Preamble: I initially started to write this report Thursday
afternoon prior to departing for Gencon.
Consequently, some of the report is written in present tense as I was
writing it as it happened. I initially
had saw my friend Harrison
Fisk’s TCG report he had done for Boston and after Lankybrit’s
day by day report starting up on the TCG forums on Wednesday, I decided
to strike a middle ground by capturing in the moment decisions/thoughts/random
events while also giving a snapshot of matchups as time went on. Thus, when I started, I imagined it to be
more in the vein of Harry’s mid-range reporting and only the swiss rounds would
get some analysis (due to not breaking into the top 8) so other low key players could see it, perhaps enjoy it, and
maybe provide their own reports as we are lacking them on the minis forums. I, naturally, did not envision that I would be
making it deep into the tournament as my national success has been nil prior to
this.
Some of the reports are reconstructed from my game notes on
the 12-hour drive back from Indianapolis and may make some errors or missed some
important things (or I might have screennames wrong).< So, if I do make errors, please correct them
or add what I missed in our matches together.
Syphonhail’s Gencon Report.
After we both topped 8 in Connecticut for Realm Champs, my
fiancée (Julie) and I have been toying with the idea of more national
competition. The first stop was Boston,
but her summer job presented a barrier and I ended up going without her and our
party of 4 dwindled to 3. After lots of schedule
re-arrangement and finally getting everything worked out, we decided to depart
Friday and play Saturday and Sunday for gencon. If all goes well, we will not have to spend anything but travel
money.After our internal online and offline testing, our final
Team List came down to this:
Lady Vashj
Crushridge Ogre
Wavecaller
ABCs:
Soulseeker
Boots of the Crimson Hawk
Chain Healx2
Healing Wave
Polymorph
Ice block
Flamestrike
The ninth card had some contention through various play testing. Julie opted for stoneclaw totem to give us a
better edge in the Cairne matchups since Breakthrough can’t teleport
totems. I went with counterspell for a
few reasons. First, if I make it to day
two, most people are going to know ice block is on the list and side in their
hate against it (if they have it) or play around it. As such, it becomes a great substitute to ice
block when I need it. Second, some
matchups are going to have Ice block hate from the start and I can either CS it
or use it on another spell so the wavecaller can sit in the middle longer.
The double chain heal is to provide a better response to
Velen. Against Velen, we are using
Soulseeker/Chain Heal on Vashj as critting can become more of a curse with the
Hand of Ragnaros in play (forces vashj to take another point of damage when we
may not want her to) and critting with SS doesn’t hurt nearly as much as we are
trading a kill for a damage. The mage is
running polymorph/Ice block against Velen and the Ogre is stuck with his two
heals.
Our Mortimer matchup seems solid and our only real concern
will be Mortimers/Kael’thas teams. Ideally, I am hoping that Kael’thas does not
appear or faces enough bad matchups that we do not have to worry about him.
Thursday 8/13
We pack up and clean up the house. Make sure the bunnies are well fed until we
have a coworker stop by and feed them.
Friday
The plan is to wake up and depart by 7am. We live about 11 hours from Indianapolis, so
driving 5.5 hours a piece should be fun!
I won’t bore you with the details of our road trip, but one discussion/change
of significance came out of the drive. After some debate in the 12 hour car
drive to Indianapolis, we dropped both of our alternative cards to pick up
purge. I began to lean this way after I
did one or two matches offline on Vassal and realized that counterspell became
hard to fit in for the matchups I wanted it. The need for purge seemed more acute as Gencon updates started reporting
the arrival of an Irana iceblock team. Consequently, if needed, we could
put it on Vashj and still have a few heals open (while not ticking vashj up) or
just throw it on the Ogre.
We arrive in Indianapolis around 7pm and get to sit in traffic
for about an hour as the Colts’ game clogs downtown. We end up going to Gencon that night to try
and pick up our badges (we had made arrangements with UDE ahead of time to make
sure we were able to pick them up late) and that ended becoming a struggle as phones were not being
answered and the Gencon staff didn’t necessarily trust us with our stories of
Free, after hours, access. Eventually
this all gets resolved as I had the email on my phone to verify our story. We head back, get our badges, and try to
scope out some play of minis, but the minis action is dwindling by this
point. Ian Stickland offers up some of the spicier events from the last
day or so and we depart from Gencon.
