2018 Fall Mailer spoilers and/or comments

Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2018 3:53 am

Post 'em here for those who would not like to be "spoiled" until after they receive and read their own.

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2957

Since I went through the trouble of highlighting my "hopefuls" in another thread, I feel obligated to post their results.

Primus

SNAKE OIL SALESMAN went 4-3, just like the previous tourney. Apparently finishing off his SP trains, learning his last Defense skill, and passing 300 FE didn't measurably improve his chances in this tourney. He lost to three perfect ABs, and beat four warriors who were NOT perfect ABs.

I'll keep tinkering with his strategy and hope for better things to come.

Contenders

DECK SWAB failed to get any more DF trains and went 3-3. So while he got past round 5 and beat some competitive warriors (which is a feat for a BA in Contenders), he didn't do quite as well as I had hoped.

Still, it was fun to run him in a tourney again.

Eligibles

VAMPIRE SQUID went 0-2. I can't put a silver lining on this one.

ADM

ANGEL CAKE went 3-3. He was always a long-shot, both because of his weak damage and his style, but it was still disappointing. He looked okay, but simply lost to some better warriors.

Freshmen

CANNED SAVRADESE hit the train to 21 WT in round 1, and then picked up 22 WT halfway to the run-offs. He fought well and got himself into TV position, but lost in round 10 to finish 7-3. At least his sexy 14 kill arena record will appear in the tourney newsletter.

I ended up with 0 TVs in the ADM-level classes, and I was pretty stunned at how poorly I did in classes that are usually my strength. I mentally steeled myself for a terrible tourney.

Champions

ZETA FORNACIS went 1-3. She did the worst of my six Champions. Its almost like I cursed these warriors by writing about them!

Unfortunately, the uncursed Champions failed to get me that elusive TV, either. Things were looking more and more bleak.

The Rest

I didn't even bother highlighting my chances in classes below Champions because I'm not traditionally successful in Adepts through Rookies.

Sticking with the tourney's theme so far, none of my four Adepts TV'd. I had now read through eight classes and failed to earn a single TV.

Much to my surprise (and delight), Initiates, Apprentices, Dead Initiates, and Dead Apprentices ended up saving my tourney. When all was said and done, my 93 entrants went 316-257-8-9 and won 7 awards (all of them in those 4 previously mentioned classes), consisting of 6 TVs and 1 TC. My warriors won 55% of their matches and 7.5% of them won awards. Not ideal, but considering how poorly I did in the top 1/2 of the tourney, I was relieved to have done so well.

Despite this being a spoiler thread, I tried my best not to spoil too much as I know Priority Mailers won't be arriving until Tuesday. I will try to post more details of my rare victories later in the week when more people have read their tournaments.

To those that have already read their tournies, I hope you enjoyed them. To those that are still waiting, good luck!

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2957

Initiates

As I had previously mentioned, I earned 0 TVs from Primus through Adepts. That is half of the classes in the tourney and contained a third of my entrants. Not only that, but those are the classes in which I typically excel.

From the wreckage of my tourney emerged an unlikely hero to break my TV drought. I had entered 12 Initiates, including several 21 WT Strikers, a 21-17 Slasher, and two 17-21 Lungers, not to mention a solid Aimed Blow and Wall of Steel. I was not expecting my first TV of the tournament to be from this guy:

HOBO STEW (7-6823) of SHEWISH PICNIC (580) [3-2-0,27,10FE], will fight Initiates.
He is a lunger with ST=11 CN=10 SZ=13 WT=17 WL=17 SP=5 DF=11.
He is right handed, is very intelligent, is quick and active, is clumsy, can not carry a lot of weight, is incredibly quick and elusive, does good damage, has an Expert in initiative, and has an Expert in attack.

Arena 7 is one of my few semi-arena teams, where I also time tourney warriors when they appear. I rolled up this 17-17 and he came back with an Expert in Attack, so I ran him in Rookies and Apprentices and timed him in the arena along the way.

HOBO STEW looked lackluster in earlier tournies and arena fights with the SS and LO, so I next tried LS in the arena. I have these two notes on his overview:

"LS crit at 9-10"
"more LS crits with 5-8 desp"

Well, that looked like the beginning of a strategy for Initiates. I had zero expectations for this warrior, but as I said earlier, I decided to run everything that I had timed in basic and that could possibly do okay. If he failed to do well in Initiates, as I expected he would, I would either just run him to graduation in the arena or try my hand at killing Dark Arena monsters with him.

