I stayed the night in Franklin and headed out to Dickson, TN Saturday morning to play in the War of the Dragon Queen prerelease. It was a straight shot up 96 (Murfreesboro Rd., the main drag in Franklin) about an hour and was a beautiful drive, sunny and mild. Reminded me of Route 9 in CT where I grew up.
I must say, it is always depressing to live in an urban area with very little gaming activity, and drive an hour away to a rural town of maybe 3000 and find a beautiful gaming store. Well, the actual store portion was pretty small, maybe 1200 square feet, but there was another 5000 in back for Magic, Yugi-Oh and DDM. Surprisingly, even though they are likely the only game in town, their prices on all their items were excellent. Boosters were $10, common and uncommon figures were anywhere between $.25 and $.50 each; I picked up about a dozen after the tournament.
It was just my luck that the Prerelease mini was the Huge Fiendish Spider. Those who know me know my intense and lasting love of arachnids. Not. Of course one of my huge pulls in the tourney was yet another spider. Great. At least I now have one red and one black huge monstrous ugly spotted snarling web-spinning terror.
My first impression of my first sealed tourney was that this set is not very balanced for limited play. At least from what I saw there was too large of a power variance among the huge figures. My two huges (neither rare) were a Huge Fiendish Spider and a Displacer Beast Pack Lord. Neither was comparable to some of the other huges I had to face. The spider is nice more due to its resistances and DR than it's poison. In the 15 or so times it did damage, it did not poison anything; part of this was due to it standing off against a construct the first game and the player making his saves in the 2nd. The fact that it only lasted 3 rounds the 2nd match didn't help.
That brings me back to the power level issue. My two best creatures had a total maximum damage output of 70/round. The Eldritch Giant I faced in the 2nd match was regularly doing 80 by himself, and his friend the dwarf construct was doing 45 or 60 more. Although I ended up with max activations (8), even the better of those creatures rarely lasted more than one round if something was actively trying to kill it. I had both a Greenspawn Razorfiend and a Golden Protector, each of which looks like it might see some 200 point play. However, neither can take the beating pumped out in Epic. My other figures, even though 3 of them were 30+ points, were just fodder and rarely registered as an actual threat to an enemy piece.
This was my warband, and it included my 7 of my top 8 most expensive figures (not counting the free promo spider):
Displacer Beast Pack Lord - 169
Huge Fiendish Spider - 142
Greenspawn Razorfiend - 45
Golden Protector - 41 (Rare)
Witchknife - 33 (I thought he might get lucky and stun something once in a while...the first game he died 2nd round, and of his 6 attempted stuns, no creatures failed their saves)
Storm Archer - 33
Dragonborn Fighter - 30 (My 2nd rare, he completely sucked)
Poison Dusk Lizardfolk - 7
All matches were played on Lost Temple, which was fine with me as I don't know the maps very well, and don't own many (though I just got Fane of the Drow and Hellspike Prison from Amazon today!).
My first opponent was a nice guy, seems he is one of the regulars at the shop. It looked like his pull was only slightly better than mine, and he ran:
Huge Fire Elemental
Huge Fiendish Spider (Anyone sensing a theme here? If you got sucky pulls you played the promo; except for moi, who pulled a 2nd sucky spider)
Greenspawn Razorfiend
Cadaver Collector (Very good piece! The Paralysis cone nearly turned the match and killed me)
Small Copper Dragon
Bonded Fire Summoner (Not so good as he didn't have any mini elementals to summon, but he did make the Huge Fire speed 12, geez!)
He was going to try to play the stay away and move up slowly game until I critted him first round with my Storm Archer (later recalled because of course Elementals are immune to crits, boo!) Still, he brought his Huge Fire Elemental up fast, which proved to be a mistake as I managed to get quite a team whacking him. Nice part about the Displacer king is his melee reach 4, which means I could hit many things from almost anywhere near a battle, and even over another huge.
