Yesterday I have attended the Warzone event in Birmingham. It was good fun as ITS tend to be, though I didn't do as well as I wanted to. Once more I have only ended up over the middle line, 8th place out of 18 people. Without trying to make excuses for myself, I think my biggest mistake was not preparing for the missions, especially the first one (Beacon Race). I focused too much on practicing for the upcoming Northern Open. There will be more details description of each mission below but in brief, in the first mission I went against Caledonia which I didn't expect at all. I put my attention onto Classified too much and I believe it is what lost me the game. Second mission was Armoury and I did great in that one (thank you Mayacast for the mission tips!). Last mission was Supremacy and while I made some mistakes, the game pretty much fell apart because my opponent rolled a crit for so many of his rolls.
Interesting was that we had over two hours for each round but I only played two turns in the first two games. Well we did third turn in the first mission I believe but we played over the time, and the third turn on last mission I was in Retreat. I think big part of that were the tables, they were quite open so we took too long to deploy. I tried to do it as fast as possible but some opponents took their time (or it felt that way anyway). It was definitely different to what I am used to from Leeds, which is fast deployment and fast missions. Overall it was a good event and I am happy with my lists but I should have prepare more for the missions.
Also my first opponent recognized me from this blog, which was kinda cool.
Game 1: Beacon Race - Caledonia vs Caledonia
Lost 3 to 7
Unfortunate match-up as I didn't expect to face Caledonia. It didn't help I never played the mission before and thought (stupidly) I could just wing it. Turned out I couldn't, or at least not against someone using my own tactics against me. I lost the Lt roll and went second. First turn wasn't terrible, don't think I lost anything and opponent had one beacon, so I had good chance to seize my own and keep the game on the same level but I went for classified instead. Which I got both of them but then didn't have enough orders to get a beacon. In the second turn my opponent got another two or it might have been over two turns he got two, but I knew the game was over for me at that point. I only managed to get one myself in the end.
Only in the last turn most things died. One of my SAS went into Rambo-mode and killed many people even when the odds were against him. Overall I expected my opponent to be more aggressive but he knew what he was doing with the objectives. One big mistake I made was leaving my Dozer Engineer in the objective room, after he didn't have enough orders to get a beacon, rather than moving him back for cover outside.
Some of the things I learned: Cameronians make for great objective carriers, when the mission allows it. I don't think what my opponent done would have worked against armies with MSV Lv2 or 3 but Smoke works great against armies that do not have access to MSV Lv2. Although we had very different army lists, I noticed we played similarly in the terms that his SAS did lots of the leg work and Cameronians were at the front with them. He did have Wallace with 45th Rifles link team sitting in a building the whole game, which I understand why but whenever I play Wallace, I don't feel right keeping him at the back of the board but admittedly I did notice myself in other games that he makes good clean up unit to defend the DZ from flankers.
Game 2: Armoury - Caledonia vs Qapu Khalqi
Won 7 to 2
In this mission I knew what I was doing. My opponent won the Lt roll and chose deployment, so I went first. I stormed the objective room with Isobel, SAS, Uxia and Dozer in the first turn by Isobel going first and Lockpicking one of the doors. From the loot boxes Isobel got +4 ARM and SAS found a combi rifle. Isobel the proceeded to shoot one of the doors but only caused 1 STR loss. The Dozer then D-charged all doors but one of them just wouldn't die. In his turn my opponent wasn't very aggressive and I held the room.
In the second turn most of my army got inside, destroyed both of the loot boxes. We were approaching the round time limit so it was my last turn. On top of the previous units, 112 Doctor and Wallace in Volunteer Link Team got inside the objective room. Most other things were dead by then or in a combat group without orders to spare. With his last orders my opponent used a camo unit to open the last closed door and shot a shotgun into five people, I didn't beat his roll and he took around 100 pts with the one shot. But I still had as much left in there, so I won the game
I couldn't get one of my classified done without sacrificing the hacker but I could have get one more point if my 112 didn't kill the guy he was suppose to Doctor and I had nothing else unconscious around. Looking back I think I could have protect the room better instead of rushing everyone inside because I only needed more points inside than my opponent but I was worried he would do a suicide run with some units and take the room by having second turn. I think my opponent made the mistake of giving me the Initiative choice but I could see why second turn would be useful.
Game 3: Supremacy - Caledonia vs Ariadna
Lost 3 to 4
I was confident going into the last game. I was matched against my mate James and for all the practice I have done, it didn't matter at all because he rolled critical so many times. I really know now how it feels when I do it to my opponents sometime. In the first turn I wasn't aggressive and killed nothing and he just obliterated one of my flanks (Wallace in Volunteer link, Cameronian, 112, only Wallace survived). My other flank held steady for the most part but I made few stupid mistakes, mostly with Uxia by not checking the person she was going to kill went back to camo and she was placed to give smoke support to Isobel while the job was done my 45th Rifles so she could have been used better somewhere else. I also forgot about my guided missiles, which would have helped as I had FO SAS in a good position. I only held one quarter both turns, while my opponent had three so my points were from Classified and hacking two objectives.
The best thing in my army was my missile laucher that took out a Rocket Launcher and Doctor with the blast, then a Sniper across the board, then Tank Hunter HMG and Engineer by the blast and lastly a Metro HMG. He was on a proper rampage until he got killed from close range in the end. Overall the game pretty much fell apart because of the number of criticals, not because I played it wrong. Hopefully that will not happen in NO3 next weekend.
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