Warhammer Teams took place this afternoon at 11am. Only 4(!) teams stepped up to face the challenge. Epic Fail. W:I is a great game, please show up to play it.

Anyways, the tournament was round robin. My team, comprised on Dwarves, Bolt Thrower, and Orc/Skaven went undefeated (only one game loss during the tournament due to decking). I played the Dwarf deck. I'll refrain from posting the list until after worlds as it's what i'm playing and i'm slightly paranoid. I didn't take notes so I can only provide a short, imprecise report.

Round 1 my team faced off against a chaos, empire, and dark elf deck. These decks were piloted by players who started about three months ago so they weren't as up on the meta as the average player. I faced the chaos deck. Chaos is a great match-up for the dwarves. I wiped his entire compliment of characters two games in a row with Master Rune of Spite and knocked out back to back zones ftw shortly after. The first game went a bit longer than the second since I saw very few characters until late game, but both played out in the same basic manner. Orc/Skaven versus Empire lasted about 5 minutes for both games. This is how it went for our Orc player all event; he was bored a lot. Bolt Thrower managed to deck himself game one because he thought Mining Tunnels were forced. RTFC.

Round 2 we faced dwarf, Empire, and Chaos. I took the Empire matchup. Orc/Skaven got paired with Chaos. The Empire match-up is also in the favor of the Dwarves. I killed nearly everything he attacked with using Slayers/Bowman and smashed with Great Book of Grudges for a ton of indirect damage. Game two was fairly close in terms of damage on our captals but I held a few Runes of Valaya that I never needed to play. I ended up dropping several characters in one turn (go Innovation), burned a zone, then sac'd dudes to shoot for 3 damage ea. due to triple bowman in my quest zone.

Round 3 our opponents decided to concede since we were the team that beat the two teams they had already lost to. I used the free time to go get my copy of March. The other two teams duked it out for second.

This event was not a great test of the game since we were the only team to bring the 'best' decks.

Prizes? Each player got a metal faction pin. Each member of the winning team got a plaque. The entry fee was $18 per team so these were pretty weak prizes. We were told they were saving 12 playmats for 'Worlds' tomorrow so we got shafted a bit on prizes.

Everyone that showed up had fun. I wish there had been more of you.

Thanks for the writeup!

Sorry there weren't more teams.

I thought there would have been more people at that event, it sounds like a great idea.

If I was at GenCon, I would have definatley been there.

Marketing is the problem. If they offered some kind of prize support, money for example, they could pull in more players. Even for those that generally don't like the idea of a game being played for money because of the type of players it draws, it is undeniably better for the health of the game. Give people a reason to play somewhere other than the tabletop at home. Even if the entry fee was only $10 (probably less than what they do charge), you could give back 80% of that and it would end up drawing a much greater crowd. I love this game too, but it seems like it is doomed to die if the tournament (prize) structure doesn't change.

Why money?

I think most people would be pleased with just FFG Games. The winner team gets 300€ for games at ffg booth or so. Or if thats too much unknown, why not a copy of Dust Tactics.

Heidelberger did it this way (100/50/30) and they had around 30 players on 2 days at the (compared) little RPC, with people probably not playing any LCGs (not a single € entry fee might be a reason too).

And people wanting games are probably friendlier than people wanting money.

people want the option to recoup their entry fee. They dont have to give out cash, but they could give out free entries into regionals or other larger tournaments. They could also give out coupons for FFG products. For those of us that have 3x of everything, this would be better than getting product because we could use it to purchase the next BP or something. Maybe for a tournament as large as worlds (should be large anyway), maybe they could give a year of free product. All 12 BP's that would be released or whatever they release for W:I in the year following worlds.

I'm still wishing FFG would think about foil versions of the cards or playmats with the capital boards printed on them or something that just feels more exclusive than the pins. dunno, just my two.

Periculum said:

Prizes were a popular topic of conversation at the con. For teams we got a plaque and faction pins. I got 4th in Worlds also and got an uncut sheet from the core set (Dwarves, obv), a playmat, wooden power/damage counters, and another plaque. 1st place got the same except they also got a 'World Champion' wooden capital board holder which was very nice.

It's my feeling that the game is strong enough mechanically that if it were a ccg we would have had 100 people at Worlds instead of 40. I think if the prizes were stronger (and well advertised) we may have had closer to 60-75. For UFS we used to get PSP's, Wii's or even complete sets of expansions. I know that some have said that they aren't interested in product as prizes as they already own the cards, but I personally would like more product because I hate to proxy. I think foils or some kind of alternate art card would be a cool prize as well. I'm not sure what the answer is, but it seemed like most players felt that there was weak prize support overall.

All of my friends who elected to play WoW over W:I this weekend walked away with over $500 in loot cards. Cryptozoic ran several events that gave away loot cards, and not just to winners. Last night they ran one that Crypt employees played in in which they 'dropped' loot cards if you beat them, which you always did because they scooped. They were giving out Spectral Tigers, etc. Sick.

FFG does not need to go to that extreme, it just seemed painfully ironic to me last night when we were recapping the weekend that I was the only player to do well in his events (they all bombed out WoW Worlds) but I won a playmat while they got hundreds of dollars. I knew when I signed up to play these games that winning that amount wasn't possible, but since W:I is competing with games like Mtg and WoW for players time at Gencon they could have supported our commitment to them a bit more.

