Steamroller 2012 and Tournaments Win Conditions:
Or, what I learned over the weekend.
"Sometimes it is all about the coins"
Or, what I learned over the weekend.
"Sometimes it is all about the coins"
Nobody is a perfect player, we are all learning and growing the more we play. I have been playing Skorne for two years now, and I am finally getting to the point where I am comfortable in large events.
This past weekend, I played in a single list, 35 point steam roller event. I took pHexeris because his feat was the biggest force multiplier I could apply, and had a pretty decent answer for any rough Cryx match-up I faced. I had no idea that a tournament with an expected 6 or 7 arrivals turned into a 20 man tournament, with every faction save Retribution getting represented. I had a fun time, even though I went 2 - 2. One loss was due to my opponent misinterpreting a spell, and my not reading it for myself, and my second loss was against eCain, where I just couldn't stop the assassination, even though I was in a place to almost take out his army and play for scenario.
My two wins however where fairly glorious, I won both of them on scenario. The first one was against an eLich player, and was a hard fought game, I killed almost his entire army and survived the feat turn, but barely had anything left to actually win the game. Dice down was called, and my one tough Agonizer held the zone. My second win was against a pKreoss player who really knew his stuff. I was able to stuff the feat turn from killing my caster, out attrition him, and contested the zone as much as possible for a dice down win.
So after this tournament experience, I felt like I learned a lot. I wasn't necessarily going there to win, as single list events are way to "luck of the draw" for me. I saw the eCain player and knew I wouldn't win against that assassination run, which was proven right in the last round.
However, I felt like I wanted to share what I learned.
Understand the Tie Breakers:
This is just good general advice. Steamroller 2012 puts a lot of emphasis on scenarios and the tie breakers prove this.
The actual game time you have is limited in scenario play. For 50 point games it could be anywhere plus or minus 100 minutes, and you are never sure when time is going to be called. Because of this, you have to have an understanding that if your turn was going to end right now, you need to still satisfy the tie breaker conditions in a way that ensure that you will win.
In Steamroller, the Tie Breakers are the following, in this order:
1. Player that has the most Warcasters/Warlocks in play - Rarely comes up, but important to remember in team events. Winning by assassination means you win regardless anyways, so this in most common events will be skipped in the tie breaker breakdown.
2. Player with the most control points - This means read the scenario, and if you can grab a control point, do so. Control Points are critical towards your standings anyways. This is the reason that almost anytime you are faced with a long shot assassination or a quick control point grab, you go for the control point. That ensures if dice down is called while you are struggling to get that caster kill, you still win.
3. Player with the most points in the designated zone - This was the even bigger one for me. Basically, if there is a zone you needed to control and you have more points in it then your opponent, you win, regardless of how much you actually lost. This forces you to contest zones, especially in late game. You can use that to your advantage as well, of you know a game is getting low on time, you can jam into the zone and prevent your opponent from just running away and winning on army destruction. It basically is here to prevent VP sniping and running, which was a tactic used by some. It also can be used to set up counter charging. If your opponent's only way to win is to have more points in zone, you know the minimum they would have to place, and where they have to place it. Put a model or unit to threaten them, and you put your opponent into an almost unwinnable situation. Pay attention to this as well, a savy opponent knows the same thing, I had a player part his caster and his last jack in the zone and constantly camp on focus. He knew I would have a hard time straight killing him, so I was able to turn a possible loss into a win by getting and filling the zone myself. Also remember, this has to be the zone you have to get. Enemy models in that zone is irrelevant for scoring.
4. Army Points destroyed - So killing the opponents army is important. Good thing we are good at this.
So as you can see, you have to always be as focused on the scenario as possible. Control points and holding control points is a big deal.
As far as Skorne is concerned, I think it plays to our strengths a little. What we do well is kill things. We are not the most attrition tuned faction (that award goes to Trolls, with Menoth and Khador not far behind) and on the flip side, we are not very assassination focused either. What we do well is look at the army across the table and kill it.
How does Steamroller play to our strengths, we can win on scenario by just flatly killing the things in control zones. The nature of a melee heavy force, means we can cross that distance, kill the army with fists, and be sitting to grab control zones.
Granted this is a little easier said then done, and every match up is different, but , I feel, as long as you put scenario and destruction of your enemies first, Skorne can do very well.
I will say, that Objective Destruction missions are very tough. We have only minimal ranged threat to pick up objectives, and if our army is too melee focus, we will be struggling to kill the opponent's army while trying to get to scenarios, while more ranged heavy armies can get to grips with them quicker. The only thing I can think to do, is kill the opponent's heaviest shooters before that can happen. It is possible, but a bit of a struggle. If you face that situation, killing your own objective can possible deny that win condition. Just make sure you can put it down or you give a free opponent to your objective. Read the scenario carefully, and make sure that can't come back to bite you.
