SUPERIORITY CONFIRMED – Gladiaterrors Tourney Report
Having lost 5 straight with Gryselle’s Arenai and Toxic Terrors, the best possible plan of action was to bring them to a Nemesis Event and see if they couldn’t keep up at our quarterly tournament. Surely things will work out for me this time! Nobody’s heard of the Gambler’s Fallacy ’round these parts, lemme tell you. ONWARD!
The event was a best of 1, four round event. Chances to suprise people with some Toxic tricks, but also to be defeated by bad dice (or win because of them!). Several of the people in this event have used the Gladiaterrors as their whipping boys (girls?) these past few weeks, so my tricks and surprises might not go as far, but who am I to give up on a commitment to Make Arenai Great Again? The deck has not changed at all since the V2.0 shared last article (https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,GA4,GA5,GA7,GA8,GA10,GA11,GA15,GA19,GA21,GA22,GA23,GA28,GA30,GA31,GA32,TT2,TT8,TT9,TT10,TT15,TT17,TT19,TT20,TT21,TT25,TT29,TT30,TT31,TT32,GA3,GA12,GA13&format=nemesis). IF you would like a refresher on how it has played so far, and how I built it, check out the previous two entries I authored for this series. Or read Saxthom and Sleeksbowl’s more thoughtful and rational discourse on how these duelists are supposed to work, since I might not actually have this all figured out so good.
Game 1: Josh’s Steelheart’s Champions with Daring Delvers (Win 16-8)
This game went really well for me, as I was able to score Taking Advantage almost immediately. With only three enemies to worry about, and their desire to get over the line for Delvers purposes, it was trivial to put two of mine over and grab 2 surge glory that way. I had conveniently left Steelheart himself Ill Prepared, so I could focus on the other two for round 1. I didn’t manage to bring down Obryn in round 1, who was spared with an extra wound upgrade, but Brightshield did me a solid and killed Kalexys rather than Thrialla, which I chalk up to Josh never having faced the Arenai before. In Round two things got out of hand in my favor – Obryn went down immediately (scoring me two glory for being a Large fighter), and I was able to one-shot Steelheart with Gryselle by getting the plus damage from both Grievous and Paragon of the Arena. Josh did his best to run Brightshield from me and get some Exploration scores, but Surfboard Gryselle coupled with Keep the Forest at Bay and No Safe Ground ended that dream for her early and we finished the game cycling cards. A strong showing for Gladiaterrors and I was pleased to see I had learned a few Elites lessons from my prior games. Steelheart’s aren’t the monsters that the Krushas are, though.
Game 2: John’s Sons of Velmorn (with updated Command Counters rule) paired with Tooth and Claw (Win 19-13)
This game was pretty tight throughout the first few rounds. The new Velmorn Command Counter mechanic (wherein they receive one at the start of each round without the need for the King to activate) did come into play early and often with multiple supports being successes, but to my great fortune John couldn’t figure out how to roll a crit for much of the game so inspiration was hard to come by. I set out cutting down Grave Guard where I could and we traded fighters for the first two rounds. The Crown’s Curse allowed Thain Fourth-and-Last to return to the battlefield twice, and Praetorian forced Gryselle into a weird spot to try and prevent some intercession in round 3, but the dice worked out in my favor (and Paragon of the Arena remains a Five-Star Upgrade). John did a good job rolling with the punches and scoring his own objectives, but Gryselle on guard with a timely Moment of Rapture heal meant that she was able to keep swinging and keep me in the lead. Honestly I got away with this one as John tied for third across the tournament and gave every player he faced some serious trouble.
