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 Post subject: German Nationals
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:19 pm 
Jedi Battlemaster
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As posted by Digital on WotC:

Hi,

this is the report for the 4th German National Championship, which I was capable of winning again.

First off I'd like to thank our French visitors for coming to Cologne and enriching our Open. They played some great matches getting a total of 3/4 players to the Top8.

Participation was down to 31 players which was expected after the announcement, still we had a strong competition attending.

There were 3 things that need to be said to get the right impression on how to interpret the report.
First off map choice wasn't restricted to the most conservative list as to allow more players with a limited map selection to participate.
Second the 2 points awarded for an overtime win wasn't implemented since the DCI reporter doesn't support this yet, which meant that you would get 3 points regardless on the way you won.
And third in the Top 8 the time limit restriction was dropped and each match was played to the finish, which should prevent some of the stalled matches won by points but let to an unfortunate event in the Top 8, where one player got the free win by simply not moving and letting the opposing MTB kill his whole squad without a chance to score the necessary Victory Points and another epic halffinal with a 22 vs. 19 activation tempo control squads without designated gambit getters.

Given the circumstances I decided to play my slightly modified French Championship Squad from last october, which was and is a blast to play and has some really good match-ups espacially the "dreaded" Bane Swap. This didn't work at all during the French Championship where all Bane Squads dodged me but worked nearly perfectly during this years German Championship.

My Squad (Momentum Buck)
Yoda on Kybuck
General Skywalker
Captain Panaka
R2-D2, Astromech Droid
Mas Amedda
2x Rodian Brute (formerly 1x Mouse Droid and 1x Ugnaught since the Brutes weren't released yet)
1x Mouse Droid
1x Ugnaught Demolitionist
Map: Starship

First Round Opponent played
Vader, Apprentice Redeemed
Han Solo, Rogue
Luke, Hoth Pilot Unleashed
General Riekaan
General Dodonna
Juno Eclipse
4x Ugnaught Demolitionist

I win the map roll and choose my map over hir Throne Room map.
First round I deep strike with Yoda and move him back out of disruptive to swap with a Brute scoring 3 Ugnaughts and hurting some characters.
He scores the Brute and gets gambit. Score 9-8
Next round I win the initiative and deep strike again killing Juno, HPU and the last Ugnaught.
I then also move up General Skywalker to finish Han we both collect gambit. Score 83-13
Third round I win the initiative again which I use to seriously hurt VAR with Gen Skywalker which he in response kills with his push but Yoda then kills off VAR for a concession. Score 131-60

For ease of reporting I will define my second round opponents squad as the Base Bane Swap squad.
Cad Bane
Thrawn
Lobot
Ozzel
Mas
3x Brute
3x Ugnaught

Obviously my second round opponent played Base Bane Swap as reinforcement he chooses 2x Twilek Bodyguard.
I loose map choice but he has the same map.
First round I deep strike Yoda and as he had placed the bodyguards suboptimal I put some damage on Cad and killing one brute. He doesn't get the double crit on Cad Banes return fire. I swap in Gen Skywalker and finish off Bane for a concession. Score 57-0

Third Round vs.
Base Bane Swap with 1x Mouse instead of one Brute
Reinforcements (Amanin Scout, Ugnaught, Gran Raider)
I win map choice choosing my map.
First round I deep strike Yoda into his command centre and after the Skywalker swap he is left with Cad Bane some reinforcements and two Brutes.
Second round I kill the rest of his squad. Score 155-0

Fourth Round vs.
Base Bane Swap with 3x Ugnaught, 4x Brute, 2x Mouse instead of Lobot
I win map choice not choosing his map Train Station.
First round I deep strike with Yoda killing 6 Uggies, 5 Brute, Mas, 2 Mouse Droids and Ozzel, while loosing a Brute, an Uggie and R2 during the return fire. Score 63-15 including gambit.
Without R2 I only get another Brute and gambit during round 2. Score 71-15
Turn three I finally kill Cad and another Brute for another concession. Score 128-15

