Mission accomplished -- TC with every style!

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 7:37 pm

Well played, Sir! Congrats on the milestone!

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 5:34 am

Wow. That is quite an accomplishment. Well done.

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2024 3:43 pm

Wow! When I first saw Mannequin post this thread in 2011, I had just come back to the game. I was heavily invested in becoming a good tourney manager. I thought the TC's would start rolling in, and I'd join him quickly as a manager that could say they TC'ed with every style. That reality did not happen. Instead, I flailed about, trying and failing with every style in just about every fashion.

Each of these warriors has their own story, involving a bit of luck, smart planning, and/or obstinate perserverence. Although I started having success with TC's in general, a few styles were being particularly difficult:

2019 was a pretty good year for my quest. In April, I decided to bust a very old (to me) parry-lunger in ADM. If my memory serves me correctly, I made Chopped Rabbit in 1992 with what I thought were really good numbers. 17-17's still intrigue me! He was always a little knacky, although when I came back and graduated him his favorites weren't appealing (MO-LO SS). I
set him up anyways, and when the time was right I trained anything I could and he rewarded me with a surprise TC.

The July FTF in Tampa was incredibly memorable, for a variety of reasons. I was starting to feel like I had a good grasp on what was working for my tourney game and what wasn't. I looked at my tracker before the tourney and felt really good at the collection of warriors on it. No fluff, no experiments, streamlined. By Sunday afternoon, I was in all sorts of
runoffs and made 7 finals, but I was losing all of them! One warrior stood out though. I had a knacky little TP by the name of Code Money that just kept winning. I was able to get to the chair with a loss to give against a real problem opponent. Assur brought a prize aimed blow to the party and he only had 1 loss too! I took the first fight, much to the delight of everyone in attendance. Don (TUM) relished any and every opportunity to call my warrior Code Monkey, and made a 2 minute fight feel like 2 hours (mostly because it was a tough fight). After a rematch loss and another funny reading by TUM, TMM read the final fight and I was able to bring home my first Challengers TC and check off total parry on my list.

Slashers have always been a fun style for me, but fun doesn't always mean winning. I had a few good ones at this point, but I couldn't ever close the deal on a TC. That changed when I decided to bust Dres in the fall tourney of 2019. It was a weak res/imm prize, and he was a big SC fave SL with a ton of attack. He was able to hit a bunch of trains and in a fun twist, beat a different slasher of mine for the belt.

It wasn't for another 3 years that I could mark off another style. Now I don't really love bashers, and I wasn't having much success with the ones I was running. Big Biker was a part of an arena team that I kept active, and graduated with minimal interest from me. He got a nice set of favorites though, and I thought he'd be neat with the possibility of superhuman damage. His 17 WT helped him finish his skill curve quickly, and I got his ST up to 25. Little did I know that I'd enter him in his first ever tourney and he'd walk away with a non-busting Freshmen TC!

That brings us to 2024. One style left. Sadly, one of my favorites. The parry-striking style. What's better than learning 2 sets of skills that aren't compatible?? You can make them with a fast setup and they're still slower than all the offensive styles, or you can make them tanky and they defend worse than all the defensive styles. I had a few bright spots emulating the striker template, trying to get a decise learn and having enough inherent attack to keep up. That wasn't fruitful enough though, lowering my basic W/L and eating into designs that made up my striker roster. I had a particularly knacky PS built as 17-15-4-17-10-4-17. The numbers gave him a lot of skills, and he was physical enough to handle getting jumped. Physical has been sort of the model I use now, but the good ones aren't very common and they take away from a small selection of setups that also do well as other styles like PR.

While I was messing around in basic, I got lucky in the bloodgames and managed to get 2 PS out that started 17-7-3-21-21-4-11. After getting third place busting a different 21-21 PS, I felt hopeful when I busted the
first of the BG'ers. Despite a TV, I didn't reach the promised land. I had now tried multiple approaches with basic design and 2 different quality AD designs. What could I do next?

UNTAME THE SAVAGERY!

In April 2022, I won a prize that allowed for 3 single stat switches. I knew from the bloodgames that a strong design was 17-16-3-13-21-3-11. I had heard of it TC'ing in AD as a couple styles, and knew that it would give me time and opportunity in the years ahead. I also thought it might be a tricky build in mailins early on, utilizing inherent scumminess while flying under the radar of people's alt strats. So I rolled up UNTAMED SAVAGERY, and got 3 different rolls with those numbers. All 3 came back hosed defense! Boo. One came back +1-4 attack. Yay! Despite being -3 to -4 defense, I made my pick.

