WOW Minis Nashville Realms 05/16-05/17/2009

Here's a tournament report from my first WOW Minis tournament, the Nashville Realms held in Nashville TN on 05/16/2009 and 05/17/2009. The original link can be found here:

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/WOW/COMMUNITY/forums/thread/1755495.aspx

So, Realms Champs for me was a blast. I’ve played in a lot of other minis games over the years but this is the first one that I haven’t had a local tournament scene for. My gaming for WoW Minis is either on Vassal or with my 2 friends locally. So, not having a local scene this would be my first tournament for WoW Minis. I was pretty excited for it and had been doing a lot of playtesting to get ready for it. I tried out 3MC and loved it at first, but soon we found that Marlowe just died too much. Plus if you saw any healing or priests on the other side of the board it wasn’t a lot of fun to be playing Marlowes. So I started looking at other things and wouldn’t decide what I’d play until Sunday morning.

Our trip started out early Saturday morning about 7:30 am. We drove down to Nashville and got there about an hour before registration started. We talked with several other players there and hung out. The game store was pretty good. I’d visited it a few times before when I was in Nashville but this was the first event I’d attended there. I think they did a good job, but it was a bit hectic with 3 events going on at the same time. Some of the start times were slow and the times of the rounds didn’t seem to run as smooth as they could have, but all in all I think they did a good job and any hiccups that occurred were more or less from having the 3 events running at the same time.

So we sit down for the first qualifier and they had enough product to do 1 Spoils of War and 1 Core set. I wouldn’t have minded 2 Spoils of War, but 1 of each made for a fun sealed event. My first booster had Jaina, Ryno, a third figure that I don’t remember, and a Foam Sword Rack. So win or lose any other matches I was happy with that. My second booster had Leeroy Jenkins, Graccus, and Amon in it. I ended up with Jaina, Ryno, and Graccus. I had some good ABCs since I had pulled 2 paladins and 2 warlocks. I ended up going with Jaina, Ryno, and Graccus. I had Summon Greater Water Elemental and Arcane Blast on Jaina, Corruption, Curse of Agony, and Summon Jhuroon on Ryno, and Avenger’s Shield, Flash of Light, Hammer of Justice, and Hammer of Wrath on Graccus. Having the extra ABCs helped a lot I think.

Round 1 I get paired with one of my friends that I rode down with, Jason. Jason had a good team of Filet, Champion Shadowsun, and a third figure that I don’t recall. I was able to get both pets out and then surround the VP so that he wasn’t able to get to Jaina and she could fire with Graccus soaking up her damage and healing her. The score was 24-3 at the end of the round. 1-0

Round 2 I got paired with Daniel Asbell. He was running Elendril, and 2 other figures that I don’t recall. He had some bad dice and low resist that the sealed petting zoo was able to get through. Score ended up 24-0. 2-0.

Round 3 I got paired against Ariel Levi who had Thrall, Omedeus, and Wilton Thorne with Felsteel Boomstick on him. This was incredible close and came down to literally 1 dice roll. We went back and forth with kills, me getting Thrall once and I believe he got Jaina once as well. The end of the game saw us both 1 kill away from victory. I had Omedeus down to 2 health and the only character close enough to attack was Graccus. If Graccus misses, next tick Thrall comes over and kills Ryno for his win. Graccus came over and used Hammer of Wrath. I rolled 3 hits, one of which I had to reroll due to it being Omedeus. I rolled it into a crit for the guaranteed kill and the win. Had it been almost anything else it would have been his game. 3-0

Round 4 I got paired with Christin. When we got paired he came over and said he had to go as he was graduating from high school later. He had Jaina, Ixamos, and a third figure that I don’t recall. Since he had already qualified and had to go, he conceded the match to me, which put me at 4-0.

For my first tournament, I was very happy with how it turned out. I know that having a great pull helped, but after having just played at home since the game came out, it was good to see that I could win some games and be competitive. I then went and signed up for the first constructed qualifier. I wasn’t sure what to play so I was just going to play 3MC to see how it’d do. First round of that I got paired with Old Bones who was running the Petting Zoo. He had also already qualified so we just rolled to see who got the win and it went to him. Second round I got paired with a friend who was still trying to get in so I conceded to him as well. Then at 0-2 technically I dropped from the tournament. I then hung around and watched some games and watched all the Petting Zoo armies. I just think it’s cool that I almost pulled their army in my sealed pull.

