onew0rd
05/20/2003, 18:49
It’s upsetting. You have a fun place to play which you just discovered. The people are cool, the competition is good, and everyone is in concert about what’s cheese and what’s not. Everyone avoids the cheese. We’re all there to have a good time. Unfortunately, this place is more a victim waiting to happen than anything else.
“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.”
--Jack Handy Deep Thoughts
This is the story of Sunday. Me, my brother Eric (pujutu on HCRealms), and my younger cousin Manny all head out to the venue. We arrive and hang for a while. Everyone starts arriving and we all just congregate around the Mechwarrior tourney tables watching the games. Really neat game I'm considering dipping into someday (funds allowing). I have a really fun team I built ready to go but it doesn’t seem tweaked enough and I really don’t want to give it a baptism by fire, so I change teams to a more comfortable build. The original team was as follows:
2 V Pyro 84
2 R Vulture 30
2 R Psylocke 58
2 V Doombot 76
R Destiny
V Hand Ninja
V Paramedic
EE + Enhancement is fun! But probably not too viable (we’ll see one day ;) ) This team also illustrates how dupes are not ALWAYS bad (very subtle and mild foreshadowing). I need these figures as they are the most efficient at what they do for the points and a little redundancy means I can pull off my “trick” with more regularity. But enough about that.
I actually went with the following:
U Nightcrawler
U Electra
E Hercules
R Vulture
R Vulture
U Green Goblin
E Paramedic
V Paramedic (Should have been a con artist)
I removed the Ninjas/Psylocke from my previous team and added the Herc and Vulture tandem to try and rectify the useless character syndrome that plagued the previous build brought upon by the use of too many characters and no leadership or freemove. My brother brought his tried and true team of E Taskmaster, U Wolverine, V Doc Ock, V Doombot, R Vulture, Wasp, medic.
We all fill out registration sheets and the tourney starts up. First round…I get paired with my brother. Ugh.
We play and the starts are aligned in my favor. He crit misses once, rolls a 1 on BCF against Herc once and I SS a couple of times. I clean sweep him in minutes. This match can (and has) gone either way. He has very high attack values and rarely misses and Taskmaster E is a beast for his first click or 2. It usually becomes Nightcrawler vs Taskmaster/Doombot. This game my team came out on top however.
There is a very balanced, fun, casual environment at this place. Everyone plays competitive teams (to their respective level) and for the most part, no one tries to cheese anyone out. In talking to the regulars who have been playing there for a long time, this is the way it has always been. When I asked the judge about Firelord, etc, he mentioned that it has never been a problem, and if he feels it ever becomes a problem, he would evaluate the situation. Among the regulars (and me) this would never happen. Not because Firelord teams would lose, because frankly, they would probably dominate, but because we choose not to cheese people out. It’s a definite unwritten or spoken rule. Well back to the report…Dave walks in. Dave’s a guy I played in the XP Marquee. He is a power gamer. He plays FL or whatever it takes to go home with the LE. Now, don’t get me wrong he has every right to be this way. We’ve chatted several times. And honestly, I think he’s a decent guy. The problem is this. I just feel like it takes something away from everyone else’s experience when someone comes and changes the culture of the place by playing something evil. So he walks in and someone groans (I didn’t know why at the time) and he registers his team. I eventually greet him and we chat a bit over a cigarette. When the tourney starts and I’m setting up for my first round vs my brother, I glance over and see the reason for the initial groan. Dave has fielded a team of:
E Ultron
E Wasp
R Black Panther
R Con Artist x 6
R Blizzard
He proceeds to demolish his opponents team one 6-7 damage blast at a time. His opponent, Mike (if you read my previous report this is captain bad luck from the last round who missed repeatedly with Spiral), looks dejected and upset. He makes some stupid mistakes, such as not trying to at least kill off a Con Artist or two or some way to stop Dave from cleansweeping. He basically starts pushing his figures to death in exasperation and loses quickly to the Con Artist perplexed death bolts fired by a Wasp-flown Ultron.