Game 3: Andrew’s Hexbane’s Hunters with Tooth and Claw (Lose 11-12)
Things started out marvelously for me in this game. Andrew won the roll off and elected to go first, charging Brydget at Retaria the Entangler and whiffing despite a dog being nearby. One Keep the Forest at Bay later, Retaria was in charge range of a previously safe Hexbane, and one fatal flourish later, he was a dead witch hunter. Activation one assassination! Hunt my Witch Elves now! Andrew has gotten quite competent with Hexbane in the past couple months, so he was able to make the best of a bad situation, but I was able to whittle him down to Pock and a dog by midway through round 2. I misplayed and assumed I would score In Praise of Khaine, but failed to do so as the dog has only a move token and not a charge. Bummer. To add to my woes, I unfortunately missed 6 straight attacks to close the game out, and he managed to score Proof of Guilt and two in my territory while running away from a tooled up Gryselle. Had I hit any one of those six attacks, I would have won this game, but instead I lost by 1 to the eventual undefeated tournament winner. I can’t really complain about my dice going cold after 2.5 games of pretty good luck though! On to the consolation match.
Game 4: Damian’s Crimson Court with Tooth and Claw (Win 20-11)
Damian is one of those cunning Canadians who keeps stealing our glass, and despite knowing him for years and playing in the same tournaments multiple times, this was actually the first game we had ever played into one another. Knowing there was an off chance for one of us to still win the event if Andrew lost his last match and we had the best differential, I was obligated to beat Damian if only to prevent yet another trophy heist. The problem with this plan is that he’s a World Class player (with a Golden Ticket to Worlds coming up), playing a strong warband with the goal to invade my side.
I put pretty much everything I had round 1 into divebombing Ennias so that I could score Superiority Confirmed. Unfortunately, I missed one attack and then he played a heal, so I was only able to leave him vulnerable at the end of the round. I did win the roll off to go first in round 2, killed him immediately, and then quickly dispatched Gorath thereafter. He had some pretty gnarly upgrades on Vellas and Duvalle headed into round 3, but I managed to get the kills I needed and came out on top. Interestingly I even ended up scoring Taking Advantage in the last End Phase, as we both had the same number of fighters in his territory (which was zero. But the card doesn’t say ‘at least one’, and it’s been confirmed that zero is a number). The final score looks pretty lopsided in my favor, but I will admit it should have been much tighter and might even have gone the other way if I didn’t keep rolling crit defenses. Significantly contributing to my slaughter was a timely crit defense on Traxya the Aegis (who auto inspires round 3), stopping a big 5 glory play out of Prince Duvalle and slapping two ping damage back into his face to leave him vulnerable. Atta girl! I knew you’d amount to something eventually!
Andrew did win his final game, so I wasn’t able to leapfrog him into first place, but ultimately that’s a good thing. You never want to win a tournament you hosted, organized, and TO’d. I mean, you do, but, you know. Plus it’s nice to see Andrew really take to Hexbane’s and get the most out of them in such a short time, and grab a well deserved glass trophy to go with his other (sadly broken) one.
The Deck in Review
With a second place finish under my belt (and with the highest glory total, and glory differential) I’m feeling a little more justified in sticking to my guns with this one. Obviously the deck has the potential to fall flat early if I miss some attacks, but I think that’s an Arenai problem and not anything I can do a ton about. I haven’t felt the need to build in more defense/wounds etc, which could offset that a bit, but would come at the expense of offensive output and the jury’s still out on whether that would be worthwhile. I do, however, need to bring this pairing to the Thunderdome against my cohosts, so while I’m done terrorizing my local scene for a while, I will still need to assess for any changes lest I embarrass myself further.
Reflecting on the tournament, one of the first things I noticed was that all day long I never even drew Paean of Slaughter. I was wondering if it got wedged in the box somewhere and honestly I didn’t miss it, which is a relief because I actually did cut it after all and just forgot! Makes me feel better about that decision I suppose. That said, it might have really helped hit one of those 6 failed attacks against Hexbane that would have won me the tournament, so…
Otherwise I think I generally had a pretty tight gameplan. I wouldn’t change my objectives at this point, and eschewing the need to care about positioning as much or objective tokens has been pretty freeing to allow me to chase down prey wherever it hides. I definitely still have issues with whiffing too many attacks,m but I also have fragility problems that leave me short handed, and those are incompatible goals to correct simultaneously. There are absolutely defensive boosts and durability boosts I could take (Devotee of the Blade and Devotee of Slaughter both come to mind) but it would be at the cost of accuracy, damage, or combo attacks. Let me know your thoughts – I can’t afford to let Sleek look better than me!
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Sleek's Bowl 
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