Saturday
Wake up on time, head to the tournament and we are pleased
that we decided to get our badges yesterday instead of Saturday morning – doing
the latter would have likely made us miss the tournament. Julie, the only woman in the tournament, gets
a first round bye.
Round One: David
Ignacio
Ahh, the first match is accompanied by the smell of Fresh
vinyl. All participants received a vinyl
copy of the Continental’s map which is a great boost to start the day. David brought Savin, Velen, Tinker to the
board for a high-dps variant that was more Savin-speed bump than Savin-wall by
opting out of Graccus’ high stats and Blessing of Sacrifice and allowing for a
more vulnerable character to be exposed at times. However, in a tight map as this, the exposure
is drastically reduced and may not be a vulnerability.
The threat by this
team is its extraordinarily high DPS that has both efficiency (tick versus
output wise, the definition of dps), but is also quick (a slow attacking team
can have the same DPS, but have punctuated hits) and thereby offers the ability
to remove your characters from play in between your attacks. Tinker+Velen brings 16 Dice to the table
every 2 ticks and every crit means an additional point of damage.
Unfortunately for David, the crits where not with him during
round one. Within the first 5 or 6
ticks, an arcane fluxed tinker rolled about 25-30 dice and failed to crit every
single time. The lack of sufficient
rolls was impacted more severely by the ABC choices for this match. As stated earlier, I was hoping that any
shaman/mage team facing our Vashj variant would not be packing purge/spellsteal
in the early stages of the tournament. If
we ran the murloc mage instead of the wavecaller, Triple Iranas, or triple
murlocs, the choice of purge/spellsteal is obvious against our team; however, a
self-sufficient Wavecaller does not always bring the threat of ice block. For example, Ayers’ Vashj team ran the wavecaller,
but did not use a space for ice block, so it would be a gamble to bring either
spell regardless.
By the end of the match, David was regretting the bad gamble
and later revealed that he had purge and spellsteal on the sideboard and
clearly wished he had some hint that I was playing ice block, as his matchup
would have been much more favorable to his party. The final score was 29 to 18.
1-0
Round Two: Drew Cottongim
Drew’s a great guy from Texas who I ended up talking with
and trading progress updates between us for the rest of the tournament. He packed the Jaina Zoo with Ryno
variant. From my and Julie’s testing, we
thought we could gain an advantage against zoo if they didn’t pack
spellsteal/counterspell or if we played
the flamestrike aggressively enough from the beginning . Drew saw the flamestrike threat and positioned
properly so that Ryno/Jhuroon and Jaina were the most likely targets and their
resist would carried them through the attack.
Unfortunately, the Kaustron’s Old Bones did not become active until much
later in the match and this lead Jaina to be slaughtered by Vashj on two
occasions. Also, his Old Bones remained
available to protect Jaina from one of the Flamestrikes but he opted not to,
when I asked him about this later on, he, like many players, did not realized
that if your protector is not a defender in an AE attack, it is able to protect
one of the defenders.
I did allow some mistakes in my play during this match. An obstinate Kaustron was refusing to die
despite multiple Vashj attacks, and this lead me to leaving her exposed for an
extended period of time. However, he could
not finish her off and I was able to end the game at 30-8. If I recall correctly, I think Drew ended up
playing our Vashj variant in the DMF – I am not sure how he did, but I think
the map is far less favorable to this team than the continentals map.
2-0
Round Three: Corey Ivy (Dclown)
This “feature match was my first of a few that were in the
feature match area, but I don’t think the game coverage extended beyond the one
or two onlookers around the barricade.
