The Ontario Team Championship

This year was the first year of me heading out to the OTC with the Battle Driven Crew. It was a blast for me, and It really amped up my desire to play more games, which is excellent as that had been waning since the NOVA last year. I’m not going to go to deep into every game, but lets take a look anyway!

The OTC

The OTC Team that I was part of consisted of Dan Schwenke, Jason Lucas, Daniel Guarnaccia and Zane Zoller. We weren’t a completely tricked out team made to exploit anything within the meta, instead, we brought our best factions and lists that we thought gave each of us a solid chance to win. Schwenke brought Skorne, Dan G brought Crucible Guard, Jason and Zane both brought Protectorate and I drug along my Cryx. I tried to squeeze in some new tech with that sweet Venethrax list, but it was mostly untested.

I flew out of BWI at ass’o’clock in the morning, with the plane taking off at 8 ish and landing in Albany, NY around 9:00. It was the best flight of my life, with only 40 some people on a 150 person plane. Lots of space and lots of quiet. The next 6 or so hours we drove up to Ontario and got our rooms settled.

I went down to the Shark Tank and watched Tim Banky play a pair of games, one into Trolls and One into Retribution. Watching those games was really enlightening. I’ve been pretty light on the pre-measuring and the threat dancing, and just watching two guys take a few steps around each other while they are waiting for either a mistake or an uppercut was just excellent. I’m kinda keen on watching more games now, simply to look at the mechanics and how people do the game. I finally get the scenario game, I understand the rules of the game, its probably about time for me to learn the fundamentals of the MKIII system.

The Tournament

With all the game watching, and then dining and drinking done, it was time. We wandered down stairs the next morning for games. We’d made a pretty simple matrix of teams and players, with an idea of what was a real hard dodge and what was advantaged matches we’d like to take care of. We’d especially taken care of fleshing out our chances against some of the harder teams. We’d hoped we wouldn’t face ’em in the first few rounds, and float up to the top to meet there for a decisive battle.

Well. It wasn’t to be. The First team we got paired against was my home team Mollywhoppers. Joy of Joys, cause these guys are good.

We paired up and I end up standing against My good friend Danny McGeehan, a newly minted American WTC player and laying down the Iona Circle nonsense. I took out my Venethrax tech, but I also knew it wasn’t going to do a whole lot of good. Danny had given me the list to play, and his fellow teammate Brad Park had taken part in developing it and getting it on the table. I was fighting uphill three ways, but I was going to give it a good go.

Long story short, playing Recon II with a ton of speedy warjacks was enjoyable because they were all over the place. I was able to contest most turns as I positioned the rest of my army, but a solid bad move at the start of the game and then a lack of solid guns in the army made it a pain to try and get to the back of the zones and get those last models that were contesting. It was a good, long grind that, while I never felt I was going to win, I felt in the entire time. We ended up loosing that round to my friends from MD, but it was a good fight. They are great players and ones I have to play against all the time.

Round 2 we are paired against a group from Montreal. I wish I could remember their name, but I don’t. I played into an extremely pleasant and fun fellow named Filipe. It was like playing an old school game of Warmachine, with Doomreavers lead by Sorcha 1 facing off against the horde lead by Denny 1. The game went by, turn by turn, with each of us gaining and then losing the upper hand. Eventually, it looked like he has completely taken the game out of my hands. he’s returned almost an entire unit of Doomreavers, and I just simply wasn’t able to break his back yet. However, it looked like he put himself into a fairly reasonable precarious position. I had a pretty low assassination on him. I charged into a Wind Rushed Fog of War’d Sorcha with Deneghra. I’d had Axiara Give her special orders in order to pull out when needed. Thinking back on it, I did the order of attacks wrong, but I really wanted to hit with the spear. I boosted a Crippling Grasp at the lady, rerolling thanks to Eilish, but I still needed a 13 on three dice, not great and It didn’t come up. I followed up with Sliver, and needing a 13 again on 3 dice, rolled it this time and did some charge damage to her, bringing her down by about 8. I bought an additional swing, this time needing 10’s, and didn’t connect. Repositioning out of the way, I let the rest of the army, all around 5 guys, get their go at her. The Stayxis Blood Priestes charged up, killed a Doomreaver who failed to tough, and got a venom out onto Sorcha. Needing only an 8, it was fair odds (who doesn’t like sprays!), I tagged her and did a few more damage to take her down to about 4 hp. All I had left that could get to her was two Black Ogrun Smog belchers. They needed to move to get LOS, as she was in the trees. They needed 11’s to hit, which isn’t great, but what can you do. You can, it seems, roll boxcars and tag her in the woods! At P+S 13, and dice -2, it wasn’t much that was going to save her, so I just up and rolled something like 8 damage to her, and took her off the board. It is a super low odds assassination, but man it felt good. We won the round, which felt good, and moved on to the third round.

