BattleCON G16 - KingdomAces (Lixis) vs. Zorblag (Cherri)

[Zorblag]

And I'm off for the night.

An exciting finish! I don't actually see a good path to victory for myself here, but I've got two beats to think of something.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[KingdomAces]

Spoiler: Beat 14

Vine Drive

My biggest mistake this game, not anteing Power the beat I thought I killed you.
Second biggest mistake, not using Rooted the finisher turn.

There was literally no reason for either of those. I think my thought processes were "I'm using Strike, and 4-2=2" and "The style I use doesn't matter at all, because either I win or I'm stunned."

Maybe I should impose a rule where I can only do one Beat every X hours or something. Both of those beats were decided in less than 10 minutes, and I'm pretty sure a major reason for that was a "While we're both here" mentality. Being forced to stop would take off a LOT of pressure.

[Zorblag]

Spoiler: Beat 14 Attack Pair

Blind Burst!

Spoiler: Ante

Pass

Yeah, looking back, I should have done Stare as my first clash last beat, so moving too quickly isn't helping either of our games. Having said that, I agree that not anteing the power and probably not using Rooted were mistakes. Still, you've had me on the ropes most of the game and I think you'll still win this. I wouldn't feel bad about the game at all were I you.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[KingdomAces]

Wait - Taking this back. I had two different plans and I may be mixing them up.

[KingdomAces]

Note the edit above, if you happen to have seen it initially.

This isn't a pass though, I just need to think things through again.

[KingdomAces]

Okay, I am passing now. I think saving for a possible Pulse is more important than anything I could ante this beat.

[KingdomAces]

Advance 2, Pulse, Advance 2

ooooLoC

Lixis - 2/3
Vine Drive
Pruning Burst

Cherri - 1/7
Blind Burst
Crimson Shot

[KingdomAces]

Assuming the above is correct,

Spoiler: Beat 15

Naturalizing Strike

If you used Dreamscape Grasp,
-

--------------------Naturalizing

Strike

Lance--------------------

-

If there's a clash beyond this, I'll figure it out then.

Spoiler: Ante

Priority, then pass as I'm out.

Now, let's see what I missed this time.

[Zorblag]

Er, actually, before I go for the weekend, now that I look at it, I think we forgot to have you pay for your finisher in force. I'll have to get back to you Saturday evening or Sunday.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[KingdomAces]

Spoiler: For postgame

I came up with a strategy or five for every single space I could move to. Which is all of them. I tried to find something that had absolutely no chance of failure. Now that I've posted that, I can't actually find anything you could do to counter moving to space 1 and using a +2 Naturalizing Lance, even though I swear I thought of something before. Which kind of worries me, because what I went with basically works on the same principle, that a +2 Nat Lance is unclashable. Maybe I was wrong about the mechanics of Stare then? Or now? Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the only way you can not be killed by the Strike is if you Dreamscape Grasp to clash at 6 priority, and if you do that then I don't have to worry about the Soak from Catatonic so there's no way Lance won't kill. Dodge would get around the Strike but not the Lance, and if you dodge without clashing first, then I win anyway due to a higher life total.

GG for real this time, and unless there's a tie rule that I couldn't find in the rulebook this can't possibly be premature. I haven't given any thought to what I said last time, so I don't really have anything new to say.

PEDIT:...yeah. Okay, now I have to spend another few hours thinking about this.

[KingdomAces]

Or not. Advance 1

oLooooC

Lixis: 2/7

Vine Drive
Pruning Burst

Cherri - 1/7
Blind Burst
Crimson Shot

[KingdomAces]

Spoiler: Beat 15 - Take 2

Naturalizing Lance

You can't get 8 priority (or 7 if you use Mirage) due to Naturalizing, so a clash should be impossible, you can't move behind me with Dreamscape due to Lance, and you don't have any range 5 attacks. I think that covers all possible ways for you to make me not have 2 health at the end of this beat.

I would have preferred to actually kill you, especially because there's more room for me to have made a mistake here, but without the Pulse, the only thing I can hit with is Shot, which can be easily countered in the event of a clash. Not that there's much of a chance of you using Catatonic Strike/Dodge to clash with my Rooted Dodge (Advance 2, ante Soak), so I'd just run away instead of getting to the Shot anyway. And Mirage Strike/Dodge would force a coin flip that could result in a tie in that scenario, which makes it objectively worse than Naturalizing Lance. I think Mirage Stare would result in you getting shot as well, and anything else would get Dodged, but any chance of failure is too high. That would make the Soak pointless though, so I could be misremembering something. Or actually I think the problem might be me temporarily thinking that you could clash with the Dodge and proceed to use Dreamscape something. Ugh, this is what happens when I try to think.

Spoiler: Ante

+2 Priority
Pass on all subsequent antes.

[Zorblag]

Spoiler: Beat 15 Attack Pair

Mirage Stare!

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I'll go ahead and ante +2 Priority and +1 Power. It shouldn't matter, but it'd be silly not to.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Yeah, I think that you're right that there's nothing I could do against that move. Well played and congratulations!

Force Gauge does make Naturalizing a stronger base against Cherri just because I can no longer rely on that clash from Mirage Stare. Pruning was an issue before, but that was just one style. You've said that you think this matchup strongly favors Lixis, but I think that this is more like a Seth type matchup; my play relies on getting some guesses right and I got a lot of them wrong early in the game.

I should have used Stare as my second clash a couple beats ago; that might have forced a tie here, but you really should win this game given that you should have anted that power earlier, so I don't feel the least bit bad about fighting back to get a loss like this. Well played!

Thanks for the patience with my schedule for this one! I try not to have big gaps, but the end of the term and my first vacation in years both happened to come at that final stretch.

For my next game I'm going to play Demitras (1) , Shektur (2) or Tatsumi & Juto (3).

Original Roll String: 1d3

1 3-Sided Dice: (2) = 2

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[KingdomAces]

You should have used Stare on the clash Beat 1. I still have no clue what you were trying to do there. I was actually coming into this expecting that literally any time you used your insight token or otherwise got a clash, and it would work, you would use Stare immediately. Beat 1 was the most obvious example of that, but I think that happened a few other times as well. Maybe you knew I was expecting that, so not using Stare caused me to use a base I didn't actually intend to use?

I can't really think of anything else to say about the matchup that I didn't already.

Don't worry about taking a while. This should probably be one of your lower priority activities, since I'm not going anywhere and this isn't time sensitive at all. Like I said before, I'm considering forcing myself to slow down, even when I do have the time, so you definitely shouldn't feel obligated in any way.

Anyway, taking off the ones I've already played, because looking over these again they seem really interesting.

Spoiler: Roll

1. Rukyuk
2. Runika
3. Lymn
4. Joal
5. Adjenna

Original Roll String: 1d5

1 5-Sided Dice: (3) = 3

[Zorblag]

I probably should have used it a number of times, yeah. That first beat I don't even remember what I was thinking other than that you were expecting Stare so it probably wasn't the right move. I'd have to look back and right now I want to look forward to ...

Demitras and Adjenna!

-Zorblag R`Lyeh