OTC 2017 Battle Reports

Round 1 - Team NZ Ghost Chips - Recon



I was given the choice between playing their Cygnar or their Cryx player, and couldn't jump at the Cryx player fast enough. This Cryx player had Gaspy2 and Goreshade2, neither of them in theme. I dropped Carver, he dropped Goreshade with the following:



Goreshade

-Barathrum

-Nightwretch

-Deathripper

-Withershadow Combine

Cephalyx Overlords

Cephalyx Overlords

Max Soulhunters

Max Croes Cutthroats

Gorman

Scrap Thralls

Scrap Thralls

Scrap Thralls

Machine Wraith

Machine Wraith

Machine Wraith



I felt pretty good about this match-up. I figured he didn't have a whole lot of anti-armour, I could deal with recurring Soulhunters easily enough, and the Croes weren't immensely threatening at Arm 19-20 across the board so long as I didn't let Croe tag Carver.



Deployment



I won the roll to go first. Just set up symmetrically in the middle of the table. My opponent stuck Barathrum on the right, the Croes on the left, Soulhunters in the middle. The Scrap Thralls lined up at the back of the board to act as Feat targets.







A brief note on terrain. It seems like the TOs struggled to get their hands on enough to cover the 25 tables for this event. What terrain did exist was rarely in a significant spot. If I have any criticism of this year's OTC, it's this. Too many boards like this one where there wasn't a single piece of LOS blocking terrain on the table.



Pigs Turn 1



Carver cast Mobility and Batten. I swung all my Splatter Boars left to deal with the Croes. My Battle Boar on the right ran into the zone. I've downed Cryx heavies with Primal'd Battle Boars on Carver's Feat turn before, so I was vaguely aiming for some sort of scenario like that to play out. I had no idea what I should do with my Gremlin Swarms in this game, so they mostly ran into the spots of rubble on the board.







Cryx Turn 1



His army ran forward. One Machine Wraith went into the zone, one into Rubble and within 4" of the left flag. Barathrum moved to my left and Dug In again. Scrap Thralls stayed at the back of his deployment, the Soulhunters kept one member lagging well behind the rest of the unit.





Pigs Turn 2



Carver casts Batten and drops a Fury. He moves a little to the right to avoid Croe. I start dropping AOEs on the Cutthroats, I think I kill two of them. I take a potshot at a Soulhunter with one Splatter Boar, spike the damage roll on the blast damage and kill it. Drop a cloud in the zone so Barathrum can't make a move on my objective. The Gremlin Swarms move away from the Cephalyx.





Cryx Turn 2



I'd neglected to keep all my Warbeasts within 9" of Carver, so my opponent made a go at some Abyssal Gates. He ran an arc node up, hit two Splatter Boars, failed to break armour on one of them, but spun the other around and out of Carver's Control. I think it took all of four shots to kill the Boar, and Croe tagged the one who had resisted the Abyssal Gate to stop it from casting Lucky Shot next turn. The rest of his army moved around, Barathrum backed up a little and Dug In again, the Machine Wraiths continue contesting and one runs right up into the midst of my army.





Pigs Turn 3



I activate Carver, cast Batten, Primal a Splatter Boar, tag my opponent's objective with Hunter's Mark, and send the Splatter Boar in to kill it and score a CP. I had forgotten about Counter Charge, but luckily Barathrum only removed the Boar's Mind. It wasn't using it anyway. The Splatter Boar's shoot one more Cutthroat off the board.





Cryx Turn 3



This time I've remembered to keep all (bar one) of my pigs within 9" of Carver. My opponent arcs another Abyssal Gate into the Silenced Splatter Boar, breaks armour this time, and spins it around. He also removes Lanyssa by trying to hit the Swamp Gobbers with a Hex Blast and scattering onto her instead. He then runs the node to safety. Croes unload into the Splatter Boar but fail to kill it. Barathrum stays in the zone to swing on the Splatter Boar (with just his Power Up Focus), fails to kill it, and he runs Machine Wraiths in front to deny a landing zone. He sends a Soulhunter in to kill the Splatter Boar, forgets to Reposition back afterwards.





Pigs Turn 4



Carver casts Mobility and Batten. One Battle Boar primals another. I do something very stupid and send the Primal'd Battle Boar into the Soulhunter next to Barathrum. I kill it, Overtake into Gorman, trigger Counter Charge, and by a random stupid fluke of good positioning Barathrum isn't able to counter charge to a position outside of the threat range of the nearest War Hog. The Battle Boar is now out of Control and fails to kill Gorman from there. I Primal up the nearest War Hog, send it into Barathrum, kill him pretty easily. The two remaining Splatter Boars kill two Croes on the left and leave a third suffering Corrosion. The one surviving smoke Gobber backs up and builds a little fort in front of Carver with smoke and Battle Boars. My other War Hog charges, staying just barely within 9" of Carver, and kills the arc node on the right.





