Dad's Army: Marro Swarm 1x Su-Bak-Na: 160 points 1x Marrden Hounds: 90 points 1x Marrden Nagrubs: 30 points 4x Marro Stingers: 240 points Total: 520 points | S1's Army: Samurai Smackdown 1x Izumi Samurai: 60 points 1x Tagawa Samurai: 120 points 1x Kozuke Samurai: 100 points 1x Minions of Utgar: 110 points 1x Brunak: 110 points Total: 500 points |
S1's army is based on samurai, who deal automatic damage if they roll better defense than the opponent rolled attack. This makes them hard to kill, because you shouldn't attack them at all if the odds aren't in your favor. Brunak is a neat figure who can carry a figure and isn't harmed by lava. The Minions have a high defense and any successful hits they roll are doubled, which makes them very dangerous from height (which adds extra attack).
I led off by moving my stingers onto the stone bridge in the middle of the map, but his custom units moved into the same area, so I couldn't get height on them. My final move of the first round was to move out my Marrden hounds, who plagued some of my opponent's units. I managed to kill a lot of his squad figures, who can take only a single damage, and who were very hard to kill from range. The Marrden Hounds locked down a number of units, who couldn't leave their area without risking a damage, and plagued a bunch on my turn. My stingers managed to take out his war witch, who was his major figure, and I won on points when time was called. Unlike Magic, you don't play best of three, so I moved on to my next map and opponent.
S1 won his round against a girl who came with Buddy's son. I forget what she played, but their map was the Burial Marsh. I thought she was very patient with S1, who neither wins nor loses gracefully and was too excited to think straight.
My opponent, by contrast, had an army of a Fen Hydra, Q9, and 3 sets of phantom knights. The Phantom Knights have flying, so they aren't stopped by water or ice and don't pay for elevation changes. They also get a +3 to defense if attacked from range, which makes them ridiculously hard to kill, and they can disengage from an enemy figure without taking damage. They also only cost 10 pts more than my stingers per squad, so I think they really outclassed my guys. I could never get height, the phantom knights flew across the map to engage my figures and pick them off, and I didn't even mention Q9. Q9 is the best unit in the game, his regular attack has a range of 9, which is more than halfway across the map, and he has a special attack that lets him attack three times. His defense is also great, and being a robot he couldn't be plagued by my Hounds. Essentially, his phantom knights owned the center heights whenever I moved forward, and going around the ice along the edges was a shooting range for Q9.
My mid-game strategy, after murdering all my first wave units, was to gang up all 3 marro stingers in a squad on whatever knight engaged mine. Since I had 4 squads of stingers, I could still field a full-strength squad to kill a Knight even when he killed one of my guys. I brought Su-Bak-Na out at the end to kill knights as well, which she did a good job of, picking them off one at a time. My opponent said I made a fatal mistake, when I won initiative I should have crossed the map to fight Q9 and risked the disengagement strike from the knight she was fighting. A lucky roll could have done Q9 in that turn, which would have changed the game, but I didn't see it at the time. I did take this advice to heart in my next round.
S1 lost his round against a Marro Stinger army, played by last year's champion, on the Bad Moon Rising Map. There were plenty of tears, although he tried to man up. I don't know if his opponent was embarassed or just keeping cool, but he didn't take advantage of it either.
The Hounds are large figures so they don't take damage from engaging Nakita Agents, but they are low to the ground, so there was no line of sight when they crept around the edge of the map. Their 8 move got them around very fast and their 5 defense made them very hard to shoot. I moved in next to Laglor and some warforged soldiers to plague them, but my Marro Stingers were locked down by another Warforged. I realized that my best chance of winning the game was to disengage my hounds (and risk the diengagement attack), move to lock down some shooters, and plague them with some lucky rolls. I succeeded in my plan (about a 50/50 chance of it working) and killed enough guys to win the game. It certainly could have gone either way, but I remembered the advice from my previous opponent. Also, I started rolling my dice in a cup, which i think helped randomize my rolls.
S1 played a by named Max on the Hot Heights. He had an advantage because Brunak is immune to lava damage, but it turned out that neither player remembered to deal lava damage, so even tough S1 won it was a tainted victory. Also, he had a lot of trouble concentrating due to his previous loss, and really his attention span is not so long. That meant he was wandering around to other tables during his game, and hiding under the table during his round, and sitting on his head while playing. Not the best behavior, but the other boys were pretty tolerant.
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After the tournament ended, the adults talked about games and things while the kids built some other maps and played their own game. S1 and I played Monty Python Fluxx with Buddy and Greg, which was about as silly as advertised. Buddy has 3 young kids and they are homeschooled as well, and they all like to play board games so hopefully we will meet up again in the future.