Ides of March 2014 - Report

Preamble

First, I grew to quite dislike 42pts while thinking up the lists, as you can see in my previous points. I made a comment about how it feels like 35pts, but with more rope to hang yourself, rather than 50pts with some stuff dropped off. I asked Dave (TO) about why 42pts last year, and his summarized response was:

• There are no other 42pt events in NZ (there are a few 35/47/50 and escalation events)
• 35pts feels small, 50pts feels like you're just jamming stuff into a list (Dave plays Cryx) so 42 is like a mid-ground where you have to think about lists and your choices a bit more.

Well, those goals are certainly achieved. No other tournament is 42pts (in fact, 50pts is the exception rather than the standard around these parts), and I do have to think about my options quite hard, but as a Minion player with so few options I still feel games below 50 really stomp on my balls in terms of missing critical pieces I need to help in certain matchups. Will that matter? We shall see. I would still like the meta to move to 60pts to change things up a little bit.

The second thing is that the TO did a great run off posts breaking down lists submitted for the tournament in pure stats data, like how many points were spent on X category per faction, how many of each faction were present and so on. What I learned from this is that there were slightly less Circle, Legion and Trolls than I expected, and slightly more Cryx and Ret.
While the Ret aspect is pretty good for me (although I am probably going to lose my first serious game against Ret with Gators in.... ever),   the rest of it isn't. While Rask + 3 Posse is still a decent bet, I think I would have been better off with Maelok (w/ WE+ Snapjaw) over Barnabas, like the other Gator player is likely taking. That would be less bad vs Cryx I think. And also give me Undead skew, which is pretty potent in itself. Like I wrote in the previous post, Rask + 3 heavies and 2 Posse and the Maelok Undead grind is probably the best 50pt combination in the current meta.

Third, there were predictions of a cyclone hitting the city over the weekend. This made travel to and from the venue noticeably less appealing, especially since we have to cross a long-ass harbour bridge to get there. Fortunately we only got the edge of the cyclone so it was basically just normal crappy Auckland weather.

Time for some super quick summaries!

Day 1

Round 1 - Mitch playing Ret (Tinkerbell), Destruction

I think the reason this matchup came up first was that Mitch proclaimed on Thrallblacks the week before that he considered Gators a favourable matchup for his Ret lists. Questionable move.
He had a mostly melee Tinkerbell list - Banshee, Skyreth? (Mk1 Vilmon on a horse), Infiltrators, Halberdiers, Thane... no arc node though.

I dropped Rask. I got to go first, pop my feat second turn,  then killed a bunch of stuff so his feat wasn't too impressive. I should have won on scenario by turns 4 and 5 respectively but had some bad clutch rolls on killing contesting models and the enemy objective, so it just kept going and he kept putting models in the zone piecemeal. Near the end, my Spitter had to throw the Banshee out of the zone, but eventually I got my 5 CPs, and more or less ignored Tinkerbell otherwise. Quite the grinder.

I made a few very sloppy plays during the game like once forgetting to declare which weapon the Totem Hunter was using before rolling the attack or measuring some Bog Trog charges badly, and I apologized for it after the game. Mitch probably still thinks I'm a anal douche though. Fair enough :(

Round 2 - Greg playing Legion (Vayl2), Supply and Demand.

This game was super short. Greg played the Vayl2 tier list. I played Barnabas. He went second and charged Vayl up to the edge of the zone, then put an Admonitioned Angelius right in front of her. He had no fury at this point. So I charged the Angel with 2 Gators, he Admonitioned away on the second charge, leaving me 2 Gator reach attacks on fury-less Vayl. She died.

Round 3 - Reid playing PoM (Kreoss3), Balance of Power

Reid played Kreoss3 with Vengers, Errants, TFG and a Devout. I played Rask. Basically I killed most of the infantry, then Vengers killed some dudes, then I killed the Vengers and managed to win on scenario. Pretty straighforward although S+P Ignited Vengers are terrifying.

A real pleasure of a game though, Reid is a newer player but very open to learning things and also very sharp on his distance estimations.

