1. What: Warhammer Invasion is a living card game (ie noncollectable) from Fantasy Flight Games. We're holding a tournament.
2. Where: The Augusta Book Exchange location at 592 Bobby Jones Expressway in Augusta, GA 30907 (706) 860-6553 http://comics-n-games.com/backlot/index.php
3. When: October 24th, 2010 starting at 5pm and running until 9pm.
4. Entry Fee: $5
5. Rules: We will be using a strength of schedule system in which the first round is randomly paired and after that players will be paired up based upon victory conditions inflicted upon their opponent. (number of zones burned, total damage on opponents capital and number of cards remaining in his/her opponent's deck). Tie breakers for placement beyond those 3 stats will be based upon the rank of the opponents they have played. The newest battlepacks that are available on the shelf here at the shop or any older packs are legal for play. We will be using the most current FAQ/Errata for the game so please brief yourself on those rules changes and if you have any questions about any card combo or how a card works in relation to how they will work in the tournament please contact me here or by email.
7. Prizes: We have a 1st Grudge Declared prize kit available. 1st place gets a custom play mat included in the kit as well as his choice of victory pin. 2nd Place gets the remaining victory pin.

We hope to see you there.

I'll be there with bells on!

Actually, how do you guys plan to knock out a tourney in 4 hours? Also, could you clarify the scoring system a little bit? It seems like my deck will have to be built a little differently in order to get the most points instead of just to win (which is a little weird btw).

Last tourney we had rolled out quick! The fifty minute rule for best of three actually isn't that bad. We usually aim for four rounds unless we get an usually large crowd. I'm sure we will tack on another round if that happens. I imagine that Harliquine is looking to follow the official tournament rules document as closely as possible in terms of the win conditions and tie breakers. I'll be glad to see some outsiders again. Now, we just need to get qwerty to make an appearance and drum up some support from his crowd and we could have a serious event here!

"unusually large crowd"

Curse you edit button! where do you hide?

Time frame is just a guide line expecting 3 rounds of matches but we'll add more rounds if we have enough players. We have permission to keep the shop open that night beyond closing time so we close when the event and the excitement are over. Generally though most matches are done within 1 hour if not sooner. And I'll be giving a heads up on time and I'll explain how it works before you play. There will be free snacks and stuff there as well gang.

We will be using the standard tournament guide lines posted by Fantasy Flight Games on their support page under Warhammer Invasion's product section. My "strength of schedule system" is just for pairings and tie breakers. I've run a lot of tournaments for different games and usually before you even finish playing your last game I have a good idea of your next opponent so there is very little waiting time for the next round. It will be matches of 3 games and wins are king not simple damage or anything like that. However after the first match I need a way to pair up opponents that is both quick and fair. The counting cards thing is not a part of fantasy flight's score system but is tie breaker #3 for me and adds a little nod to anyone playing a mill deck out there instead of standard win conditions.

If you finish your match early you can watch me do the strength of schedule. It looks complicated at first but then it clicks and is suprisingly flexible for just about any game LCG, miniatures or otherwise.

So just 3 straight up rounds or 3 swiss and like top 4?

swingjunkie said:

Well with strength of schedule by round 3 the top players will be playing each other. At 10 players and every two players after you add a round. We have at least seven players locally if you bring 3 that makes it a 4 match event. In any case after the first round the top scoring players will be pitted against each other in each match and there is never a point where someone does not have a game to play. It's a very fast smooth system. There is no lose the first round so that you can rack up points against a lower ranked player because wins are the capital score with other such points only used to break ties.

Just a bump since this one is coming up in a week. I'd love to see some out of towners to compete against.

One more day and it's on!

Tomorrow, Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Augusta, GA

592 Bobby Jones Expressway

@ The Augusta Book Exchange

706-860-6553 if you need help getting there.

Just wanted to check and confirm if Redemption of a Mage will be legal.

Of course your picture is DE. Why am I not surprised?

Are you really going to wear bells?

Why yes Redeemtion of a Mage will be legal. I don't see any rules for waiting periods in the tournament rules like certain other cards games have so yes play them if you have them. See you there and... save the bells but you might where something pink. We're doing a breast cancer charity tournament for a wargame today as well. Donate if you wish, yes there will most likely be "pink" themed snacks provided.

See you there fellas. Today I am a tournie director only as it should be. And we have insured there will be some players of all skill levels available at the event.

Thanks to everyone who came out play. I hope you all had a good time and hopefully more folks will have the day off next time around

We had 5 players:

1st Place Marc with Dwarves

2nd Place Brett with High Elves

3rd Place Randall with Orcs

4th Place Landon with High Elves I believe

5th Place Bart with Chaos

Actually, Landon had a Dwarf deck as well

Yep. Didn't do near as well as expected. Haven't been playing against much rush and it made it weak. Time for something new!

