I left on
Thursday morning to travel to my first Adepticon, my vehicle loaded down with
clothes, painting supplies, and my newly magnetized Other Side miniatures in a
black metal toolbox. Other than my cruise control quitting on the way there and
the discovery of how atrocious the tolls are on the Reagan tollway, the trip
was uneventful, just the way I like them to be. When I arrived at the
Renaissance Schaumberg center the parking lot was starting to fill up, so I
ended up parking around the back of the building. I left my things in the car
and came in to find my friend Phiasco and pick up my badge.
Ostensibly,
the point of the tournaments at Adepticon were two-fold: say goodbye to M2E and
run the first official tournaments for The Other Side. I was primarily
interested in the latter, as I haven’t played a game of 2nd edition
Malifaux since joining the Alpha for M3E over a year ago. As such, I wasn’t
much interested in the farewell tournaments, and I was ok showing up after the
first Henchman Hardcore was underway. Phiasco, on the other hand, was putting a
well-honed strategy of non-violence to work in a tournament that is essentially
built around killing. Utilizing Low-River Monks, Sensei Yu, and Sun Quiang to
throw enemy models out of the center ring or make them insignificant, Phiasco
managed to Win or Tie every game of the tournament without inflicting a wound
on the enemy models. I told him he needed to tell his opponents “Namaste” after
the games ended. I forget how he ended up, but I know he placed.
After that
finished up, it was time for the first TOS tournament of the convention, a
Titan Smash. The rules packet for it can be found
here, but the short
explanation for the scenario is that you play king of the hill for a couple of
objectives while in a battle-royal style game with up to 7 other Titans on the
same table. You score for being near an objective at the end of a turn, with a
bonus point for the titan who is closest to the center point. Additionally,
every time you knock an asset off of a titan, that scores as well. If one of
the titans reaches 10 points at the end of a turn, all other Titans that
haven’t scored 10 die instantly. The winner is the last Titan standing.
Obviously,
I was bringing in my King’s Hand. I attached the Armor Piercing Machine Gun,
the Big Drill, and replaced the head-slot assets with the special one for the
scenario that gives an extra tactics value. I left the usually standard issue
Symbol of the Realm off, as I was thinking that going into Glory may not be all
that important for this type of game (though in retrospect that may not be as
clear-cut as I thought.) This game was played with four titans squaring off: my
King’s Hand, Ariel with a Dreadnought, a man whose name I didn’t get with another
Dreadnought, and Steven with an Alpha Crawler. Early on Ariel and I traded
shots and danced around the right-most Objective Marker. Steven took a turn to
wind up his Alpha Crawler into Glory with a bunch of reinforcement tokens while
the other Dreadnought took a commanding spot on the second Marker. Once the
crawler was ready, he barreled into the second Dreadnought and did what damage
he could, but by that point I’d been scoring 3 a turn from shooting off assets
and squatting on the marker. The drill paired with the Dreadnought’s relative
lack of offensive capability let me hold it relatively uncontested. As such, I
hit 12 points at the end of Turn 4 and caused the other Titans to pop. So, in
the first “tournament” run by Wyrd Games for the other side, victory came for
the King’s Empire. *cue God Save the King*
 |
| I felt left out that my King's Hand box didn't have a Horomatangi in it by mistake, so thankfully the Titan Smash remedied that. |
Despite my
intentions to not play any M2E, there was an Enforcer brawl that first evening
and
the choice was either to play in it or go home. I figured I knew enough of
how to play the game to at least get by. If you’ve never played an Enforcer
Brawl, imagine the Royal Rumble from the WWE and you’re not far off. If you
die, you respawn on your initiative but lose points (and give points to the enemy
model that killed you.) Phiasco let me borrow Yasunori, who can kill a lot of
models but costs a lot (there are bonuses for killing more expensive models.)
He’s not the right choice, frankly, but he’s pretty straight forward to run so
who cares. First game I ran into a Peacekeeper, who is not a great dance
partner for Yas due to his high armor. I managed to chop it down, but then the
entire battle ended up respawning on the other side of the board, leaving me
stranded. So that sucked. Second round went much better at first, with me
jumping up 8 points early on in the game. Third round I discovered that Burt
Jebsen with Dirty Cheater can’t actually be killed without blasts or passive
damage, so that blew. All in all, the format was a laugh and I enjoyed it. I just
want to try some different models next time. I think the format should still
work fine for M3E, so I’m excited to try it again in the future. With that
done, we headed home to rest up and give Phiasco time to get three colors on
his Abysinnia models.