Round 4 - Adam playing Khador (Butcher3), Process of Elimination.

Adam is one of the more dedicated WM players in NZ, so we had a pretty clean game all up. I played Rask, because otherwise Butcher camps 4 focus the whole game and is immune to my entire army while killing them all. Butcher3 is very bad for Gators, as there's not much I can do about him (no anti-spells, all melee army reliant on jamming). Basically he threw some worthless Black Dragons in my face to jam, and then Butcher came up and did all the work. I had a decent assassination attempt on Butcher had I been able to shoot his 4 focus off, but his Bokur was 1.995" inches behind him. I took a risk with the shot before knowing this for sure since it was basically my only chance at winning, but it was shield guarded after it was determined to be in by a bee's dick and therefore couldn't crack the ARM. I then lost on scenario.

This was videotaped to show how bad I am. Maybe it will be uploaded later on some Thrallblacks youtube site. The room was basically a large empty dance classroom with a huge mirror in the back, creepy noises (a mix between a haunted house and a gas chamber), a table in the middle, and a camera on a podium. I tried not to say anything un-PC but pretty sure I let slip a few things that will offend the random observer.

I can think of a few mistakes I made, the most prominent of which was not casting Inhospitable Ground every turn (no reason not to here really, Silence of Death makes camping fury almost useless). But it is still a very bad matchup for Gators as long as there's a Bokur and War Dog in the list. I am happy though that my second game ever against Butcher3 was a significant improvement upon my last game, as Rask kept Admonition up on himself and lived because of it, but I could still play it better. Too bad I have no Khador players to practice against these days.


End of Day 1

So 3-1 at this stage. The games were all fun and interesting, and the tournament was run super smoothly as Dave's tournaments tend to be, but I'm not really feeling too enthused about Warmachine. Not even my usual rage about stuff, but general non-chalance. Perhaps I'm just getting bored of the game itself, or the general meta. Maybe things will get better Day 2....


Day 2

Round 5 - Darryl with Cryx (pSkarre), Rallypoint.

pSkarre, Blackbanes, Blood Witches, 2 Ripjaws, Wraith Engine, Bloodgorgers, Gerlak

Played Barnabas. Lots of incorporeal, so not much game. At least I can KD everything that one turn. The Battle Engine was a real pain in the ass under Skarre's feat (what isn't?). That thing is actually really quite good (on the "real people" scale, not the "Cryx player" scale). I also learned here that the Blood Hag has stealth, just because Cryx. I bitch about Cryx a hell of a lot, but learning that the Hag had stealth didn't even make me angry, just sad and despondent.

The only sizable mistake I did was running 3 Gators within 0.5" of Blood Witches that had been knocked down by my feat, so instead of doing nothing, they got up and killed 3 Gatormans. Had those 3 Gators lived, I may have been able take over the left zone and do something useful. But alas, that mistake cost me a shot at a deathclock victory (no chance at scenario victory because Blackbanes, and no chance at assassination victory because I had to sacrifice my beasts to not get killed early + Skarre charges 0.5" further than Barnabas).

Near the end Daryl tried to kill Barnabas with Hellfires using his huge stack of focus. He killed Barnabas on his first boosted Hellfire, I toughed, and he proceeded to roll a pair of snake eyes on his next two Hellfires. It would have been tragic had he not been able to get another 5 or so melee attacks on KD Barnabas right after.

Sidenote: pSkarre is perhaps the most compelling evidence for why warjacks are a bad use of focus in Cryx. She is swimming in focus every turn, and would rather just camp 5-6 than just take warjacks to use that focus. Think about that a minute.

Round 6 - James with Ret (Rahn), Into the Breach.
Rahn with a Phoenix, Halberdiers + Thane, 2 units of Mittens, some MHAs, Eyriss3 and solo Mittens.

