Quirkworthy

So now I’ve had more than 5 minutes’ sleep and the experience has at least begun to digest, what do I think of the tournament? Well I think it was clearly a success from Mantic’s point of view. Their aim was to road test the game system under tournament conditions (using live gamers), and especially to get some feedback on the use of timed games using chess clocks, like this one:

The Kings of War rules showed that they are generally robust and play quickly, though they are still a work in progress (as Ronnie explains) with a couple of very broken units who were very exploited by veteran tourney players. Masters of Death (assassins) were the most egregious of these and the human captain that could give Vanguard to everyone (you get to advance units after both sides deploy) the next. Vanguard was nerfed after a couple of games so that chap came 4th overall, but the assassins remained as written throughout, and the 3 armies that focussed on them came in 1st, 2nd & 3rd place. No real surprise there as they were very, very broken.

A third aspect that Alessio considered overdone were the vampire units. I had used these as the focus of my army, but after 6 games I thought rather less of them and am not personally convinced they need toning down. They are powerful, to be sure, but have their vulnerabilities too and can be killed once you understand this. As they stand I now think (having actually played the game a bit) that I probably wouldn’t take them if I was being really competitive. I can get more punch for my points with other selections (even ignoring the aforementioned broken bits). There were also issues with nasty flying things, especially when they had the Nimble rule (extra turns during movement); allies probably won’t be allowed in “real” tournaments, and so on.

What this tournament allowed Mantic to do was to see the really horrible bits before they have a room full of a hundred paying customers. The tournament pack will be updated accordingly. So a big win for Mantic on that front.

The chess clocks will probably stay too. There was a bit of a technical hitch with several of the ones we had to hand being broken. However, we muddled by and played games at several different lengths to see what was easy and what was pressured. First game was 90 minutes each, the next was 60, then 45. On sunday we started with 30 minutes each and then went back to 45 each for the last two games. Alessio’s aim here was to try and introduce another element to manage in game: time. This was perhaps less successful, and I’m not convinced it really encourages the kind of armies Mantic want to see. For me, if I was picking another tourney army for a timed tournament I would think small numbers of units as the only people that had issues with the time were those with big armies to move. This seems to go against the grain of Mantic’s whole ethos, but it’s their call. Chess clocks work fine in chess tournaments as both sides have fixed and equal “armies”. When the armies are flexible then simply moving them in your turn becomes an issue, and impacts on your selection. Whilst this isn’t a problem as such, it seems to be an emergent result rather than a planned aim, and not one that entirely fits IMO. Couple this with what seems to be overpowered characters and the trend could be to smaller, more character-heavy armies – not so much the “Big armies, Huge battles” aim Mantic have as a by-line.

So that’s what it did for Mantic; how about me? Well I confess that I’m not really a tournament player. I find the whole atmosphere both artificial and overly competitive (I know – it’s supposed to be). Or something: it’s hard to define exactly why I don’t get on with them. I like the idea in some ways, but usually end up feeling rather ill by the end of the sunday. The fact that the venue was rather stuffy didn’t help – they have loads of fans, but not windows that opens so you get to push the gamer funk about rather than replace it. Anyway, I went along regardless to help out as they’d had loads of cancellations.

The players were a great bunch, and I’d happily play any of my opponents again. That in itself is an accolade, as that has not been true of a fair number of the people I have played against at tournaments in the past. If you’ve been following this you may recall that I mentioned Blood Bowl tournaments as being my favourite. This was, as expected, near that end of the spectrum, which is a real accolade. The “vibe” was very good.

Unfortunately the rather broken nature of many of the armies (my own included if you don’t know how to deal with vampires) didn’t make for very fun games. Note here that I mean the games themselves. They weren’t unpleasant to play, even when I was being obliterated (as it was hardly a surprise), and I hope it wasn’t too awful for the folks I killed on day 1. But all told, the games were all landslides, and these are not as fun as close games. I think I mentioned this yesterday. At other conventions I have had similar whitewashes some of the time, and in early rounds you might expect this as players of wildly different abilities meet in random draws. However, once the levels settle a bit in later rounds you would increasingly expect to get more balanced games between opponents of similar skill. Some of the other games in the tournament were balanced in this way, but not any of mine. You can get a vague idea which ones were by looking at the results here. The numbers in brackets at the end of each result are the points killed by each side – a crude guide to the closeness of the fight.