The next
day, I threw on my newly acquired “The British Are Coming” shirt and went
forward to do battle in the King’s name.
The tournament packet was published ahead
of time, so I had a good idea what objectives I would need to complete and
which models I could use to do it. My garrison consisted of:
Kassa Okoye-Bigger is Better
Margaret Belle-Rapier Wit
2xMotor Scouts-Toughness
2xRRC
2xInfiltrators
1xKing’s Hand-Symbol, Armor Piercing Machine Gun,
Strategems-Overwatch, Medic, Behind Enemy Lines, Capture the
Flag, Defensive Formations, Bloody Their Noses, Perfect Accuracy, Keep Calm and
Carry On
First round
saw me go up against Jeff in Scavenge with Confrontation deployment. The hordes
crew was led by the Storm Siren and was built around sending some of the armored
whelks to squat on objective markers on the flanks while tying my company up
with Eels and Karkenoi. The board effectively funneled all the action onto my
left flank due to a large impassible terrain piece (this led to the tournament
organizers electing not to use that board for any of the other rounds of the
tournament). Both sides forgot a large number of rules during the course of the
game (resummoned units come in with one fireteam, not all of them. In scavenge
the team that’s behind can use a tactics token to remove a turf marker at the
end of the turn. Motor scouts have engagement ranges due to the bayonets rule.
Etc.) I jumped out to an early lead and then dove Margaret Belle into the
backfield to tie up the Stormsiren for most of the game. I decided to try out
something I’d heard of online and buy the Overwatch stratagem on Turn 1, effectively
giving me an extra set of activations for the rest of the game. It’s kind of a
hefty cost to pay (starting with one card in hand and no tactics tokens is
rough) but so far I think it’s worth the investment. The Hordes came back over
the course of the game, however, and ultimately managed to take a 1-point
victory over me. The day was off to an auspicious start.
Round 2
paired me against Steven (from the earlier Titan Smash) with…more Gibbering
Hordes. This time we were playing Pitched Assault in Corners deployment. I
wanted to bring Kassa out for this one, as I hadn’t had a chance to see her in
action. They were accompanied by one squad of RRC and one squad of
Infiltrators. I knew Pitched Assault is a tough game for the Hordes to play, as
their “eat my own stuff to flip my units to glory” tactic feeds VP to the
enemy. There are essentially two ways to look at this from the Hordes’ side,
either A) Ignore the usual methods and just go all-in on trying to kill the
enemy with base units or B) Stick to the normal plan, let the opponent get a
lead, and then come back and overwhelm them. Steven went with the latter idea,
bringing Horomatangi, an Alpha Crawler, Eels, and Armored Whelks to use as food
for the rest. The theory behind his army was to spike the Crawler up with reinforcement
tokens and glory then send it barreling into the enemy, fill out your numbers
disadvantage with multiplying eels, and have the whelks get eaten then respawn somewhere
the enemy doesn’t want them. It’s a good plan in theory, and probably works
fine in most games. In this one, however, I seized both objectives while he was
powering up/feeding me VPs. My infiltrators took the left objective by
themselves, essentially trying to bait part of the enemy to go deal with them
while allowing me to keep most of my forces together to resist the Titan team
when they came in on me. I learned the delights of Kassa allowing you to
actually have cards and tactics tokens to spare (leading me to question my
earlier assertion of Margaret as undisputed champion commander, but that’s a
blog post for another time.) Ultimately, on turn 3 my Rifle Corps demonstrated
why they are the pride of the King’s Empire, withstanding a full assault from
the Horomatangi while my Titan shrugged off the Alpha Crawler, resulting in my
jumping to 12-0 at the end of the turn. Since the Decisive Victory rule was in
place, that meant the game ended immediately. Not exactly what I was expecting,
but it put me back in contention for the tournament so I wasn’t complaining.