2nd Round
I play Dave. I take a breath and try and think how I can deal with that. My only hope is to win the die roll, choose an indoor map, and Taxi/Perplex NC to pop his Blizzard out of Pulse Wave. He wins the die roll and chooses outdoors :( . We set up and here I make a questionable decision. I should have gone to a rooftop to make it harder for him to hit me. Granted, he would have been able to still probably get at me first for tons of damage, but it couldn’t have hurt to start elevated. So 1st turn he does the pulse wave trick, runs BP into hindering terrain and Taxis Ultron to kill Green Goblin for 7 clicks. I don’t hesitate to start in on his team and quickly taxi my electra up 8 with a vulture blocking LOS from Ultron, Taxi Herc on top of a building, and send Nightcrawler on a solo mission into the den of the steel devil. Without HSS, Nighty is useless. My only other option is to punch his Wasp, but then the outwit would become a problem. Also, if I hit BP, I will be in B2B with his Wasp behind Ultron thus giving him Vulture as the only target. I opt for this and hit BP out of outwit. I pass the turn and he starts his. He thinks for a bit then decides to breakaway with wasp. This is a critical play. If he fails breakaway, he pushes Wasp and is stuck with Ultron to either push him to kill my Vulture or rest. He rolls a 4. He turns Ultron around, perplexes him up and takes a pot shot at Nightcrawler for 7. He hits and I roll Supersenses. Again a critical roll. I roll a 2. :cry: Nightcrawler goes down but he is pushed with Ultron and Wasp. He moves a con artist or two and passes the turn. I rush up with Herc and pound Ultron for 2 (after invulnerability) and push taxi my Electra into B2B with Ultron. Not having free moves really hurt me here. But such is my team. On his turn he sees that Ultron is in trouble and uses Blizzard’s running shot + perplexed damage to hit my Hercules for 5. Ugh. He moves another Con Artist or two and rests Ultron/Wasp. My turn I use Electra to BCF Ultron and roll a 4! He’s on his last click or two but I know that the battle is in his favor. On his turn he pushes Ultron to kill Elektra and Uses Wasp to kill Hercules. On my turn I use a Vulture to put Ultron on his last click. He doesn’t realize this and pushes him to death next turn. It’s now Vulturex2 + Paramedic x 2 vs Blizzard, Wasp, Black Panther and 6 con artists. Somehow I kill the Wasp (thanks to him pushing her a lot) and he cleans up the rest. Did I play my best? Probably not. Namely, I should have gone after blizzard instead of BP with Nightcrawler. The range of 8 + running shot made him a threat (with the 6 perplexers). Could I have played better? Maybe. Probably actually but hindsight is 20/20. Is his team THAT good? No. But 6 con artists will do wonders to a team’s win percentage. I know that even if I had played flawlessly, him going first was the doom of me. Doing 7 damage with a great deal of accuracy is insane. Had I played my other team I may have done better but but it probably would have been a bloodbath anyways. Double EE from 16 away would have cleaned my clock. Very frustrated about being cheesed to death, I go have a smoke.
Round 3 I play a really cool dude and we tussle it out pretty well. One of the best HC games I have played ever. He had:
LE Wolverine
U Green Goblin
V Bullseye
U Sauron
R Con Artist
V Con Artist
E Paramedic
R Vulture
He comes out by positioning himself on top of a building within charging BCF range of Sauron/Wolverine. I play a little too aggressive at the beginning of this game and I perplex Herc’s damage up to 5 and clock his Bullseye which he retreat’s with next turn (thanks to a successful breakaway). He eventually Taxicharges to the top of the building with Wolverine and Sauron to very devastating effect leaving me without a Hercules a turn later. The game progresses in his favor with him healing and regenerating and stealing energy to great effect. Sauron must have taken at least 12-15 clicks in that game. Eventually, I calm down a bit, play a little more conservative and with the help of some good dice rolls, the game balances out a bit. It comes down to Nightcrawler, Green Goblin and 2 medics (Nighty has pushed once or twice but GG is fresh) on my side vs Green Goblin (on his first non perplex click), Sauron (pushed once or twice) and 2 Con Artists on his. He gets first crack at my Green Goblin and crit misses! I return the favor and crit miss too! GG doesn’t want to hurt his brother. Nightcrawler takes out Sauron after SS several times against BCF. My GG gets the first hit and almost kills his. Soon after I am able to mop up the mess. This game was incredible. We shake hands and I secretly wish all games were like this – win or lose. Although winning it was nice.
The winner: Captain Con Artist ;) got 1st place after utterly creaming his opponent in round 3. They did something different from last time and let the winner pick his prize from Mystique LE and Ninja LE (Ranged). He chose Raven Darkholme. The other prize, an Electra LE, went to Fellowship: this dude who made a to-scale building that sits over a building on the 1st Marvel map outdoors and is amazingly cool. He is also a really cool guy who has played the same Brotherhood Team for who knows how long.
Start Rant:
The problem I have with the guy in round two is that now everyone at this place will be playing Con Artist or FL. Why bring a knife to a gunfight? If I show up to a place and see everyone is playing nice, why be the one to taint the batch? Since everyone there was not used to cheesy teams, we were steamrolled. It’s our fault. But now this screws up the whole equation. His only goal was to come an win the LE. Who’s isn’t? I don’t know what’s wrong about what he did. Nothing really. It just irks me that this nice cheese-free environment has been corrupted. How many FL or Con artist teams next time? I’m bringing two teams next time. A new non Nightcrawler fun team I’ve been working on for a casual day of gaming and a tuned up killing machine without remorse and loaded with cheese. We’ll see which one I field. I’m sure I won’t be the only one.
