WMW Recap: Less on Strategy, More on Play Habits

Well, I'm only a couple of weeks late in recapping WMW!

This year was my first visit to the convention, and it was an absolute blast.  Luckily, we had an easy time with flights, hotels, and all the essentials of getting there, so I was able to go in on a low stress, focus on having fun note.  For a brief recap of LCQ games:

Round 1 was Butcher3 vs. Doomy3 with Destruction.  I blew game one because I made order of activation mistakes, got rattled, and make stupid decisions that ended up feeding Butcher3 one piece after another for no gain.  I wasn't aggressive enough on my feat turn, when I had the potential to clear out nearly or all of an IFP unit and maybe take zone control.

Round 2 was Carver vs. Doomy3, and it ended all in favor of D3.  Only the Dygmies were lost.  Scenario was Recon, and I just took command of the zone and he didn't have enough to break me.

Round 3 was Fire Support, Bradigus vs. Doomy3.  I got to play Josh Wheeler of Chain Attack, giving me a game against a prominent podcaster for the weekend - a side goal!  I'm not sure I played correctly into Brad, but I broke 2 sets of stones top of 2 and essentially killed a Watcher (also feat turn), then Admonitioned Mulg out on an order of activations error on his part and he couldn't get to him due to broken stones.  From there, I got the heavies down and simply ground the game out.

Round 4 was Close Quarters, Kreoss2 Tier vs. Doomy3.  Shoulda taken pGrissel, but it turned out OK!  Calculated to approximately 90 points of healing across the course of this game, including the Mauler to 3 at one point, and back up to 20 by the end.   He jammed into me but I was able to use Whelps and the Storm Troll to contest (they died) but it bought me enough time to clear his army.  Because we were X-1 and couldn't go to Top 8 probably, he just went into me on my feat turn to see how bad it was.  It was even worse than he expected.  Also, I was aggressive enough on my feat to remove more than half of his army, which was huge.

Round 5 was Incursion, Butcher2 Dogs of War vs. pGrissel.  I got rolled pretty badly - I was doing OK removing guys, but I hadn't played pGrissel enough and I had a lot of order of activation trouble, clock trouble, etc.  I just didn't do a good job of managing my attacks and placements, and I ended up getting rolled pretty hard.  My opponent did a good job of taking advantage of my inexperience with my own list - and against his - and he easily won.

So, I learned a few key lessons.

Lesson 1: I'm going to pick 2-3 lists for the coming 6 months (or at least for the Jan - June period) and stick on them.  Currently I'm trying Gunny and either Madrak2 or pGrissel, one of the two.  I want to get months of reps in with them so I know my own lists as well as I can manage.

Lesson 2: Get Timed Turns reps in.  I hate Timed Turns, I really don't like the style, but I need the practice.  It should make me an overall better player, too, but I definitely need to work on it.

Lesson 3: Force the scenario more often.  I had multiple times in LCQ or other games where I should have put scenario pressure, and I didn't.  I need to get the hang of putting on better scenario pressure and trying to ride that out to victory.  Scenario play is still a major weakness; I focus too much on tabling the opponent and then using scenario to close out after the table is clear.  I had multiple times over the weekend where, had I simply slammed my army/caster in to one scenario point and chased that, I could have easily won.

Outside of these games, I got in a game with Josh of Muse on Minis also, and games against the Atlanta players Akira and Stephen.  All 3 of them were absolute pleasures to play, and I had a great time getting to know them.  Hopefully I'll be taking trips down there in the near future to get in some more practice, since I learned a lot in all the games.