After round 2, I had stated that I wanted to play Mortimers early on so
I could evaluate my long term chances in the tournament, and I was “blessed”
with the opportunity this round. The
game was not overly spectacular, but one of the defining moments of the game
came early when a Jhuroon was taunted by a fully dotted wavecaller and allowed
the ice block to go off, removing all of the dots. This made the game much more favorable to me
and allowed me to pull off a tight victory end the end.
I did make a mistake early in the game by allowing Vashj to get dotted prior to tick 5 and forcing me to play more aggressively, this mistake was not repeated in future Mortimer matchups as I hid vashj until after tick 5 (allowing the mage to act again and getting more damage in by all of the characters).
3-0
Round Four: Nathan Westlake (Coraythan)
This was my first Velen-wall matchup and I opted for the
Soulseeker/Chain Heal on vashj fearing the Hand of Ragnaros. After the dice are
rolled, I expose Soulseeker and notice no equipment from Nathan and thought he
perhaps had a trick up his sleeve (apparently he had gone equipmentless during
a previous match). He moves first,
deploys Graccus and the game proceeds until about tick 3 when I toss out my
first flamestrike, distribute damage, and Nathan announces my wavecaller
receives a point of damage. After inquiring
about the source, he realizes the problem and I see his ploy was actually an
error. Nathan, understandably, plays
with the less enthusiasm as two pivotal ABCs are no longer playable and it
quickly becomes a lopsided fight. I feel
guilty for not actively informing him of his need to flip equipment up before
he started his first turn, but feel the wave of Karma coming in pretty quickly.
4-0
Round Five: Matt Whaite (FantomKoala)
My second Mortimer matchup, after the close call in Round 3,
I figure that I have the knowledge to carry this match through victory. Matt wins the die roll, deploys a
Mortimer. I deploy my wavecaller as normal. He grabs a second Mortimer, begins to play it
and summon a Mortimer and I quickly realize that I forgot to flip up my
equipment. I confirm with Matt that it
is too late to expose the equipment, and we proceed playing. I end up losing the match 18-23, one VP from
having a win despite the two dead ABCs on Vashj.
Matt is a great guy to play against. I had the opportunity to play against him
once or twice on Vassal, but this was our first live competition and the match
was a relatively enjoyable experience despite my obvious error. He is a very solid player while also
maintaining a very friendly attitude both on and off the map and I wouldn’t
dread facing him in future tournaments. The
match is over in about 21ish minutes, and we chat for a bit as he expresses empathy
and guilt for my equipment mistake. His
play style was a more aggressive Mortimer matchup than I had seen previously seen
and probably made the match closer than it should have been at the end, but it
also ended the match sooner than normal.
4-1
Round Six: Norvic Santos (becsquared)
After losing to Matt based on a silly mistake, I begin to
sweat my final round as it is the likely final cut point for finals. I figured one or two 4-2s would make it into
the top 8 and that my breaks were decent, but I did not want to default to chance
for obvious reasons. Norvic piloted
double Kiala and an Aluna. I was told
Vashj had a great matchup against the team, but the unknown of not testing
against this team made me nervous about my chances. To begin with, I opened up
on his characters with full force from the middle and ignored Kiala’s and Aluna’s
pet hoping to kill of their masters before they had a chance to be effectual. This strategy was paying off as I dominated
the game 23-4; I controlled the VP and was dispatching his characters as they
spawned. All of my characters had
received some damage, but nothing overly significant. It was nearing a VP tick when I calculated
that if I could bring down his low health (6 I believe) Kiala with Vashj, then
I immediately win the game with 2 added VPS from controlling the center. The risk was putting Vashj on a hill and
exposing her to an onslaught from his pieces.
I opted for a quick win and failed miserably at rolling. The game came roaring back as Norvic racks up
16 (of his needed 19) points and I sit at 27.
He cleverly fears my ogre away for my last shot of getting Two VPs from
the middle and he surrounds the middle with his three characters. Having one Kiala at low health, but hidden
and a second exposed but at full health, I am forced to throw all of my dice at
the full health Kiala. The wave caller
and the Ogre both get magic attacks in and brings Kiala down to about four
health. Vashj respawns and runs up to
the wavecaller, only needing to crit to win the game, otherwise I lose. I roll my 5 dice and no crit. I immediately begin to curse my luck and poor
strategic choice earlier in the game as I pick up the final die to seal either
person’s fate and I score a 9. My 20%
last chance pays off and Norivc laments that last roll.
