GenCon 2018

The 2018 Ancients Event has wrapped up and it was a huge success! We had exactly 30 players in attendance representing a pretty good spread of factions and strategies all converge on Gaming Hall B's green tables for a memorable evening of laughs and die rolls with other kindred spirits. Here's a quick recap for those who couldn't make it:

YAVLO BINGO

Going into the event we had come up with a fun side game as a means of handing out random prizes which included War Journals, Overlords, chase rares, deck tins, and other random items. We'd like to go ahead and take a second to apologize - the BINGO board took too long to resolve and caused a massive delay and we're sorry. Nonetheless, Warlord BINGO was a great idea and accomplished its goal of being a fun way to hand things out. However, we didn't anticipate 22 of the 24 squares being secured after the first round. In theory, the squares were going to slowly get covered throughout the event but the reality was exactly the opposite.

Having all the spots covered wouldn't have been so bad, except that there was also a lot of three and four-way ties for some of the spots. We had already decided to do roll-offs for ties, but in the moment we didn't adjust for the extra time this would require. Looking back, had we just rolled for the players from the very beginning and handed out the prizes during round 2's matches, we could have cut 20 minutes off of the down-time between round 1 and 2. Instead we decided to track everyone down and have them roll for themselves and hand the prizes out right away. Again, we apologize! Anyway, here is the board we used:

If the tournament participants got BINGO once, it meant a Blinding Beauty for everyone, BINGO twice meant Phoenix Feathers, and BINGO thrice meant Limited Wishes in addition to the other prizes. Needless to say everyone got a Limited Wish! Also, congratulations to Josh King for getting the most BINGO spots and securing the Giant Kraken!

ATTENDEES AND FACTION SPREAD

Again, we had right at 30 players, but it was a noticeable mix of fresh blood and pillars of the community as well which is great! We have to say thanks to all the old and newcomers alike - everyone demonstrated great sportsmanship and seemed to be having a great time! Even when we saw someone we didn't recognize have their Warlord stunned in the front in the first turn against a longstanding community member, all players involved looked surprisingly happy! A huge thanks to our senior members for your excellent hospitality at this event!

The faction, Warlord spread, and Top 4 was as follows:

-Free Kingdoms (8): Adarymy (4th Place, Fat Kid), Adarymy, Captain Dukat, Logan Ebonwoulfe, Samuel, Sir Robert the Vigilant (2nd Place, AJ), Sir Robert the Vigilant (3rd Place, Chase), Sir Robert the Vigilant

-Elf (6): Ahdre, Cairbre Netheryn (1st Place, Jared), Cathel Rowan, Morghen Dythanus, Rathe, Raziel

-NoThRoG (5): Ar'tek, Ar'tek, Bershar Nin, Brikta, Uthanak

-Mercenary (4): Allisara, Fasolt, Sal'azar, Yscar the Elder

-Deverenian (3): Edric d'Ilchant, Ginerva of the Moon, Jodin Drac

-Dwarf (3): Byaal Kadapati, King Xod, Loki

-The Chosen (1): Atiratu

Quick aside: Before the event there was some chatter about making a change to the Reserved section of the Ancients Rules. Ultimately it was brought up too close to the event for us to be comfortable employing it, but moving forward you can expect to be stunned by Edwann Ruthard on the first turn a lot less.

There are a lot of broken interactions in Warlord CCG and a lot of factors involved in whether those interactions should be allowed to remain. Some of those factors include ease of execution, power level, and whether it creates a negative player experience. Edwann Ruthard out of Sir Robert the Vigilant is a triple-offender in this regard. You just need a single level 5 character in most situations and then any deck relying on their Warlord can no longer function. Easy, broken, unfun.

Other than a strong showing both in sheer numbers and also record from the FreeKs, every faction was pretty well represented except for The Chosen. For fun, here is the class breakdown of the Warlords as well:

-Fighter 12

-Rogue 7

-Wizard 5

-Cleric 3

-Classless 3

-Multiclass 0

I wouldn't spend too much time over-analyzing these faction and class stats. There are a lot of FreeK loyalists (Kentucky) and several of the loaners handed out were FreeKs, the Fighters were all doing very different things (uber, blitz, cavalry, combo), and Edwann Ruthard carried the two people running it to the Top 4. At the end of the day, we feel that the format was very healthy except for the minor change to the Reserved section that will take place.

THE WINNERS

Everyone was a winner! But really, here are your GenCon champions:

First Place: Jared Reyes - Cairbre Netheryn
Second Place: AJ Foster - Sir Robert the Vigilant
Third Place: Chase Causey - Sir Robert the Vigilant
Fourth Place: Fat Kid - Adarymy
Top Dwarf - Chris Schoenthal - Byaal Kadapati
Top Elf - Jared Reyes - Cairbre Netheryn
Top Free Kingdoms - Fat Kid - Adarymy
Top NoThRoG - Josh King - Bershar-Nin
Top Mercenary - Richard Carter - Sal'azar
Top Deverenian - Brandon Schulte - Jodin Drac
Top Chosen - Drew Gunn - Atiratu

Worth mentioning is that while Drew Gunn was technically the Top Chosen by default since there weren't any other players, he did rattle off a 3-1 record at the event. He didn't need it to get Top Chosen, but he certainly did well considering he was playing a 4E Atiratu deck!

CHALLENGES

Over the weekend there wasn't a large number of challenges taken. Chase did two Gixu challenges, but other than it was basically just Josh King donating a frack ton of money to Cancer research as he chased after Gixu the Jester (who he killed) and Karz Bez'gala (who got away). I think the reason for this is that it's GenCon and there is a ton of other stuff to do. Plus challenging involves additional deck building and more packing etc. Still, we had hoped there would be slightly more interest in challenging and even incorporated it into some fun memorabilia. Everyone got a copy of Meet at GenCon! and the Top 8 received a copy of Ring of the Upright Infinite. We made sure to use special backs to separate them from actual Warlord cards.

Josh King killed Gixu the Jester run by AJ Foster using Lekar Osud, Ring of Blasting, and double Infinity's End for five wounds each in response to Gixu's second use of his React to steal opposing actions. The first Infinity's End was negated by Halo of Secrets, but the second one connected for lethal. Congrats to Josh on his slaying!

ROLL CREDITS

A big shoutout to everyone who showed up and chose to spend their precious GenCon hours slinging dice with the Warlord crew!

Also thanks to everyone who was involved in prize support or running the event! Those name would be Woodrow Hood, Josh King, AJ Foster, Don Tsuchiyama, Arne Reuter, Jason Engle, Drew Baker, Richard Carter, Laura Scott, Chris Vac, Greg Melnyk, Frank Kallal, Daniel Gore and his friend Joker, John Mathys, Ben Niccole, and Kevin Lester!