Anyone else watching the live stream right now on twitch? http://www.twitch.tv/greaterthangames
I don't see any built-in way to chat w/ other people watching the stream. One can create a chat room, which I've done, and then send out invites to other twitch users. If you want to be invited, let me know your twitch username. If you PM me, I'll get a notification.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Just saw a thrilling fourth round match.
Dawn and Bunker were banned.
Draft was: Blade, Legacy, Tachyon and then I'm not sure the order of the final three. Teams were Blade, Beacon, Unity vs Legacy, Tachyon, Ra.
Tachyon came out first (probably a mistake -- better to start w/ Legacy so the defense is in place from the beginning) and Blade then went, pushing her out of the trees and into the range of an auto turret. Tachyon was knocked out on turn 3, by Beacon and then Tachyon would spent most of the second round dealing with the turret.
Unity used Swift Bot and Reconfiguration to drop Turret bot next to Ra and Legacy. Legacy tried to take all the attacks, but it was ruled that switching places _also_ triggered attacks, so Ra and Legacy ended up taking two attacks each instead of one each.
Blade eventually got knocked out, but Ran and Legacy were both short on hit points and Legacy went down as well.
With time running short and down two incaps to one, Tachyon attacked and incapped Beacon and then used Pushing the Limits to get another turn and took Unity down from four to one hit point. One more point and they would have won outright.
Blade had just enough time to stand up, but not enough to take the action. With the game tied on incaps, it came down to percentage of remaininhg HP. Blade/Beacon/Unity had 6/15 (only because Blade was able to stand up). Legacy/Tachyon/Ra had 7/15 and got the win.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
I had no idea it was going down today!
I hope a recording of it goes up because I can't watch it right now.
Stop lurking, it makes you look like a villain target
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all
There's a chat room on every twitch channel on the right hand side. You might have to click a button to open it though.
I wasn't watching because I was busy playing Tactics as part of Multiverse Month!
Lead Bit Flipper, Handelabra Games
Developer of Sentinels, Bottom of the 9th, and Spirit Island
Thanks. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but I couldn't see the chat room that I expected to be there. I eventually reloaded my web page and it was there. We've been having fun in the chat. (Hi, foote!)
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Just saw the other 4th round match. This is the round that determines who makes it into the semis from the secondary bracket. Not as good as the last game, but still fun.
The bans were Legacy and Dawn. Draft was Unity, Bunker, Baron, Beacon, Omni, Wraith.
I thought Blade/Omni would win for sure. Unity could practically have just ignored the fight. The Blade player, however, failed to punish Bunker for building up tokens and Bunker got off the Omnicannon. Blade missed an opportunity for an 11 dice attack. Bunker also sat in the middle of the field in Turret Mode and dealt out a bunch of damage.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Day one is over. Both teams going to the finals tomorrow are undefeated, so it will be a best of 3 match. 11AM CST (noon eastern).
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
There was a pretty epic finish in one of the off-camera quarterfinal matches. One team was leading 1 incap to 0 and about to get the second incap with Legacy when the second team pulled off the Ambuscade Trap Stack - Omnitron move, incapped Legacy (who heroically intercepted) and TAchyon and then pushed Ra into the path of the Powered Remote Turret, which took him out.
How many teams/games were there?
Also, any comments about the new banning rule?
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
16 teams, double elimination, a ton of games.
I think the new rule is really great for variety - every character was used except Proletariat and there was not much of the Dawn/Truth strat
As that Blade player, our team just picked up the game for the first time today really and I didn't realize that token punishing one-shot I had until I made the teleport in and by then it was too late. But Omni missing on all 3 attacks, followed by swift bot missing, followed by my slash and burn missing really was a huge depressing loss of a round.
Anyways still a fun tourny and was a blast to learn and play.
I saw the first three matches they streamed and the common theme was being defensive. And in one if the matches it seemed the eventual winners almost have it away when Citizen Dawn retreated instead of trying to deal Beacon one more damage
edit: likely the defensive strategy dealt with players being unfamiliar with the game.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
I believe nearly all of the teams had only demo'd the game the day before, so I would imagine that was a lot of it. It was impressive how much studying a lot of them were doing between round - watching other games, watching previous ttourney VOD's, looking through all teh character powers, asking us is strategies they were thinking of could work. It was a pretty awesome thing to see
Glad you're enjoying it. I should keep in mind that the only reason I feel even as knowledgeable as I do is because I've been through a tournament now and I've listened to Christopher's analysis.