One of the things I do like about tournaments is the large selection of armies on show. Again, due to the rather rushed and experimental nature of this tourney there were less nice armies and a great many proxies. Among others we had Romans and even at once stage a Napoleonic army standing in for something. Many folk had some or all GW figures in their armies, and the werewolf army was a mixture of Rackham and Otherworld, which was cool. When I was considering taking a werewolf unit myself it was the Rackham Wolfen I was going to use.

There were some Mantic figures on show too. The first army I fought was Mantic Undead, the second Mantic Orcs and the third Mantic Elves (who were particularly nice), so it wasn’t all proxied by any means. GW used to be very strict about using only their models in their events, which is fine, but I rather liked the mixture of Mantic and not, especially as it allowed a deal of invention and a chance for players to see models they’d not come across before. Whilst Mantic is a business I hope they continue this line, which is good for the hobby in a wider sense IMO (as well as being more fun).

Would I go again? Probably not myself. As I said, I’m not really a tournament player. If I was? Well if I was into KOW I’d definitely consider it. The Mantic crew aren’t half bad at thinking of extra interesting things to do, bringing along some unreleased Warpath models to show off and having numerous Q&A sessions with Ronnie and Alessio. I’d expect full tourneys to have this sort of thing and more. If they can retain and build on the existing community spirit then that in itself is a good thing. Community spirit is of inestimable value for a company, and Mantic have some very enthusiastic, loyal and cheery fans. If KOW is part of your hobby then it’ll be worth trying at least once, and you never know – you may be bitten by the tournament bug.

Finally, I’ve just noticed that Mantic’s own blog has some more pictures of the event and the winners, plus news of the revised tournament pack going online soon, so you might want to check that out too!

PS: judging by the site stats not all of you have found the earlier posts with more commentary plus all the photos 🙂

KOW Tourney Day 1

Day 1 Musings

KOW Tourney Day 2

Some photos from today’s battles. As expected I had a worse day today; in fact, the complete flip side of yesterday’s efforts, getting wiped out (or all but) myself in every game. In my defence, my first two games were against the people who fought the final for top slot, and both of them had broken assassin based lists. The brokenness of assassins (masters of death I think is their proper name) was a major point of note over the weekend and in future events they will be fixed. The last game was against the Vanguard using cavalry horde. Apparently Vanguard (extra move forward after you deploy) wasn’t supposed to put you in a position to wipe out half of the enemy army with your heavy cavalry if you won the first turn, but as written that’s exactly what it does. It’s a risk because you have to win the dice roll for first turn, but predictably I rolled a 1 so it was less of a challenge than it might have been for him. He ended up in 4th place. Top 3 places went to assassin based lists with the Vanguard one taking 4th.

This is game 4 (against the eventual tourney winner). You will notice the lack of any troops from my army. I managed to kill one assassin.

Josh rumbled over into the corner I had set up in and butchered me in short order, assassins appearing behind units and characters and slaughtering them without a single thing I could do about it.

Bobo moving in his cavalry to slaughter mine. The unit on the left in the distance is being attacked by 4 assassins in the flank and is, predictably, unable to respond. In the centre I have advanced so we actually get fighting before his infantry wall arrives. He moves faster than I and you are allowed to pre-measure, so he won’t let me get the charge – one way or another I will get thumped, so we might as well get it over and hope I survive. I need a little luck here, but not loads. Naturally I have none at all.

Sorry, that’s not quite right. One of my army standard bearers proves perversely unkillable (on the far right), despite being repeatedly attacked by 2 assassins.

This is the last game against the Vanguarding horde. By this point he’s killed 2 of my cavalry units and I’ve destroyed one of his in return, but his flanking hero has snuck out of sight so I can do nothing but reposition so I take the next charge in the face instead of the flank. I’m just pushing things about here with no hope of actually achieving anything. In a practical sense it was all over when I lost the roll for the first turn.