Fifth Round vs
Base Bane Swap with 3x Brute instead of 3xUgnaught.
I win map choice not choosing his map Rancor Pen.
As reinforements he chooses 2x Twilek Bodyguard.
He is the first opponent to choose the correct side (namely the "bad" side) and the correct reinforcements and sets up inside the closed room.
Since I was already qualified for the Top 8 I took some risk and decided to deep strike first round with Yoda while I think that might not have been optimal. I kill the two bodyguards, 3 Brutes, hurt Cad Bane and collect gambit but loose Yoda. Score 14-51
Next round he can't hide Bane from R2, Panaka and Skywalker, so I kill Cad Bane and one Brute, but need to sacrifce R2 and one Brute to do so. Score 77-63 including another gambit score.
Third round Gen Skywalker starts mopping up the rest, getting Ozzel to prevent reserves and another Brute and gambit. Score 96-63
Fourth round I loose another Brute but get Thrawn for another concession. Score 133-66

Top8
5-0 Momentum Buck
4-1 Mara hates Cad (25 Activation Mara Jade squad with MTB and Dodonna)
4-1 Bane Swap
4-1 Slow Cannon
4-1 Slow Cannon
4-1 Twin Droids (22 Activation squad with San Hill, Loathsome, 2xIG 86, E522)
3-2 Bane Swap
3-2 Bane Swap
The remaining 2 Bane Swaps also finished 3-2 on places 10 and 11.

Quarterfinal vs.
Base Bane Swap
I loose map choice but he plays the same map, as reinforcements he chooses 2x Twilek BG.
I deep strike with Yoda killing Lobot and 2 Brutes plus Bodyguards but play it save and swap a Brute which he naturally scores. Score 38-3 including my gambit
Next turn I kill Cad and two Uggies by sacrificing my Yoda. Score 103-54 including my gambit
Third round I sacrifice R2 to get Ozzel for reserve prevention. Score 119-63 including my gambit.
Next round I collect another Uggie, a Brute and gambit while losing a Brute still not risking anything so he concedes. Score 130-66

Halffinal vs.
Luke Snowspeeder
Han Smuggler
Lobot
Princess Leia
General Riekaan
General Dodonna
Juno Eclipse
I win map choice and choose his map Throne Room. He chooses 3x Mouse Droids and Human Bodyguard as reinforcements.

This was one match-up I was rather scared of. There are Slow Cannon variants I do not fear but the Lobot, Juno variant is one of the most difficult match-ups for Momentum Buck.
First round we only position our pieces and I get gambit. Score 5-0
Second round I'm able to profit from him not knowing Yodabuck and its rulings well enough and I can strike at Leia, which he though save, killing her and seperating his forces to prevent further losses. Score 25-0
Third round I pick of Han and collect another gambit. Score 57-0
In the fourth round I also get the Snowspeeder for another concession. Score 102-0

