I got Stoned - A Moonstone Tournament Report

So I had signed up for a Tournament! How on earth do you prepare for this! The word Tournament makes it sound super serious, super competitive, and I am neither of those things, so I was very nervous, as I expect most people are when trying out a new thing.

But the first thing I concentrated on was the two main things, painting models and deciding on the models I was going to take.

Now I am not a great painter, I struggle for time due to family life, and I don’t feel like I paint enough to practice and improve. The best thing I ever did though was to get it straight in my mind that what I see on the internet is something I should aim for, but should not be used as a critique against my own work. Seeing Angel Jiraldez work being utterly amazing and then thinking that I should be producing similar quality is daft – but that is the pressure of social media and it is the bane of our generation to be the first to understand how we manage our overexposure to information.

I have got to a point in my hobby that I paint for me and as long as I am happy with the result then I have achieved. Yes I can improve and yes I want to improve, but for many years the paralysis of not being great meant I didn’t even try.

Moonstone sculpts are amazing for me, they are so detailed and full of character that you can get really good results, and I am happy with all the models I have painted so far from this range.

For me this was so tough. There is a lot of synergy in models, and it is very easy to come up with pairings in moonstone, so having the Tournament limit the Troupe size to 5 was such a headache, but was a highlight for me as well. It meant trying to decide on synergy or go for some models that can standalone but lose the overall synergy.

My faction was chosen on the basis that I had a painted Baron Von Fancyhat from an earlier kickstarter, so one Commonwealth human painted, by starting with the Baron meant I only needed to find time to paint 4 more models – faction choice decided lol.

My missus helped me out with a couple of test games to help me learn the mechanics of the game and to get a feel for the nuances of the interactions and abilities in game. It is far too easy to think an ability is over or underpowered when you read them, it isn’t until you play a game and see them in action that you can appreciate the subtle way they affect gameplay.

In the end it also came down to the characters and I wanted to have fun, so rather than go super meta and be so hung up on the most perfect of choices, I went for fun and narrative, with a bit of tactics in the back of my head lol.

In the end my Troupe choice was:

#1 : Baron Von Fancyhat – tank role, who can standalone without buffs and amazing in melee to defend moonstones and draw focus from the opponent, plus his hat his amazingly fancy.

#2: Fritz – tank, super damager output, a killing machine in melee.

#3: Quack – the human wizard healer, having two standalone tanks, Fritz especially has no defence, so to keep them alive I needed a healer, I went with Quack the wizard doctor over Eric the squire, as Quack has an offensive side that I though would get overlooked, he can throw blinding powder to reduce melee stats on the opponent, Quack blinding and then Fritz or the Baron to melee afterwards is nearly always a one turn kill.

#4: Flintlock – Long range sniper, I had a lot of melee focus, so wanted a ranged threat.

#5 Graddock – He was my only gnome, and took as he can remove abilities from people without needing to test, wanted a general support in case I came up against ability heavy teams to try and limit their tricks to allow quack and the melee guys to do their thing.

I like most people own all the things, yet never play the things. I loathe myself for buying things and leaving them unused, but then something new and shiny appears and it joins the ever growing loft collection.

That being said, I found myself in a wonderful side effect of signing up for a tournament. I needed to practice the game. I didn’t want to turn up to a TOURNAMENT with in my head professional gamers and have to ask rules, not really have a clue about the game. So I set my self the goal of playing some practice games, so I could basically bluff that it looked like I knew what I was doing lol.

I would recommend this to everyone, obvious I guess, but as a very casual player, I don’t go into things to focus on winning only, I want to win of course, but I want to have fun more.

As a testament to the Character of Moonstone, my wife (an avid non-gamer) agreed to help play a few games with me. She took time to look at the models, goblins straight away, the models drew her in, she loves them. Yes she didn’t get some of the rules and why/when you would do certain actions or activation order, but every game we played we had a laugh, whatever the outcome (me winning of course) the focus for her was never the outcome, she would easily forget that she had lost, and only remember the story that evolved. She still reminds me of the game where Seasick Stu kept taking all the Barons energy so he could only stand and watch as Doug the Flatulent walked up and farted at the Baron, killing him dead. She might have lost the game, but she farted someone to death.

So yeah, practice of course is a must.

To help with my nerves of meeting new people (I am really shy) and playing a game against people, who in my head would be Moonstone experts, I recruited a mate to come with me. Luckily I had insisted he got a demo of Moonstone in at Salute earlier in the year, he did, he bought the game straight way from the limited stock at Salute. So was more than happy to Tournament with me.

We played a few games against each other the day before the Tournament, to help us both with the mechanics of the game and feel at least happy we both kind of knew the basics.

So yeah, practice if you can, try to practice against different people, it will help learn the basics, if you are new to a game, or even new to a tournament game. It surprised me how much extra pressure I mentally put on myself, just because it was a Tournament, and we are conditioned to know a tournament has a winner and all the rest are losers.

Spoiler- there were no losers at this tournament, every person and every game was a pleasure to spend time with and enjoy getting Moonstoned.