Well, the picture above pretty much says it all. ^^ Things started to go wrong already at registration when the judge looked through my list and asked me where my 10 points of reinforcements were. I hadn't planned any and just enlarged my collection to be able to play two different 50pts lists with character restrictions. I guess this is a cultural difference because in Switzerland/Germany the TO always explicitely announces when Reserves are being played and how many points you need for that. Here in Texas they just play Steamroller and you are supposed to know the rules well enough to figure out what consequences that has.
Either way, I had a leftover Hammersmith and Arlan Strangewayes, so that was reinforcements enough for one list and for the other a judge was nice enough to lend me his Gorman di Wulfe model. However, if you are somewhat into Cygnar you immediately notice how silly it is to have a Hammersmith (4" movement per turn) come from reserve.
Will Pagani explaining the chess clock - at least I was familiar with that. ^^
Game 1 vs. Hunter Dominque (Minions, Barnabas)
Hunter is from Louisiana and he brought a gator list with tons of crocs - now THIS promised to be a lot of fun. I have never played Minions before, so I had hardly any clue what he was going to do and decided to stick to my "standard program". To make a long story short: Hunter basically dominated me with movement so he was able to pick pretty much all the fights and not me. He did this by casting swamps right in front of his army every turn that he could easily pass through but that were difficult terrain for me. When my charge range of 8" is reduced to 4" there is only so much I can do.
This is how we set up our armies. The rings are the two initial swamps.
My army moves up to the first line of defense.
My army moves forward to the second line of defense and is dominating now the objective area, but Hunter's gators on the right side of the picture are also inside it with a toe. Barnabas pops his feat and knocks down my front line of Warjacks and Stormblades.
On my left flank, some crocs appear that have some flanking special rule that allows them to flank from reserve even if the scenario doesn't include it. They didn't appear too powerful to me, but by their number they were strong enough to finally take down my Firefly. With the center of my defense gone, my only assest left were the Thunderhead plus the Triangulation between my Stormcallers and the Fireflies. Unfortunately, when it came to do the Triangulation, both Stormcallers failed their skill check.
Once my defense was completely dissolved, the Swamp Horror threw the Wrastler forward and he charged eHaley. End of story.
Game 2 vs. Derek Crass (Protectorate, pSeverius)
Well, another excellent game and if there were a price for sportsmanship, Derek would definitely get it from me. (this is not to say the other players weren't good sportsmen, they were all very good, it's just that Derek is an especially good sportsman!)
We set up and I run forward. Eiryss is sticking around the brown building to the right.
The Protectorate moves everything forward, too...
The center of the game gets literally heated with the domination of the battle engine. Luckily I do really good dice rolls when it comes to test on the conitnuous effects and they all get extinct on a 1 or 2.
With the Stormcald gone, eCaine pops his feat and kills off the battle engine plus 2 additional infantry modells he has shots left for.
However, now the attrition really sets in and I have to give up the center while Nicia kills off my Gun Mages to the right with hit 'n run tactics. I have no means anymore to prevent Derek from taking the mission objective slightly to the right of the center of this picture.
The game ends when this Warjack shoots eCaine. pSeverius that can be seen in the background actually did stay in the background for the entire game. He didn't even need to pop his feat that caused so much chagrin on the previous day.
Game 3 vs. Colin Hill (Circle, pBaldur)
Colin is from Australia so we joked around saying that this is the international game and that we were basically supposed to be at the top table. ^^ Colin picked up WM/H in March so he introduced himself pretty much as a newbie - a very friendly, fun, and easy-going newbie I have to say - yet a newbie with a clear concept on what he was going to do. Of course he beat me. ^^
We set up and I moved forward. Please note the Shifting Stones in the background. I already knew them from Robert Deola, but Colin didn't take one unit of them, he took two so he had two intersecting trinagles. This was the key to victory because one trinagle could teleport a Shifting Stone from the 2nd trinagle as needed and then the newly formed trinagle could teleport a Warbeast pretty much anywhere. When I played Robert Deola so far I was also lucky enough that I never had to fight his Druids inside the woods - now against Colin I was about to learn what this means!
Here things looked still sort of good because my lines were intact. However, I couldn't capitalize on it because it was pBaldur's feat turn and everything within his control area was difficult terrain. For example my Stormblades that attempted to charge the Warbeast in the center just failed by 1 or 2mm to get into melee range.
Over the next turn, Colins Warbeasts dissolved my line of defense and then everything in his army that could shoot shot eHaley. RIP.
Looking back at this tournament I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I really enjoyed it because I had great people to play with. On the other hand it's kinda bitter because I thought I am used to play against Protectorate and Circle, but the defeats were just as devastating as in the game against the unknown crocs. In other words, my learning curve isn't steep enough. On the other hand, I never had problems handling the clock, actually even in Friday's Classic Hardcore the clock didn't really mean a threat to me. I guess what I currently need in my gaming group is not practicing with the clock to get faster, but a consistent list that I know by heart and that I am deeply familiar with. I have sort of reached this level with eCaine, but his lists are ever changing because basically I just built my army around him based on the looks of the models. eHaley was a complete fail because I simply lack the experience to make her work, so I guess she's gonna be shelved again.
When I start to play Trollbloods, the first thing I do is building lists meant to be competitive and then it's just a matter of going back into the trenches and accumulate more experience on how they perform against the various armies.
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