Long story short: ran a Crush Hour last weekend that ended up having 2 participants. (Low turnout was expected; we didn’t realize we scheduled up against both Warfaire Weekend and a small local con. Also had a bunch of the regulars out sick and such, too.)
Anyway, Player #1 has (theoretically) been playing for a year, although practically he hasn’t played more than maybe 12-15 games total, and has played rather sporadically on top of it. Player #2 literally had never touched MonPoc until six days before, when I gave him a demo game. He bought and prepped a full legal army in the next 5 days in order to participate. (Talk about enthusiasm!)
And... the brand new guy won the event...hard. It wasn’t like “new dude got lucky crazy dice on the last roll and pulled out a win!”, it was a blowout. I think he ended with 1 undamaged monster and 1 that had just gotten put into hyper form the turn before he won.
Player #1 was....
disappointed, to say the least. I felt badly for the guy! He was on his way to a victory (and that sweet Donut Factory) by default until the new guy unexpectedly showed up! Now, to be fair, he was making mistakes (not securing the buildings he really needed, not stopping the opponent from gaining power dice, not using Abduct and whatnot to the fullest, etc.) and probably not playing aggressively enough, but obviously I was doubly constrained on being able to offer advice, considering this was an event for a prize and I was the EO!
I really feel like I should write a good strategy article for Player #1. Of course... I am not sure I’ll be able to coax Player #1 back to the store any time soon....
I have never seen a grown man so demoralized after a game before!