Warlord TaKtiX

Well, as most of you now know, Mike Leader has assumed the role of Brand Manager for Warlord. I couldn’t be more happy leaving it in his more than capable hands. I look forward to seeing the new directions Mike takes the game.

And that of course moves me fully into L5R territory. I have lots of plans for the game, many of which you’ve already heard about including the board game and graphic novel coming next year. I’ll try to post here again more often, though it will have a much more samurai feel…

So if any L5R players happen by, and would like to see my thoughts on a few subjects, leave a comment or two. I’ll see what I can do about writing them up. First though should be a little behind the scenes on the World Championships and what we have planned.

Wednesday was rather uneventful considering the 12 hour drive. We met up a Buffalo Wild Wings and discovered the Beer sampler. Lindeman’s Framboise ON TAP. WOWZERS!!! Buffalo Wild Wings is now the official hang out of the Order of the Doomed Liver in Indy.

Thursday, I have the world conquest events of CE Highlander, EE Singles and Open Doubles.

I end up paired vs. Matthias Waeggemans in CE Highlander and my Albrecht with five strikes defeats his Nitesh. In EE Singles I am paired vs. Marco Wellman we’re both playing Jin Valford front line blitz. In both games he wins initiative on turn 1, breaks my ranks and wins the game. Initiative is really huge in that mirror match. In Open doubles I’m paired with Tommy Pistole (Melon on the temple) vs. Marco and Matthias. We’re playing Uriel + Lord Winter they’re playing Uriel + Sjonegaard. In both games we end up winning. Thursday is also open singles, I decide for fun to play my Adaramous Te infinite deck (using the Fist of Albrecht) to play, after 4 rounds (there should have been six rounds based on attendance) I’m at 2-1-1 and do not cut.

I end up score 4 points for Team North America.

Friday, I have the world conquest events of Open Singles, EE Draft and CE Doubles

In Open Singles I’m playing Uriel ICBM MAD BOMBER. This deck fears only one archetype in open and that’s Spell Based Ranged Strike blitz. A bunch of warlords can do it, but only three do it well Saunginel, Taoth and Tavis Jape. My Draw is Marcel Harz with Tavis Jape spell blitz. Uriel meets his early demise quickly in both games. In EE Draft I manage to draft a really hot Slayer the unkind deck however in the end Marcel (my opponent yet again) manages to save against my big spells and turn Slayer into a pincoushin. The third event was CE Doubles, again I’m paired with Tommy and this time we draw Matthias and Roberto playing Durin + Kestrel. In both game’s we’re able to eliminate one on the first turn with Captain Dukat + Ahdre. From there the two on one advantage allows up to seize the advantage and win.

Friday is also doubles, and I’m paired with Chris Aven. We’re playing Raziel + Bronwen (better known as Scissors in the doubles environment) and after going five and zero in swiss and being top of swiss in double we succomb to the swiss curse loosing to the eighth seed which happens to be our only bad matchup, the very decks we played at Origins.

Friday is also Midnight Madness. MMVII drew 79 Players. the most ever. We raised right at $500 (actually $480 but I threw in an extra $20 to make it an even $500). A good time was had by all and instead of playing untimed finals Marcel Harz (Azrhaan the Foul) and Jay Rosenberg (Nitesh) split the prize pool of first and second place and declared themselves Co-Champions.

So at the End of the day I score only 3 points for Team USA giving me a possible 7 out of 15 points total, I’m slacking and I know it. I need to step up my game for tomorrow.

Saturday held two events for World Conquest EE Sealed Deck and CE Singles.

The First is EE Sealed Deck. I draw Florian Huepper and he’s playing Etra Bloodvine who is amazing in sealed when he access to other druids from Elves and Mercenaries but as of the starter deck he can’t actually control the board as well. I’m playing Trevor Magson and Trevor cuts through him like butter in both games. The second match up is CE Singles and I’m playing my Captain Dukat and I’m paired against Marcel Harz (again) he’s playing a tavis Jape spell blitz deck. I win two out of three in a truly epic match. Blue Wyrm’s Helm saves my ass and Llyr Militia is key vs. Tavis. Worlds is also this day, I go 4-2-1 in swiss and end up seeded 17th.
I also score 8 out of a possible 8 points for Saturday. I end up with 15 out of a possible 23 points I could have earned and a 5-3 record vs. the Euros. I later find out that Marcel had taken Distrust out of his Tavis deck for the conquest event and that his deck for Worlds is running it, not having distrust probably cost him this matchup, however its still an amazingly hard matchup for tavis because Llyr Militia can recapture a lot of tavis’s early advantage.

Saturday is also L5R seminar followed by the L5R Bar Crawl. Myself and Roberto excuse ourselves from the Warlord CCG area and head to the seminar. The seminar is AMAZING and I hope that we can do something like it for Warlord in the future. I meet up with many of the luminaries from L5R and we get down to drinking and bar hopping. Roberto discovers the Lindeman’s Framboise and loves it. We end up calling it quits at 1:15 or so and crashing out before World Finals the next day.

Sunday. TOP 32. I beat Drew Gunn playing Tavis and beat him soundly 2-0. Drew is playing a good deck and is a very good player, but my Dukat deck is built to handle Tavis. TOP 16. I’m playing Marcel Harz (AGAIN) with his tavis deck. He’s got Distrust back in the deck or rather in the seperate deck he was using for worlds as opposed to conquest finals. Distrust he draws early in both games wiping my Peyton Latham from the board allowing him to win. Peyton is huge in the Tavis matchup.