For my main strategy, I gave him a LS, no back-up, no armor, 9-10 in minute 1 and 5-8 in desperation, with a slower strategy in the middle minutes. Against TP, WS, and PR, I went instead for LO, back-up LO, and skipped the 9-10 in minute 1, instead going straight into the slower strategy.

After 9 rounds, HOBO STEW had managed to go 8-1, 5-0 with the main strategy and 3-1 with the anti-parry strategy. Barring a death, he would be my first TV of the tourney.

This warrior's success brings up lots of questions. Who uses the LS? Isn't this warrior precisely why you do terrible in Rookies through Initiates? Who brings STEW to a PICNIC? Believe me, I have the same questions and its going to take a long while for me to figure out the answers.

Even at 8-1, I expected nothing more from this warrior than an 8-3 performance, but he kept on going. He had already picked up his AdEx in Attack, and he went on to pick up an Expert in Decise and an Expert in Defense (revealing +2 Def) in the run-offs. Along the rest of the way, he went a further 2-1 with his LS strategy and 1-1 with his LO strategy, to finish up at 11-3. He went undefeated against AB, ST, TP, and PL, took losses but maintained winning records against WS and LU, and lost his only match with a PR. He was joined in the TV ranks by a 21-15 Striker, who finished up at 8-3.

While its fun to achieve unexpected success with a warrior, this doesn't particularly bode well for the future. He has likely learned too slowly to accomplish anything else in a tourney ever again, and I probably stumbled upon his favorites, something which can't be counted on with future warriors. Basically, it was a TV that lacked the promise of future TVs to come.

That said, I was thrilled to have put something on the board in this tourney and after being bummed out for much of the tourney, I was eager to read further.

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2957

After picking up my first two TVs of the tournament in Initiates, I followed it up with two TVs in Apprentices. One was an 8-3 with a super bonused 17-21 LU, and the other was a 10-3 with a pretty ordinary 21-10 ST. I went from 0 to 2 to 4 TVs in the span of two classes.

I reverted to my losing ways in Rookies. My best performance in this class was a 7-3 with a 17-13-12-17-17-5-3 LU. I guess it was a good tourney to be a mediocre looking LU.

I ran five Dead Challengers and one recently deceased Striker managed a 7-3-1. He'll try again next year. And probably the year after.

Out of four Dead Champions, I managed two 6-3s and one 5-3. Not bad, but not good enough.

I got another 6-3 in Dead Adepts out of three entrants. I seemed to be losing momentum after my hot streak in Initiates and Apprentices.

Dead Initiates

I ran three warriors in Dead Initiates. One was an 11(1)-16-5-21-17-4-11 PL at 9 FE. I had previously had some basic success with this design, so I was hopeful. Another was a 13-9-4-21-7-9-21 AB with 8 FE. The third was a 5-6-12-17-17-6-21 AB with 10 FE. This last design had been successful for me in the past, as another version of him got a deep Rookies TV before also dying.

The PL went 0-2. At least he'll be timed at 10 FE for next year.

The 21-7 AB, MORDANT DESSERT, went 8-3-1 and earned himself a place among the living. I'll enjoy running him in a future tournament.

The biggest surprise, though, was the 17-17 AB:

TAU ORIONIS (19-5745) of ORION (488) [0-1-0,15,10FE], will fight Dead initiates.
He was a aimed blow with ST=5 CN=6 SZ=12 WT=17 WL=17 SP=6 DF=21.
He was left handed, was very intelligent, was active, was very frail, could carry very little weight, was incredibly quick and elusive, and had an Advanced Expert in attack.

He doesn't look like much, and I might not have run him if he were at 6 or 7 FE. He did have a note on his overview that read: "looked good with the DA 9-10-7". That certainly looks like a fine minute 1 strategy.

I wasn't confident in his ability to jump Strikers, despite being an apparent Decise favorite learn (he had just under an Expert at the start of the tourney), so I used a FI strategy against that style. And that almost cost TAU ORIONIS the tourney.

In the first 9 rounds, TAU ORIONIS fought 7 non-STs with his Dagger and went 7-0, and fought 2 STs with his lousy Fist and went 0-2. Round 10 match-up? A 3rd ST. The ST attacked, hit TAU in the chest, attacked 3 more times with TAU dodging, attacked a fifth time, hitting TAU in the leg, sending him desperate. He attacked twice more and TAU ORIONIS dodged twice more. Then the Striker ran out of gas and flailed a weary armed attack. TAU took the initiative and threw three normal attacks (why did I use the Fist?!?) to win the match and earn my second Dead TV of the tournament.

