Arcane Wonders Forum
Mage Wars => Events => Topic started by: silverclawgrizzly on June 10, 2016, 12:36:21 AM
-
We have two great venues for Mage Wars in Charlotte. I'm going to keep on going threads for both of them with tournament reports. Here is the report for the 6-9-2016 event at Get Some Games.
Mages:
Jimillia: Jimillia played her skeleton Necromancer which has won her several tournaments and got her second place in our coveted Mace: Wounded Warrior event last November.
Jon: Big Jon plays an Earth Wizard and plays it very aggressive. He's hard hitting with a stronger defensive strategy than most people suspect.
Silverclawgrizzly: I used a different style Straywood Beast Master book for this event. Though this is my primary mage this was a totally different style suggested by Puddinhead.
Larrick: A very interesting take on a Bloodwave Warlord. Larrick focused on board control to slow down enemy range units. It was an experimental strategy that worked ok.
Sarah: Sarah uses a Force Master and can either force rush you or build for a turn if need be. Normally however she hits hard and fast repeatedly.
DevilsVendetta: The Devil won a few OCTGN matches with his Fire Wizard and won a tournament not long ago with it. Little unorthodox but a solid wizard build.
ROUND 1:
Silverclaw Grizzly VS DevilsVendetta
Jimillia VS Larrick
Sarah VS Jon
The very last thing I wanted to fight my first turn trying out an experimental book was a wizard. The Straywood strategy I was trying out was to cast 2-3 Animal Kinships while throwing down cheap animals the first few rounds. I played a Lair on like turn 6 or 7. I have to be honest I had thought I'd lost this when time got called because it went to Life Remaining. However I had a small lead there and took the win. Overall the strategy went well but I do NOT want to try it again against Devils wizard without fine tuning it some first. He took an early lead and I was only barely able to shift things back around my way towards the very end of the match when he was out of creatures and towers. He had good armor but eventually enough dice and piercing will prevail.
Jimillia beat Larrick in what looked like a close fight. I know Larrick had her down to 9 life left before she Drain Souled him which swung things for her.
Sarah beat Jon in what I heard was a great match. Sarah is a tough nut to crack because she reads opponents well.
ROUND 2:
Silverclawgrizzly VS Jimillia
Sarah VS Larrick
Jon VS DevilsVendetta
Oh joy now I get to fight the book that usually beats the crap out of my normal Straywood with an idea I got from a puddin head. I've fought this book enough times to know I have to Lair and Enchanters Ring on Turn 1 and go for sturdier creatures first. I knew she'd Idol of Pestilence which is why I had the magic healing tree in my Lairs zone and a Wychwood Iron Vine on my mage. I was able to corrode the idol and send a small tactical assault team of a Timber Wolf and a couple of Thunderrift Falcons to take it out. Yes I spent a lot of resources on this but they all survived so it paid off. She focused on killing my first Animal Kinship and healing tree. I took a small lead in damage after sucking up some beating earlier. I kept my distance and my Mage Wand(with Dispel) around far longer than normal. This allowed me to handle her hate in smaller doses than normal. My animals wore her down faster than I think she was expecting and when she cast Deathlock earlier to prevent me from healing(when she had the advantage) I chose to let it stay up. In the end I picked up the win.
Sarah beat Larrick very abruptly actually. They were fairly close with Larrick building strong momentum. However he only had like 7 life left at this point(Sarah had 11) when Sarah got Initiative and had her damaged Invisible Stalker attack as her first action. Well she rolled exactly 7 damage all Critical and finished Larrick off before she lay one impressive beat down on her with the three surly dwarves in her zone.
Jon beat DevilsVendetta in what I hear was a Wizard Tower duel. Don't know many details but Jons been playing Wizard since day one of his Mage Warrior career and I suspect experience played a large role.
