1st Maryland Regional MERCS Tournament

This past Sunday I ran the first Maryland Regional MERCS Tournament!  I hope to run one about every three months alternating locations between Games & Stuff (who hosted this one) and Icons Comics & Games.  One of the main reasons I became a MERCS Black Ops representative was to run gaming events such as tournaments, and I've been planning this one for a while.

I worked with Sarah to make this tournament a success.  She is G&S's "minis guru" and put in a lot of effort to make Sunday go better than I had hoped.  We both spread the word via the MERCS Forums, and in the end we had ten players show up!  She snapped this picture of us before we started.

The players at the 1st Maryland Regional MERCS Tournament!

Sarah also went all out and made trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place!  They are beautiful!

Left to Right: 1st, 2nd, 3rd place trophies.

In addition to trophies, the $10 entry fee went toward very generous prize support with the following breakdown: 

1st: Choice of MERCS Starter Box + Gold Trophy

2nd: MERCS Game Mat + Silver Trophy

3rd: $15 Gift Card + Bronze Trophy

It is also a tournament standard at the store that the last place player gets their $10 entry fee back in the form of a gift card, which is cool.  

Our game boards. Many thanks to everyone that set these up for me.

The format for the tournament was as follows:  Everybody plays three games with a 6-turn/1 hour time limit each (in the end the tournament took about four hours), at the end of each game the total Blood on your opponent is your score.  Winner had the highest Blood total across all three games.  Simple.

My feeling at the end of the day, and from those I asked, was that everyone had an intense three hours of gaming!  MERCS is a fast paced game and playing "under the gun" back to back for such awesome prizes made it intense.  That being said in the games I played and what I saw when I looked around I know everyone had a cordial and enjoyable experience.  It was pointed out on the Forums after the tournament that opponents were regularly calling modifiers against themselves (helping the other side win), so clearly everyone was in it for fun, even with those great prizes on the table.

My goal for the day was to have everybody have a good time and for people to get a chance to play somebody they'd never played before.  From what everyone told me after the tournament I'm sure I accomplished my mission.

Thanks to my buddy Thomas (Conphas on the Forums) for taking most of these pictures for me.

I have to call out Michael's CCCs.  Some of the most beautifully painted models I've ever seen. The cable at the feet of the Leader is a great touch.

Me doing some setup, aka "Black Ops'n."

Setting up for Round 1.

Round 1!

Round 2!

Round 3!

The Gracious Winners!

Peter won by a good margin, wish I could have played him.

Brian took second, and called for a round of applause for Sarah & myself. Much appreciated, sir!

Kevin took third.  It was my pleasure, sir!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to play any of the top winners.  Hopefully next time!

Congratulations, gentlemen!

I hope to see you all at our future tournaments!  Thanks again to Games & Stuff for hosting!

And because I love them, here are some random pics of games in progress.

Some KemVar hurt.

KemVar vs USCR

My red CCC vs Winfield's CCC, aka "The Board of Infinite Armor Break."

sefadu vs CCC

Waza with a KemVar Assassin! Oh, but is that a Waza Sniper scoring a head shot?! BOOM!

Beardy Blackwell's BatRep

My buddy Thomas made a badass MERCS Battle Report video of his Waza vs Josh's USCR.  I thought I'd share because its awesome.



Thomas is on Twitter as @BeardedThomas and Josh is @thedorksreports.

I'll be posting an extensive report this week of the tournament I ran in Glen Burnie yesterday.  Short version: it was awesome.

Here's a teaser:

MERCS Tournament Prep

Tuesday night board game night at Icons turned into "MERCS tournament preparation" this week as Thomas, Josh and I got some games in before the tournament at Games & Stuff I'm running this Sunday.

I played two games of my CCC against Josh's USCR.  Here's some highlights and pics.

Overall: Not enough terrain on either map.  I need to put more terrain than I think I should when playing MERCS.  That's the form of the game.  I think I should also use more full cover walls.  I quickly built a small two floor building using my TerraClips.  I think this was a little too much.

Board setup for game one.

My Incinerator moved up and got hit my all three shots from the Behemoth. Damn.

TOO MUCH OPEN AREA. I set up the board so its all my fault.

I managed to get my "speedy" Medic to the balcony, but running ahead of the pack ended up being a fatal flaw. Lesson learned.

One of the things I love most about MERCS is simultaneous actions. We had an unusual situation with a four-way simultaneous action. It ended up not doing too much because of which of my models it was, but it was still weird.

My Heavy "set" and the Incinerator had broken armor, so she "repaired".

Other half of the simultaneous.

I was the Ice Grenade's bitch this night.  The USCR Leader has Ice Grenades which can anchor models for three turns.  The problem is the Leader can target an area of the board.  Well the Leader (the guy all by himself just above the building in the next picture) targeted the balcony and froze my medic in place... with his back facing the stairs.  Ballsacks.

My Demo (just below the door) was able to toss a grenade into the room and deal a Blood each to the two USCR on the lower level. Score.  My Heavy (to the right of the Demo)? He ain't doing shit. He was useless.

USCR up the ladder, about to get ass-rapey.

He's in 100% of my back-arc and I can't turn around for two more rounds.

My Demo broke the USCR's armor and was dealing Blood, but my Medic had broken armor and was a dead man.

Everybody was getting shot in the back.

Outside the building, my Leader went on Suppression to stop this A-hole from doing anything and my Heavy had him in an Overwatch arc just in case. I ended up Suppressing him for the rest of the game.

Medic down, the USCR I grenaded through the door comes back for revenge.

This was the end of turn five (of a six turn game) and at this point I surrendered in favor of getting another game in.  My Demo was going to take at least one Blood. So the "final" score was 7-4 with Josh winning the most Blood.

