I just played in my third tournament, and got the same result as the other two - a loss, a forfeit on time, and a win. The loss was against Strategic Bombing on this occasion, a deck that had won a tournament the previous week. I was completely unprepared for it and my deck design had no chance due to a lack of AA, not enough factories and too many expensive cards.
The other deck option I had been considering was a cheap Soviet infantry deck, that had a focus on cards costing two or less (including 5 of the cheap AA guns) - it would have been a good choice in hindsight. As it was I went with a deck I had tested more thoroughly and was more comfortable with - a deck that softens up the enemy with an initial infantry probe assault, before playing out combined arms and IS-2 heavy tanks in the mid to late game. The concept seemed sound enough, but in practice the deck is probably a little too slow for tournaments.
My time forfeit occurred against an Allied artillery deck. I actually rolled over him in 9 minutes in game one, so was very confident I could pull out a second win with 21 minutes available. However, game two did not start well, only drawing two factories (one of them my single munitions factory), and this allowed my opponent some breathing room to put together a strong defence - possibly I could have surrendered this game early and hoped for a better draw in the decider, but at that moment I felt my deck simply outclassed his, and being short a factory would not make much impact. I was able to accrue 6 victory points before too long, but the final breakthrough was not forthcoming - he had 17-pounder guns to eliminate my IS-2s (I was using Fire Plan to protect my tanks, unfortunately that could be bypassed by the Forward Observer's trick of allowing a second support unit to be deployed), artillery smoke to nullify all my battle phase effects (eg. Zis-2 guns/ IS-2s), Vickers MGs to pin my engineers and preparatory bombardment to take care of anything else. It has to be said the Allies are kings of the battlefield when it comes to creating a stalemate. In a word, frustrating.
In round three I beat a Deep Operations deck, maintaining my 100% record against this doctrine.
I have a theory that success in tournaments for the more aggressive decks hinges on a couple of cards - for the Soviets, Attrition and for the Axis, Strosstruppen. Being able to knockout (almost) any unit of your choice is priceless. Naturally, they are very difficult to get hold of, I only have one Attrition so far. Without 5 copies in your deck, it is more likely a stalemate will develop, probably leading to a loss on time. The rigid, 30 minute time limit means that a defensive, stalling strategy is perfectly viable as long as you can play slightly quicker than your opponent (quite likely if they are using up time figuring out how to break down your defence).
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Topic: Hearts of Iron the Card Game (Read 4715 times)