ROUND 3:
Silverclawgrizzly VS Sarah
Jimillia VS Jon
Larrick VS DevilsVendetta
Sarah had no interest in letting me build up a nice Animal Kinship power base and came after me ridiculously fast. She enchanted and equipped with her quick cast while beating my face in with her full action. For a while I tried to trade blows with her as I was unavoidable, had her outnumbered, and was well armored and a little buffed thanks to the two totems I did cast with a Straywood Hound and Darkfenne Asp. Well that worked sorta....but then I got scared and ran away like a scared rat. After that I slowly started healing while using Tangleroot to slow her down. I was able to recapture a lot of my life while she got only a little of hers back. So feeling slightly braver I poked my head out from behind my Wall of Thorns after having my Lair summon a Steelclaw Grizzly. Ha joke was on me she had Cheetah Speed and Mongoose Agility and ran past my guards and put some more beat down on me. I fought back and eventually managed to get the momentum. Putting a Weak on her as well as a Rot(thanks Mr. Tegu!) helped as well. I squeezed a win after taking her Forcefield down through swarm I finished her off with my mage.
Jon beat Jimillia due to attacking before she was ready from what I overheard. Being very focused on my finals match I couldn't tell you more as it ended before my match did.
DevilsVendetta beat Larrick after a good solid struggle that left them both hurting. Larrick is one of our newer players in terms of tournaments under his belt and he fought well but against mages who knew their books like the backs of their hands. Overall he says he likes his walled off tactics but wants to refine them some more.
So I took first place and got some store credit which I used to buy prize support for our upcoming charity tournament next month. Hooray pre-order Academy Priestess! Also a gift card to Get Some Games. Get Some is a fantastic game store if you're ever in Charlotte btw with a nice cosplay and anime section in the back.
Our judge for this event was JasonBourneZombie whom I'm sure could tell you more about the matches I wasn't in. He runs a tight ship with his events and is always professional as well as level headed. So glad he's joining Jimillia and I as a judge for Gen Con in August.
-
Nice Write-up, Grizz! It's always good to see some news on Mage Wars events around the world.
Glad to see the Kinship Beastmaster had some staying power. Of course, he had an excellent pilot. Although now that I see your list of participants, my loyalty shifts to the brave Forcemaster. Tell Ms. Sarah that she has a fan and that I hope to hear tales of her victories in the future and get to see her play someday.
btw, Thanks for the shout. ;)
-
See if I tell Sarah then she'll be all pleased and happy, and I like to keep my Force Master on a steady stream of misery and abuse cause I normally lose to them ;D Sadly Jimillia saw this and will no doubt tell her sister in arms lol. Sarah actually got 3rd in my first Wounded Warrior tournament and regularly wins events locally. She'll be at Gen Con working the booth this year as well.
-
See if I tell Sarah then she'll be all pleased and happy, and I like to keep my Force Master on a steady stream of misery and abuse cause I normally lose to them ;D Sadly Jimillia saw this and will no doubt tell her sister in arms lol. Sarah actually got 3rd in my first Wounded Warrior tournament and regularly wins events locally. She'll be at Gen Con working the booth this year as well.
I should know better than to trust you as a reliable go-between! Perhaps you do belong on the side of Team Necro! *shots fired!* Thankfully, Millie has undermined your authority already. ;D
Well awesome for Sarah! Unfortunately, as it currently stands, I won't be working the booth at GenCon as I haven't heard anything from the big-men-in-charge. I'm hoping to make it there in some capacity to play some games with y'all.
-
Well if you do make it I hear there's a decent tournament at Gen Con ;D
-
I was able to watch many of the matches as they played out, but don't have a perfect recollection of any of them. I can summarize them well enough, though.
Round 1.
SCG's kinship Straywood vs DV's Fire Wizard:
SCG plays a few animal kinships, an asp, a hound, and a cub. DV plays oozes and soon enough has killed the cub and corroded the beastmaster. This begins the asp's period of trying to bite itself to death so the corrode falls off and a new reptile can be played for armor's sake. A strong 5 crit strike from a bobcat on the ooze changes the tide, and in the meantime the beast master takes advantage of ironwood vine regen to heal and melee+ from the wolf to take the lead.