Sorry for the dreadful picture here.



Cryx Turn 4



My opponent has the Withershadow hit my out of control Battle Boar with Abyssal Gate and turns it around... and also moves it back into my Control Range while freeing up Gorman. In a terribly unfortunate piece of positioning he also blocks one of the Soulhunters from being able to charge my non-Primal'd War Hog. Curse of Shadows gets thrown on that War Hog anyway and the one Soulhunter with a charge lane goes in for some fairly minor damage. A Cephalyx kills the last smoke Gobber, the Croes charge and do a bit of damage to the two Splatter Boars, a Machine Wraith ensures that it will be the Primal'd War Hog's Frenzy target.






Pigs Turn 5



I feed a Gremlin Swarm to a Battle Boar to keep it from frenzying. The Gremlins weren't really necessary for much at this point, I had no fear of him clearing the zone and they weren't going to be getting any Sabotages off any time soon. Carver goes left, casts Batten, and uses his shotgun to clear off some Croes. The badly damaged Splatter Boar in the bottom-left has lost its Body, but it doesn't need it to kill the engaging Croes. The last Croe had already died to a frenzy attack from the second Splatter Boar. The War Hog who didn't frenzy kills the engaging Soulhunter.





I forgot to pick my cloud template up. Oops.



Cryx Turn 5



My opponent forgets to declare he's upkeeping Curse of Shadows, which stuffs up his turn. The Soulhunters to kill a Battle Boar. He reapplies Curse of Shadows to that War Hog, and Abyssal Gates the other one I think. The Machine Wraith in front of Carver gets scared of his magic sword and runs to the other side of the zone. He also either forgets or opts not to Feat, I can't remember if it was a deliberate decision but I was surprised that he chose not to get some Soulhunters back.





Pigs Turn 6



Carver walks over, casts Batten, kills the Machine Wraith at the bottom of the zone. My War Hogs kill a Soulhunter apiece.





Cryx Turn 6



My opponent has the Withershadow Abyssal Gate the Curse of Shadows'd War Hog over next to the flag. Goreshade charges and kills it. The other two Withershadows are engaging my War Hog. My opponent goes to 1 CP.





Pigs Turn 7



Carver walks over, Feats, casts Batten and heals a damage on a pig somewhere with a Fury. He shoots one Withershadow dead. One Battle Boar primals the War Hog, another Primals itself and kills a Withershadow. The War Hog accepts a free strike from the last Withershadow, takes one damage, goes into Goreshade and kills him easily.



In the end, the match-up went more or less exactly as I expected it to. I could have killed the Croes a tad faster if I'd bricked up more, but it was basically a game where neither of us were able to score the entire game. That would have been an issue if I were down on clock, but I believe my opponent was down for most of that game instead. Eventually my opponent made some mistakes and ran out of options.

Always good to start the tournament with an interminable grind  

Thanks for the posts

Ctrl of 12, beast can be placed 3'' by Abyssal Gates. If he wants the beast to remain in CTL for next turn and batten down the hatches, 9'' is the sweet spot.

Ah - ok, thanks! I was figuring it was an enemy's ability, but for the life of me couldn't figure out why.

I dislike ambushing them. They threaten, what, 14" from each table side? So they usually come on, run, get shot to death, and maybe contribute to the game after that. If you're unlucky enough to go second then they won't be contributing to the game in a meaningful fashion until the bottom of turn three.

Admittedly, I've only used a max unit. Gaston is probably right that a min unit is the way to go. However...


Basically how I imagine people use a min unit of Commandos. He's a harassment unit. Comes in off the table side, threatens 16" with his grenades or 13" if he charges. Good for tying up cavalry and the like, or a heavy without any support (usually because other models have killed the support capable of removing the 13/16 8 wound solo). He can hunt solos, knock down cavalry models, rust bomb flanking Warjacks, and so on. The main exception is against lists without any meaningful shooting or ability to scalpel him, like most Amon builds. Then he deploys instead of Ambushes and just applies Rust with impunity.


