The Metagame and the U.S. Nationals event.

Thank you to Draddog for reactivating my account. My political stepout I feel was justified, but in all honesty (or immaturity) for how long can one hold a grudge, especially when the game (and the metagame) is on the up and up.

I must say that nationals were a great success for the game and its players. Raine did an awesome job, and it was a great idea to rule that 2 bm¡¦s had to agree on a rule call to have it official, else they got Raine. Also, if the player still didn¡¦t like the rule, they could use their second chance token and get raine anyway. What a great idea. These days, I look forward to the future of this great game.

My sealed pull:
Booster one had a SH rifleman, merc shoddy assault vehicle, 2 inconsequential infantry

Booster two had a SW rifleman, ssw garrot, 1 br mortar team, 1 inconsequential infantry

Booster three had df bounty hunter, ssw aesir, 1 (10move jj) infantry, 1 inconsequential infantry.

I used the BHunter which is a piece I out and out hate. It¡¦s a terrible piece for somebody who calculates and tries to coordinate attacks and control the board. All it really has on its side is luck. I choose the ssw garrot with the ssw aesir even though the aesir has an 8 attack and single use streaks, mostly because the shoddy assault vehicle meant I had a lot less infantry. Was this the right choice? I don¡¦t know, but it allowed me to take 4 or 5 of the infantry.

Bhunter blew chunks. He faced off against five armies. Of those five armies 3 of them had 2 arty, and the danged di towed can put a pog anywhere. Couple that with a mortar squad or an arrow and put them 6 inches apart and basically the BH can never attack without taking damage. ƒ¼ As you probably all know, after 4 clicks the BH is very bad with a 20 defense and has lost evade. I couldn¡¦t do the suicide trick and win vc1+3 b/c I couldn¡¦t¡¦ win vc 3 with slow infantry and two incredibly frail vehicles.

I also faced all 4 of the SC 16inch range mechs over the 5 games. I was charged 4 times during the 5 rounds, and only 1 missed. 2 of the other three connected while I was at prime. In every game but one he took at least one damage (crit missed once) in the first 10-15 minutes of the game. I never stood around to be shot unless I had to, and I never charged save once in the last game. My opponents hit him with crit hits, streak shots, and indirect shots¡K overall I think they had a 50% hit ratio against him. I hate the BHunter. In short, it was a nightmare and I¡¦ve never had a bigger headache in my life than I did after the first day.

It really is no wonder that my opponent at the end of sealed probably wanted to step on me about as badly as I wanted to step on the Bhunter. I was mad at the mech and not the happiest of players. To have been accused of stalling in that game though was wrong, even my opponent had told me that I wasn¡¦t stalling and taking a constant amount of time for all my turns, about two minutes, and considering we took at least 15 turns that game, I was fairly ticked to have been accused of cheating.

It was contagious though, and caused me severe problems the next day in HTH. I was accused of stalling in game two vs. the three mech sc army¡K told I was clocked at an excessively long turn. Considering the game finished before time I thought this was amusing, until it became clear by the look in somebody¡¦s eye that I was being DQ¡¦ed from the tournament. I could be wrong, and they could have been ¡¥clocking¡¦ me during my third game, wherein the game was, in all sadness over before it started for my enemy. I feel they clocked the wrong person and thought it was me. I dragged my 3rd round opponent into the fire and asked him in front of Raine if I had taken anything even close to a long turn. He said no. It became later obvious to me that a certain opponent had a certain connection with a certain bm who perhaps wasn¡¦t as unbiased as they could have been.

In the end, raine took charge of the situation as she did with all situations and did it right. She issued me my second warning, to not have the bm lose face and told me that she personally had to witness me doing it, to give me my 3rd warning (thus DQ). She watched all my games personally from that point on¡K to my request since I don¡¦t stall¡K and thus I got to know her well.

She is awesome. My opinions on some of her calls are as follows:

Perhaps Will63 getting dq¡¦ed was a bad call. In the end, she didn¡¦t write the rule that says players playing with the wrong pieces get dq¡¦ed, it is just her job to uphold that rule. She enforces, not writes them. Also, regardless of whether 50% or 5% of the people heard the announcement over the PA to get new pogs, it was announced and ultimately it is still the player¡¦s responsibility. On the flip side, a warning with a loss wouldn¡¦t have been terrible as Will just wanted to play at that point (being already out of top8), and even more so since he came from california too.

Nick showing up on time as an alternate and the other guy being 15-20 minutes late. This is really a no brainer, the games hadn¡¦t started. Can you imagine if she told the #6 guy he couldn¡¦t play, and we hadn¡¦t started? I mean, think of the firestorm then. Nick was in and out of the top8 more than just that once though, since the first posted results had him at 8th. I don¡¦t think nick felt she handled it wrongly, but of course he was disappointed. Afterall, he probably would have won. But hey, nick got the girl, which is BY FAR the better thing to walk away with. Lol. :>

Her LOS arty call (if it even happened) is pure nitpicking. She was in charge of the entire event and if these are the only three things that we can find fault with, well then, in my opinion she is the champion of the convention. She provided the level ground with solid rules and no nonsense attitude that worked. In the end, say what we will, it worked. She was fantastically personably and approachable too.

My most awed moment around her was when I realized she was taking initiative between arguments. She didn¡¦t even wait for two players to have their point said before she would lay down the rule as it is, perfectly, with no room for argument. I loved warlordstat, but he was certainly susceptible to ¡¥talking and convincing¡¦, Raine is not. She always made herself the bad guy in the argument between players, letting two players go back to being friendly toward each other. For that, but not that alone though, I would say wizkids found the perfect person for that job. I would feel comfortable and fair playing in any tourney she was in charge of.