Jon's earth wizard vs sarah's buff centric force master:
Jon corrodes sarah's forcemaster and the forcemaster puts down a forcefield to compensate. This is countered by a hydra entering play. The rest of the match centers around avoiding the hydra for the forcemaster and getting around the forcefield for the wizard. Teleporting the hydra away helped immensely at the end.
Millie's skellie necro vs larrick's control warlord:
Larrick leads early with three kriegbiels and switches to earth attack spells near mid game. Millie matches kriegsbiels with skeletal knights, but has trouble avoiding damage at first. To change the course of the game, she drains the warlords soul and uses poison mastery to continue hurting him. By late game, the kriegsbiels are contained, the warlord has been enfeebled, and another drain soul has been cast. Larrick falls to the -12 health vs +12 life combo of two drain souls.
Round 2:
Jon vs DV:
A match of dueling wizards, each quickly set up mana and placed a wizards tower in their front center square; one with hurl boulder, the other a fireball. I didn't see too much of this match, but recall it was largely won by alternating boulders and hurl meteorites from a wand.
Sarah vs larrick:
Larrick lead things off with kriegsbiels again, making defense rolls by sarah necessary. Sarah manages to win this game by virtue of defense and simple avoidance of the squares that the dwarves were in. The aforementioned 7 crit also mattered greatly.
SCG vs millie:
SCG already covered this and I didn't keep the closest eye on the match. I'll be honest: I was expecting millie to win handily. Props to SCG pulling it off.
Round 3:
Honestly, I was watching the finals match almost exclusively at this point. I did see some of the match between larrick and DV. Both took fairly conservative strategies early game for building up. It wasn't until late game where they really started tearing into eachother. I will note that the barracks did not immediately burn to the ground, but can not say whether that was due to tactical choice on DV's part, or strategic wall placement by larrick.
-
We had another Get Some Games Event last Thursday 7-7-2016. This time it was a Domination tournament! Here is a brief write!
Mages:
Silverclawgrizzly: Running my Straywood Beast Master book due to an unexpected entrant.
Josh W: I loaned Josh my Adramelech Warlock Domination book as he didn't have his own book.
Millie: Bloodwave Warlords showed up twice in this event and did well.
Jay: Young buck who ran the other Bloodwave Warlord.
Devilsvendetta: A Priestess book using the new Academy cards.
Larrick: Running a Druid for Domination with some success.
In the end Josh won with his Warlock book after I conceded due to a family emergency coming up. I hope to revisit that match at a later date.
I'll post more details later.
-
Sounds cool. I hope the family emergency wasn't anything too serious.
I'm curious about some of the specifics of the tournament:
- What was the tournament format? 3 rounds of Swiss pairings?
- What map did you use? (e.g. from the Domination rule book, or a custom map, or different maps for each match, or...???)
- What was the V'tar goal?
- What was the match time limit?
- What tournament scoring structure did you use? e.g. how many points for a win within the time limit, vs leading in V'tar at time? How many tourney points for a draw? Did you use health = life - damage as a tie breaker when tied in V'tar at time?
- What proportion of matches were decided by mage death rather than V'tar? And how many matches went to time?
- Was Galaxxus legal? If so, what proportion of spell books included Galaxxus? How many matches were won by V'tar without casting Galaxxus? And did any books include V'tar Suppression (presumably instead of Galaxxus; I assume this might show up in a book designed with mage death as its primary win condition)?
- Is there anything (above, or that I didn't think of) that you would do differently next time?
-
Good questions! The family emergency was more "Oh my dad is randomly in Charlotte and needs me to help him move that washer and dryer...like right now..."
Here are some answers:
1. 3 Rounds Swiss yes.
2. A modified version of Court of the Antharians. JasonBourneZombie designed it and set up all the maps.
3. 14.
4. 60 minutes.
5. We don't have draws normally. We had one instance where time ran out and V'tari was tied. We used health then.
6. 1 Match went to time. At least 2 matches were mage deaths. I would have died but my opponent rolled really low with a boulder.
7. Yes it was legal. Nobody cast it as we had players not use to Domination. The Warlock book I built had V'Tar Suppression yes.
8. I was winning the match when I conceded and my opponent graciously split the prize support with me. That was aces of him.