Dark Sphere Local Practice Tournament

 

Last weekend, Dark Sphere held a small Infinity tournament so that the new players there could get the hang of playing in a tournament, and the person running it could get the hang of the tournament software. I volunteered to be a "ringer" - essentially, to play if there were an odd number of players so no-one had to take byes. And, oddly enough, there were indeed seven sign ups, so duty called!

I am a much more experienced player compared to the locals, so I decided to take Qapu Khalqi, a faction that is viewed as not being particularly great at the moment - and one I've never actually played before. I threw some profiles that looked good into a list and headed over to the shop.

The first game was Acquisition, and I was up against Shasvastii. The player, BizBozLoz was using a lot of the older Shasvastii models that she'd found lurking at the back of the store a few months back. There were a couple of proxies but everything was really clear as to what it was.

The Shasvastii snuck up cautiously and activated a console, while I pushed up a Haris team lead by the Al Fasid. A Sphinx did reveal to try and take it out, but unfortunately for the Shasvastii, I was able to put down a round of active turn shooting on it with some lucky rolls, and the Sphinx just evaporated. With only one wound left, the Al Fasid needed to get into a gunfight with Sheskiin in ARO to hold the centre box, but was able to put the necessary fire downrange, taking out Sheskiin and giving me a 5-3 win.

Second mission was Frostbyte, and I was facing Kosmoflot, piloted by flyer10. I was quite nervous about this as I've not faced them before. A solo Kosmosoldat started off the attack, and fell afoul of having to split burst against a Hafza Heavy Rocket Launcher and a Ghulam Sniper.

A Zenit Sniper revealed, and I was really worried about it blocking my route forward. I tried to take her out with the Djanbazan shooting through smoke, but she survived the attack and threw herself prone where I couldn't see her any more. I then dropped in my Yuan Yuan to run up and take her out in close combat.

With this done, the Al Fasid link started advancing, and co-incidentally caught the Kosmoflot Lieutenant from an unexpected angle and took her down. I was really worried about scoring as at one point my opponent had activated one console and narrowly failed to activate a second, which in Frostbyte isn't something you can swing back from.

Instead, I applied violence to the situation. A lot of violence. The game ended 5-3 in my favour, with me having 71 points left alive, and my opponent with 46 points still up.

At this point, one of the other players had to leave early, so I sat out the third round to let the regular locals play. It was a great day out, everyone learned a bunch, and Dark Sphere is looking into holding some more tournaments in future that will be more widely advertised, so watch this space!