In July of that year, I attended the FTF and decided to run him so I could pay attention to what he liked rhythm/weapon wise. He did okay, going 6-3. Not the quick TC I hoped for, but maybe I should've saved him for that mailin trickery? I decided I would try to limit his arena FE by running him in the fall at 5 FE, in case I wanted to park him in Challengers down the line. That mailin trickery was no joke! He went 9-3, overshooting Initiates. Well that was dumb. Now I'm committed to the tourney FE plan, right? So I run him in Tempe '23 at 11 FE, and he goes an expected 1-3. He does get rewarded for my ineptitude at least, by receiving a zap to his defense, going from -4 to +3! Now he's starting to look like a prize warrior. By this time, he's -1/0/+2/0/+3/+2. I get a little scared for him, and again switch up the plan by running him twice in the arena to 15 FE. After a perfect 7-3 in April 2023, I hold him out of the FTF for the weak res/imm cycle and an Adepts run.

Adepts historically has been a good class for my PS, so I decided to use some bonus potions to give him an even better chance. I added +4 to his riposte and +2 to parry. He was clearly an initiative favorite learn, but I wanted to be able to defend and swing back. He had only learned 1 riposte and it was a problem. His adepts run was good, going 8-3, but it was clear to me that winning anything as a PS was just really difficult. What was left? Time to get real. I used a remaining max damage potion on him. I had now sunk multiple prizes into a PS. Creation prize, check. Bonus potions, check. Max damage, check. After, I even used another zap he'd won to change his obvious init learn to "anything else." Maybe he would shore up his learning by getting riposte or defense, both of which were lacking. I timed him in Tempe, going 4-3 to get to 30 FE.

By Champs, homeboy was 17-18(2)-3-13-21-3-11, -1/+4/+2/+2/+3/+2. His learn curve was 16-2-13-16-6-14, 47 base and 67 learns. I had less hopes for him now as a Champ, but his learn rate was competitive and he was running alongside a very good PR of mine, Savannah Baby. The start of the tournament was insanely busy, but Untamed Savagery was getting a nice run of lunger opponents that he was able to handle with his armor and parry. On top of that, he was now an obvious defense learn! His learning was voracious, even picking up 3 skills one turn. By the runoffs Sunday, he was undefeated, chugging along with Savannah Baby at 9-1, and a surprise 10-0 by a 22 FE zombie AB of mine Captain Midnight.

After round 11, I had 3 of the remaining 4 guys left, with 8 losses to give. I was walking my PS to the next round with a free win from the zombie, and I had a tough matchup with my PR against Vlad's AB. I told TMM multiple times I was going to fumble this at the goal line somehow. I get really nervous about situations like this when it seems like a layup, and round 12 didn't disappoint. What felt like a free turn for my guys suddenly felt like a major loss as Vlad's AB Brandenburg straight up killed Savannah Baby. Now Untamed Savagery has the bad matchup. Boom, he loses easily. 12-1. Give me an NPC! I never thought a 22 FE warrior would be my saving grace, but Captain Midnight finally put Brandenberg out of the tourney, and let Untamed Savagery have his day in the sun.

Now someone might say, "Did the PS really win if the AB threw the final?" I don't care! Put it in the books. After years of actively trying to accomplish the goal of a round robin TC list, I get to join the only member of the club Mannequin on the podium. Mannequin, you're a great manager and have always been helpful to me, and especially encouraging while I've tried to do this. This quest has given me great respect for your play, and a love for way more of the warrior styles than I expected. I hope to see more managers follow in your footsteps and accomplish this goal, because it was very fun.

IN ORDER:

OCTOBER 2012 WALL OF STEEL: GEORGIA SAM (17-6-3-13-21-7-17) ROOKIES

JULY 2013 STRIKER SLEEPING SAVIOR (8-6-17-21-17-4-11) APPRENTICES

OCTOBER 2015 LUNGER: PEPEROMIA PIZZA (10-10-4-21-17-11-11) APPRENTICES

JANUARY 2016 AIMED BLOW: SKIP JAMES (11-9-10-17-11-9-17) FRESHMEN

APRIL 2016 PARRY-RIPOSTE: ANDRES (11-12-9-15-17-3-17) ADM

APRIL 2019 PARRY-LUNGER: CHOPPED RABBIT (11-9-13-17-17-4-13) ADM

JULY 2019 TOTAL PARRY: CODE MONEY (11-14-5-17-21-5-11) CHALLENGERS

OCTOBER 2019 SLASHER: DRES (11-9-15-21-15-6-7) FRESHMEN

APRIL 2022 BASHER: BIG BIKER (15-9-15-17-17-4-7) FRESHMEN

JULY 2024 PARRY-STRIKER: UNTAMED SAVAGERY (17-16-3-13-21-3-11) CHAMPIONS

Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2024 1:59 pm

Way to go, Howlin'! Salute.

I enjoyed the historical read. It was informative and very interesting.
Hubba hubba Exclamation

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2024 2:56 pm

Congrats HW on this awesome accomplishment! Hell I'm still just trying to TV with every style LOL!

Site Admin Joined: Jun 20, 2002 Posts: 1349

AWESOME!!!

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2024 12:13 pm

If this took Howling Wolf 12 years, it will take the rest of us like 50.