Second game I played against vanilla Haqq player Psyence. He said he didn't play much games with Haqq ( if I remember correctly he said he played like 5-6 games with them only ), he brought them to IP because he was bored of his primary faction. He won the roll and chose to play first. Honestly I knew I was going to win this game when I saw what he deployed. He had few ghazi, few camo markers, Captain Haqqislam some Ghulams, Naffatuns and Djanbazan sniper. Basically nothing is his list was really a threat to mine. I also played at least 50% of the games in my life against vanilla Haqq, so I know this faction very well. I played List B again. He opened his first turn by dropping Nahab and going around my defense in attempt to Isolate my LT Sakiel. He spent several orders on this unit. He came close to my LT and he moved around the corner and back and shot me with ADHL, but sadly for him my Sakiel won FTF roll and glued him in place behind a building. This was also Specialist Operative version so it scored for this scenario ( Hunting Party ). He also tried to shot with Djanbazan, which died to my Sukeul ML I believe. My turn was basically going forward and killing everything that wasn't specialist, revealing some camo markers. His second turn he spent a lot of orders on Captain Haqq, but he somehow died to my ARO doing basically nothing. Rest of the game was me gluing his LT and doing some classifieds I think. In the end it was 8-0 for me. This game was hard because at this point lightning in the building was terrible. It was like playing in a cave, as you can see in the pictures. We had to illuminate the table with cell phone flash just to be able to collect our minis. My opponent was a great guy, really friendly. If he brought a faction he was more familiar with I am sure game would not be so one sided.
Third game was against another Tohaa player. Sadly I don't remember his name. I never played against Tohaa, as this is my first tournament outside of my home country and I am the only one who plays Tohaa here. Mission was Unmasking. Again I lost the roll and again opponent chose to play first. All 3 of my games so far I rolled over 16 at the start. I played List A this time. Opponent had similar list with same attacking pieces, but different triads. He had 2 Kaeltar, so 4 Symbiomates and he had Gao-Tarsos. What he didn't have and I didn't understand why not is Clipsos Infiltrators. I guess sacrifices had to be made to be able to run 2 Kaeltar. He grouped 2 HVT's on my right hand side and one on the left. Left one was covered by Sukeul ML triad. He spent most of the orders in his first turn moving his Sukeul HMG on the right behind the same building where 2 of his HVT were. He shot some of my guys, I remember he critted me a lot in this turn. I think he killed my Draal and some other guys from that triad. He didn't discover HVT's in his first turn. In my turn I killed Sukeul ML with my Sukeul HMG. I think this took only 1-2 orders. I've spent some orders on my Sukeul K1 trying to kill his Sukeul HMG but no success. I then used my FO Clipso to open console on that side and chose to reveal HVT on the same side since nothing was covering him. It was the designated target. Since my Data tracker was on the other side of the table and I was low on regular orders I activated my brave Liberto and blasted designated target with his shotgun. I also dropped some mines on the way to make it hard for the enemy to approach this half of the table. In his second turn he dropped Gao-Tarsos behind my Sukeul HMG triad and with several orders he managed to kill 1 Makaul and drop Sukeul to 1 wound. He moved his Gao-Rael triad in the middle trying to kill my brave Liberto who dogged a lot. He discovered and killed 1 of the mines. He went too close to another mine which killed his Makaul I think. I think he still didn't discover any of the HVT's. In my second turn I went and killed his Sukeul HMG on the right with my Sukeul K1, then finished off his triad. Then moved him to the console to discover more decoys. I succeed and kill another decoy. Game was practically over at this point, we played turn 3 quickly. He couldn't really do much, I think he just killed my wounder Sukeul HMG. I killed some more of his stuff and activated third console to discover last decoy. Tried to kill him with my second Clipso and failed. In the end 8-0 for me. I didn't like my opponents list, just because I don't see the need for 2 Kaeltar and Kriigel and no Clipsos in the list. I would at least drop Kriigel for 1 Clipso. But I might be wrong as if I remember correctly all the players that I played against placed higher than me overall, except the guy from game 2.
Are those tables low to the ground or are you do you have some serious height on you mate? Looks like you've got an aerial view of the battlefield in some of those :) Liking the reports so far, thankyou for writing them.