Feedback? Questions? Flames? Have at me.
If anyone attended this tournament and sees this, please feel free to post your thoughts as well.
Eugene.
“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.”
--Jack Handy Deep Thoughts
This is the story of Sunday. Me, my brother Eric (pujutu on HCRealms), and my younger cousin Manny all head out to the venue. We arrive and hang for a while. Everyone starts arriving and we all just congregate around the Mechwarrior tourney tables watching the games. Really neat game I'm considering dipping into someday (funds allowing). I have a really fun team I built ready to go but it doesn’t seem tweaked enough and I really don’t want to give it a baptism by fire, so I change teams to a more comfortable build. The original team was as follows:
2 V Pyro 84
2 R Vulture 30
2 R Psylocke 58
2 V Doombot 76
R Destiny
V Hand Ninja
V Paramedic
EE + Enhancement is fun! But probably not too viable (we’ll see one day ;) ) This team also illustrates how dupes are not ALWAYS bad (very subtle and mild foreshadowing). I need these figures as they are the most efficient at what they do for the points and a little redundancy means I can pull off my “trick” with more regularity. But enough about that.
I actually went with the following:
U Nightcrawler
U Electra
E Hercules
R Vulture
R Vulture
U Green Goblin
E Paramedic
V Paramedic (Should have been a con artist)
I removed the Ninjas/Psylocke from my previous team and added the Herc and Vulture tandem to try and rectify the useless character syndrome that plagued the previous build brought upon by the use of too many characters and no leadership or freemove. My brother brought his tried and true team of E Taskmaster, U Wolverine, V Doc Ock, V Doombot, R Vulture, Wasp, medic.
We all fill out registration sheets and the tourney starts up. First round…I get paired with my brother. Ugh.
We play and the starts are aligned in my favor. He crit misses once, rolls a 1 on BCF against Herc once and I SS a couple of times. I clean sweep him in minutes. This match can (and has) gone either way. He has very high attack values and rarely misses and Taskmaster E is a beast for his first click or 2. It usually becomes Nightcrawler vs Taskmaster/Doombot. This game my team came out on top however.
There is a very balanced, fun, casual environment at this place. Everyone plays competitive teams (to their respective level) and for the most part, no one tries to cheese anyone out. In talking to the regulars who have been playing there for a long time, this is the way it has always been. When I asked the judge about Firelord, etc, he mentioned that it has never been a problem, and if he feels it ever becomes a problem, he would evaluate the situation. Among the regulars (and me) this would never happen. Not because Firelord teams would lose, because frankly, they would probably dominate, but because we choose not to cheese people out. It’s a definite unwritten or spoken rule. Well back to the report…Dave walks in. Dave’s a guy I played in the XP Marquee. He is a power gamer. He plays FL or whatever it takes to go home with the LE. Now, don’t get me wrong he has every right to be this way. We’ve chatted several times. And honestly, I think he’s a decent guy. The problem is this. I just feel like it takes something away from everyone else’s experience when someone comes and changes the culture of the place by playing something evil. So he walks in and someone groans (I didn’t know why at the time) and he registers his team. I eventually greet him and we chat a bit over a cigarette. When the tourney starts and I’m setting up for my first round vs my brother, I glance over and see the reason for the initial groan. Dave has fielded a team of:
E Ultron
E Wasp
R Black Panther
R Con Artist x 6
R Blizzard
He proceeds to demolish his opponents team one 6-7 damage blast at a time. His opponent, Mike (if you read my previous report this is captain bad luck from the last round who missed repeatedly with Spiral), looks dejected and upset. He makes some stupid mistakes, such as not trying to at least kill off a Con Artist or two or some way to stop Dave from cleansweeping. He basically starts pushing his figures to death in exasperation and loses quickly to the Con Artist perplexed death bolts fired by a Wasp-flown Ultron.
