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Other D&D Miniatures player's viewsJeremy's account June 16th, 2005 Jeremy vs. Gamble The abyssal blast took out 5 of the orc warriors and damaged Grumpsh. He later stoned my Orc Champion. Grumpsh was taken out before he had a chance to swing. It was humiliating. I couldn’t even get to Lord Soth or the Beholder. I think I killed 1 or 2 goblins. Jeremy vs. Richard Richard completely set me up with tile placement and I walked straight into it!! I had all my guys lined up down a corridor to make an impressive swarm and here comes the Red Samurai. I lost all my Orc Warriors with 1 breath. I was hoping for initiative or that he forgot about the weapon. Neither was true. I was able to use my Orc Champion to go after Ryld and I think Richard made a mistake using his Orc Champion to go after the ZWD. The ZWD can take the hits, but is easily avoided. On the next round I won Initiative and was able to take out Ryld, cleave the Orc Brute, and then mangle the Orc Warrior with my Orc Champion. I consider this the turning point of the match. I used my second move to wallop his Orc Champion with the Ogre Ravager. Eventually the Orc Champion routed and I was able to turn my attention to his Ogre Ravager. This was really an awesomely close match and I was lucky to get the win (thanks to the tile point advice).
Jeremy vs. Manny Overall, I thought it was a good tournament. All the bands did really well and owned at one point during the night. I’m still really impressed with Richard’s strategy against Gamble. Richard's account June 16th, 2005 Last night I played in a DnD Skirmish tournament. It was swiss round, 200pt, constructed assault games. What that means is that we built 200pt warbands from any of the available figures and played each of the other players. An assault game you score points in 2 ways, kill your opponents figures or you can gain 10pts per round by occupying a 8x5 tile that is completely on your opponents side of the board.
The tourney at the game shop was cancelled so we
played at this guys house instead. Manny whose home we played at, owns a
computer company and is apparently an avid gamer. His 2-car garage is
converted to a gamming room. The quantity of games, books
and figures that he owns makes
Allen's game room look as bare as an Ethiopian's dinner plate. Another cool
feature in the room is the snack cabinet. It is very reminiscent of the
Jones's pantry on Crescent Street.
Now for the battles. The DDM game is similar to
DnD only in the creature names. You do have Level, AC, HP, Morale, Hit,
Damage, Speed, etc, but your damage and hit points are all based on
intervals of 5. Alot of spells and ranged attack are line of sight. That
means if you can stretch a line across the whole board without being blocked
be a wall you can get a shot off. It makes archers and mages with magic
missiles pretty deadly.
My Chaotic Evil warband consisted of my drow
commander Ryld, orc champion, orc brute, 2 orc warriors, ogre ravager and a
red samurai. The first round I played against a Chaotic Good warband that
was heavy with rangers and elven archers. Since it was the first time that I
was playing an assault game with tile placement I didn't do that great of a
job. Tile placement and movement of figures in DDM is much more strategic
than normal RPG play. It really does bring some chess like qualities to the
game. My big mistake in my first game was not breaking up the open spaces
enough with cover so that my warband could close the gap with his archers
before getting beat up. My opponent's
warband also included 2 frenzied berserkers. They have alot of hit points,
are fearless (no morale check) and do alot of damage. The archers softened
up my guys, then the berserkers ran up and did a really good Benny Hannah on
my big guys. In the end I only killed 3 wolves (minions of the rangers) and
my opponent killed or routed all of my figures. ouch
The second match was against a warband that was
almost exactly like mine. The exception was that his commander was different
and the samurai and orc brute were replaced with a large zombie white
dragon.
This time I did alot better with my tile placement. I basically created a corridor my opponent had to come through to get at my figures. He rushed most of his guys forward to with 1 movement phase. The next round I won the initiative. I was able to move my red samurai up and use his breath weapon and catch almost all of his warband. The breath weapon does 20 pts damage or 10pts if you save. 4 of his figures had under 10 points and were killed outright. The battle was going pretty good for me. I surrounded his most powerful figure; the orc champion; with my drow commander, orc champion and an orc warrior and beat him down to half his hit points. He made his morale check and didn't flee. The round was over and I knew the next round I would be able to wrap things up. We rolled for initiative (I had a plus 8 and he had a plus 4); I rolled a 1 and lost initiative for the first time. He immediately activated his orc champion and attacked my commander. Critical hit for double damage (50 points!), killing my commander. The orc champion also has a special ability called cleave. On a death blow the figure gets an immediate attack against another creature. He used this attack against my orc champion (hit for 25) killing my big gun. And for his normal second attack he hit my orc warrior slicing him in half. Now without a commander and one of my powerhouses hurt I was in serious trouble. His next activation was with his ogre who hit my red samurai for 30 points of damage causing a morale check which I unbelievably rolled a 1 on! With his high movement rate he was able to get route off the board in one round. The next two rounds were a wrap up operation.
The third and final game was against a
powerhouse of a warband. It included Lord Soth as it's commander, a
beholder, and a bunch of goblins as shock troops. I
think this warband is tailor made for Sid. This time I did a much
better job at tile placement. This was needed because Lord Soth and the
beholder both have powerful line of sight weapons. Once per game Lord Soth
can sling an Abyssal Blast at the closest enemy that he can see. An Abyssal
Blast is 8 diameter fireball that does 30 points of damage with a DC 18 save
for half. The beholder is even more deadly. twice per round that can
activate and use an eye stalk. The available spells are telekinesis, inflict
wounds, slow, fear, flesh to stone or disintegrate. I was scared to death of
these 2 guys. For the first 2 rounds I did a great job closing the gap and
sticking to cover. Finally on the 3rd round it started to unravel. I had
strategically placed a lowly orc between Lord Soth and my heavy hitters. A
DDM rule states the you must target the closest figure within sight with
spells or ranged weapons. My orc was guaranteeing that Lord Soth wouldn't
waste his single Abyssal Blast on a lowly orc. Unfortunately the beholder
was now in sight of my warband also. At the end of the round his beholder
blasted my orc to dust. My next figure in line was my ogre ravager. I had
wisely spread out my figures so that any blast would only hit 1 figure.
Since it was the end of the round I didn't worry because I could close the
gap to Lord Soth next round. Well, I lost initiative. He activated his
beholder first. Using telekinesis he attempted to push my ogre backwards. I
failed my DC and fell back 3 spaces. Next Lord Soth attacked with his
Abyssal Blast. He centered it on the newly positioned ogre. Unfortunately
for me by pushing the ogre back my drow commander was now within the blast
zone. The ogre saved but my commander failed his save. From that point on
though was downhill for his warband. It came down to great attack rolls and
saving throws for my figures. Over the next couple of rounds I made saves
versus flesh to stone, 2 disintegrates, slow and fear. I also made my morale
checks when the beholder tried to disintegrate my orc champion and reduced
his hit points to below 50%. I was able to kill Lord Soth (75hp) and gang up
on the beholder. The battle ended with my ogre warrior rolling a natural 20
causing 60 points of damage to the beholder. In the end I only lost 2
figures to one of the most deadly warbands around. For once the rolls were
where they needed to be when it counted most.
It was a lot of fun. In about 4 hours we had
played 3 games of hard fought
battles. Though the next couple of weeks will be pretty busy with some RPG
stuff, I'm looking forward to playing some more DDM.
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