When we were in the inaugural tournament, our team name was 'Happy To Be Here', because we'd mostly traveled to STL just to have a good time, not because any of us knew the game very well. If we hadn't gotten an incidental master class against one of the eventual finalists in our first round loss, we probably would have gotten knocked out faster than we did. As it is, having seen them use the Dawn/Truth strategy, use Legacy effectively, and use Blade VERY effectively, we were able to use all those tactics against our second round opponent, and then tough out a close game in the third round. (I one-shotted Truth with Blade's Fission Blaster). With only eight teams, after 3 rounds we'd made it to the semis. The team that beat us in the 1st round then showed us how to beat most of the tactics they used against us then, handly taking appart the Dawn/Truth defense using Omnitron.
Anyway, apologies if I was harsher than needed.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
I'm not sure how many dice all of those attacks have. One of the things we learned in our massive first round loss (0-3 in 30 minutes) was the incredible power of large dice attacks. Doesn't matter if all ten dice are 1s. If the defender only has three defense dice, that's still seven hits.
One of the questions that's come up is how much the die rolls seem to be making the difference in the game versus ban/draft choices and tactical choices. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that yet. Certainly the dice are making a difference, but my inclination so far is that it has been a secondary factor to the ban/draft and the tactics.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
I liked the ban of a character because it forced other characters to be used. Of the three matches I watched only Tachyon, the Operative, and Proletariat weren't chosen. It was good to hear strategy from Christopher about each of them.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
The powered Turrets on the map make Pro a very very hard choice because it cripples his largest strength (covering the map). Any kind of AoE push like omnitron or Ra (popular picks) are too much of a hard counter with that map layout. You would have to devout a precious few turns hitting the turret instead of the other team and in a these timed matches the pros wouldn't out weight the cons. So to speak
It would be funny if Con became a character at some point and we could actually have Proletariat and Con against each other.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Well, right now, the Pros are at the Con.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
I liked the addition of the turrets to the map I thought it was a good touch. I agree with Pro being a hard choice but I think it could've been done in some of the matches as the last choice depending upon the opponent. I didn't see all of the matches from yesterday so I'm curious if the Operative or Tachyon got picked at any point.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Missed that comment entirely. Wish GtG had the matchups posted on the site or tweeted about it. I know they'll release videos eventually but that probably won't be for a month or more.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
And the videos they release will only be the ones from the main board, not all of them.
Still, Tachyon was livestreamed and was critical to one of the matches, getting two turns in a row that at the very end that got an incap and did enough damage to another character (3/4 on Unity) that the team squeaked out the win on damage ratios.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
It's all good, that match we were talking about for what seemed like hours afterwards. It was analyzing our mistakes. For Beaver Bane, our team, we demo'd it Friday and thought hey, let's join the tourney.
So we had our first match on the livestream and we hadn't seen Omni used yet. So not wanting to learn what a 7hp monster did, we banned him in favor over Citizen Dawn who we knew could get out minions cause as Baron I could focus blast if they came for us. They banned dawn and all was good.
We hid in the tree area and they came for us with abzero's hazards and abul's trap surrounding us it didn't make much since to move around. With 10 min left. Our bunker got an awesome grenade launch incap'ing two enemy players at once securing our victory.
The next match, we banned Dawn first this time and they banned legacy. So they picked bAron first, then our unity, then their omni, our bunker, I frog their 3rd and since I had only played baron to this point abz seemed nest so I picked him.
However so many tiny rules errors were made such as the other teams were allowed to switch turn order, which was clarified in the next round, and how dodge and aim interacted with +1 tokens and Omni's armor, in addition to me getting pushed deep in between all enemy players and a turret, it was a tough match.
At the last seconds with Kenya bot (swift) racing across the field to incap baron the match was tied and ended. Since each team had one player incap'd and the other 2 at full, the other team won after it was determined their total life total was higher than ours.