The biggest mistake here was to take the easy shot with
Vashj and risk the game. If I had played more cautiously, I would have
guaranteed victory at a slower rate while risking nothing. Obviously, the risk was not worth it as the
only thing the alternative would cost me was time.
A 5-1 was a solid record and guaranteed my presence in the
top 8. Julie ended up 18th with her 4-2 record, just shy two spots of a prize upgrade (and only one 4-2 made it into the top 8). After scouring the exhibition
floor and finally getting pairings for
Sunday (as well as a full decklist of the top 8 and Ming informing me that his
money will be on Tony), we were able to retreat to our hotel, do a bit of
swimming/chilling in the spa, and then study the GIB matchup. From my testing (online with Vassal, no one
else was on though), I figured my matchup was largely in my favor due to Tony
not having a direct answer to ice block and, from what I can tell, being forced
to rely on his two AEs, equipment, and maybe Bolvar’s ret to remove the
Wavecaller.
Sunday: Outrounds
I had set my alarm for about 7:00am to get to our 8:30 start
time promptly. Our hotel was about 30
minutes away (a 12 mile drive down Meridian street). Somehow, for the first time since I owned it,
I failed at the iPhone and didn’t set my alarm properly. I woke up at 7:45 and made the drive in about
20 minutes and walked quickly from where I left the car with Julie to the Upper
Deck area. Nothing like a little sweat
and panic to start the day. As I walked
in, I saw Pozsgay walking quickly as well, fumbling for his badge, so I walked
up behind him and tried to convince him that I had the authority to remove him
from Gencon for not wearing a badge. He
smirked and seemed satisfied that there were four of the top 8 were late to the 8:30
arrival.
Thankfully, I showered the night before and didn’t pursue
some sort of biological warfare that I hear happens in some competitive card
games.
Quaterfinals
I meet Tony (Maxlongstreet on the forums) a bit before our rounds and he seems to be a
great guy in addition to a stellar player – like most Minis players in the game,
I think we have a better crowd than several other games out there. My initial surprise is the distribution of equipment,
for some reason I had put both the bulwark and the hammer on Graccus not
thinking he would split up the damage with Bolvar. This would have been a bit more useful
information if I had done some better scouting during Day 1 and just glanced at
one of the other Bolvar players.
The match had a few swings in it. I initially dominated the board and have a
healthy lead of 20-0 despite some obvious play errors that left Vashj open and
taking attacks from the hammer of Ragnaros (Sheeped seacreatures do not have
taunt), after ressing, Tony makes a stellar comeback as my defenses fall apart
and the game becomes a dead heat. Half
of the game is spent with Vashj running around, at one health, afraid of dying
and being unable to attack due to Savin’s auto damage from Ragnaros. A few better rolls for Tony in the later part
of the game could have been the difference between the win and the loss. As such, GIB turned out to be a worse matchup
than I had initially believed and I now think my optimism was misguided.
A few things from BIG might have made the difference. Bad die rolls not withstanding, his second
card on Graccus was a flash of light that did not see any play. This is partly due to the nature of Vashj
hitting characters hard and fast (kind of like Brannigan’s law/love) – the few
times Tony can heal, he will be using Bolvar’s retribution. Thus, by subbing in Avenger’s shield, he has
an easy way to deal with the ice blocking wavecaller with 2 AEs and a
non-attacking damage spell that the Wavecaller cannot block through. This vashj variant likes to group in the
middle and hug VPs, and the threat of multiple AEs would either punish the team
with damage or force it to sacrifice VPs by spreading out. Additionally, I think I was able to block
twice by random swings that probably should have been avoided – it did take the
mage out of commission and had utility, though a dead mage is probably superior
to an ice blocked one.