Oh well prize support was great for top 16 and even better for winning World Conquest.

Props:

Roberto, Marcel and Sebastian. You guys really were an excellent face for the European players. Marco, Matthias and Florian were really nice guys but quiet. However the three of you fit right in with us boisterous Americans. Its too bad I never got the chance to go drinking with you Bulga. Mike Leader, you did well all things considered my biggest complaint about the weekend was the shortening of the Open event on Thursday. The US Conquest Team for Winning of course. The Jersey Crew. Zechnophobe for braving your soul to eat dinner with us a St. Elmo’s, I know you’re forever scarred and a changed man, I just hope you don’t succumb to the nightmares. St. Elmo’s. Steakhouse, simply amazing.

Slops:

Midnight Madness for running until 6 am.
Open being cut two rounds short, but oh well.

Without further ado, Captain Dukat I played this exact deck in WCF CE Doubles, WCTF CE Singles and Worlds placing like 12th.

Starters: 6
1 x Captain Dukat
2 x Glenn the Blaze
3 x Llyr Militia

Characters: 19
3 x Brother Dominy
3 x Percy Dorn
3 x Spencer Latham
3 x Xanthis
3 x Peyton Latham
2 x Calenar
2 x Amoudasi’s Wrath

Actions: 15
3 x Blast
3 x Fiery Bolts
3 x Final Power
3 x Tzin’s Attention
3 x Sabotage

Items: 10
3 x Collapsing Bow
3 x Far Glass
2 x Blue Wyrm’s Helm
2 x Hawthorne’s Arrows

So, I made it onto the Warlord story team. I always was better at talking about this game than playing it. Let’s hope that I can get some cohesive ideas down in type as well.

Of course, there are people out there that care about this crazy world of Larisnar as much as, if not more than, me, and may be fearing that I’m not the right sort of guy for the job. “He just used the word crazy to refer to my favourite fantasy setting!” they’ll cite, “How can you trust him to come up with decent stories?!?”

Of course, I must do something to reassure such people. The quality of my stories I can make no excuses for; I promise that I’ll try my hardest to come up with tales of exciting adventure and intrigue, but those that have gone before left some freakin’ big shoes to fill. I’m talking in miles across, here. If my stories can come out with just a small fraction of that quality, I’ll be happy. And the assistance of my fellow team writers and our incredibly talented Story Lead should help me to get better.

As to the question of treating the setting with respect, as well as relying upon my comrades and boss to keep me in line, perhaps I’d best lay out my view of Larisnar.

Evil won that eternal moral conflict, and so the good guys are running scared. So, does that make Warlord a tale of dark fantasy?

It’s definitely a lot more scary than ‘traditional’ high fantasy stuff. The big giveaway is the fact that dragons are almost entirely evil, but there’re also those necromancers and Abyssals running rampant to back that impression up.

However, there is hope. And the heroes that represent this are so much the cooler for being up against impossible odds and refusing to give up. Their victories are small, but they happen.

This doesn’t take away from the overall atmosphere of the place. However, these days the term ‘dark fantasy’ is most often used to describe what used to be termed ‘horror’, and I think that we can safely say that the Accordlands doesn’t quite cross over into that genre. Zombies, vampires and demons are all present, but their influence is secondary to that of the great nations of the Accord, and the pantheons of gods that watch over the setting. There are instances of corruption and individual terror, but on the whole the stories are writ large, having great, sweeping consequences for the world as a whole.

So, there are elements of the dark about the Accordlands, but also the sweeping conflicts of epic fantasy. Yet at its heart the heritage of its RPG roots shines through, and there is as much action to be found with small groups of adventurers striking out for the greater good as there is with armies clashing on the field of battle.

In summary, the conflict between good and evil takes place in both large and small scale, with good being the side fighting the uphill struggle all the way.

Also, in any disagreement between black-clad martial arts assassins and uncouth nautical brigands, the pirates beat the ninjas every time.

Since making the conquest team I’ve been busy deck building for the numerous events I’ll be competing in during the conquest finals. These events are Open Singles, Open Doubles, Campaign Singles, Campaign Doubles, Campaign Highlander Singles, Epic Singles, Epic Sealed and Epic Draft. That’s a lot of deck building to prepare for and had eaten up much of my time.

Anyway that pretty much explains my absence this past month. Hopefully once the con season is over I’ll have time to update this blog more regularly. I hope to see all of you at GenCon.

So, with Epic approaching, people on the Temple of Lore are getting all heated about whether or not it will be a good format, worrying over cards that were/weren’t included, the merits of battlepacks vs. starter decks, and everything else under Bascaron.

There are small pockets of calm, citing that it’s just the same climate as when Campaign edition rolled around over two years ago. But it’s not. It is completely different, something new and exciting, and getting a healthy amount of panic up in the system is a good thing.

No one likes anything static, that never changes and keeps supplying the same old, same old day in and day out. What leaves people content over a long period of time cannot compare to the excitement over something risky and daring, with big payoffs. Epic may have upset some people, but that’s just the edition showing how cool it will turn out to be - everyone has a favourite card or two that didn’t make it through. Epic isn’t afraid to stomp on people’s toes with dirty great hobnail’d boots. A people-pleasing format that just delivered what the popular masses thought that they wanted would have seemed good at first, but would have left a bad aftertaste. Much better to take the Epic approach, which may hurt at first but will be much more worthwhile in the end.