I will post more as I attend more events. I still have Adepticon on the horizon, and that will be, by far, the biggest Warmachine event I will attend. I will post reports afterwards.
This past weekend, I played in a single list, 35 point steam roller event. I took pHexeris because his feat was the biggest force multiplier I could apply, and had a pretty decent answer for any rough Cryx match-up I faced. I had no idea that a tournament with an expected 6 or 7 arrivals turned into a 20 man tournament, with every faction save Retribution getting represented. I had a fun time, even though I went 2 - 2. One loss was due to my opponent misinterpreting a spell, and my not reading it for myself, and my second loss was against eCain, where I just couldn't stop the assassination, even though I was in a place to almost take out his army and play for scenario.
My two wins however where fairly glorious, I won both of them on scenario. The first one was against an eLich player, and was a hard fought game, I killed almost his entire army and survived the feat turn, but barely had anything left to actually win the game. Dice down was called, and my one tough Agonizer held the zone. My second win was against a pKreoss player who really knew his stuff. I was able to stuff the feat turn from killing my caster, out attrition him, and contested the zone as much as possible for a dice down win.
So after this tournament experience, I felt like I learned a lot. I wasn't necessarily going there to win, as single list events are way to "luck of the draw" for me. I saw the eCain player and knew I wouldn't win against that assassination run, which was proven right in the last round.
However, I felt like I wanted to share what I learned.
Understand the Tie Breakers:
This is just good general advice. Steamroller 2012 puts a lot of emphasis on scenarios and the tie breakers prove this.
The actual game time you have is limited in scenario play. For 50 point games it could be anywhere plus or minus 100 minutes, and you are never sure when time is going to be called. Because of this, you have to have an understanding that if your turn was going to end right now, you need to still satisfy the tie breaker conditions in a way that ensure that you will win.
In Steamroller, the Tie Breakers are the following, in this order:
1. Player that has the most Warcasters/Warlocks in play - Rarely comes up, but important to remember in team events. Winning by assassination means you win regardless anyways, so this in most common events will be skipped in the tie breaker breakdown.
2. Player with the most control points - This means read the scenario, and if you can grab a control point, do so. Control Points are critical towards your standings anyways. This is the reason that almost anytime you are faced with a long shot assassination or a quick control point grab, you go for the control point. That ensures if dice down is called while you are struggling to get that caster kill, you still win.
3. Player with the most points in the designated zone - This was the even bigger one for me. Basically, if there is a zone you needed to control and you have more points in it then your opponent, you win, regardless of how much you actually lost. This forces you to contest zones, especially in late game. You can use that to your advantage as well, of you know a game is getting low on time, you can jam into the zone and prevent your opponent from just running away and winning on army destruction. It basically is here to prevent VP sniping and running, which was a tactic used by some. It also can be used to set up counter charging. If your opponent's only way to win is to have more points in zone, you know the minimum they would have to place, and where they have to place it. Put a model or unit to threaten them, and you put your opponent into an almost unwinnable situation. Pay attention to this as well, a savy opponent knows the same thing, I had a player part his caster and his last jack in the zone and constantly camp on focus. He knew I would have a hard time straight killing him, so I was able to turn a possible loss into a win by getting and filling the zone myself. Also remember, this has to be the zone you have to get. Enemy models in that zone is irrelevant for scoring.
4. Army Points destroyed - So killing the opponents army is important. Good thing we are good at this.
So as you can see, you have to always be as focused on the scenario as possible. Control points and holding control points is a big deal.
As far as Skorne is concerned, I think it plays to our strengths a little. What we do well is kill things. We are not the most attrition tuned faction (that award goes to Trolls, with Menoth and Khador not far behind) and on the flip side, we are not very assassination focused either. What we do well is look at the army across the table and kill it.
How does Steamroller play to our strengths, we can win on scenario by just flatly killing the things in control zones. The nature of a melee heavy force, means we can cross that distance, kill the army with fists, and be sitting to grab control zones.
Granted this is a little easier said then done, and every match up is different, but , I feel, as long as you put scenario and destruction of your enemies first, Skorne can do very well.
I will say, that Objective Destruction missions are very tough. We have only minimal ranged threat to pick up objectives, and if our army is too melee focus, we will be struggling to kill the opponent's army while trying to get to scenarios, while more ranged heavy armies can get to grips with them quicker. The only thing I can think to do, is kill the opponent's heaviest shooters before that can happen. It is possible, but a bit of a struggle. If you face that situation, killing your own objective can possible deny that win condition. Just make sure you can put it down or you give a free opponent to your objective. Read the scenario carefully, and make sure that can't come back to bite you.
I will post more as I attend more events. I still have Adepticon on the horizon, and that will be, by far, the biggest Warmachine event I will attend. I will post reports afterwards.
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