The third constructed got started later and as it’d already been a pretty long day we went ahead and went to dinner and called it a night. My friend Jason got in while my friend Tony had some bad luck with his dice and wasn’t able to pull out the third win. We went to dinner with Ariel Levi and then got some last minute playtesting in before we called it a night. At that time I had worked on a few Petting Zoo builds that weren’t exactly what I saw but were combinations of what I liked from each build. By the time I woke up in the morning I’d decided against going with Jaina as I wasn’t really fond of running a band I’d only tried the concept of in sealed. So I sat down and looked at what I could run and since I’d ran a lot of HTH against my friends locally, I decided to try HTM as it wasn’t that far of a stretch from what I’d played before. I tried to go for a lot of healing in the team, just incase anyone went with any 3MC armies or any other locks. My final party was:

Haruka
Grounding Totem
Healing Stream Totem
Healing Wave
Purge

Thangal
Rejuvenation
Cat Form

Morova
Rejuvenation
Moonkin Form
Mark of the Wild
In hindsight, that was the wrong ABC selection as it never really worked out like I’d planned. Generally whoever I put Rejuvenation on at the start, one of the 2 died by tick 5 and never got the healing. Mark of the Wild on 2 figures would have been much better. Morova also could have been replaced by another Haruka. I know she was the safer bet, but most of the time when I rolled a crit it was with an actual 10. But with this being my first tournament, I learned a lot from it. Here’s a recap of my matches.

Round 1 I got paired with Matt who was running a Haruka, Thangal, and Morova as well. This was a very close game. Early on he had some good rolls on defense and I thought he was going to take the game because I couldn’t get any damage on him. After him taking an early lead I was able to catch up and start a come back. The end came down to time with me getting the final kill to put me ahead on points. Final score was 18-14. 1-0

Round 2 I got paired with Drew. Drew was running Haruka, Daxin, and Azarak. This was another very close game that came down to some dice. He was able to pull out the win, 22-17. 1-1

Round 3 I got paired with Allen who was running the Jaina, Ryno, Vindicator Petting Zoo team that was around the event. Somehow I only got paired against it this one time. I had a shot to put some hurt on Jaina as I was eventually able to get a cat formed Thangal over to her. Even with the crit he only managed to put through 1 or 2 points of damage on her as he rolled pretty bad with the attack. We went to time but there was no way for me to catch up to him. Final score was 16-4. 1-2

At this point I figured I was out of it due to tiebreakers if nothing else. I would have had to win my next to 2 games to even have a shot as we were going 5 rounds instead of 4. Round 4 I got paired with Billy Tillman. He was running Lady Vashj, Crushridge Ogre, and Rethligore. This was a pretty even match. I wasn’t able to catch Vashj and mainly concentrated on taking down the other 2 figures. I got more VP than he did and I managed to get 2 VPs late in the game that put me ahead 17 to 16. I then pulled back and Vashj wasn’t able to catch me before time was over. Final score was 17-16. I have to also say that this was probably the most fun game that I played all weekend. 2-2

So at the end of Round 4 they posted standings and I was in 9th. I had pretty bad tiebreakers and I had to win my next one to even have a shot at making Top 8. For Round 5, I got paired with Daniel Asbell. I had played Daniel on Saturday during the sealed qualifier. He was running Vi’gor, Magdeline, and Tinker. This game was all about Tinker and Arcane Flux. I think he only missed 1 or 2 rolls where he didn’t crit. Everytime Tinker attacked, the first attack had several misses so he’d reroll into 5 or 6 hits with the crit. When Tinker’s dice are on fire it’s hard to overcome that. I focused on taking down Vigor and Magdeline and took an early lead. But the little cannon known as Tinker wore down my figures and I wasn’t able to take him out before he was able to start netting some kills that evened out the score. Daniel then pulled ahead and got the final kill to put him to 21 and give him the win. Final score was 21-16. 2-3

I ended up at 13th I think. Even had I won my last one, I had horrible tiebreakers and I think I would have ended up 9th or so and probably missed Top 8. All in all I was happy with how I did for my first tournament for WoW Minis. I had a blast the entire weekend and I look forward to seeing some of the same people at the Fall Realms.