Sounds like fun, congrats to the winners. Someone post a write-up of their experiences at the tourney! Please.

I'm pretty bad a remembering tournament stuff. Even back in my youthful days playing star wars. I'll try and say what I can remember.

I brought a dwarf deck based around the empire helblaster cannon. I had tested it many times against the local crowd, but unfortunately, that wasn't a good enough test because it didn't cover enough different decks.

First round, I played Brett from out of town. The upside to only having five people is that it was highly likely I would play the out of towners instead of the people I play against every day. (I always love playing new people, even if I get wrecked). The first game was pretty close. Brett's High elves ran some good deflection but I was finally able to punch through with a 16 something power unit (with the cannon) and a surprise assault.

The second game didn't fare as well for me. He got his deflection out early with Swordmasters in the battlefield and a dragon mage in the quest. My deck has little in the way of unit manipulation because it rarely gets stuck in a drawn out game (also, didn't test against many High Elves). I had one burned zone but thanks to the Dragon mage, it would take me three or four turns to break through the quest zone while he was hitting my zones for four a turn with the swordmasters and Illyriel. The hero was a good choice for him, because it kept the cannon off of the board for a few key turns while he set up the dragon mage. Every time I look at the board and see my opponent has four power and I have four hit points till losing a zone, I reason that there is no way he doesn't have another power in his hand to finish the deal even if I a development. I hate that I do this, because I was very wrong. again. Had I dropped a development in the kingdom I could have had another turn. Not sure if it would have gotten me the game, but I would have had a few more cards to try something with.

The third game, my deck came roaring out the gates. I'm pretty sure Brett was drawing a lot of cards that didn't help and I was drawing everything I needed. Ancestral tombs, cannons, serpent slayers, the whole deal at the right time to where I could afford everything. He managed one deflection with a Gifts, but that was pretty much it.

The games against Brett were great. Especially the second. Those are the kind of games where you leave the table realizing that even though you won, you learned a good bit about how you should play the game. He's been a great opponent both times he's come to town and that's one of the reasons I enjoy playing against out of towners.

2-1 vs. Brett

My second round was against Marc. He fears my deck, I fear his. One of the reasons is that we usually test our high power decks once or twice and then put them away so our opponents don't learn them too well. Marc has become a very solid Dwarf player. He used to always use orcs, but I think I made fun of them enough that he went to dwarfs for a while. He was using rangers and reclaim the fallen.

Sorry these games arent very detailed, but the first game pretty much was a tight game until three of his guys died in combat and a serpent slayer wrecked me with about eight developments.The rangers picked off the rest of my two almost burnt zones. Game.

The second game, I got a ridiculous start. Two Warpstones and a derricksburg forge. I decide to two in the kingdom and one in the quest. His go. He looks like he's starting slow and I'm starting fast. I just cant seem to get many developments down on the table and my cannons and serpent slayers are having to be very careful to avoid the rangers from picking me off. I kill several of his dwarfs managing to stay alive in the process, but all that did was fuel a powerful reclaim the fallen to end the game for me.

0-2 vs. Marc 2-3 total.

The final round, I play against Randall, the other out of town. I know he's on these boards, so he's welcome to correct anything I get wrong, so here it goes.

Spider riders, snotling pump wagon. I lose

Spider riders, snotling pump wagon. I lose

With very little unit manipulation, there wasn't much I could do to stop the orc onslaught while I was still trying to set up. I'm glad he slaughtered me this time. Fair trade for the last tourney. He and I played a few pick up games while we waited on the other rounds to finish and we both realized we could have brought something better to the table. He still beat me in two more games, but I think my high elf would have put up a better performance.

0-2 vs. Randall 2-5 total

I thought my day was going to go well and instead I got some bad matchups along with seeing reclaim the fallen first hand. Welp. off to the drawing boards again. Sorry my tournament posts aren't detailed. I can't remember details of the games very long. I would have to post the same night to get some of these details these other guys can afford.

Hopefully, we can draw in some more gamers in the area. I get the feeling there are a lot of small communities of this game in the area and no single big community. If we want to keep this game rolling in the GA/SC area, we need to plan events and travel around for tourneys. Just my two cents. Hope to see Brett and Randall again in the future and maybe a few more!