Meanwhile, the “final” was being played out. Although the tournament doesn’t have a final as such, if Bobo won this game he would win the whole thing, and if Josh got at least a draw then he would be in top place. There are 7 assassins in total on the table here.

Bobo (on the right) has deployed with his back to the table edge so that Josh’s assassins can’t turn up behind him. Bobo’s own assassins are behind the ruined archway things in front of the chess clock at the edge of the board. Here’s the view from the other side at the same time.

Bobo’s line looks really dramatic in this formation. You’ll note that this is a rich man’s game with pound coins as objective markers 🙂

A few turns later the situation is getting very messy. Josh’s assassins are munching through Bobo’s line of foot troops, but Josh has lost his vampire knights and Bobo’s cavalry and assassins are in amongst Josh’s troops.

The final dissolved into a slogging match that was fairly evenly matched and very bloody. In the end it was a draw with little left on the table from either side.

The tournament was designed to iron out the wrinkles in the system so that when they run larger ones for paying customers it all goes smoothly. As such it was a success, but for me personally I can’t say the games were inspiring. I met some great folk, it’s just the rules got in the way of the games being as pleasant as the company. On the first day I slaughtered people whose armies simply could not cope with the slightly broken list I had. On the second day I was obliterated in turn by the majorly broken lists my opponents had. Landslides either way are rarely the best of games. What I really want to play is something with a bit of to and fro, where things might go either way and you feel like your efforts make a real difference. The best game in this respect was the one against the Elf missile line on day 1, where I got enveloped by enemy units, failed to break one of them on the charge and almost got swamped. In the end I wiped him out, but before the end of turn 3 you wouldn’t have guessed that would be the result, and it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. On day 2 I don’t think any of my actions in any of the games was ever going to win me a game against the weight of the rules.

Having played 6 games this weekend and one last week, I’ll be writing a review of the Kings of War game soon, while it’s still fresh. Look out for that in the next couple of days.

Before my immediate thoughts are buried by day 2’s events, I’d just like to jot down a few of them. It was an interesting day and provoked a number of broader points as well as points about the specific rules we were using.

Firstly there’s a whole long discussion on army composition (the antithesis to Elro’s comment on an earlier post). Secondly we could talk about in-game assessment: the ability to understand and dismantle your opponent’s force in real time. For example, I think my army has a very obvious weakness, but nobody has yet exploited it which is why I’ve wiped out my opponent in all 3 games so far for almost no loss. The army isn’t that amazing nor am I that good a player. I don’t deserve to be in top place and I would be amazed if I stayed there. My normal place in a tournament is about a third from the top, which suits me fine. Real tournament players, like Josh who I’m playing first thing today, take it all far more seriously and expect to be much higher. I suspect he will spot the weakness and do me rather more damage than I’ve taken to date, but we shall see.

I had some more thoughts, but they’ve flown for the moment. I’ll come back to them, I’m sure. Not enough sleep as usual, I’m afraid (which is why I can be posting at 1am and back typing before 7am) so feeling a bit fuzzy.

I’ll write a review of the rules after this too, which might be of interest. I’ve not seen many discussions on the net about King’s of War, and it deserves a mention regardless of your eventual verdict.

Anyway, off to battle now. Wish me luck!

It’s been a hectic day at the front, with 3 games played and much happy banter, cursing of luck and other associated gaming nonsense. I’m a bit brain fried to write much sensible for the moment, so I’ll mostly be posting photos today and will comment more after the thing’s over tomorrow. To kick off, the obligatory room full of gamers pushing toys about:

Being a tournament there were a bunch of somewhat “competitive” armies there, and during the Q&As a couple of things were decreed by consensus to be a bit good for their points. Masters of Death (Assassins) were leader of the pack here. No pictures of these dealers of death as they’re too slippery.

There was also an all-werewolf army, which looked great and was fairly good at munching things from what I hear, though I haven’t fought him yet. It’s even more dangerous as the general actually seems to have a vague idea what he’s doing 🙂

The first game of the day was a warm-up and didn’t count. I fought against a large undead army with a mixed force that included something of everything.This is early on where most stuff is still on the table.

