January 2015 Face-to-Face -- Tempe

Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2015 6:47 am

Haven't committed to either or neither will have you? Twisted Evil

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2957

I wasn't able to make it to Tempe this year. Too much work, too little time.

I sent 20 warriors to the tourney, proxied by Assur, and also did the Mail-In Bloodgames. I managed to have at least one warrior in every class, and one warrior of every style in my roster. Class breakdown: 5 Primus, 1 Contender, 1 Eligible, 6 ADM, 1 Freshmen, 1 Challenger, 1 Champion, 1 Adept, 1 Initiate, 1 Apprentice, 1 Rookie. Style breakdown: 3 AB, 2 BA, 3 LU, 1 PL, 1 PR, 1 PS, 3 SL, 3 ST, 1 TP, 2 WS.

I was running a small roster, but I had some good stuff.

In Primus, I sent my entire King of Primus team. My PS picked up a win in his first ever Primus tourney. My WS did okay with a 2-3. The LU and AB did horrible at 0-5. They both need to be replaced. The star of my Primus class was Sushi Slinger, however. Due to some good early match-ups, he got off to a great start. After 6 rounds, he was 5-1 and all the other SLs were eliminated, so he had the stylemaster locked up tight. Then reality set in, and two premium ABs eliminated him from the tourney at 5-3. His best performance yet and one I enjoyed following. Eventually I'm going to have to replace him because he can't hit the good ABs, but he sure does well against the non-ABs. He dodges like a LU and really makes a good show of it.

My lone Contender entry was a LU at the top of the class, looking for a couple extra DF trains. If he hit them early, I thought he had a chance to go far. He didn't hit them, and didn't go far.

My Eligible was a 21-21 AB (with one of his 21s already blown out in an ADM tourney). He picked up 13 gateway skills in two of the three turns leading up to the tourney (due to a postal delay, he missed one turn), and trained his 21 DF during the tourney. Things were looking good up until he died in round 5, exiting the tourney at 3-2. I guess this one wasn't meant to be.

For once, I didn't have anything ready to bust in the ADM class. So I picked 6 warriors of 6 different styles who were close to the top of the class and looking for difficult trains. Much to my surprise, my young zombie SL Andorian Smoothie came in 3rd place behind the two busting ABs at 11-3-1. I'm pretty sure I've found Sushi Slinger's eventual replacement.

Going in, I felt Freshmen was my best hope for a TC. I was running Surly Deckhand, a veteran Freshmen sandbagger, and I was training him over the Freshmen line. Back when the Freshmen line was much lower, Surly Deckhand was set up like 25(10)-25(9)-12-5-25(4)-10-5 BA, having learned all 20 of his Att and Dec. Then they raised the Freshmen line about 20 skills, so I trained him up to 25(10)-25(9)-12-15(10)-25(4)-10-5 over the next few years. He continued to be successful, picking up two runner-ups and four other TVs in the class over his lifetime. But I could sense the changing of the guard. Prize-modified ABs were honing in on the top of the class and it was becoming more and more difficult for a warrior like this to win it all. I figured I would take one last shot and train Surly Deckhand over the Freshmen line; and who better to proxy the warrior than Assur, Alastari's most well known Basher lover? In the three turns prior to the tourney, Surly picked up DF to 8. In the early rounds of the tourney, he was a training beast and got DF to 11, picking up his Grandmaster in Attack. Then we switched to SP, since there were still some mean strikers out there like Don King and Sushi Hangover. He took a loss to one tough AB in the first 10 rounds, but otherwise things were going splendidly. By Round 12, there were two warriors remaining: Surly Deckhand and The Uptight Man, both at 11-1. The Uptight Man, an AB, was sandbagging thank goodness or Surly wouldn't have had a chance. As it stood, Assur and I felt good about Surly's chances. He had beaten The Uptight Man once early on when we picked up the DF train to 11, so we were 1-0 vs him and had gotten better since. The biggest problem is that one of TUM's strong suits is making good strategy changes, so with each passing fight, it was more likely that TUM would find a good counter strategy to Surly's single strategy. I wasn't there and haven't read the fights, but the series of fights sounded truly epic. Surly won the first one, so he just needed to win one of the next two to win the TC. Then The Uptight Man won the second fight, evening things up. It would all come down to a final fight. Surly got in three early hits with his Great Axe before The Uptight Man took control of the fight and started peppering Surly with Fist attacks. Surly managed a parry here and there for additional damage and then took the initiative back. This time, he couldn't connect. He kept missing until The Uptight Man took over a second time. Fist after fist hit Surly in the head, although he still managed an occasional Parry for damage. Finally, Surly was desperate and he threw up one last Great Axe parry to ward off The Uptight Man's fist. And that damage did the trick. The Uptight Man couldn't take any more punishment and Surly Deckhand won the TC. Mgr gave a great play-by-play over Chatzy and I was on the edge of my seat reading it.