In round 3,
I faced yet more Gibbering Hordes. There were other Allegiances in the
tournament, I assure you, but I guess I’m just lucky. I hadn’t faced them
before in any practice games, so I got the full seafood buffet in the
tournament. Thankfully, my opponent (Andrew) was bringing the Frenzy for this
game, so I got to see all the different faces of the Allegiance that day. As
the game was Set Traps, Margaret was the clear choice. I strongly considered
bringing Kassa instead, as I’d had a taste of what a KE company with card
access could do, but elected to stick with my gameplan all the same. Andrew’s
company featured the aforementioned street shark commanders, along with Yarazi,
Karkenoi, and some Crawlers I think. They tend to blur. I deployed my forces in
two groups on the outer edges of the board, splitting my two units of Rifle Corps
with a tough Motor Scout in both places. Margaret was on the left. First turn,
I focused on shifting the right Rifle Corps unit back towards the left,
creating a sort of Refused Flank to try and pick a hole in the enemy line and
then roll it up. I don’t know whether it really worked or not, or whether it’s
even possible to do that against the Hordes when they can just respawn and reinforce
as fast as they do, but it helped ensure I wasn’t facing the whole of the enemy
force at one point. I underestimated the Frenzy, not having faced them before,
and tried to use Margaret to tie them up. But without enough tactics tokens to
protect her, she was quickly devoured on T1 or 2, leaving me with no commander
for the rest of the game. I was tilted, but knew I needed to do something to
try and slow the Horde down. I was able to accomplish this by sending the Motor
Scout on my left side deep behind the enemy lines with a Rush order. Andrew
either had to send the Frenzy back to go and deal with him (the option he
chose) or leave me with a free hand to plant explosives at will behind him.
Since his Frenzy went chasing after the Scout, that gave me a turn to shoot at
them with a Gloried Rifle Corps, filling them up with Pinned tokens to slow
their return (they still got back into melee the next turn, but it required
them to eat one of their own to get into Glory first.) This, plus some fancy
footwork on the right side by the other Motor Scout and some very fortunate card
flips managed to get me the win.
 |
| Why is Adepticon trying so hard to get me to play CotBM |
In the
final standings, Phiasco tied on tournament points with the winner, who was
playing Cult of the Burning Man, but was behind on strength of schedule so he
got 2nd. I came in third place and got Best in Faction for KE. The
Faction badge was my goal for the day, and ultimately I felt my first round was
winnable as well, so all-in all it was a successful day.
That was
the end of the official events from the weekend, but I did have a chance to
play some pick-up games with an old member of my former Club later on. It was
Supply Cache, and I learned that 1) It’s important to actually understand the objectives
of the game you’re playing before you start 2) Abysinnian Mechanized Infantry
are a nightmare that have to be removed ASAP and 3) Field Intelligence Corps in
Glory are kind of gross in this Operation, as they can place markers within 6”
of each other rather than the minimum 8” from the rules. Additionally, I played
a 2 commander game with Phiasco later on, wherein I was able to deploy my
Dragoons. Overall, I wasn’t extraordinarily impressed with them on their base
card. Maybe in Glory it would be another story, but unless there’s something I’m
not seeing they seem expensive and brittle. While we played, there was a 4x4
game featuring one of each Allegiance going on, which was terribly exciting.
Ultimately, that one was decided by how stupid the Burning Man’s Rhinos are,
and I got the impression that they will likely be getting erratad soon, so players
of other factions can rejoice.
All in all,
I would call it a successful launch of TOS official tournaments. I came away
with enough Cult of the Burning Man to get a start on them as a second
Allegiance (after using my booth credit from running Through the Breach to get
their starter box), which will be important for letting me run demos in the
future. I came away with the impression that the game itself is strong, despite
starting out awkwardly from the less than optimal roll-out. I think TOS is a
better tournament game than M2E and possibly even M3E (I won’t know for certain
until I try one.) And ultimately, I think I enjoy it more because I don’t feel
as exhausted after playing it as I do when playing Malifaux. Even some of the
more vociferously negative voices I’ve seen online seemed impressed with The
Other Side, having seen it in person. I don’t know anyone who has a problem
with the game itself, so much as frustration with how Wyrd has deployed it.
Hopefully that will be overcome with time, as I think the game has some real
legs to it.