At 8-2, I wasn't expecting much more out of this warrior. He had picked up an Expert in Defense, a Master in Attack, and an Expert in Decise along the way, but I wasn't confident in his ability to beat another Striker.

Lucky for me, he didn't face any more Strikers. Over his next four fights, he beat an AB, a LU, a TP, and a SL with his trusty Dagger and won the TC with a 12-2 record. With 46 learns in 17 FE and a fresh new note on his overview ("don't use the Fist"), hopefully he has a chance in Adepts and Champions. Following that, his 1 arena fight, 0 PPs, and newly Immortal body will make him a perfect Challengers sandbagger.

While it is isn't a use of the new Frankenstein chamber, an immortal AB to play around with in basic is not nothing. This is my first Dead Initiates TC, too, so that is special for me.

In the remaining class, Dead Apprentices, a 10-3 TV with a Striker out of two entrants put the finishing touch on a fine redemption story. With one TC and six TVs, the living and dead Initiates and Apprentices took my tourney from an abject failure to a moderate success.

I hope everyone finds something in their tourney to be happy or hopeful about. I plan on going to Tempe, so I'll see you on the sands in January.

Master Poster Joined: Aug 11, 2002 Posts: 242

are there any actual spoilers?

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:07 pm

With a small squad I managed to pick up my 4th title fight. I did lose it to move my record in TC fights to 1-3, but I got there!

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:50 pm

Well that tourney pretty much sucked. Of 26 warriors entered [one of my largest, if not the largest], only 6 had .500 record or above. 8 went 0-2.

The only bright spots were up in contenders, where Cardinal Biggles proved that the 7-3 in DC was no fluke. His 6-3 showed he is a force to recon with. The other was my AB, The Rabbit, who has finally started winning contender fights, going 3-3 after 0-25 the last 2 years since I came back to Alastari.

No TV's, no deaths and 2 kills in Initiates. I don't even want to add up the overall W/L.

One other bright spot. All fights were in envelope. No reprints required. My thanks to Sandy and Lee.

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 4:05 pm

Oops. Kills in Rookies, not Initiates.

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 4:21 pm

Nomad wrote:

With a small squad I managed to pick up my 4th title fight. I did lose it to move my record in TC fights to 1-3, but I got there!

Congrats on the TV RU!

Master Poster Joined: Aug 11, 2002 Posts: 242

congrats to all the TVs and TCs. Anyone have a newsletter posted or anything?

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:17 pm

Managed to snag two TVs, one coming back from the dead in Sunset. The quest for a ripper or plunger TV continues...

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 8:55 pm

DD's tourney results!

Why oh why do they print them in tourney order? It is sure tough to read for we non three letter acronym managers!

Primus - I sent two. I got the obligatory 0-10 start! Two bright spots though. The Black Fox learned his last speed skill and though I will confirm by switching to skill learning, he should be maxed out. Markus learned his last parry and can no longer train skills himself. He'll be on speed trains for a while.

Contenders - My AB, Fallsworth, who typically runs .500 while sitting at the top of the skills for this class went 2-3-0-1 and got called out as the only death in the class. How embarassing!

Eligibles - OMG! Three entrants. The two warriors who have been at 3-3 the last several tourneys went 0-2. The lone win was against Fratsfa Slave! A combined 1-7.

ADM - Testing a double 21 SL, Sir Yvain. He's near the top of the skill line but only managed a 2-3.

Freshmen - Sent a double 21 LU because he'll be classified ADM for the next tourney (he just graduated). 0-2.

Overall in the AD classes an inspiring 5-25! I just about quit reading the tourney! On to the basic classes.

Challengers - As I mentioned before, I fired my only real shot in this class. Britt Stone had gone 10-3 and 10-3-1 in the last two FtF tourneys. Sent him in hoping for a miracle, expecting a TV. Instead he struggled to a 5-3. Oh, that third loss was a death so make that 5-3-0-1! To add to the fun, Voodoo Toad (a zombie/faves AB) went 0-2 and died on his second fight. Yay for immortality. Also ran A TW entrant who went 2-3, as is typical, for a 7-8-0-1. Couldn't quite hit .500!

Adepts - Yes, I had no champions worth sending. Each of the 5 adepts I did send were all under the line, many hoping for FE in prep for Tempe. The best effort was Black Web who went 5-3. We'll see him in the same class in Tempe! 12-15 overall here. Still looking ugly in this tourney.