The things got a bit messy. The models beyond the last lot of trees at the top aren’t reinforcements – they’re casualties. My undead are fine, but the enemy’s are thinning out.

The second game had a similarly large enemy horde, but this time they were greenskins instead. By this point in the game I’ve piled over the table and am in among the mass of orcs. This was a Pillage scenario (the first one was Kill).

The last scenario was Kill & Pillage, and was fought against yet another different army – Elves. Naughty shooty people, Elves. Got to watch them. A very pretty army though with a  clean and unified paint scheme that I thought looked lovely on the tabletop. Here it is waiting to deploy:

And on the battlefield.

And because it’s so pretty, here is the Elf line from the other side.

This is the height of the main ruck, with one of my units charged by two Elf units, and another fighting three at once. The unfortunates in the centre are now getting the unwelcome attention of the Elf shootiness.

All told, 3 fun and exciting games with some tense moments. The chap who is kindly running all the admin smoothly so we can get on with the killing has put a blog up on the Mantic forums so you can see who’s playing what and what the ranking are. It seems that at the end of the day I’m in first place! That can’t last; not playing Josh and his assassin extravaganza first thing in a speed game (only 30 minutes per side). When I told Alessio that I was fighting Josh in the speed game he laughed for simply ages. He’s played him before…

Had a go at Kings of War last night. I managed to persuade Bob to give up his evening so I could get at least a vague idea what was going to happen at the weekend. I shouldn’t really say yes to going only 3 days before it starts. I’d say “that’ll teach me”, but I know it won’t…

As you can see the game was all thrown together rather hastily, with several playtest armies being merged to produce a shambolic collection of models for each side, but few things were what they claimed. Liars all. The rulebook suggested playing with little terrain to start with, so I took that to the logical extreme and had none. Get the rules straight first, then worry about trees and stuff. I didn’t even bother getting the table toppers out and the grass mat as I was going for fast and dirty. This is a learning thing, not a pretty one. Speed is of the essence as I have to assemble a correct list and some models to represent it before first light tomorrow. Oops.

Note the chess clock in the background. The arms are Saint Bob’s, measuring out some artillery deviosty.

As an aside, this is a picture of Bob’s naughty Peter Pig dice. More Oink indeed. This roll is slightly atypical for them as they normally have lots more 6s (the only one that isn’t a 5 here is a 6 – it’s the PP logo). Luckly for me they ran out of batteries half way through or half the pips rubbed off. Either way, his luck was distinctly less awesome in the second half.

All in all it was a very useful practice session, and a demonstration of quite how simple the rules are. I think I’ve already got most of them in my head, and even if I haven’t then the rulebook is hardly a massive tome that will take ages to look things up in. Also, if you’ve ever played Warhammer then the similarity of concepts within the armies makes commanding the equivalent one a piece of cake.

Now, I must away to sort out some models.

Well I’ve decided to go to the Kings of War tournament this weekend. This is despite the fact that I’ve not played it since it was in the original Alpha well over a year ago, and then only once. One or other of my playtest armies is going to have to double as something KOW, though I’m not 100% sure which yet. I am, however, going to have a game tonight to try and get my head round the whole thing again.

Kings of War is a fairly simple game so (re)learning it isn’t a big challenge. However, it’s not one I’d really been drawn to because of its fanatically “i-go-u-go” turn sequence. I generally prefer some permutation of alternative activations, but there is a time and place for every rule. In either case, I managed to acquire myself a copy of the 2nd edition rules which aren’t officially out till the end of the month. I won’t be telling you all the Big Secrets, partly because I don’t want to annoy Ronnie, but mainly because I haven’t got a clue what they are 🙂

Still, it’ll be a learning curve, for sure. I’ve not been to a tournament for many years. They’re not really my thing. This one will hopefuly be a bit more relaxed than most as it’s really a testbed for “proper” tournaments (with serious people) later. We’re using chess clocks for the games, which will be an interesting additional challenge. If you’re anywhere near Maelstrom Games at the weekend why not pop over and cheer on my opponent? It’ll be fun.

I’ll try to remember to take a camera and keep you updated. Mind you, I fully expect to be playing Alessio on the bottom table by the end of Sunday afternoon 🙂