The rest of the tourney seems to pale in comparison to Freshmen. My first time Challenger sandbagger managed a 4-3. Not bad for a lowly SL. :) My Champ picked up some FE for his real Champs run in April or July. My Adept and Init both did great, but not great enough to get me into the finals. Both STs, both recently returned from the dead, both went 10-3. At least I'm consistent. Apprentices and Rookies was a wash-out.

At the end of the tourney, my record was 85-63-3-1 (57% w/l), with 1 TC and 3 TVs. Pretty awesome results for 20 warriors.

The MI Bloodgames was very close to being great, but my 3rd place Jalon AB in round 9 got edged out by Donald Trump's WS in round 10. Congrats to Trump on his BG graduate. And congrats to Dr. F on his two BA graduates from the Bloodgames. It was a good weekend for BAs. Storm Lord got his first Bloodgames graduate as well and I don't know who got the other two out. Var picked up a TC, which is stupendous, along with 4 for TMM, 3 for TUM, 1 each for myself, Assur, and Chuck.

I want to especially thank Assur for his wonderful job proxying. He set up a private chat channel for him and the owners of the warriors he was proxying, and it was as if I was there in the room, making small changes each round, discussing strategy with him, and switching up attack and protect locations. Things couldn't have gone any better had I been there.

Congrats to all the winners. Condolences to all the runner-ups. I'm already looking forward to competing against everyone in April!

Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2015 7:37 pm

Friday was very casual. Got to talk to lots of people, lots of excitement about Crapmasters, which brought 16 managers. Crapmasters was very important to me, having run the worst team the prior two years. When my warriors came back, I liked 4 of them. Two were obviously getting sent (a lunger with expert decise and a 21 strength striker). The other two came down to a good/good tankish 17 will/7 deftness lunger bonused in defense or a mediocre AB that was at least +2 init and +1 defense. I chose the AB, since in theory it could have rolled +4 att/+4 def. My expectations for the rest of the tourney were not high. I knew my squad wasn't as strong as some I've sent recently.

Saturday was a whirlwind. I managed to keep up, but with 57 of my own and 22 proxied warriors, I was very busy. OAB did most of the work for his warriors so I was mostly just doing strategy changes. The dinner break was very welcome and I caught up completely, then took my break (and a quick nap). After activities ceased for the evening, I figured out where I was at: 21 of my warriors were left, but 18 were on the bubble (ouch) and 11 of my proxied warriors were left. I also scored the Crapmaster contest to that point.

Sunday started poorly. Going into round 10, I had 4 left, one with 8 wins. OAB's squad was doing great and Surly was looking very strong having switched to Speed by then. I finish with 2 TV's and figured I'd be out soon, but get to enjoy OAB's run. After round 11, things slowed down, so I had time to look at the newsletters. I was surprised that Apprentices had 9 warriors left, all on the bubble. 4 Rounds? Someone has to win 4 fights. Why not me? Lots of strikers left (which were a good matchup for my dagger/fist aimed blow. OAB still had a bunch left too, including Surly. OAB's crew slowly dwindled to just Surly, who had some epic fights with The Uptight Man. We went to an off-hand backup shield, figuring it wasn't going to hurt and might help. I really enjoyed proxying a basher to a TC! As for Unflushed, R12: Striker. R13: NPC. R14: Managers Plate Lunger that beat me earlier. I drop my armor and hope for the best. A first attack knockdown made that fight a lot easier than the other paths to victory. R15: Mannequin's Striker. He opened with a crit, but the next normal was easily riposted and I get my 3rd award in 3 tourneys at the apprentices level.

Final results: 167-172-6-2, 1 TV, 1 TC.

Enjoyed seeing everyone.
Stillgard - Really enjoyed following your slasher. Great run!
Dr. Feelgood - Those bashers really suck! But big time congrats and thanks for sharing the fun with us! But they still suck.

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2015 5:53 am

So far we've seen some excellent write ups. This won't be one of those.

First, a big thanks to Otto X/Erik and Managerr/Dwayne for putting up with me and my brutal head cold for most of the weekend. It was certainly annoying I'm sure...

Sandy and Lee did a great job as usual. And as has been stated already, the room was large with plenty of space.

My stats:
I entered 34 total warriors -- Primus-->Rookies: 0/0/1/0/1/3/0/0/3/5/21
My pipeline was in need of fresh blood hence the rookie armada.
Overall: 114-99-1-5 54% w/l with 4 TV's (all rookies, 3 AB and 1 LU)
Notable stat: 21 rookies entered, 5 dead (25%); 4 TV (25%).
I made a critical error in round 14 of rookies by forgetting to turn in a strategy change and it probably cost me a shot at round 15. Lessons learned.

As always, I came away having met a few new people, getting to visit with some friends and having learned some new tricks!

I'm looking forward to Newark!

- Mike

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2957

After doing a little research, it seems the additional BG graduates belong to The Chosen One and LHI. Congrats to both on their warriors, especially TCO as a 1st timer!

Pretty neat that of the 6 graduates, 5 belonged to 1st timers (2 for Dr. F, 1 for Trump, 1 for TCO, and 1 for Stormlord). Way to show the veterans a thing or two!