Greetings from Riker's Iron
For those of you who do not know me yet, I am Game Master Riker, long time twitch streamer of all things Privateer Press and fan of PP products approaching a decade. I am a giant monster movie lover with a pacific rim collection people have to see to believe, a player of warmahordes, IKRPG and 1.0poc. When monpoc returned it was perfect timing for our twitch/discord community and we jumped in, full sails; recruiting people into the game offline and online ever since.
This is my first blog post here or anywhere since my Iron Kingdoms blog back in early 2012. I wanted to start my presence here by showing an event we did at Lock n Load 2019 with our twitch community; the Riker's Iron Midnight Monpoc Community Tournament. (Golden Crush Cup)
Midnight MonPoc - The Format
The format for the event was a fun but simple one. You might recognize some of this in the tournament format the community (The Godly GearboxGrinds) has been talking about on reddit. I hadn't seen stuff on this yet and came up with this a few months ago when I announced the Gold Crush Cup. Its not exactly as the in test tournament is, but its pretty close.
Monsters - Each player chooses 3 monsters to play during the whole event. Before each match, after map has been chosen, each player can chose 2 of their monsters. 1st player declares first choice, second player 1st choice, ect until both have chosen 2 monsters, then you deploy.
Units - The players bring a unit pool of 25 to choose up to their 20 allowance for each match depending on what they wish to swap that session. There is no need to declare what you took but instead declare from your pool what you didn't take. That 25 unit pool is for the whole event.
Buildings - They are locked in 6-12 from the start of the event. 12 recommended
Health Tracking - At the end of a game, each player is responsible for tracking their left over health on their monsters and reporting to the TO. This is used to determine winner should there be ties. The most health left over at the end of the event, should you tie, will win. If you do not report, it gets reported as a zero. If a win from clock, you record the win and the health for both players.
The Golden Crush Cup & Prizes
To celebrate the 1st ever Golden Crush Cup we made a trophy for the winner! (Repainted a bit by another twitch streamer and mega supporter of our stream DrakeossDragoon who you can check out HERE)
Prizes (seen around the trophy) we gave out were some of the swag Privateer Press hooked me up and I bought extra of; 1 of each new ape unit expansion and 1 of each new uber corp unit expansion. Winners in order of placement got choice based on placement, 1st getting 1st choice, 2nd getting 2nd choice, ect.
Round 1 - The Beer Flowed like Water Around the Creationship and the Crew Tumbled in Ecstasy as Combat Began
Round 1 started a few minutes after midnight, saw some crazy match ups and LOTS of booze flowing around every table. We had 6 players, 3 games rolling at once.
What I didn't realized until I sat down to play, was my 1st round was vs Vicarious aka Mike Ireland who took second in the 2 monster Championship just hours before. Having not played in nearly 2 months at this point, I knew I was in for a stomping, it was just matter of how badly.
The tables were in full swing with match ups featuring (by Twitch/Discord Handles);
- Ghoek Vs GearboxGrinds
- Vicarious vs Rikers Iron
- Emberwilde13 vs RustyPaints
My Set up for Round 1 vs Vicarious, I wasn't really sure what I was gonna do. I had already been drinking a bit before hand and was looking forward to just getting games in. I had never faced Ares before (my wife only plays Ghadra and Cthrugrosh at the moment) and didn't know what to expect. My initial plan was to go for Ares and focus fire on her.
After many rounds of misplacement and bad screening on my part as I refound my footing, Vicarious won with 14 health left split between his two monsters. His Ares game is a great one, one I will hope to learn from when I play my own Ares. I did learn a lot about how to step in this game and in the future used it more effectively following this game, so thank you Mike for a harsh lesson in Positioning! 
Showing no mercy I was stomped after this turn, we started last and finished 1st, it was a mega match of body slams and throws.
Some pics from the other tables of Round 1
Ghoek Vs Gearbox - Round 1
In the End Gearbox Dropped Gheok for his 1st Win of the Tournament
Emberwilde13 vs Rusty Paints - Round 1
#TeamDwarfPig!!! 
The most excellent Emberwilde13 took home the win vs Rusty Paints on isle of annihilation and also the longest game of Round 1.
Round 2 - Tired & Sloshedpoc
Round two! Everyone was still motoring to get another 12 games in if they wanted (this changes later lol) we all grabbed another drink (Ghoek spilling beer on all his cards) and picked at random our next opponent from the tricorn of fate!
The Match ups for round 2 were amazing. We had a rematch of the Champion of 2 monster tournament vs his opponent in the finals (Gearbox vs Vicarious), emberwilde the most excellent vs The Great Gheok and myself (Riker's Iron) vs fellow twitch painter Rusty Paints (check him out HERE).
Current Standing at the start of the round!