Man, I¡¦m tired, still¡K I will post more in this thread soon. :> I want to get into what I believe the current metagame is, and what some of the army prototypes are.

To everybody I met at nationals, I miss you already. Why can¡¦t nationals be every weekend?

Sarphus(sp?) said it best, ¡¥it isn¡¦t who plays the best, it is who plays the best without sleep.¡¦ Enter: midnight run. :>

-c

who hoo first post
wow did I say that
welcome back corle

this is totally posted in the wrong forum... rusty, i guess. :>
-c

Is there something...wrong...with your keyboard? Oh well. Kudos on your awesome army/win. I especially love the 3 BR Sprint thing, it kicks major a--.

There is nothing wrong with his keyboard, he used (probably) used M$ Word to type in his post and pasting it here...

Welcome back Corle!

yep, m$ word it was. :>
-c

In regards to the VTOL swarm tactic returning...

I actually foresaw something like this (though I can say that in retrospect). After CA came out, the VTOLs around here dropped like rocks. No one wanted to play one because everyone was tossing a MHI or Aesir into an army just to see what happened.

But....

As soon as the VTOLs disappeared, slowly, so did the AA units. The MHIs aren't bad tanks, but the Aesir (especially the SH one) are glass-jawed. Additionally, pog warrior was strong around here (I am a noted pog-warrior cheese boy) and arty does an adequate job of suppressing one or two VTOLS.

Now, since artillery is suddenly 'teh n3rfed', one method of supressing VTOLs is weaker. And people aren't remembering to put in AA since they remember that one game against that guy when their Aesir missed that one shot. Over the last month I've seen VTOLs slowly come back into play. My artillery army was okay vs. VTOLS, since they generally had to take out my A4s and then Malisa alpha struck them into oblivion, but still. My most recent army (a varient on a SS faction pure Warpog) has an AA tankdrop that has done well recently, including wrecking the heck out of a pseudo-VTOL swarm.

So, right now, the previous champ (A4 army) has been nerfed and people are going to have to start experimenting again. Since the change in champions was not accomplished through raising someone else up, but tearing someone down, people can't point to the new UBER unit as easily. As sure as the sun will rise, they'll go back to what worked before, and VTOL swarm is one of those former winners. We'll see what transpires from there; that is, if a combined arms force (artillery, AA, VTOLs, mechs and tank drop) can overwhelm a VTOL swarm. Should be interesting.

As has been mentioned b4, VTOLs move and shoot, can't be based, and can't be captured. Coupled with defenses that are as good if not better than most of the existing 'mechs and virtually ALL of the ones in FP, they are a bargain. Getting the most out of your available points isn't he only key to winning, but it does help.
Artillery was king because it circumvented many of the basic ground rules. (No defense check, multiple targets, etc.) It was cheap and had great range. Now that it's been hobbled, right or wrong, the next best 'rules dodger' kicks up a notch.
Sylph VTOL infantry will be huge due to it's unquieness and it's 16" move and shoot option.
Sylphs, ATVs, and VTOLs are going to be the 'must have' units for a long time to come. Therefore, units that are effective against them will be popular as well.

Welcome back.

As the final opponent in sealed who wanted to stomp on you, I can attest to just how much in an awful mood you were. I was having fun up to that point and also had a load of fun on Saturday, but pretty much that one game against you made me hate Mechwarrior.
After the match, I did bring up every little thing you did (was the roll a 7, 8, or 9?) to try and have a BM watch you like a hawk on day 2.
At the start of Saturday, seeing you in a relatively good mood made me think 1 of 2 things:
Either he was playing me with his moodiness to draw the game longer so I'd have little time to injure the BH, or this guy is bi-polar. It seems I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, most everyone else I spoke to said you were an enjoyable opponent.
Either way, I lost my cool against you, played like #### on Saturday but still had fun.
You definitely had the army to beat on Saturday and hats off to you on your Championship.

BTW, I would like to claim credit for a change to Engineer's army. I mentioned to him that he should use the LE Combat Engineers instead of a Liao ATV.

I've said it again and again...with regards to me, Rain absolutely made the right call. It was just a sucky situation, that was no one's fault. :)

I'd love to hear some more on your theories of army construction in the constructed portion of nationals...after the fact, now, what should you have brought? Obviously, what you brought worked...but do you still believe it was the best choice?

We should have tried to make time to play our armies against each other regardless...I would have loved to see how that went. ;)

-Nick

Welcome back Corle, and congratulations on the win! I once played the BH in a sealed tournament and had poor luck with it, though I'm sure I made a lot more mistakes than you did.

Glad you are still promoting return fire for mechs as an idea to bump them up in power (in house rules or a "scenario" ;) ). But I think that's a topic for another thread...

Well, this is probably the best place for it (I've only moved it to about 3 different forums so far).

Just came across this thread and wanted to make an observation or two. I ran the three SC mech army that Corle played against in round 2. Though never hitting with Lenel was disappointing I am not sure why anyone would have said he was stalling. I sat across from him and never noticed him stalling. One other issue that was brought up after that game was when a battlemaster came by to ask if Corle had a timer and was timing the event. Not sure what all that was about, but Corle played a good game and as he said we finished up before time was called, but not by much lol.

Corle
You know where I stand on all the issues thus far.
Glad to see your back and posting

I am egar to hear your thoughts on the MetaGame and where it is heading.

My personal opinion is that mechs are gaining strength in armies without command but have not reached the point to be the main strike force in an army.
Command and VTOLS are currently without counter especialy Swarm Tactics.

Well Ill wait to hear more before jumping into a long disscusion