Determined after the lost to do better, we played next round banning Omni and them baron. After getting massacred as Abz, I went with Ambu keeping the rest of the team the same, which I perfered alot more. We once again turtled in the trees with my hunter bot and traps clogging up the middle. Dawn sent in her 7hp citizen to clear a path and then she charged up the middle and incap'd all 3 of us with her Aurora, we got up and incap'd her.
She fled after that and my hunter bot ran up to wraith incap'ing her as well. Great game and was happy how we played.
Next round was to be streamed with us again but our opponents wanted to see more of pax and left. That gave us an hour break to eat and rest up. Tacyons team won that match at the very end with her attacking about 7 or 8 times after pushing the limits.
So our final match was again livestreamed. This match we switched things up too much. We went with play over ban, we lost our bunker to the other team, we lost our normal position of in the trees, and Ethan had to learn omni really quickly since he didn't have bunker anymore. Beacin charged up thE middle and hit omni but a turn later we determined that couldn't happen as being next to stealth not gabe him cover. And got it retroed. So as exhausted and tired as we were foolishly hopped in to direct combat and had every single one of us attacks miss. Bunker was unable to get incap and proceed to go turret mode and blast us away. It was hard, the only attacks that hit were my 8dice attack vs beacon that brought her down to 1, the exploding bot that incap'd beacon?, and the exploding bot that incap'd our own omni. It was tough and we will definitely go further next time.
Good job to everyone involved it was tons of fun and a big learning experience.
Congrats to Rainbows and Unicorns for winning it. They got thrown off a bit in the second round but worked it out. Bunker brought the boom in that game.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
@GtG
There are some rumors going around that some teams were using deflated dice. Care to comment?
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Yeah reports are that 11 of 12 dice were not at the proper PSI
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
The only character that was not in the matches was Proletariat. Everyone else made a showing.
I was an adjudicator on the first day of the tournament so I answered a lot of rule questions but didn't get to see details of any particular game (except the Ambuscade stack that Omni-V pushed Tachyon into).
Bunker, Baron Blade, Omnitron-V and Citizen Dawn were the most banned characters.
I know of three games that had Visionary. One where she incapped the Baron after the Baron incapped her due to her ongoing on her card.
One game Citizen Dawn ran into an area with Absolute Zero and multiple Unity bots and dropped Devistating Aurora. They attempted to get the bots to explode to kill AZ before they had to incap him for sure from the Aurora, but they weren't quite successful (1 health left, I believe). Still, with 3 powers possible in play he needed 3 rounds to recover from it.
"Deja-fu? You've heard of that?"
- Lu Tze, Sweeper, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
Much of my time at the screen on the show floor was spent explaining the game mechanics to passersby, but I did manage to see the end of this game. Was pretty exciting seeing one of my thematically favorite characters make so much of a dent in the other team. Next time, I'm hoping to see Absolute Zero make more appearances at the main table.
I am glad that you all enjoyed the tournament! We have big plans for the PAX East tournament, both at the booth (we are getting another TV to show the match live at the show) and in the tournament itself in order to encourage exciting, agressive play (which tends to be the dominant strategy anyway, but it tends to take new players the first half of the tourney to discover that fact).
“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
We totally need a UK tournament! ;)
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
@Silverleaf
I completely agree. I suspect that I want that to happen almost as much as you do! :)
“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
Now that the videos are up I can see what you were saying. Having played this match, me being Unity, and knowing we lost because of Beginner's Luck getting the last incap I was confused. Turns out the Twitch feed didn't take the 1 health from Tachyon for her extra turn move. The game went to the third tie breaker. Though to be fair if I had paid attention and attacked her with my Swift Bot instead of just going to lay next to Ra we might have won on the health tie breaker. Oh well, glad the match was good since we just learned the game the day before!
My only problem with the game as a whole is that my friends all live in other states so now that I'm back home in NoVA I don't have anyone to play with.
Oh. Wow. I don't even know what the third tie breaker is!
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Over in the Sentinel Tactics discussion forum, someone is talking about playing online using roll20. You might could check into that.