My first match didn’t go so much as I expected but more as I feared. I found myself bleary-eyed (the extent of our sleep deprivation has been joked about in the blogs before, but really, it was rough) sitting across the table from the dreaded and powerful Maxim (also apologies to all of my opponents – I’m terrible with names). Fine, I thought, I’ve prepared for this, bring it on.
Well, I’m going to blame it on the lack of sleep but I chose Downtown Beatdown. Why? My reasoning, flawed as it may be, was with weapon master, Maxim would be hitting me for two damage per monster turn. The only way for me to keep up was to use Negation and Steady to wade into the downtown and do some throwing. Yes, screaming masses, I know Beat Back negates negation! But I’ve played aginst Beat Back before when Steven was fielding Rogzor and I did pretty well.
So that was my logic, flawed as it turned out to be. And I was quickly made aware of this fact as Maxim established a wicked power base (something like seven p-die on the first power up). I tried to do some disruption but the Mothership never got a good shot at any buildings, and never having played the map before I was quickly made to realize exactly how cramped it was. Screening opportunities were everywhere. It was actually harder to not screen your monster than to have it unprotected. And as we all know Beat Back does not need to be base to base.
I’m not sure how many back to back monster activations Maxim got but it doesn’t matter. Maxim found a nice couple of spots on the map so that I was always in range and it was a pretty quick GG.
I felt like I just got 3 turn queen-checked in chess.
Oh well looking back on it now I see my mistakes. The biggest one being choosing that map. It’s a mistake I will make again two rounds from now. But that’s another story for another day.
However there were some triumphs. Tune in next week for my experiences in loser’s bracket round one.
Related posts:
Jonathan Wooley is an unapologetic noob... which makes it that much worse when you lose to him. After resisting collectible games of every kind for years, Team Covenant finally tricked him into joining their world. Maybe one day you will see him at a tournament. He'll be the one with the video camera and the confused look on his face. 
I wish I knew more about the maps, I’ve only seen the two that come in the starter plus a few occasional (and typically blurry/poorly angled) pictures of other maps.
What was your unit/building list? Obviously it was Martian, but I’m interested to see what you were fielding at the Masters since one of my two armies is Martian.
Yeah, I made the same mistake in the finals of a local tournament. Was facing Victor (who took MZM to fourth at Masters) in the finals. I had a Raiden list and picked DTBD and got schooled. Over in three Monster activations. Embarrassing.
Ha. It’s so true. From start to finish was one giant blur. The videos turned out great and I think everyone enjoyed it. Can’t wait for the next one.
Oh and by ‘next one’ I meant ‘next convention’. It was great having our friendly neighborhood video guy (FNVG) at the big events.