The elemental went down and I started to work on his fodder pieces (and the Collector). I killed off the Greenspawn, the Small Copper, and the Fire Summoner, but never even touched the other spider before time was called. I felt comfortable with how the game was going until he unloaded the Cadaver Collector's paralysis cone and paralyzed 3 of my 4 remaining pieces. Luckily the spider remained awake and finished off the collector and the others woke up just as time was called. I won on points. (yay, first DDM tourney match!)
The next round wasn't so pretty. I always read alot on Maxminis talking about how important maxing your activations is, and often questioned how true it is. Once I saw him running only 4 creatures to my 8, I knew he was likely to walk all over me. (He did) His team:
Eldritch Giant
Slaughterstone Eviscerator (Epic)
Blackspawn Exterminator
Warden of the Wood
I decided immediately I had to concentrate on the Giant and his 250 HP, mostly because even at +19 my Displacer still only had a 50% of hitting the Slaughterstone. He obliged and teleported the giant straight to the front. I may have made a mistake, but I charged in with the spider and followed with the reach 4 of the Displacer. My Dragonborn engaged his Blackspawn to prevent it from flanking (His 22+3 bonus AC was actually pretty good in this case) and also got off his tiny breath weapon against 3 bad guys. Still, the Spider only lasted 2 rounds with the Giant and the Eviscerator, and the Golden Protector went down the next round. I tried stunning the Giant with the Witchknife for 5 or 6 consecutive rounds, and even though it only has a 25% chance of working on the giant, I could have expected it to work once, but no dice.
I eventually managed to slay the Giant around 8 rounds into the match, but he still had the untouched Eviscerator (and the Warden was still kicking after having rallied) and I had a big cat with all of 90hp left. Going head to head with the construct yielded what one would expect and the kitty died.
I had hoped the Displacer was going to be a very good piece, however with an AC 17, his only true protection is the Conceal 11, which means every attack from an epic piece (and even some of the good non-Epic pieces like Marut) has a 50/50 shot of hitting. With only a level 10 I was lucky to not have him run off the board. His damage output of 20 non-magic was also not that great, as he had to hit against both a Spider and the Collector with DR 5, netting max 30 damage/round. Even his paint job was pretty blah, with what looks to be only 3 colors and a dark wash, and there is a visible molding line at his neck. (The also-uncommon Greenspawn was about as blah as well)
Overall, the experience was pretty disappointing. Unlike War Drums, there weren't many good commanders to be had, and I lost initiative most rounds with my only commander being the Displacer and his 0 rating. Also, there were very few mid-level creatures (meaning Epic mid-level), the only one I saw being the Cadaver Collector, that although not Epic, still stood his ground for a while and was worth his 100+ points. When the points drop from 150+ to 50 and under, the power levels of the secondary figures aren't even worth their cost, as they tend to drop in 1-2 rounds versus the heavy hitters.
A couple of the figures I opened even seem like they will be under-powered in 200. The Witchknife and Storm Archer are both 33 points. It doesn't look like constructs are going away anytime soon, so the nearly infinite stuns of the psionic Witchknife will mostly go to waste, and I'd definitely rather have a Duergar over him. His 5 non-magic damage is also pretty pathetic. I really wanted to like the Storm Archer, but again for 33 you are giving up a beater for a pretty fragile ranged fighter. If he gets based you've pretty much lost 33 points for naught. At 25-27 either would be closer to playable as a support piece.
The Dragonborn FIghter is a good sculpt, with some nice armor and coloring, but he must be the worst rare to pull for sealed. A +10/+5 attack rating for 10 non-magic is pretty pointless. Even his breath weapon is only 15 damage (5 if save, which most do). His one redeeming quality is his 25 ac vs. dragons, but in the 2nd match that only meant tying up my opponent's weak 3rd hitter, which he really didn't need anyway. He could have ignored the Dragonborn completely for all the damage he did.
Regardless, I'm glad I went, and with 1/1 I might even end up above 1600 in rating. It was a perfect day to be out and about, and I know how easy it is to get to for the next pre-release. Hope everyone else had a guten weekend also!