Tony, as with several players in the Championship, was a
very good player and the match was much closer than I had expected, especially
after my initial lead – this is a good reason not to despair over being crushed
early on a match as I have seen many games decided in the late game and not who
scored VPs first.
Semifinals
I won’t repeat my praises of Matt as a player here, but I
will say that he probably undersold his chances. He publically did not desire to hit this version
of Vashj and had an extreme dislike for my healing Ogre as a response to his
mad dotting. This match played out a bit
different than our previous one as I actually revealed my equipment. I started off with a few great dice rolls
from my mage, but was later punished by the other side of luck by having a
stretch of non-crits by Vashj. Matt made
a few choices that he immediately regretted after each one and began to count
his errors – this included a Jhuroon jumping down, attacking and then realizing
that the sea creature had taunt. Ice block
immediately popped and began to remove dots. Despite
this, this was my first game of the tournament that went to overtime and was to
end on tick 23. Ticks 21-23 were a
rollercoaster where every action seemed to promise victory to either side if we
received X amount of hits by an attack.
After each of hopes being crushed by a failed attack here or there, Matt
missed an attack on Vashj by opting to take out the ogre instead, and allowed
me to win by VPs during the End of Match Procedures.
Finals
This set of matches has actual text coverage and the final
results of match 3 are currently being debated on the forums as a catalyst for
rules change. I did quip early on that
the match was going to be decided by rules penalties as both of us were racking
them up. I was one infraction away on
the “announce-tick-action” guideline. So,
without rehashing match 3 as much as I could, I can say that Michael Ayers is a
very skilled opponent and I think he had the better war band for the mirror
match by having a high dps output versus my relatively ineffectual healing. In
another competitive event, I had lost a high level round to a small
technicality to an opponent (who is now in the WoW community and reflected upon
this when he heard what happened), and I know the pain of losing to something
that seems relatively trivial in a significant round. As such, I had and still have empathy for
Ayers, knowing that this is not only a bad way to win a match, but also a
horrible way to lose one. As a class
act, he publically did not blame the judges, me, or anyone else but himself and
lamented his ill-fated reroll. I do look
forward to playing against him again and hope it ends under better
circumstances.
Match one started with a mistake that Michael Pozsgay openly
pointed out to me later on. I had played
the wavecaller with polymorph and flamestrike, but instead of feigning the
iceblock for the first part of the match, I opened with both moves early on and
removed all mystery of what my wavecaller packed. Not playing the soulseeker was also an ABC
mistake as the boots were not enough to take down vashj and the purge could
have been easily left on the Ogre in place of Chain Heal. Chain heal is not an effectual spell when
most of the characters are getting 2-shotted.
Match one had me on the ropes as I trailed by 20 to 4 at one point in
the match, but was able to recover enough VPs to win the first match with a few
good rolls and positioning plays.
The second match lead
to some configuration differences on both sides and my chances for victory
required one-shotting a worgen with Vashj and Michael failing his final shot on
my Ogre – neither point materialized.
After Matter
I would like to thank the judging and organizing staff of NACC. My interactions with Simon both here, online,
and at Boston have been great and he is a good head judge to have in our community. I was finally able to meet Siggie in person
after several online interactions, and I hope he continues to judge the event
whenever possible. This is probably not
in my interest as he catches all of my mistakes and is very strict on
enforcement, but predictability of enforcement is desirable trait to have in a
judge.
In the Final Match, Will Brinkman and I chatted about Poker
for a significant period of time that made me recall Sklansky’s 1970 work
The Theory of Poker. In it, he
articulates the fundamental theorem of poker, a game theoretic concept placed
into plain language:
Every time you play a hand differently from the
way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents' cards, they
gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it
if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents
play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all
your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they
would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.
In several of my
matchups, it seemed like the result came down to making less mistakes than my opponents did. The dice may or may not punish a tactical
error, but not making it in the first place is a more desirable route. Thus, in the long run, I need to tighten both
my strategic game, plug the leaks, and make sure my formal style of play is
consistent with the rules.