What deck did you play that earned you 4th place?

Is there a recap of the world tournament?

Thanks,

Brian

I remember with the Call of Cthulhu game they would let the Worlds winner "design a card" with his or her likeness on it. I don't know if they're doing this with the new LCG system, but it would be cool. I think they should do that with Warhammer: Invasion as well. Or give a special promo card, or shirts, vouchers for the next deluxe expansion or other expansions, etc.

mykelen said:

I'd be ok with being drawn as an orc..or a dwarf with gigantism.

For the final day of gencon the only W:I event held was a core set draft. Interesting format. 10 people showed up to play. I ended up winning using Orcs in a close match versus Dwarves. I had to Grimgor out the Kindom zone and later Troll Vomit into dropping an orc with a Choppa and a Rip dere heads off to win. So, in all for the weekend there were 3 W:I events: teams, worlds, and a draft. I won the draft and teams and placed 4th in Worlds.

Anyway, my decklist for World's was tweaked to beat the mirror match. I didn't expect BT to be as good or as played as it was as I hadn't done any testing before the team event on friday and we saw no bt's in that event. The BT deck that we played in teams just flat out wasn't as good as the BT's in World's so I lost all of my BT match-up's (3), but won all of my Dwarf match-up's (4).

The decision to not play support destruction was made because I expected to have to race Orcs a bit and also because I wanted to be a bit faster than opposing Dwarf decks. I can generate so many resources a turn that support destruction doesn't matter much, and I tend to play enough actual Dwarves into my Kingdom and Quest zones that even if you somehow killed all of my support cards I won't be locked out. Honestly, everytime someone killed a support card of mine I felt like I was getting off easy. Those 2 resources could have been a Rune of Valaya next turn, locking me out of damage.

Ultimately though, that lack of support destruction is what led to a near auto-loss against BT. I managed to race one opponent to a near tie but ended up misplaying the final turn 3 seperate times to end up with a loss. Being too lazy to do Ranger math can really end games. Also, in that match I didn't yet know that forced damage generated by Rangers can't be responded to, and some of their damage got cancelled by Rune of Valaya and the High Elf cancel tactic I can't recall the name of.

A majority of the Dwarf decks at Worlds played Stand Your Ground and Grudge Thrower to combo with their Rangers and Great Book of Grudges. I knew this going into the tournament and decided that my plays were stronger without them. I also opted to play Runesmith over Longbeards as I wanted to option to pump opposing characters into lethal range with Master Rune of Spite, as well as give myself a boost in combat.

Enough chatter, here's the deck:

3x Dwarf Cannon Crew
3x Grudgebearer
3x Mountain Brigade
3x Gurni's Elite
2x RuneSmith
3x Slayers of Karak Kadrin
3x Dwarf Ranger

3x Ancestral Tomb
3x Treasure Vaults
3x Warpstone Excavation
3x Mining Tunnels
3x Great Book of Grudges
3x Contested Village

3x Master Rune of Spite
3x Master Rune of Valaya
3x Grudge Thrower Assault
3x Innovation

Hey I just wanted to congratulate the winners of 3v3 and Unified in particular for his great showing in singles as well. You have great insight into the game and I get to face up against you another time as we didn't bump into each other in any of the events this last weekend.

- dut

Unifiedshoe said:

Aiming to beat the mirror in Dwarves is a solid plan for t8 but isn't going to win it because the Thrower deck is busted. And sure enough, that's what happened. Your decklist is definitely interesting. How did the Runesmiths and Assaults work out in practice?

Runesmith in particular shined in every Dwarf vs Dwarf match up I had. I never had the chance to make the dream play of decking my opponent with him but it was probably possible a few times considering I often had 3x Master Rune of Valaya in hand. It was always faster and simpler though to just smash without fear of reprisal.

As for Assault, well, that card is kind of disappointing in one sense. It is only eligible to be played after damage has been assigned, which means that if they are going to burn a zone with damage on board it won't save you the damage the way a Slayers will. On the other hand, I was able to sacrifice my own attacker to trigger Book of Grudges and Rangers and in those cases I was happy to play it as written. Looking at the card outside of this context of this event, I think it's a great card for several Destruction match-ups, and I'm sure it would have shined in those.

It's certainly better than nothing, but as you point out, it has the same problem as Wrath of Khaine. The joke here is that Wrath's text reads: "Kill All The Guys That Just Burned Your Second Zone". I could certainly see it being used as a sacrifice outlet like the Slayers though. The big problem I had (as I pointed out in the deckbuilding forum) with Slayers (and similar effects like the Assault) for triggering Rangers is that they don't do anything if your opponent is sneaky and plays MRoV/Gifts pre combat. The Thrower really seems like your best (only?) bet in that regard.

My deck wasn't as heavily reliant on the Rangers as the other Dwarf decks. My win condition most often was to collect about 12-15 resources on turn 4-5, dump a bunch of guys (holding 2-3 resources back for either Master Rune for defense), attack and burn a zone, then do it again next turn. I used the Rangers to control the board and snipe units more often than I did to combo out and kill a capital.