Thoughts on "Who's the Boss?"

I want to do another in my caster profile series but I don't have the time or energy right now.  I've been managing a political campaign (for those that don't know) and it's a 60+ hour a week job.  I'm not eating enough and I don't have any kind of social life lately, but that's what I signed up for.

Anyways, today I want to talk about the best format ever and how it could be even better.

Who's the boss!!!!!

For those who don't know, this is a 35 point, one-list, death clock formatted event.  The catch: you make a 35+5 point list with no caster/lock.  So no theme forces, no elite cadre, no nothing.  Before each match you spin the Wheel of Casters to determine who leads your army.  The only stipulation is that you cannot get a caster from your faction.  Naturally, there's more on the wheel than casters-- Door Prize, Bankruptcy, Dealer's Choice, Jackpot, Double Cross, Free Spin and Free Spoon.  Bankruptcy gives you Rorsh, Dahlia Hallyr, Brun Cragback, Wrong Eye and a Journeyman Warcaster (but no Brine, Skarath, Lug or Snapjaw, of course).  You must divide your battlegroup between them.  Jackpot lets you pick a caster (within 5 seconds, of course); Double Cross lets you switch casters with your opponent.  Free Spoon is a free spoon, man, don't read too much into it.  One problem I have with the format is that it's based on Boss Points, not wins, and a lot of those events are worth TONS of boss points-- 3-5 for an unused Free Spin or Double Cross, 7 (!) for the Spoon.  Compare this to 5 for winning a game +1 for every ten points of army destroyed, and the outcome is a bit too random for me.  I mean, yeah, it's a wheel, but that's different-- the joy of the tournament is overcoming randomness and adversity, but there's a difference between the randomness of spinning a bad caster matchup and having to make the best of it vs. the randomness of losing the event because someone spun 10 bonus points on the wheel.

Anyways.

As a hilarious event, this is second to none.  Warcasters and warlocks become Friendly Faction to the army they're in; Harby in a Hordes army has Fury 10 and up to 10 transfers, eVayl in a Warmachine army has Focus 8.  Effects that add Focus instead remove Fury and vice versa.  Some models were errata'd-- Lord Carver's feat is now Friendly Faction (!), Laris becomes a light warjack in a Warmachine army, and so forth.

Here are my lessons from the event:
1) Tiberion with Full Tilt is nasty, but if you forget to cast Bump and lose him to a Forced Evolution'd free-charging Reckoner, it won't matter.
2) Ravyn does absolutely nothing for Skorne but you don't need her to.
3) Titans with Roots of the Earth turn out to be fairly difficult to kill.
4) Burning Ash is a realllllllly good spell.

I went 3-1 and scored a free Titan kit for being the first person in Round 4 to kill the enemy caster (Constance Blaize in a ret army, yeesh) with a solo (a combo striking Hakaar, after Tiberion had thoughtfully crit-slammed her into me).

That's all for now; I know this was a short and shallow post but I have work to do and I wanted to spread the gospel of the Best Format Ever.