Final vs.
Base Bane Swap with 3x Ugnaught, 4x Brute, 2x Mouse instead of Lobot
For the finals my dice decided to make it interesting. First chance to instantly win the game is the map roll. I loose and we play on train station. I let him setup first, so I can prepare the deep strike.
First I miscalculate by 1 square and roll a 1 on one galloping attack, so my deep strike misses 3 Brutes scoring only 2x Uggies, 1 Brute and 1 Mouse. I swap for 1 Brute which he scores. The possible Cad return fire on Skywalker due to the left over Brutes, leaves Panaka with 60damage, but Skywalker unhurt, due to one miss and one successful Lightsaber defense. Score 12-3
On my second turn 1 deep strike again hurting Cad but I wanted to play it save so I swapped and didn't risk the double crit from Cad which could finish Yoda.
Therefore I only score 2 additional Brutes and 2 additional Uggies, while he scores the swapped Brute. Score 29-6 including my gambit
Third round I have positioned myself such that he cannot save Cad. I start my Master Speed Galloping Attack which only needs a 2 against the Mouse droid to open the way for Skywalker to finish off Cad. Up comes the 1 which only allows me to score Ozzel and the Mouse with Skywalker instead of Cad while he is able to do a total of 80 Damage to Yoda and 20 to Skywalker during that round. Score 43-6
Fourth round he tries to retreat scoring my mouse and my Uggie while Yoda gets some more points namely Mas, 2 Brutes and 2 Uggies while I try to make another move on Cad. This time Skywalker uses his knight speeded double greater mobile momentum attack to finish off Cad. Up comes another 1 so Cad lives to see another day. Score 63-12
Fifth turn Cad hits Skywalker 4 times dealing the remaining 80 damage killing him off. With his leftover forces he's unable to protect bane from Yobuck so Yoda scores another Brute and finally Cad. Score 125-59 including my gambit.
Sixth turn Yoda starts locked in a corner, takes some more damage but puts Thrawn down to 10 and is swapped for Mas which my opponent scores. Score 130-67 including my gambit.
He has a single Brute and Thrawn with 10 HP left, while I have a full R2, Panaka with 10 HP left and Yobuck with 60 HP left which forces a concession from him.

And so I became German Champion twice in a row and might unfortunately be the last official one.
Yours,
Frank

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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:42 pm 
One of The Ones
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Nice job! This is precisely what many of us were talking about right after the French Championships in October, and we were surprised that something like this hadn't happened then. Granted, General Skywalker wasn't out at that point, but Yobuck was still a dangerous matchup for the Cad Bane swap squads. Well done.

I'm interested to know what the deal was with the Mara/MTB squad, and why they didn't have an exit strategy. Wonder what happened in the game where the other player just kept turning pieces until the MTB killed everything? Did the MTB player run out of Ugnaughts or get Override locked into a room or something? Very curious. Plus, wonder how that should have interacted with the '5 round, no action' rule? Does the MTB overrule that '5 round' rule, lol?

Anyways, great report. This is a good lead-up to Regionals too, though I'm surprised they chose to stick to 150 with the US groups doing 200 this year.

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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 3:56 pm 
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LoboStele wrote:
Nice job! This is precisely what many of us were talking about right after the French Championships in October, and we were surprised that something like this hadn't happened then. Granted, General Skywalker wasn't out at that point, but Yobuck was still a dangerous matchup for the Cad Bane swap squads. Well done.

I'm interested to know what the deal was with the Mara/MTB squad, and why they didn't have an exit strategy. Wonder what happened in the game where the other player just kept turning pieces until the MTB killed everything? Did the MTB player run out of Ugnaughts or get Override locked into a room or something? Very curious. Plus, wonder how that should have interacted with the '5 round, no action' rule? Does the MTB overrule that '5 round' rule, lol?

Anyways, great report. This is a good lead-up to Regionals too, though I'm surprised they chose to stick to 150 with the US groups doing 200 this year.


Well to answer some of your questions.
1) To correct you General Skywalker was just but already released (naturaly given the fact he was in the same expansion as Cad) at the French Championship and I played basically the same squad.
Unfortunately that event was rather big, with only a few Bane Swaps participating which managed to successfully dodge my Momentum Buck.
Especially in the Final 16 where my Momentum Buck had to face Kyle/Mara first round. A match-up, which took me out of contention and I think is even worse than Slow Cannon.
2) I don't know the exact facts what happened. I know that it was ruled that MTB overruled the 5 round rule (don't know if this is correct).
Fact is without an exit strategy and 22 activations you can't score more than 110 points of gambit which isn't enough and with 19 activations you can build a bodyshield for your 4 central pieces
(Mas, Thrawn, Ozzel, Cad) especially on the map they played Train Station.
The Problem is that MTB was needed to counter Thrawn or without MTB Bane could use his stealth and the certainty to be swapped to safety at the beginning of the round to score points against Mara with ease.
And with MTB he slowly looses pieces and can't get to Bane with Mara, because the way was blocked with activations, while Bane with Mobile Flight kills Mara quick if she dares to advance cause she won't get away fast enough.