I am 202cm tall, so I play from bird's eye perspective :-) My back started to hurt later that day, so I was mostly sitting in game 5. Had to steal a chair from some other table, as some tables had chairs and other didn't for some reason. Game 4 I will talk about it very briefly. I hate Highly Classified, and my lists couldn't really achieve all of the classifieds. What was worse I got to play against OSS, who can fairly easily build lists that can achieve all classifieds and much easier than Tohaa can. CB drew 4 main classifieds for everyone, I forgot which ones exactly but I know 2 of those I couldn't really do at all, and OSS player could do them all easy. At this point I knew the game was lost and I was just playing to kill time. I won the roll and decided to go first, which was another mistake I made because one side was clearly better as it had large sniper building that covered 75% of the map in it's deployment. Opponent deployed 5 man team there with 2 Dakini snipers, Apsara, HMG Dakini and Deva. He also bunkered around his HVT ( 2 classifieds I could achieve involved interacting with HVT ) with camo markers and rest of his force watching over it. In addition to everything opponent was so lucky with his rolls he was apologising entire game for it. Couldn't do anything, lost 10-0 this game. In the picture you can see I marked where he deployed. Literally everything was deployed around this HVT, except 1 Naga that was more to his left. ---------------------------------------- Game 5 was against a Russian player Unicorn. Funny thing is, he wasn't supposed to play on IP, but since 10 or so players who applied didn't come, CB asked if anyone had minis there that wanted to play the tournament and he signed up. He played vanilla Ariadna with 2 combat groups of 7 orders and third combat group with only Warcor. I have no idea why. We played on a very dense table and I was honestly sure I am doomed as my Hunting Party/Firefight list was mostly mid to long range ( List B ). He won the roll and decided to go first. He tried to drop Cube jaeger at my right flank, which did nothing but die. Free points for me. He was moving bunch of camo markers, honestly it was almost impossible to track his movements and which camo belonged to which combat group. I know I've spent at least 10 orders over 2 turn trying to kill his Tankhunter with Autocannon and in the end I finally did. He was just saving all armor saves. My Liberto also killed several models, God bless his reptilian soul. His Irmandihno on the other hand killed like 70 points of my troops. No LT's died. I also couldn't see all his camo markers in this super dense table with all the damn bridges which cost me entire Gao Rael Triad. In the end I won 6-2, but honestly it could've gone either way. I didn't really feel like I should've won. -------------------------------------------- Game 6, my biggest screw up of the tournament. Shows my lack of experience in international tournaments. I played against vanilla Nomads. I won the roll and chose to go first. Now, when I talked to opponent about the table I was sure we agreed there will be no deploying on cathedral roof and that you can't draw LoF thru it. But in his deployment he deployed Zero on top of the roof ( not in camo ) and in the end declared him Data Tracker so he was basically both unkillable and 100% sure he will be able to get him in exclusion zone. I thought this was a dick move, but I didn't want to say anything because guy seemed friendly and I just maybe didn't understand him well when we talked about which building can we deploy on. Looking back at this, I would never allow it but whatever. Water under the bridge. When he deployed his army I was pretty sure this is free win for me. Vanilla Nomads is my most played faction this year and I was sure I will play them up until 3 weeks before the tournament when I switched to Tohaa. I thought his list wasn't really good. He had Puppermaster with 3 bots, Kriza Borac HMG, Zoe and Pi well, TR Bot, Liberto, Heckler Jammer, Krakot, 2-3 Morlocks, Flash Pulse bot, I think Intruder as well. In my first turn I was able to activate 2 heating units, drop 4 mines around 2 of them, kill his TR bot, 2 morlocks, Pi well, Flash pulse bot and I think Intruder. Rest of his army was so badly positioned I was sure this was free win at turn 2. I lost nothing at this point, not even a symbiomate. In his turn he stood up with prone Zoe and moved her outside the ruin to repair his TR bot. Now here is my second big issue with this game. He moved her thru a window that is maybe half the size of her silhouette ( which is fine I guess ) and when she went outside the ruin where half her base is outside the game table ( which was definitely not fine at all ). Problem is I didn't really pay attention to his moves and realized all this basically when the game was over. He proceeds to repair his TR bot and Pi well, then crit my Draal triad ( with CoC kaeltar ) and K1 Sukeul ( and he was LT and data tracker ) to death with it. I started second turn in LoL. Couldn't do much, moved a bit with my impetuous Makauls that weren't in the triad anymore, Liberto suicide to kill his morlock and Krakot. In his turn he just moved around and activated 1 heating unit. In my 3rd turn I killed his Kriza with Sukeul HMG and that was about it. Had no more orders left. He went and did his classified and moved his zero to exclusion zone to score. In the end 10-1 for him. I approached this game too casually and it cost me the win.