Basically the entire game came down to Rask missing a boosted shot at the Halberdiers to remove Polarity Shield (needing 6, rolled a 5). This has a 4.63% of happening, which I estimate to be the usual chance for Ret to beat Rask, all other things equal. Anyway, it happened here, and led to me losing the game. Because of this highly unlikely roll, lots of Halberdiers that should have been dead managed to live, in addition to several battle mages, which cascaded into a huge attrition favour for James, a lost CP, and me getting crapped on. His dice on the other hand were total fire, regularly 1 shoting Gatormans with boosted POW 10s at range. I think he missed 7 or 8 attacks over the entire course of the game with all his models, with maybe the same number of attacks that failed to do at least a few points of damage. I managed to eek out 4CPs before getting every model killed bar Rask and a Swamp Gobber, then Rask died to a free strike while yoloing away at 1 health. Worth it.

There was one really small chance of winning that I could have played better. After getting 4CPs, I tried to kill the objective by hitting it once with a Furied Gator (the last remaining Gator) and shooting it with Rask. However I forgot to cut for extra fury so wasn't able to boost the damage roll from Rask's shot. Given that I rolled a 6 on the 2d6 damage roll though, an extra 6 wouldn't have killed it either.

It makes me seem like an asshole who is trying to take something away from my opponent to say it I lost entirely because of that one dice roll, but thinking about it more, I really believe that's what this came down to. It is something I rarely say, but this game was won and lost primarily on dice. 4.63%.

Round 7 - Chris R with Ret (Ossyan), Fire Support.

Ossyan with Discordia, Halberdiers + Thane, Dahlia + Snake, Invictors, Eyriss2

I was ready to scoop and go home at this point, and fortunately I got paired up with Chris Russell, who drove to the tournament with me and taught me all about Ret. I was going to just concede and give him full CPs so we could just go home.... but then I learned that if the other Minion player won, I wouldn't get a mug. All I cared about going into Day 2 is the possibility of a mug, and I wanted a shot at the mug.

This time, the thorn in my side was Dahlia with her 'yo Cryx I heard you like being good so you can do whatever you want while the living do nothing' spell. She basically just kept walking in my face while Skaryth jumped around killing things and objectives.
After my feat turn, I took a shot at Dahlia with Rask using a fury siphon bolt (she had only 1 fury on her), but rolled an 8 on 3d6, rather than the 9 I needed. Foiled by 1 again (a 25% chance of failure this time though, more reasonable). She lived and proceeded to piss me off the entire game. Had I managed to kill her with that attack, the game would have been a bit of a landslide in my favour I think.

Anyway, stuff happened, then Chris managed to kill like 4 of Rask's Bog Trogs with a good Skaryth spray, then shoot Rask several times and charge him, leaving him 1 box of life and 1 Trog nearby. So close, as usual. Then I killed Ossyan with 3 furied Posse (the first 2 missed all their attacks).

End of Day 2 - Conclusion

I came 11th out of 40, with a decent Strength of Schedule (didn't really matter, but Adam placed first playing Butcher3 every round, Darryl 7th with best Cryx and James 15th).
Butcher3 seems a bit stupid at present, at least until people realize Lamentation is good and take those effects in their lists. That is the only effective counter I see to him, outside really solid assassination tech (which isn't trendy at the moment either). I would if I could, but Minions. Just another thing Minions can't deal with, add it to the pile. I do love that he is pretty bad against Garryth though.

But I got a mug for best Minions player. Mugs are everything.

As always, the organization was top notch, and Dave's tournaments are always super smooth, well promoted and with good communication. He is everything to this community I am not - charming, Kiwi, willing to organize and travel to large events, a hit with the ladies, plays broken as balls lists with no remorse whatsoever, and quite pleasant to play against.

As to my feelings about the game, they are almost as low as they have ever been. I spend more time thinking about things in the game that annoy me or could be better, or thinking about how boring matchups are and the meta is stagnant, rather than focusing on the strategy or hobby aspect of it. I guess that is partially to do with Minions being underdeveloped, and partially to do with PP being extremely hesitant about changing anything post-release.
Either way, I'll need some time to recharge my batteries and see how it goes with the new Minion releases to see if I decide to keep playing this year or whether it's still boring and I just spend my time building coffee tables, running long-distances and watching DotA tournaments.

Exactly like this one, except it says
"IDES MMXIV - Minions"

TL;DR - Doesn't matter, have mug.