My guess with the exit strategy is that the squads tend to get slower and slower and more fragile to beat the other squad, so an exit strategy a) couldn't be implemented and b) wasn't needed unless there was no time limit.
Eg the Bane Swap in the Finals forgoes Lobot for 9 activations to squeeze an additional 2 activations into the squad, which generally weakens the squad imho but is an advantage in the mirror. This is exact what makes Momentum Buck so strong, the ability to destroy the fragile structure of some Top Squads. The problems for Momentum Buck are "robust" squads (eg. Slow Cannon, Kyle/Mara). But these robust squads have bad match-ups against the fragile but "overcharged" squads like Bane Swap.

This is imho a healthy meta we have at the moment using a comparison with M:TG where in theory Aggro struggles against Midrange which struggles against Control which struggles against Aggro.


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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 6:13 pm 
One of the Sith on Malgus' Shuttle
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Great report!

I have to say I'm still surprised so many people are playing the Cad Base Squad. Seriously, putting all your trust in 1 shooter is frickin ridiculous! Sorry, but you deserve to lose if you expect only 1 piece to win it all. Sure, you can bump that piece up to no end, but as shown here it doesn't matter when it only has 80HP and is completely fragile against Melee pieces.

Sorry, Boba BH, seems Cad has replaced your as Main Crutch Piece :(


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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 11:56 am 
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jedispyder wrote:
Great report!

I have to say I'm still surprised so many people are playing the Cad Base Squad. Seriously, putting all your trust in 1 shooter is frickin ridiculous! Sorry, but you deserve to lose if you expect only 1 piece to win it all. Sure, you can bump that piece up to no end, but as shown here it doesn't matter when it only has 80HP and is completely fragile against Melee pieces.

Sorry, Boba BH, seems Cad has replaced your as Main Crutch Piece :(


Boba BH hasn't been in contention for over a year now. Last time he was played with any success was in the regionals last year when there were a few rebel Boba Cannon squads. He doesn't do enough dmg.

THere are possibilities to run a greater mobile squads with Flobi, the exile or Vader LOtDS but he has lost so much mainly due to the increased speed.

I think you're being overly harsh towards the people running Bane swaps. Its a very tough build, you out activate and win init 95% of the time so that 120 dmg end of round and possible 80 start of the round depending on your position. Thrawns swaps give Bane great survivability and it would have stood great chances to win last years gencon. To call bane a crutch in this build is wrong IMO. These builds are tough to run and win with mainly due to the problems you bring up yourslef. You need great placement and foresight to make it work.
However, it is an old build now, people are prepared for it and there are enough fast figures out now to deal with it. The rule changes and map list alos work against it. Still, enough Germans seemed to like it to run it enforce and 3 in the top 8 means that it wins well.

I'm pretty happy to see it miss out on the top spot though, facing high activation squads make for long games.

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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 4:08 pm 
One of the Sith on Malgus' Shuttle
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I agree, I am being harsher than I should. I just have a problem with a squad of only 1 attack. That, in my mind, is a recipe for disaster that has turned into people netdecking it. I think that's another problem I have, when making a squad I always try to be original and it pains me to see so many duplicate squads of people not being original. It's just my personal opinion and I know many will feel strongly against it and will disagree with me. Another reason I'm not eager for Regionals, too many similar squads that just makes me laugh when they go up in mirror matches. It's also why this year at GenCon it really stuck with me, the last game was against JamesWys and his squad was completely original and we had a blast with it. Nothing like the cookie-cutter squads I'd gone up against before.