2nd Round
I play Dave. I take a breath and try and think how I can deal with that. My only hope is to win the die roll, choose an indoor map, and Taxi/Perplex NC to pop his Blizzard out of Pulse Wave. He wins the die roll and chooses outdoors :( . We set up and here I make a questionable decision. I should have gone to a rooftop to make it harder for him to hit me. Granted, he would have been able to still probably get at me first for tons of damage, but it couldn’t have hurt to start elevated. So 1st turn he does the pulse wave trick, runs BP into hindering terrain and Taxis Ultron to kill Green Goblin for 7 clicks. I don’t hesitate to start in on his team and quickly taxi my electra up 8 with a vulture blocking LOS from Ultron, Taxi Herc on top of a building, and send Nightcrawler on a solo mission into the den of the steel devil. Without HSS, Nighty is useless. My only other option is to punch his Wasp, but then the outwit would become a problem. Also, if I hit BP, I will be in B2B with his Wasp behind Ultron thus giving him Vulture as the only target. I opt for this and hit BP out of outwit. I pass the turn and he starts his. He thinks for a bit then decides to breakaway with wasp. This is a critical play. If he fails breakaway, he pushes Wasp and is stuck with Ultron to either push him to kill my Vulture or rest. He rolls a 4. He turns Ultron around, perplexes him up and takes a pot shot at Nightcrawler for 7. He hits and I roll Supersenses. Again a critical roll. I roll a 2. :cry: Nightcrawler goes down but he is pushed with Ultron and Wasp. He moves a con artist or two and passes the turn. I rush up with Herc and pound Ultron for 2 (after invulnerability) and push taxi my Electra into B2B with Ultron. Not having free moves really hurt me here. But such is my team. On his turn he sees that Ultron is in trouble and uses Blizzard’s running shot + perplexed damage to hit my Hercules for 5. Ugh. He moves another Con Artist or two and rests Ultron/Wasp. My turn I use Electra to BCF Ultron and roll a 4! He’s on his last click or two but I know that the battle is in his favor. On his turn he pushes Ultron to kill Elektra and Uses Wasp to kill Hercules. On my turn I use a Vulture to put Ultron on his last click. He doesn’t realize this and pushes him to death next turn. It’s now Vulturex2 + Paramedic x 2 vs Blizzard, Wasp, Black Panther and 6 con artists. Somehow I kill the Wasp (thanks to him pushing her a lot) and he cleans up the rest. Did I play my best? Probably not. Namely, I should have gone after blizzard instead of BP with Nightcrawler. The range of 8 + running shot made him a threat (with the 6 perplexers). Could I have played better? Maybe. Probably actually but hindsight is 20/20. Is his team THAT good? No. But 6 con artists will do wonders to a team’s win percentage. I know that even if I had played flawlessly, him going first was the doom of me. Doing 7 damage with a great deal of accuracy is insane. Had I played my other team I may have done better but but it probably would have been a bloodbath anyways. Double EE from 16 away would have cleaned my clock. Very frustrated about being cheesed to death, I go have a smoke.
Round 3 I play a really cool dude and we tussle it out pretty well. One of the best HC games I have played ever. He had:
LE Wolverine
U Green Goblin
V Bullseye
U Sauron
R Con Artist
V Con Artist
E Paramedic
R Vulture
He comes out by positioning himself on top of a building within charging BCF range of Sauron/Wolverine. I play a little too aggressive at the beginning of this game and I perplex Herc’s damage up to 5 and clock his Bullseye which he retreat’s with next turn (thanks to a successful breakaway). He eventually Taxicharges to the top of the building with Wolverine and Sauron to very devastating effect leaving me without a Hercules a turn later. The game progresses in his favor with him healing and regenerating and stealing energy to great effect. Sauron must have taken at least 12-15 clicks in that game. Eventually, I calm down a bit, play a little more conservative and with the help of some good dice rolls, the game balances out a bit. It comes down to Nightcrawler, Green Goblin and 2 medics (Nighty has pushed once or twice but GG is fresh) on my side vs Green Goblin (on his first non perplex click), Sauron (pushed once or twice) and 2 Con Artists on his. He gets first crack at my Green Goblin and crit misses! I return the favor and crit miss too! GG doesn’t want to hurt his brother. Nightcrawler takes out Sauron after SS several times against BCF. My GG gets the first hit and almost kills his. Soon after I am able to mop up the mess. This game was incredible. We shake hands and I secretly wish all games were like this – win or lose. Although winning it was nice.
The winner: Captain Con Artist ;) got 1st place after utterly creaming his opponent in round 3. They did something different from last time and let the winner pick his prize from Mystique LE and Ninja LE (Ranged). He chose Raven Darkholme. The other prize, an Electra LE, went to Fellowship: this dude who made a to-scale building that sits over a building on the 1st Marvel map outdoors and is amazingly cool. He is also a really cool guy who has played the same Brotherhood Team for who knows how long.
Start Rant:
The problem I have with the guy in round two is that now everyone at this place will be playing Con Artist or FL. Why bring a knife to a gunfight? If I show up to a place and see everyone is playing nice, why be the one to taint the batch? Since everyone there was not used to cheesy teams, we were steamrolled. It’s our fault. But now this screws up the whole equation. His only goal was to come an win the LE. Who’s isn’t? I don’t know what’s wrong about what he did. Nothing really. It just irks me that this nice cheese-free environment has been corrupted. How many FL or Con artist teams next time? I’m bringing two teams next time. A new non Nightcrawler fun team I’ve been working on for a casual day of gaming and a tuned up killing machine without remorse and loaded with cheese. We’ll see which one I field. I’m sure I won’t be the only one.
Feedback? Questions? Flames? Have at me.
If anyone attended this tournament and sees this, please feel free to post your thoughts as well.
Eugene.