Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Adepticon Coverage Part 4: Necromunda by Night Tournament

Just a quick post continuing my Adepticon Coverage
I got to play Necromunda by Night on thursday night and I took my Arbites gang. Every gang was allowed to bring 1200 points and could take 2 Hired Guns. As Arbites I was allowed an extra 200 and they COULD be Hired Guns, so I took a Sniper and a Wyrd painted up as a sanctioned psyker to keep is all super fluffy.
We got to play 4 games, and I had fun in all of them. Won 1, Tied 2 and Lost 1. Loved playing ALL my opponents and there were some beautiful gangs (wish I had some pictures, but lighting was TERRIBLE in the room). Best painted was this crazy Chaos Goliath Gang.

Overall, I was really glad to get to play as it has been a while, but I don't think I will be doing it again next year. Just a few things that were disappointing IMO

1- The terrain on the top 2 tables was awesome. The middle two was okay. The last two were kinda crappy, and table 5 was unfairly set up (both my opponent and I agreed. And I played on it twice). There was a huge train in the way and it completely blocked line of sight for 3/4 of the board width.

2- The games were rushed. We had about an hour a game, which would be okay it we were all on top of our game rules wise AND got to see the scenarios BEFORE Adepticon. But neither was the case for anyone, so no games seemed to ever finish. And in between I always felt rushed to advance my gang, and we weren't doing territory or anything either...
3- Mission design.They were fun missions but there were a few issues. Each mission had something wrong with it IMO.
-Game one was 5 objective markers, but the organizer walked down one side of the table, so on my table (Table 5) I had 1 marker in my table half, 1 dead center, and 3 on my opponent's table half, 2 of which were behind that annoying train. Due to the time constraints on the TO, in a rush he made a perfectly reasonable mission was imbalanced. Fortunately, somehow I managed to tie this game, as you had to move objective markers back to the board edge to scare them and my Cyber Hound is SUPER FAST so I got to bring back mine and the center one and through shooting kept my opponent from getting the ONE I could even see on his side. Thank the God-Emperor for my Sniper.
-Game two was this weird creature hunting one. What stunk about this is he could show up turn 1 and you rolled for each member of your gang and on a 6 he showed up next to them. So I as Arbites had only 7 guys on the table and my opponent was Redemptionists and had 14, so instantly stacked in his favour. We went 37 rolls before getting a 6 though, but it still showed up on my opponent's side and he killed it immediately (though it was Epic. He flamed his own juve to kill it, which was a really fluffy sacrifice for the Emperor). It seemed on a full 1/2 of the tables it was killed in the turn it showed up OR it showed up and then proceeded to kill 1/2 of the gang it was next to, so it was either an instant win or loss for a player and a tournament spoiler if it killed a bunch of your gang. On table two, it showed up on the first roll and he melted it in the first shot, winning before his opponent could do anything. Any game where this can happen is not "good". A better mechanic would be a single roll per player turn that progressively increased as the turns went on, and then the monster would RANDOMLY show up on 1 or 4 or 5 terrain pieces or objective markers. Just would've made it more fun and fair.
-Game three COULD have been cool, but once again I feel the TO rushed and set up poorly. There were 3 ork boys that had beastly stat lines, but they were set up in the middle of the table. So between my opponent and I we killed them by turn two and they didn't even get to move because they were constantly down or pinned. I killed 2 of the 3, but that didn't matter, as the victory condition wasn't around the orks, but around bottling the opponent, which is near impossible in such short time frames, especially against 12-16 man gangs... This was a tie for me.
-Game four was replaced with a game from the day Necro Tournament. It was a modified shootout. I ended up randomly bringing 2 arbites and my psyker. I won the shootout and quickly removed 2 of his players by charging them while they were down. I then proceeded to roll my first Perils on my weird in the Tournament and he got POSSESSED! Great way to end the tourney! But as for the rest of the game, because of the way the shootout was, the side that lost that was basically 1 casualty away from bottling, so the game could end really quickly and there was really no strategy to the shootout. It was random how many guys came, random which guys came to it, and random who shot first. So yeah, just poor mission design again IMO.

But I guess that's the under hive.

Now, I am not trying to complain that much. I did have fun and I am glad the event is run. BUT I think the TO should send the missions out before hand and take a little more time himself to make sure he is prepped for each mission.

Next year, we are probably all just going to Medieval Times Thursday night.