Event Report: Totally Crit Open 1

At the end of February, I pottered down to the darkest depths of Kent to attend the Totally Crit Open. I was very excited, and totally forgot to take photos of my first game.

(Totally Crit is an awesome Infinity Podcast. You should listen if that's your thing.)

My first game was Annihilation, facing a Haqqislam force. It was quite an open table and I kept my opponent on the back foot all game, but in the end, his doctor was able to get an awful lot of points back up on the last turn, giving him the win by a small margin.

Second game was against PanO. We had seize the antennae, and the middle antennae was in the middle of the massive TAG Hanger. I had first turn, but it was going to be an uphill struggle to get the middle objective, as the doors were on his side. I helpfully left an invisible dude in hidden deployment right next to the antennae.

By the time the Spektr revealed, there were a couple of chaps pottering around inside, and he wasn't able to take them all out before he was taken down himself.

I got a reasonable number of people up the field to behind the hanger in the middle. In late game I used a combined order to climb them all up opposite a total reaction remote in the hope of getting some of them to the objective. It didn't work!

I lost so many people in the last turn charge for the centre objective that my opponent was able to roll all the way up to my "home" objective and claim that as well, leaving me with a 10-1 loss.

Final game was against a Corregidor sectorial with an awful lot of orders and a link team to contend with. The mission was Supremacy, which involves a lot of tinkering around with boxes. I didn't get to pick deployment for the third game in a row!

In the end, I mauled the other guy's force a lot more than I realised at the time, but I was never anywhere near claiming many of the objectives, or having enough models in the centre quadrants to contest them. I had a couple of points, but he maintained a solid lead through the game.

I was able to neutralise his Intruders pretty effectively with White Noise, but I wasn't really able to use the terrain to play to the mission.

So, while I lost all three games, I didn't come away unhappy. I scored points in every mission, and scored enough points to be several places off the bottom. I'm still making mistakes, but I learn from them. I'm doing OK at calculating how to optimise winning a firefight, but I'm not optimising my orders to achieve the mission objectives and win games. That's a long time coming, I think, but I know to focus on it.

The event itself was well run, the Totally Crit guys were really welcoming and friendly, as was everyone I played at the tournament. Excellent fun, would definitely attend another one!