The Tournament

Teams:

Team F*cking Lazorz – A group of Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters veterans, looking for a taste of glory in the tournament arena.
Team Fighting Mongooses – Coming in from the outside, this team of Warp One freshmen is here to prove themselves to the competition.
Team Los Angelas Lakers – Under the vicious Game Mastery of the Magnificent Matt Bowes, this team of old pros and veterans is ready for anything.
Team Srs Bzns (Serious Business) – Longtime D&D players, this team has limited experience with 4th, but this is balanced by a burning desire to crush the competition.
Team Vagina – Three women with a chip on their shoulder and dice in their hands, Team Vagina has been prepping for this tourney for months.

This is, to my knowledge, the only Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition tournament in Edmonton. If this turnout is any indication, it will not be the last. In our first round, we had Team Lazorz fighting the much-lauded Team Vagina, while the Lakers took on Srs Bzns. Team V has been planning for this tourney for two months, planning and tweaking and building and rebuilding, practicing and talking a big game. There has been a lot of buzz, and people have been talking; can they live up to the hype?

On the second table against the Lakers, Srs Bzns’ Assassin Jordan Thompson took a third-turn kill, taking down Jeff Turner’s Paladin/Cleric Hybrid with a 4-shroud swing for 35 damage. Shortly after, Srz Bzns’ own Warlord, Tim Griffith, and their defender, Berni Jugdutt, go down. Thompson goes in for the kill against both opponents and crit-fails. The Lakers fire back with two critical hits in a row!!! Thompson weathers the blow, thanks to a well-timed Shade Form.

The Laker’s rogue, Ian Bowes, falls from four to zero, and finally goes down, leaving their monk, Marcus Cunningham (at three hit points), alone against Thompson’s assassin (also at three hit points!!!). Thompson tries to hold the monk off, but Cunningham gets in for the final blow, using an at-will weapon power to sneak in the final damage.

Teams Vagina and F*cking Lazorz are stuck at a stalemate, each trading blows and healing with equal proficiency. The teams are well-built, tough and terrifying. Vagina’s cleric drops to as low as three hit points before casting Healing Word on herself, the lowest anyone has dropped in the match so far.

Slowly, Lazorz whittles Team Vagina down, but the girls are well tuned to taking damage and living through it. It goes to time, the full 90 minutes, and though Anna-Marie Million, the team’s warden, fell to negative hit points, her team was able to revive her in time to pull it to a draw.

Round two features Team Vagina facing off against the Fighting Mongooses, and the Lakers against the Lazorz. Team V gets off to a rough start as Stephanie Adams, the team’s cleric, falls to 49 damage over two rounds. Next round, Mark Oleschuk delivers the coup de grace on the cleric, crippling Team Vagina for the rest of the round.

On table one, the stalemate finally ends with a vicious coup de grace against Ian Bowes, the Laker’s Rogue, from Brodie Williams, the Team Lazorz battlerager’s. A few turns later, Mike Wright gets off a big turn, hitting for heavy damage and dazing Jeff Turner’s cleric until the end of his next turn.

On table two, Holly Booth rocks her daily for 28 damage, reduced heavily by the fact that Andrew Hryciuk’s swordmage has her marked. Mark Oleschuk takes out Anna-Marie Million, making that his second coup of the night, leaving Holly Booth as the last woman standing on Team Vagina. Overwhelmed by three opponents, she fell to Oleschuk’s blade.

Marcus Cunningham busts his Spinning Leapord Maneuver to drop Daniel Lamoureux, Team Lazorz’ bard, to –6 hp as the players scatter across the map. Brodie Williams drops Jeff Turner, leaving Marcus Cunningham the last man standing on Team The Los Angelas Lakers. He puts up a valiant fight, dropping Williams to one hit point before a Fury of Blows took him out. Mike Wright finishes the job, taking Cunningham out with an at-will.

Round Three pits the Lakers against the Mongooses, and the Lazorz against Srs Bzns. Berni Jugdutt drops Mike Wright with a critical hit on an encounter power, taking him to over half his negative-bloodied value in a single shot.

On table two, the Lakers start with a distinct disadvantage, their rogue starting at a mere 8 hit points. The Mongooses take quick advantage, bringing him down, but things get gummed up when Cunningham begins regenerating 5 hit points per turn.

Griffith heals himself for 29 hit points, taking him from near-helplessness to back-in-the-game in a single turn, and Wright is taken out of the round by Jugdutt’s coup de grace. Thompson crits on an at will, taking Lamoureux down and le aving Williams the last man standing, who goes down quickly with Srs Bzns pressing the 3-1 advantage.