Carver is always solid, but I was talking more about the Gremlin Swarms than I was his own attributes. They really are the perfect solos for SR 2017. Cheap and ridiculously hard to kill warrior models make them perfect support for Warbeast spam. Though Carver's Quagmire spell (and Lanyssa) are why I'm ok with breaking theme for them.

Round 2 - Team NSW Asian Dad - Take and Hold

I ended up playing into their Cryx player, running Denny1 Ghost Fleet and Goreshade2 Infernal Machines. I'm pretty 50/50 on Ghost Fleet. It's not an easy game, and we have no way to deal with Incorporeal so it's effectively dead on scenario, but it's not that easy for Denny to crack armour post-Feat when it's spread across that many light Warbeasts and her army isn't inherently hard hitting. Plus Carver is reasonably tanky and can survive the Riflemen assassination run. It probably advantages the Ghost Fleet player, but I at least have a game. So I drop Carver, he drops Denny with:

Warwitch Deneghra
-Stalker
-Deathripper
-Nightwretch
-Nightwretch
Max Blackbane's Ghost Raiders
Min Revenant Crew
-Rifleman
-Rifleman
Min Revenant Crew
-Rifleman
-Rifleman
-Rifleman
Min Revenant Crew
-Rifleman
-Rifleman
-Rifleman
Captain Rengrave
Pistol Wraith
Pistol Wraith
Wraith Engine

Deployment

I win the dice off and get first turn, which is a big help. I deploy pretty much as per normal, my opponent drops all his Incorporeal stuff opposite Lanyssa and the Revenant Crew across the rest of the board.



Pigs Turn 1

My front line runs forward with Mobility and Batten up. The rest walks up.



Cryx Turn 1

My opponent also runs everything forward. Parasite is arced out onto the rightmost Battle Boar.



Pigs Turn 2

So I know I'm going to need to get a good few Battle Boar killing sprees out. I've stuck one Battle Boar behind a spot of rubble though. I don't think to check whether a good Hunter's Mark target would let me get him into the Revenants without Mobility, in all honesty it probably would have. Carver casts Mobility and Batten, Lanyssa throws out a Hunter's Mark onto the Revenant Crew, Primal goes on the left Battle Boar, and it happily chews through the front two ranks of the list killing about 10 Revenants in total from across all three units.

I know that isn't a big dent at all, but that every kill I get from this point forward may actually count. I fire out some Splatter Boar shots and slam the right Nightwretch with one Splatter Boar. The Parasite'd Battle Boar receives Primal and bounces off a Revenant Crew member into the Nightwretch (well outside of Control Range by this point), finishing it off with its initials. As my turn is winding down I start to seriously consider how likely I am to die to an assassination run and throw up some clouds. I neglect to actually work out where his stuff can get to though, so the two clouds end up positioned pretty ineffectually.



Cryx Turn 2

The Riflemen all come back. The remaining Nightwretch runs into the Bellows' Crew's cloud. My opponent decides the attrition game is too much work and just goes for an assassination. He Feats, Crippling Grasp goes onto Carver to account for elevation. The rightmost Pistol Wraith shoots Carver twice and makes him stationary. The Riflemen open fire and drop him to 1 box, with the last shot doing six damage on its own. He runs out of attacks though, so the run ends there.



Pigs Turn 3

I make a few very big mistakes here. I kill the Revenant Crew Riflemen, instead of engaging them. I don't stick a cloud down on the left to at least prevent the Blackbanes from charging. Carver can't afford Mobility, so he can only shift about 2" and camp two Fury. I do manage to kill the second Nightwretch at least, plus a few more Revenants, so if I survive this next turn I've probably got a good shot...

Big if.



Cryx Turn 3

My opponent upkeeps Crippling Grasp. The Riflemen come back and fire on Carver. Two shots break armour, eating up both transfers. The Wraith Engine runs to engage, and Deneghra throws a boosted damage Venom into him. It breaks armour and Carver makes his Tough roll. The Blackbanes charge him. The first one hits, breaks armour, he makes his Tough roll. The second hits, breaks armour, he makes his Tough roll. The third misses. The fourth hits, breaks armour, he makes his Tough roll. Nothing else is in range, so my opponent moves whatever he has left in to screen Deneghra.



Pigs Turn 4

Corrosion doesn't go out. I make my Tough roll. Carver is knocked down. Fire doesn't go out. Carver dies.

...

Dammit. I have no right to complain about luck after that, but so, sooooo close.

Azahul is a man who finds a couple lists he likes, plays them forever, then uses those games to convince people to buy lots of the same model. I wonder if I can convince my friends to play ikrpg so I can have them fight an army of bone grinders.