King of NOVA Tournament - Round 1

Charlie Sheen picture aside, I did not actually win the King of NOVA tournament this weekend but instead came in third. Overall it was a fantastic day and I got in 4 really fun and challenging games. I ended up at the top table in round 4, playing against Mike for top placing on the day.

There were 3 big prizes available on the day, along with prize money for the top three placing players based on TP. The top player would end up going home with a King of NOVA Trophy, the top store in VA would go home with a Best Store Trophy, then the best placing store along the east coast would take home a plaque. At the end of the day, Mike grabbed 1st place and the King of NOVA trophy, Andrew Weakland grabbed 2nd place and the Best East Coast plaque, and I grabbed 3rd place. Huzzah Hobbies, my local store, grabbed the Best Store in VA trophy.  It was an impressive showing overall, with players from the Warmongers in NY, Neverland Games in PA, Huzzah Hobbies and Victory Comics from VA.

So, with all that background, lets dive into the games.

Games 1 - Marcus (Nayte from Victory) vs Zoraida

Nayte has become known as a new but very good Resurrectionist player recently, and I also know he has Sonnia Criid sitting in his case. He and I have discussed strategies for playing Sonnia and her Avatar, and we have played a couple games where he took Kirai against me. Going into the game, I was expecting him to grab one of those two, likely siding toward Kirai as that was a game we had played within the past two weeks. Nayte surprised me by pulling out Arcanists and putting Marcus and Kaeris down on the table. We had a spectator who was trying to learn a little about the game, so I let him pick between Zoraida and Pandora, and he promptly chose Zoraida. Nayte and I laughed, as this would be an interesting game with both of us having essentially no experience with our masters.

Nayte rolled out with Marcus, Kaeris, 2x Night Terrors, Malifaux Raptor, Student of Conflict (Kaeris), Jackalope (Marcus), and a Gunsmith

I flipped Contain Power for my strategy, and chose Grudge on Nayte's Student of Conflict and Stake a Claim on the boxes between the two buildings in the picture. Nayte had flipped Deliver a Message, then grabbed Stake a Claim on the building near my deployment zone and Power Ritual.

On turn 1 Nayte grabbed several both corners on his side of the board for his Power Ritual and then started up the board, hiding behind buildings and the back forest to keep Zoraida from tagging a Voodoo doll on them. Regardless, I was able to grab LOS to the Gunsmith, made a voodoo doll and obeyed him, but the attack missed. I passed the rest of my turn, only killing the Voodoo doll and having Collodi summon a 4th marionette from the scrap. I was aiming my set-up for an attack on round 2.

The next several rounds started the fun, with Collodi giving all his dolls fast and launching an attack across the board. Two marrionettes pulled his crew to the back building where Kaeris, the Gunsmith, and the Student were all hiding behind. A marionette used his fast to kill off the Student of Conflict. A second Marrionette charged, Fast attacked, and Melee Experted Kaeris. The Wicked Doll snapped up and charged, Fast attacked, and Melee expert Kaeris. I was able to put damage on Kaeris, kill off my grudge target, and tie up a chunk of Naytes crew in the back of the board. Nayte, on either turn 2 or 3 was able to jump Marcus all the way to Zoraida (who had not moved) and deliver the message to her with no problem. In return, the Stitched together in the back of the board gambled Marcus's life enough times that Marcus died. By the time we got to the end of turn 3, Nayte had grabbed Power Ritual on 3 corners (his deployment corners and my right hand corner), Marcus was dead (to a stitched), the message was delivered, I had my grudge, and we were studying how to get our claim jumps. 

Neither of us were fast players, especially not knowing our crews well, and as we started round 4 the TO called 20 minutes remaining in the round. I asked Nayte if he figured round 4 would be our last round, to which he agreed. I studied the board and came up with my strategy, knowing this was the final round. Nayte was sitting on 5 points, with a Night terror close enough to get to the house for Claim Jump. I was sitting on 4 points, with Collodi and the puppets set to jump around and grab my claim jump. We started the turn and I had initiative. Collodi moved back to put a marrionette onto the Night terror, trying to kill it off. The attacks hurt it but did not kill it, and I then followed up with the other Marrionette pulling Collodi back toward my claim jump and moving over to touch the crates. With only 1 model on my claim jump, I knew I needed something else because Kaeris and the gunsmith would be able to take out the marrionette with no problem. Nayte moved his Night Terror slightly around the building and sat touching the far corner, out of LOS from Zoraida. I moved my stitched up to touch the crates and put up Creepy Fog to provide cover. Kaeris jumped into the cloud of smoke and took some attacks on Collodi, but nothing effective. I moved through the building with my Puking Snake and attacked the Night Terror, missing. Things looked bad for me, but I had one trick left up my sleeve I was confident of. Nayte move forward with his Gunsmith but could not get anywhere to do damage to my dolls. With the last effective activation (Nayte had a Raptor left but it was insignificant), Zoraida moved up onto the scrap pile to the left of the building (Naytes Claim Jump) and used Repulsive to push the Night Terror off the building. We finished out turn 4 a little after the TO called 10 minutes remaining in the round.

Nayte quickly shuffled as if he was going to play out another turn, and at this point I asked him what was up. He said the round was still going, so he wanted to keep playing. I discussed it with him and the two conflicting points were:

Me - If we cannot finish another turn, I do not want to start another turn. If Nayte was willing to play into Lunch the TO was ok with that so we could finish a turn 5, I was up for playing turn 5. If not, then I was not willing to start a new turn.
Nayte - He felt he could win if we started the turn and he got initiative to move back onto the claim jump. He was not willing to play past time into lunch to finish the turn, but wanted to keep playing.

With those two stances, we did not start a new turn and the game ended with a 6/5 win to me. I got a couple looks and comments after the game about playing through to the end of the time, and apparently I was a dick to not do so. I guess I am conflicted over this, as we had agreed going into turn 4 that it was going to be the last turn. In addition, I agree with Nayte that whoever got initiative on turn 5 would likely win the game. If I grabbed initiative I could easily remove Naytes ability to win through a simple move to the front of the house, cast Repulsive (pushing Collodi and my dolls into my own claim jump via positioning, while pushing Naytes models further away from his), then obeying his Night Terror to charge the Gunsmith of Kaeris, moving it too far away from being able to get to his claim jump. Likewise, if Nayte had gotten initiative and moved his Night Terror back onto the house and time was called, he would have grabbed a win without my models being able to take the actions to push them off again.

At the end of the day, I feel bad that my actions were considered a dick move, but I would not change the way I played. I ended up going into round 2 on 3TP/+1 Diff/6VP.

More rounds will be posted through this week.