Aww, I'm flattered by your kind words. I kind of wanna go down there just to have more people to play with and discuss cards and deck ideas, but the 1 hr 45 min drive is a stiff deterrent. :-/

That said, here's the day from my POV:

It was an exercise in frustration for me. 5 people were there, including myself and my usual play partner. Last time we came down there was about 9 or 10 players, so it was just a little disappointing. I understand that they can't control it, but eh. However, the big frustration came from the fact that I had 3 decks lined up to chose from when I walked in the door and I apparently choose the wrong one....again. (more on that later)

Let it be stated first off that i have been a Dwarf player since day one when they were the red-headed stepchildren. However, I recently realized that I'm also apparently very indy/emo at heart. I didn't want to follow the crowd and play with the meta. I'd rather buck it and prove people wrong. (Coincidently, this cost me greatly in the last Augusta tourney where I tried to play Chaos pinging against the Skaven flood...but didn't take loyalty costs into account when building). As a result of my hard head, I built an Orc/Skaven deck designed to rush while blowing up dwarves developments and supports like crazy.

Round 1: Marc (Dwarf SLAYER deck)

I had never seen a slayer deck before, though my intent was to go home and build one after the tournament, so it was cool to see one in action. While my Orc deck had worked pretty well (around 55/45) against my spite dwarves, it did not vie so well against this deck and Wake the Mountains. I spent the first game focusing on the Kingdom, which is where my D deck revolved around, while he put a few developments into his Battlefield also. When I finally realized what kind of deck it was, it was too late and I'd used most of my destruction stuff. Second game I got off to a good start, but a few Master Rune of Valayas, and my stupidity in no knocking out the Kingdom or Battlefield with my first burn cost me and he came back for the win.

So then, for the sake of my curiosity, I pulled out my DE deck (the 3rd option for the tournament) to play against his Dwarves while we waited on the others. Sure enough, the deck rocketed out of the gate as usual and COMPLETELY shut down DWARVES card draw. Even my opponent said "WOW! Why didn't you play that deck!?"

Then, since we played quickly, we went ahead and played again, this time with me using my Dwarf deck. Short story: I won again. Those were the only 2 loses that Marc suffered all day. Apparently I had chosen the wrong deck.

Round 2: I got a bye.

While I was out, Periculum (Landon) was having his match against Marc and my friend Brett was playing Bart, who was running a Chaos deck built for him by the organizer Harliquine (who's name I don't remember but I want to say Chris? I apologize). Bart lost the first game by decking when he was drawing 9 cards a turn and Brett just waited him out. Second game, Bart got the win semi-quickly ish for a game involving HE. lol. The time limit ran out on the 3rd game with Bart having the most damage dealt.

Round 3: Landon (Dwarf/Empire Slayer/Hellblaster)

I had forgotten how unsatisfying and Orc rush win was. Both games ended in 4 or less turns after starts that included some combination of CME, Spider Riders, Snotling Pump Wagon, Waagh!, and Choppa. I had the other cards in hand to make for an interesting game had it continued, but I just didn't happen, Landon drew nothing to destroy my units.

Since our games ended in quick fashion, we both decided to try other decks we considered. Landon played a HE deck that attempted to rain down indirect damage (and did fairly well at it), against my Dwarf deck. My deck went 2-0, but it was close for both matchups. Wanted to try my DE again, but didn't get a chance to.

As a sidenote, me and Brett decided that there was a mistake in the position calculations and I came in second to his third, since we both had 4 wins (counting byes) and I beat the guy who beat him and actually won a whole match, though he assured me that with the hand he had, had the 3rd game been played out, he would have beaten Bart's Chaos deck in round 2 (though I'm not sure how he'd done against Marc in rd. 3).

Overview: 1) Dwarves strong, 2) HE still holding pretty strong actually, 3) DE can handle Dwarves (not enough data in this one tourney to say they can do it constantly....though my own games say it can go about 40-60), 4) Orcs can hold against Dwarves, 5) Chaos are still pretty low, but are slowly being revived.

Lots of fun and I like the players down there.

P.S.- How many do you guys have on an average Sunday session?

We usually don't have a "Sunday" group per se. Most of us (that being Chris, Marc and myself) play on thursdays. It's the random day of the week that we all manage to have most of the day off and we usually just play games all day from 1 to 11 or so. Sunday manages to be the best tournament day for nearly everything around here; Malifaux, PP games, GW games, etc. So that's why we usually schedule things on Sundays.

Bart wants to get into the game fully, but he needs a good entry point. There are a few players looking to get out around here and we just have to strike a deal for him. There are other 'players.' The guys that buy every pack, talk about the new cards, but for some reason always manage to avoid tournaments and the like. I'd love to have more people to game with and hang out when it comes to invasion.