Tournament Report Steel Wars 2

 

Yesterday I ran the second installment of the Steel Wars tournament in Duisburg. 

With a bunch of people dropping close to the event sadly we had an attendance of 10 players which is honestly fine for Germany. And we had Nicky and Tim from Belgium come over which was especially great 😃 

For me personally it was gonna be a farewell for now tournament for the Guardians of the Galaxy, which would guarantee me the 30 games badge on Longshanks. I had already decided beforehand that Nova, Star-Lord and the gang would get a well deserved shelf rest until the release of Adam Warlock, Phyla-Vell and Moondragon. 

The event taking place exactly one week after the big Ministravaganza shake ups meant that we all didn't have a lot of time to practice the impact of those changes to our rosters. I actually hadn't played a single Guardians game during the week. 

Round one I got paired against Groschak who is our German Apocalypse main and we also got the Apocalypse table that Burkhard brought: 

The crisis draw came out to: M'Kraan and the new Jailbreak and I chose 20 threat to get the Servants as far away from their ideal 17 as possible. My squad consisted of Star-Lord, Bill, Rocket, Nova and Gladiator. Groschak brought Apocalypse, Gambit (Death), Magik (War), Sabertooth (Pestilence) and Psylocke (Famine). Sadly Gladiator was probably not the right choice as he got absolutely drowned in special conditions and easily taken care of by the big man on the other side. We basically tied for the first couple of rounds but in round 3 Groschak was able to outscore me heavily which I couldn't really recover from as he only needed two points to win in round 4. 

Final score 19:12 for the Servants and my first ever loss with Gladiator on the board (5:1 now). 

Second round I had to take on Mathias who plays X-Force. We got to fight on Asgard (which is one of my boards) and the crisis draw ended up being Riots and Alien Ship. Locked at 17 threat I chose to deploy my standard 17 of Star-Lord, Rocket, Groot, Bill and Nova. Who had to face off against Cable, Sunspot, Deadpool, Honey Badger and X-23. 

Sadly I didn't take a lot of pictures during this game which was very close for three rounds and then the Rocket show started. Being left alone on my back point and having to face both the Kinny sisters (who were both on their injured side) I had basically given up hope he'd live to see the next day. Mathias chose to activate Honey Badger first who was on full 4 health and had to move once to reach the little Raccoon. I jokingly said well watch me roll 4 Crits on the Booby trap. And I think everyone at the tournament heard what actually happened right there and then: 3 Crits and a Wild. Honey Badger KOed in her own activation and Rocket living to get to activate one more time. He had two chances of firing at X-23. And he absolutely obliterated her off the table. With Big Dumb Hero Nova taking care of Sunspot and Cable (with help from Groot who was KOed at the time already) and Bill wining the 1:1 against Deadpool I was able to score all 7 points in the round and win the game. 

Final score: 18:8. 

Last round I got paired up into Tim from Belgium who had a 1:0:1 record at the time, his first round game against my brother ending with an 18:18 tie due to time. 

We ended up playing Infinity Formula and Scientific Samples locking us in at 17 threat. So I deployed my standard 17 squad again and had to face King T, M'Baku, Okoye and Hulk on the streets of New York (another of mine). 

I decided to have Bill face off against Hulk and M'Baku alone while Rocket, Groot and Nova tried to take care of King T and Okoye. Star-Lord picked up my back Sample and went over to my right side too, which was probably mistake as he spent the next turns slowly flying over to my left again. The game was very close for the entire time but was decided by two well timed important decisions by Tim. Bill had spiked heavily into M'Baku with a Summon the Storm which Tim basically recaled into basically nothing and then after he wasn't able to daze a 1 HP Bill with a terrain throw he made one attack into Star-Lord. It didn't do any damage either but he got the push and pursuit trigger. After taking a long time measuring Tim finally decided to push Peter as far away from M'Baku (who hold a Sample) and retreating back to his own Infinity Formula. I had to take the risk it and advance Star-Lord straight to M'Baku but Tims gamble paid off when he was narrowly but clearly outside of Range 4. This meant we tied at 14 at the end of round 3. I got Prio in Round 4 and had to make a desperate move with Big Dumb Hero Nova in moving long and spender beaming M'Baku to take his extract and secure which at least would have kept the game going. In his last activation before he's put on the shelf for hopefully only a couple of months far and away best marvel character in the comics Richard Rider threw a total of 11 dice Energy with a Winging It token into M'Bakus 2 defense dice and cleanly: didn't do any damage at all...  That meant Tim could just double move M'Baku to the corner of the board and guarantee him the 18:17 win. Well earned victory for Tim but of course not the farewell for my Guardians I had hoped for. 

On the top table Nickys Hydra was able to hold off Groschaks Servants of the Apocalypse for the win. 

Sadly two of the third round games had to end before either player reached 16 VPs or round 6 due to time which is why we've already decided to be using chess clocks next time.  But as far as I could tell everyone had a good time overall and we've had lots of fantastic conversations too especially with the Belgians even though they came to crush us taking place 1 and 2 between them. We'll absolutely try and return the favor in the future though 😉

My Guardians Roster for the day. 

While I obviously would have liked to finish my Guardians run for the year with a winning record at the event I did achieve my minimum goal: 

And even with the 1:2 record for the day the one for the year remains quite positive: 

Apparently I forgot to mark my leader once as I definitely haven't played a leaderless game 🤔

Competitively next for me will be Avengers where I lean on the good old Hulk crutch and play Steve 1. I have only played 5 games as Avengers overall and have a 4:1 record with them (often thanks to Hulk) so let's see how the last two games in our German TTS League will go with them. On the side I'm gonna try some X-Men, but strictly casual as set plays and deep plans are something I simply can't hold the focus for. 

And finally here are some more impressions from the event: 

My Wakanda board 

Best Painted winner 

The construction site board done by my brother. 

Thanks again everyone for coming and making the event a success. 

I'm not sure if and when the next installment of the Steel Wars will be as we kind of have an important date in the middle of next November 😬

That's it for today! 

Cheers from Germany 🍻