Initiates - I sent two. One because he's a TW warrior, the other because he was timed. Finally had a little success here. The TW entrant went 0-2 but Tabor Skullshot danced his way to an 8-3 TV! I'll take it at this point as I needed any kind of highlight after trudging through the previous classes. First winning class at 8-5.

Apprentices - Only ran one here from DM33 who happened to be at 4 FE. I expected a little better than an 0-2. Still, picked up 4 skills so that is at least something.

Rookies - Ten entrants here. Only three were sub .500. Did hate seeing a 4-1-1 PR exit at 4-2-1-1. The size 3 WS that I had high hopes for managed to only go 3-3. The ever frustrating 6-3 run for one of the ST entrants as well. Did have a nice surprise with Dreamweaver carving out a nice and deep 12-3 for my second TV of the tourney! Rookies ran a tidy 41-31-2-2.

The living were 73-83-2-5. A couple of the deaths really hurt! I had predicted 45% and managed to squeak just over that at 46.7%. Missed the TV prediction by one, having predicted three.

I was looking forward to reading the dead. There are several warriors that I just enjoy seeing in action, even if it is only once a year. I tend to run about half the dead just for that purpose!

Dead Challengers - Been hoping to get another one out of this class for a while. I ran 8 here. I have a PS in this class that I'd really like back. He crossed over the 50 FE mark during the tourney and had a career best 4-3 in this class. Maybe next year? Locutus, who has a penchant for dying, started off with a nice 3-0 before dying for the fourth time in round 4. Maybe next year he gets to round 5? The highlight of the class was another warrior who crossed the 50 fe mark, Wren. Wren fought her way to life with a nice 10-3 TV performance! 20-19-0-1

Dead Champions - Three entries here including another sentimental favorite PS, Supreme Being. He continued to underwhelm with a 3-3 and will return to the class next year. Highlight of this class was Shadow Golem. SG is a SL that some thought should not have run. He proved all doubters wrong as he battled to a 12-3-2 runner up! The second kill ruined someone's day in round 13, bringing a small smile to my face. 15-10-2

Dead Adepts - Many of the nine entrants here started off hot only to fade in the middle rounds, including a little damage, size 4, double 21 SL who started 5-0 and ended 5-3. Best performance of the class goes to a warrior that was killed in round 11 in DC. Running at 15 FE this warrior was at 7-1-2 entering round 9 but ultimately exited at 7-3-2 running into a Bash Brother something or other. Thanks Assur! At least he's at 20 FE for next fall! 22-25-2

Dead Initiates - Nothing to write home about here, but I will anyway. At least a little. Best performance was a 7 FE ST that went 5-3-1. Oh well. He'll be prepping for a 2023 run! 15-16-1

Dead Apprentices - Eleven entrants in this class. Some deserving. A few because I just wanted to see them in action. One such of the latter variety was a three fe BA named Beastmaster. With no stat above 15, and two of those being ST and CN!, he was another that was sitting at 7-1-2 entering round 9. He was also another that was trounced by a Bash Bros team member in round 10. Assur! GRRRR! Several nice performances, including a 7-3-1 from a nice ST. The highlight was from an unexpected source. Captain Paradise survived with an 8-3 becoming my first PR TV and finally closing out the TV round robin. (Yes Assur I'm counting it!) 39-30-4-2

The dead ran 111-98-9-4. I had predicted a 40% win clip and two TVs. I was a bit off as the dead over achieved to a 53%! Just missed the TV count as I pulled down three dead TVs instead of the two I predicted. I did get the overall TV count spot on though! ;-)

Overall it was a pretty satisfying tournament. I ended at 184-181-11-9, clearing the 50% bar despite the horrible AD showing. Still well below the 10% award mark, hitting a 7.4% rate.

Congrats to all the managers who TCd!

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:08 am

Grats on your results! So you're running that team in 21 with Dreamweaver! You gonna show up any time soon and run the team? That'd be cool!

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2018 4:08 pm

Nomad wrote:

With a small squad I managed to pick up my 4th title fight. I did lose it to move my record in TC fights to 1-3, but I got there!

This is awesome. Which warrior was yours Nomad ?

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2018 4:38 pm

FLOYD1 wrote:

Nomad wrote:

With a small squad I managed to pick up my 4th title fight. I did lose it to move my record in TC fights to 1-3, but I got there!

This is awesome. Which warrior was yours Nomad ?

Delphic Casino from the team Mistakes in Myth. Initiates.