The Great Ghoek (0W/1L) vs The Most Excellent Emberwilde13 (1W/0L)
Vicarious (1W/0L) vs GearboxGrinds (1W/0L)
Riker's Iron (0W/1L) vs RustyPaints (0W/1L)
My Game with Rusty is kind of a blur (both drink and so many turns) but It was a another valuable lesson is positioning and paying attention to 'the vectors' as Gearbox and new buddy crewmen Luis call it. It was also my first game on isle of annihilation which was extremely fun to jump into.
My plan was to try to get the more pedestrian monsters to carve their way to me or take the straight roads and then spring a big move with Maxim to toss back to Defender X. It kind of worked and didn't as I failed a few key attacks and failed at setting up an effective power base to pull off an 'ally-oop'. (I have always been horrible at it but in my next post ill talk about my private game with Gearbox that helped change it for me) 
I still hadn't found my footing in the game yet but was getting there. Rusty played a great terrasaur game and really gave me a run for my money. We both missed some key moments and attacks but in the end I lost to his pure terra monster list. 
Gearbox vs Vicarious - Round 2 Final Game state - Vicarious pulling the Win in the champions rematch and ruining the no losses out of 20 games at lock n load for the Champion Gearbox
The Great Gheok vs The most excellent Emberwilde - Emberwilde took the win in a bloody Destroyer vs Destroyer mirror match
It was this time in the night about to get started on round 3 (about 2:30-3am in the morning PST, 6 am for me from East Coast) we decided to pause the tournament until we slept and after the MonPoc Dev Chat. Notes on the chat you can find on Reddit HERE complied by Dragon Pup
Round 3 (Finals) - Midnight MonPoc...continued at Noon
Noon rolled around and along with it the start of Round 3. We started a bit later than noon but the dev chat ran long and my P3 Grandmaster entry collection was longer than I thought but worth it (I got a Bronze!).
The current Standings and Matches for Round 3;
Vicarious (2W/0L) vs The Most Excellent Emberwilde13 (2W/0L)
RustyPaints (1W/1L) vs GearboxGrinds (1W/1L)
Riker's Iron (0W/2L) vs The Great Ghoek (0W/2L)
My head was clearer for this match up and was ready to compete for bottom slot last place vs The Great Ghoek! The match was a familiar one, Ghadra/Grosh vs DX/Max.
This battle I've fought many times vs my wife and it was a grueling battle that expired both our clocks and one we kept playing until it was done.
I had finally found my footing (too late it seems) in the game and was screening, positioning and slamming very well...but so was Ghoek. We both wanted that wooden spoon.
The Last Stand of DX before he fell...
Eventually it ended here, Maxim was still pretty good on health, Ghoek expired his clock many turns before and I had just followed suit. I conceded as I don't think I could take on two hyper monsters too long. Thinking about it now I probably could but everyone was also waiting for the final award ceremony for the Coveted Golden Crush Cup so we called it
Some Action from the other Tables
Gearbox Vs RustyPaints
Gearbox eventually taking down the Terrasaur team with his own GUARD team!
The Finalists Table - Emberwilde13 vs Vicarious!
In the End Vicarious took the win! (I missed getting an end game shot as they had cleaned up before I noticed they finished)
The Final Standing
1st Place - Vicarious (Hammer/Ares)
2nd Place - Emberwile (Grosh/Rogzor)
3rd Place - GearboxGrinds (DX/SkySent)
4th Place - RustyPaints (Armodax/Khan)
5th Place - Gheok (Grosh/Ghadra)
6th Place - Riker's Iron (DX/Maxim)
The Champion
Taking home the 1st ever Golden Crush Cup and community exclusive tournament is Vicarious aka Mike Ireland.
You can catch Mike in the community discord and on various live streams to congratulate him!
Personal Take Aways
I learned a lot doing my 1st ever tabletop tournament of any kind since my steamroller stuff in early MK2. My biggest notice of this game is even when losing, your still getting some epic moments and a lot of fun out of it. I don't feel that way playing other games.
My second take away is I need more practice on both the maps and setting up myself to power dice generate. I played only on maps I never have before and it was an uphill frying pan learning experience, however watching the other top guys and better players do their thing, I did pick up on a few things to do they did a lot of.
- Set Power Base early and aggressively (take mid ground early if possible)
- Stepping is a big key to after or before attacks (don't forget)
- Pay attention to your vectors and remember telekinesis/Beat back type powers
I had so much fun with this and was a big highlight of my experience at lock n load. Thank you everyone who participated in it, tossed me around and showed me a good time even when you were stomping my ass. My goal after this is to hit our local Ottawa/Gatineau tournaments for MonPoc to really hone my knowledge gained here and the learnings from my private game later with Gearbox.
Thank you for also taking the time to read this and you can catch me on various places including Twitch Monday, Wednesday, Fridays and Sunday or at the other links below.
~ Riker
Twitch.tv/RikersIron (For Streaming)
Creationship Fleet Discord (For Privateer Press Hobby Community)
Youtube (For Edited/Pre-recorded Videos)
Twitter (For announcements & Genral Daily Activity)
Facebook (For announcements & Events)
Instagram (For Works in Progress, Announcments & Finished Work)