Cunningham and Turner start to turn up the heat, but Olanchuk’s rogue is still rocking the Lakers hard. His +11 to strike comes as a bit of a shock to some, as an optimized rogue build should. The Mongooses continue to press the advantage, and pull the Lakers down, asserting their primacy in this, the first Dungeons & Dragons tournament held at Warp One Comics and Games.

A Few Issues We Need to Deal With

Byes work well in some ways, but they’re pure win in Dungeons & Dragons, especially when people don’t get their healing surges back between matches. The last round this was especially notable, as the Lakers were sitting with one character at no Healing Surges, while the Mongooses hadn’t had to spend many, having come into the fight with only a single round of combat behind them. It was a lopsided advantage, and it determined the outcome of the match.

Backgrounds are, from this point forward, banned from Dungeons & Dragons tournaments. They have a fairly specific purpose, and that purpose has nothing to do with tournaments.

Timing. I was originally planning on 50-minute rounds, but we ended up going to 90-minutes because 50 was far too restricting. That time-limit worked just fine, so I would suggest that if you’re going to do this somewhere else.

Overall, the tournament was a good time, and we’ll be doing it again. After I get back from Europe, I’ll be setting the next time and date. ^_^

The Tournament

Dungeons & Dragons isn't really built for tournament type play. Once upon a time, people used to play in D&D tourneys, but those were less than tournaments as far as I'm concerned. I mean, sure, pushing through a pre-written adventure as fast and hard and skillfully as possible was a hell of a thing, but to me, that's not competitive D&D. That's just playing D&D and adding up some points when you're done.

Fuck that. When I think competitive Dungeons & Dragons, I think about two teams of players sitting on either side of an arena, destroying one another. I think about Clerics and Fighters and Rogues and Wizards knocking the crap out of each other until one side stops moving. So we're doing that at the store on May 22.

My job at Warp One Comics and Games is basically this: organize tournaments and make sure people play in them; also, sell stuff. I have some other things I need to do every week, but the majority of my time is spent making people play kid's games and like it. So I have some experience with creating new and strange events for people to play in.

In the three years I've been doing this, I've never seen the buzz this tournament is getting. With the popularity of D&DE, and the flagging support of the Friday Night Magic scene, I figured it was time to set something up that could bring in some new players and make for a crazy-awesome night of adventure. I didn't expect this sort of response to it. Most of the people I've talked to about it are excited. They want to play, they want to try their gaming chops against other players, they want to fight and they want to win. I posted this up on the event (consider this your invitation, if you're in Edmonton at the time).

Welcome to the first-ever Warp One Dungeons and Dragons Teams Tournament. Teams of three will face off against one another in a single-elimination tournament, the winners of which will walk away with $20 gift certificates for product at Warp!

You: An avid Dungeons and Dragons player with something to prove.

Your Team: A three-person machine of death and destruction, perfectly tooled to kick the pants off your opponents.

You'll Need: A character sheet (D&D 4th edition, Character creator, level 3, RPGA-legal), pencils, a miniature, a set of dice, any books you think you might need. These resources will not be provided for you, so make sure you bring everything you need to play!

The Arena: You'll be fighting on 15x15 space empty arenas. There will be no terrain, there will be no traps, just you, your allies, your opponents, and the thrill of battle!

The Venue: Warp One comics and games is located on beautiful Whyte Avenue, just off 99th street. There's parking in the back, lots of tables, some junk-food for fuel, and more comics, games and toys than you can shake a 10' pole at!

The Rules: Due to some interesting points regarding character-on-character combat in D&D, a few special rules come into play. You cannot teleport out of the arena. Characters do not die; the match is over when the entirety of one team is at zero hit points or less (no need to roll on the death track, and if you're at -bloodied hit points, you cannot be healed for the encounter, but you will be right as rain for the next battle). There will be no extended rests between matches; if you use your daily power in the first match, you will not be able to use it again for the rest of the tournament. Matches will last 50 minutes. When that time limit is exceeded, each player will have one more turn to put their opponents down. If neither team wins in that final turn, the match goes to the party with the highest total hit points. Because this is the first go 'round the table for us at Warp, we'll be adding or subtracting tournament rules as we need to, and putting together a Tournament Rules Document for the next tournament.

There are only a few people actually signed up and guaranteed coming, but the response on the word-of-mouth side has been a lot more fervent. I'll keep you posted on how it all goes down. ^_^