I did three main things wrong.

1. Running my Medic up ahead to get elevation early got him killed. Sending a man ahead alone into a hot-zone is dangerous. Duh.
2. WTH was my Heavy doing this game?!  Nothing. That's what. 
3. Incinerator. I killed you. I'm sorry.  Don't run models without long range weapons up in nothing but half cover.

Game Two!

I did much better.  I moved the brick walls and added a full cover wall.  Here is the setup at the end of round one. 

Speedy Medic in a good position this time.

My Incinerator was able to get up to the wall just in time for the USCR Medic to come running around the corner. I torched his ass.

*BWOOOSH*

The Demo took some fire getting into position, but he was getting his Heroic bonus so he was shooting well.

Medic shooting in through the door.

I continued torching the USCR on the right, which apart from doing Blood was forcing Suppression checks compounded by my Heavy (on Suppression) which was locking him down.

Medic's armor broken. USCR Booster moving in on the Demo (left side of the building).

The Booster got behind my Demo!  I was able to execute a Move & Shoot so I turned and fired.  Heroic (as well as Short Range) made the penalties easier, but my double 4's doomed me!

NO!!!

The USCR launched another damned Ice Genade at my Medic, freezing both the Medic and my Leader in the doorway.  My Leader couldn't move and didn't have LOS on anybody. I realized far to late that I could have used his action to try and repair the Medic's broken armor, but in the end that wouldn't have mattered.

My Demo got a shot off on the Booster, bringing him to two Blood.  The Booster then shot at me, killing the Demo but triggering Overwatch from my Heavy, which took him down.

Now we're there...

... and now we're dead.

The whole time I was frozen in the doorway I was able to keep shooting at the USCR Leader that put me there.  I broke his armor so he couldn't get up the stairs (or anywhere else for that matter).

Frozen models can still fire. Much to the USCR Leader's regret.

Once the Ice Grenade wore off it was turn six.  My Leader moved to face the Behemoth and I did an action that I think is one of the most clever ones I've ever made playing MERCS.

My Leader went on Suppression.

Its the last turn. If the Behemoth opened up at my Leader he could deal a ton of Blood.  If I Suppressed him successfully he wouldn't be able to shoot. If I failed it would still raise the FN.

Well the Behemoth passed his Courage check but only landed one hit on my Leader so the game went to me! Yay me!

End game state.

These two games illustrate why I love MERCS.  In the first I made some dumb shit tactical decisions and paid for them through the whole game.  In the second game I used smarter tactics and came out ahead.  It doesn't so much matter what faction you play as long as you bring sound tactical decisions that exploit that faction's abilities and that unit's synergy.

End of lesson.

Pointless pictures of MERCS

I meant to blog about the two MERCS gaming sessions I had last week, but I got really busy and didn't have a chance.  But I do have a bunch of cool pictures of the minis mid-game, so I figured I'd post them anyway.

Game summary is as such: I got my ass handed to me in every game.  It was honestly pretty frustrating. I don't remember all the details (otherwise I'd blog about the games rather than just post pics) but I recall making a lot of really bad calls.  Thats the thing about MERCS that is awesome: its a tactics based game. Make a bad call and you can be screwed.

But I also have Good News! I played at Icons this Tuesday (two days ago) and won my first game in a long time!  I basically brought my A-game, got elevation and laid down a good combo of overlapping Suppression and Overwatch.  I even got my Demo by himself up field to throw two grenades.  I took some advice from Brian (one of the creators of MERCS) that focused fire is a solid tactic and it worked out well for me.  It was a six turn "most blood at the end" game.  I killed three models and only lost one. I think I did have some blood on my remaining guys at the end but the score worked out to a clear win for me.  Yay me!  Of course, I forgot to take any pictures! Doh!

Anyway, the two game sessions where I sucked last week:

The first set was at Icons and was a "first to kill three" vs Josh's USCR.  He pwnd me. That's alright. I'm pretty sure I pwnd him in our most recent game. ;)

I'm pretty sure this was one of the few guys I was able to kill. Not 100% on that recollection though.

Whenever I hit somebody with the Incinerator I put the card in front of the model. Otherwise I forget the +2 courage check against their next acton.

The next game was Wednesday night at my place vs Thomas's Waza.  I needed some terrain so I borrowed some from Xavier's plentiful toy boxes.  It worked alright. It was too open though.

A bit frustrated with my lack of variable terrain I finally got the Buildings of Malifaux TerraClips that I'd been drooling over for months.  There goes that item off my xmas list...

I could not be happier with it! Its beautiful and amazing and it will be super fun to play on. It is incredibly variable and lets you make a building the size of a closet as easily as a multi-floor complex! I did a quick test build to see what I could come up with fast and snapped some pics of the end product.

This is like 1/3 of whats in the box! I have it stored in a comic short box with two small plastic totes inside it and four plastic zip top bags! All this terrain for like $70!  INSANE!!!

I made a two floor tavern type of thing with a 2nd floor balcony above the front door and a back side door. Again, this used a small fraction of the pieces that came with my one set, but would be a nice piece as part of a larger MERCS board.

My MERCS CCC Medic for scale. 

Roof removed. Malifaux Silurid also for scale.

Wide staircase in the back of the building. The foot of the stairs is near the back door.

"I've got 1/2 cover, elevation and clear LOS on your gigantic son!"

Bottom floor.

 What I love about these is that if there's action happening on both levels you can just lift one off and play it in some other area! The multiple floors fit together and lift apart so nicely.

You can see the 2nd floor in the back left of the pic. Its still entirely intact.

I can't wait to play a game of MERCS in an "office building" type of setup, and a game of Malifaux on one of the "indoor" locations!