures with conceal and 65 hit points was a good thing for me. However, had I been smart and led the left hand charge with my chraal, I might have slowed down his progress some. However, having it go down the center allowed me to kill all of his fodder pieces, and preserve my tile points ... a difficult decision.
If I could do it all over again, I'd just like to see one of those dang monks route. They all made morale saves ... grrrrrr.
My second match was against LCS:
Louis played a really fun band with gimmicks. Ghaele Eladrin, Large Air Elemental, and Voice of Battle + fodder. The idea was: Ghaele + Large Air Elemental for the whirlwind combo, then ghaele gaze + improved countersong to send my troops fleeing.
The whirlwind idea never got off the ground. He whiffed with the elemental a few times (or perhaps killed a few kobold miners - I kind of have an evil overlord tendency with them, forgetting what happened with them unless they were spectacularly brave or something), but then the elemental died to a combined assault by duergars and efreet spells.
The ghaele gaze combo was more effective, but still didn't work well enough. It send a duergar and my chraal fleeing, but they both made moral checks to recover, and without any other offense, that still left me with a lot of attacks on the ghaele from the other duergar. In the end, I was able to finish off the voice of battle and then kill the ghaele.
As he started down on activations, I was able to get tile points every round and clean out his fodder with my fodder. In the end, I think his ghaele was has last living piece when it died.
One highlight of this match was the bravery of my kobold miner's with a very useful made morale save (rolled 19) on a jittery roll, and a few great attacks to kill off his wild elf barbarians and xeph warriors.
My third round was against IanB:
Ian is a good friend, and one of the best DDM players around. It was a bit of an odd battle, as he was playing one of my favorite bands (3X Chraal) and I was playing a band that he convinced me was a good band (Duergars and Efreet).
In round 1, I made a huge mistake in placing my figures, leaving it possible for him to double cone my duergars and my efreet (as well as Urthok once) if he won initiative for rd 2. In addition, he'd have had terrain advantage, and I'd have needed to move my warband to one side of the map and fight while surrounded. It would have been bad ... but I won initiative.
This allowed me to move my chraal to block his two chraals from getting close to my meat and block off his access to the scoring victory area in my backfield. I had terrain advantage, and it was going to be hard for his chraals to kill my chraal due to their 5 damage per attack exchanges.
From there, there was three slow battles - chraal + DC vs 2 chraals, DC + Efreet versus Chraal (later supported by Orog Warlord), and my fodder against his fodder.
In the end, he managed to get both of my duergar champs, but I killed all his fodder, blew up a chraal and had a 40 or 50 point victory point advantage.
You know you're getting better when you can beat someone like Ian ... and I think this was my second tournament victory in a row against him.
I ended up 2-1, and I had a lot of fun. I hope some more folks will join us for our next Endgame weekend tournament in March ... | |
Champion of Meepo _*_ Myztek on the Wizards Boards. _*_ (2206 DDM on 03/06/06)
Please note: The use of the indicates an attempt at humor ... often a bad attempt.
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