Round 3 was when I felt we knew it was not going to be our day. We were the pair up, and we were playing into another one of the five (of 38) teams that we knew were big players, Alberta Strong. The team matchup went pretty amusing, and we ended up in a Cryx mirror, Denny 1 Scourge v. Denny 1 slaughter. This match was a damned bloodbath. I survived a top of 2 assassination attempt under her feat on a botched venom roll, and resolved to slug it out. I collapsed one flank with Bloodgorgers, but as it was Spread the Net, I didn’t have any warjacks over that way to collapse the advantage. On the other side of the board, I was in a pickle as he was consistently collapsing my flank. I had model advantage, but I was quickly running out of time. He had two focus, and was well within assassination with just a few boxes left because Eilish had been doing d3’s to him over the game. I charged out from behind my safe spot with Denny, and tossed two boosted sprays into him, not quite doing enough damage to kill him, Leaving him with 1 point of damage and corroded – but with 2 focus still on him, he was able to prevent the damage from corrosion and killed Denny with Denny. It was a tense game, with a lot of back and forth, that I really enjoyed against a skilled and determined opponent who didn’t get flustered. We lost that round, and the day ended at 1-2. We had another round in us tomorrow, but then had to get on the road fairly early, which sucked, but it is what it is.

The final round, on the final day for us, was into Ottawa’s Finest team, and a fellow who’s name I forget. He played convergence into my Cryx, and like the plan had been all weekend, it wasn’t Iona, so I dropped Deneghra again. In what I think is a misdrop, he dropped Locke with 6 jacks, a list I was thrilled to see. Bottom of 1, I was able to drop a Crippling Grasp on a jack, and it is the lone model without a shield guard nearby, tossed a pair of Thrown Braziers at it, knocking it down a peg. The fire burned it down a bit more on his turn, which left it pretty low even after it got healed. He had all 6 jacks up, but due to a positioning problem, was unable to allocated and then induct to all 6, ending the chain after the second model. The rest of the jacks were able to get their initials, but he wasn’t able to get the attrition he wanted started. I was able to kill the damaged jack with vengeance attacks, and then put down two more under feat with debuffs up. I’d dropped him down to three jacks, and damaged most of the rest. The big deal, though, was pushing him out of the left-hand zone that allowed me to score repeatedly over the next three turns to push the score up high enough for me to win. We took down that round as well and ended with both a team score and a personal score of 2-2

Wrap up

The OTC was a fantastic event, and I’m definitely glad that I went, even if I had to leave two games behind. It was my first 5 man tournament, and there were a ton of people there. But more than that, playing Deneghra and not playing Scaverous re-invigorated a desire in me to play, not because Scaverous is bad, but because he is not the type of answer the meta needs now. He’s just not got enough going for him in the armor cracking department and, the big thing, people are actively picking lists that deny him souls. He can definitely be an off list, and might be in my pairing with Gaspy 3 or someone else thats a bit more beefy, but he’ll not be my main man.

Well, until next time!