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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 4:37 pm 
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yeah, i hear you. We actualy don't think that differently. I don't like going with the flow or using the popular builds and will often go out of my way to build in an unusual/different way. The thing is that you should feel free to play what you want to play but also allow other people the option to run whatever they want even if it is flavour of the month.
It kind of annoyed me that so many bane swaps were played in the German champs as it really doesn't show a lot of inginuity by the players. It happens in all collectable games though. People read about what wins or has won and them mimick it soley for the purpose of winning which really is their perogative even if a little close minded.

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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 11:09 pm 
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5/31 players used Bane Swap or 16.1%. That is certainly a significant part of those present. Their average position was 7.4 out of 31. This would suggest Bane Swaps was more of a concern at the top tables and in this report than in the tournament overall.

It would seem ill adviced to enter a tournament if there is there is a known and expected counter to your squad which you don't know how to win against. In this tournament YoBuck does not appear to have been a very common sight though.

Cad Swap was not a good enough choice to win the tournament. Apparently this squad was common enough to give counters to it a tangible advantage. Still, from looking at the results Cad Swap would appear to have been a better choice than many other options. It seems the counters to Cad Swap in this meta was not good enough or common enough to completely destroy its chances and make Cad Swap a really poor choice.

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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 1:49 pm 
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There are information (Score, report of ADX, and team of the Top 8) by the French Delegation on the forum (section in english) :
http://minis.aceboard.fr/37815-2233-134 ... l-2010.htm

(Sometimes there is a message error, try to refresh the page or try later. The correction to this problem is ongoing)

I report Here the Team of the Top 8
------ 1st:
Yoda on Kybuck
General Skywalker
Captain Panaka
R2-D2, Astromech Droid
Mas Amedda
2x Rodian Brute
Mouse Droid
Ugnaught Demolitionist

Map : Starship

------ 2nd:
7x Rodian Brute
Cad Bane
Mas Amedda
Thrawn (IE)
6x Ugnaught Demolitionist
Admiral Ozzel
2x Mouse Droid

Map : Freight Transit Station

------ 3rd:
Luke's Snowspeeder
General Rieekan
General Dodonna
Juno Eclipse
Princess Leia
Lobot
Han Solo, Smuggler

Map : Throne Room

------ 4th:
2x IG-86 Assassin Droid
E522 Assassin Droid
6x Mouse Droid
5x Battle Droid
Ugnaught Demolitionist
Battle Droid Officer
San Hill
R7 Astromech Droid
General Worm Loathsome
Gha Nachkt

Map : Rancor Pen

------5th:
Mara Jade, Jedi
2x Ugnaught Demolitionist
Luke Skywalker, Force Spirit
General Dodonna
Lobot
General Wedge Antilles
Gha Nachkt
9x Mouse Droid

MAp : Muunihilist Grand Plaza

------ 6th:
3x Rodian Brute
Thrawn (IE)
Mas Amedda
Admiral Ozzel
3x Ugnaught Demolitionist
Lobot
Cad Bane

MAp : Starship

------7th:
Luke's Snowspeeder
Han Solo, Smuggler
Princess Leia
General Rieekan
General Dodonna
R2-D2 with extended Sensor
Juno Eclipse
2x Mouse Droid
4x Ugnaught Demolitionist

Map : ThroneRoom

------8th:
Thrawn (IE)
Mas Amedda
Lobot
Cad Bane
Admiral Ozzel
6x Rodian Brute

Map : Rancor Pen

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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 11:30 am 
One of The Ones
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Interesting results.

Obviously the restricted map list was not used. That changes alot.


I am glad we have the restricted map list for regionals and GenCon. Statements like this prove why: "First chance to instantly win the game is the map roll." I don't think that will ever be the case with the restricted list.

I am curious if the new DCI rules were used. No Gmabit for less than a 5 point piece? No gambit for reinforcements? 2 or 3 point wins?


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 Post subject: Re: German Nationals
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 2:24 pm 
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I know that they were unable to follow the 2/3 points for a win because the DCI software is not updated with it, but I think the reinforcements/gambit getters rule changes were followed.

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