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Post by Dirhavel on Oct 16, 2019 12:00:02 GMT
i can only assume the warhog made short work of skarre. that beeing said. these battle reports are quite a treat to read. Nah, Brun did the deed. He made three boosted attacks and rolled a 19 on all of them and just killed her dead thanks to Lug softening her up. Poor War Hog never got the opportunity. And aw shucks. Cheers! I do often feel that my tendency to just settle on two lists and play nothing else for, like, a year at a time probably makes these write-ups a little redundant after maybe the first six months. Always glad to hear people are still gaining value from them. I kinda like the write-up redundancy myself. When you see the same lists having success against all kinds of opponents, I think it only reinforces how good they (or at least you, the player...) are. It's inspiring, really. Especially for the Minions community, which tends to lack that kind of "high level" representation. Keep up the good work!
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Post by Azahul on Oct 17, 2019 23:09:37 GMT
fine tuning a list requires repeated play and use. you cannot just say "this does or doesn't work after 2-3 games" i mean i played ALOT of feora3 before saying "this sort of works" but then the oblivion theme force changes happened. Heh, if I at least tweaked the lists from time to time I might be able to claim I was "fine tuning". Instead odds are I'll settle on the final iteration within 2-3 games and then... never change it. That Sturm and Drang list has changed once in the year since Mire released, and it was because Oblivion gave him a free point but cost him a free solo option. I kinda like the write-up redundancy myself. When you see the same lists having success against all kinds of opponents, I think it only reinforces how good they (or at least you, the player...) are. It's inspiring, really. Especially for the Minions community, which tends to lack that kind of "high level" representation. Keep up the good work! That's great to hear I'm glad you get something so positive out of it. Personally, I take a lot of joy out of building lists that I think can cover the overwhelming bulk of the meta, and the last year has been an enormously positive experience for myself in the sense that it's actually allowed me to field two all-comers lists (previously, it was always just Arkadius and a supporter). All of that said, I honestly do intend to try and sneak some Helga games in post-Void Archon. I'm currently thinking this: Helga -Road Hog -Road Hog -Battle Boar -Soul Slave Valkyries Valkyries Valkyries Dahlia -Skarath Totem Hunter River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider Gobber Chef Void Archon Void Archon Feels like it actually has some unexpected meat on its bones the more I look at it. Cracking armour is the toughest part, though the Void Archons can get the Road Hogs to P+S 21. Problem is that the Road Hogs are the only real damage dealers, and they're reasonably fragile. Hopefully nine Shield Guards are enough to deliver them.
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Post by charlzheimer on Oct 18, 2019 7:42:09 GMT
GOoOoOo ThornFallllll OoOOOoooOoohhh bring more bacon!
helga likes more bacon~
ps: i'm very well aware of my losing streak with helga but this is due to my helga beeing cursed with garbage dice rolls.
if your gonna do WWFF with helga. why not tanks? playtest em?
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Post by Azahul on Oct 18, 2019 11:44:19 GMT
I'll certainly consider the tanks once they release. Not sure what I'd cut though. A unit of Valkyries if I only want Ledfoot, maybe Dahlia and Skarath if I wanted to trial the full boat. Certainly worth playing around with.
My problem with Helga in Thornfall is that she just doesn't have access to any of the fun mobile/teleporting models that make her Feat an actual joy to play with. It leaves her a lot more predictable and static, which I think takes away really her only big strength.
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Post by Azahul on Oct 21, 2019 4:50:57 GMT
We had a really interesting tournament play out locally on the weekend. It was a teams event operating under a Captain, Mate, Crew system, where we split up the attendees into teams of three and assigned them positions based on relative ability. When the teams paired off, rather than going through a pairing process each team member would instead play their corresponding opponent on the opposing team. The intent was to encourage new players or players without a competitive bent to take a shot at a Steamroller event, by ensuring that they mainly be playing against players of equivalent skill level while we competitive try-hards were segregated off in our own bracket where we could only hurt one another I'm happy to say that it worked, there were four new people at the event who I had never met before, and it was a decent turnout from the rest of the community as well. We were looking for either two or three rounds, but the tournament started late and the Crew players were on an extended Deathclock so we ended up settling for two. Still a great day for everyone concerned I think. I took my current list pair of Arkadius/Sturm and Drang for one final outing before Void Archons release and at least shake up my lists (even if the pairing will stay the same), so I was running: Arkadius -War Hog -War Hog -Road Hog -Road Hog -Gun Boar -Gun Boar -Gorax -Targ Bellows Crew Mire -Wrastler Hermit Boomhowler2 Kwaak and Gub Gobber Chef Sturm and Drang -War Hog -Battle Boar -Battle Boar -Soul Slave Bellows Crew Mire -Dracodile Dahlia -Skarath Brun -Lug Orin Eilish Round 1 - Invasion I drew up against a Legion player for the first time in a while. He had a Thags1/Rhyas1 pairing, mostly just trying out a few new things now that Legion's Warbeast stable has opened up with the theme force changes. I probably should have dropped Arkadius, but I plumped for Sturm and Drang figuring that he would be stronger into the Rhyas list and had some tools (like RFP) that could help with the Thags list and Arkadius just hates dealing with Hellmouths. My opponent dropped Thagrosh, running: Thagrosh -Archangel -Typhon -Carnivean -Carnivean -Naga Nightlurker Hellmouth Hellmouth Forsaken Forsaken Deployment My opponent won the starting roll and took first. I gave him a table side loaded with Burning Earth. He deployed his Archangel on the left flank, his heavies on the centre-right, and a Hellmouth in the right zone and one behind the forest in the centre. I skewed my deployment more heavily to the right in response, with the War Hog, Brun and Lug, and Dracodile all aiming for the centre and right-hand zones on the basis that my opponent had locked himself out of ever scoring the left by not putting a Hellmouth there. I figured Dahlia and Skarath would be enough to hold off the Archangel for a while and hoped to focus my attentions elsewhere. Both objectives are Stockpiles. Legion Turn 1 Thags put Draconic Blessing on Typhon, Spiny Growth on himself, cast Fog of War, and moved up. Everything else ran, with Typhon taking good advantage of his new immunity to fire by running through a patch of Burning Earth. Pigs Turn 1 Sturm, vaguely aware of the assassination danger presented by the Archangel, moved forward only a little and spent his stack putting up Deceleration, Vision on Skarath, and Polarity Shield on the Dracodile. The lessers all cast their respective upkeeps and I ran the heavies and Dracodile forward cautiously, keeping outside of my opponent's threat ranges. In retrospect I think a good move would have been to put Skarath inside the Archangel's threat range. Skarath wasn't going to do too much against the Carniveans, and being able to bait the Archangel forward and clean off the left flank would have given me a good advantage going forward. And if my opponent didn't take the bait, I'd have had some board presence to play with. Legion Turn 2 The Archangel received Wraithbane from the Nightlurker. It then moved up and rolled up the maximum number of shots, concentrating fire on the War Hog. Not wanting to lose a heavy to shooting, I spread the shots out across my two Shield Guards, which sadly meant that I lost a Gobber and had both Sturm and my Soul Slave set on fire. The heavies all moved up and cast their defensive animii, making them tough nuts to crack, while Hellmouth Tentacles ran up to engage. Pigs Turn 2 I mucked up this turn pretty badly. It started with getting really unfortunate on fire rolls. Both Sturm and the Soul Slave remained on fire, and my opponent rolled an 11 for Sturm's damage roll to take him down to 11 health and managed to drop the Soul Slave to 4 boxes as well. From there the problems were of my own making. Skarath moved up to spray down three of the tentacles blocking my War Hog and Dracodile, and managed to miss one and fail to break armour on another (needing 4s to hit and damage). I had Sturm TK the War Hog and Soul Slave forwards, aiming to get the Carnivean in the centre zone. Unfortunately I then only moved up Sturm a few inches, which meant I wasn't able to Feat on anything. That was an integral part of the plan sadly, since I hoped to deliver both the War Hog and Dracodile into the Carnivean to ensure it died and was RFP'd, and they would need the Feat to survive. The net effect of that was that I played the rest of the turn defensively rather than throw away my two heavy hitters, without even having Deceleration in play to force my opponent to put out some Wraithbanes. Legion Turn 3 My opponent considered going for an assassination run. The dicey part was that it was most likely going to come down to the number of shots he rolled on the Archangel. After a bit of consideration, he figured that even if it failed it was unlikely that it'd expose Thags and that if he could kill the War Hog as part of the run then he probably wouldn't lose the Archangel either. So the Archangel moved up and rolled four shots, though luck was in my favour as he missed two of the four shots at Sturm. I bounced the two that hit onto the Battle Boars, but it dropped both Battle Boars to pretty low health. The Archangel chose to remain in position with its animus up to guarantee one last damage roll from fire on Sturm in my turn. One Carnivean was able to assault in with its spray, tagging Sturm chewing through some health. Typhon and the remaining Carnivean sprayed the War Hog off the table, taking one of the Battle Boars with them. Thags moved up a lot more aggressively than he needed to, originally planning on landing a Twisted Form on the Dracodile, but Orin being in position meant that he scuppered those plans. Pigs Turn 3 Fire rolled high again on Sturm. Not super high, but it was enough damage to kill Sturm even after transferring the damage to his highest health Battle Boar. Sturm failed his Tough check. Ouch. I definitely had a live assassination run on Thags had Sturm lived. I also think I mucked up with how I resolved those fire damage rolls. As far as my opponent and I could tell, I could have picked which order they resolved in, but I made the poor move to resolve the damage rolls on the Battle Boars before Sturm and that left him without any health to transfer to. Unfortunate, but I do think I deserved this loss. The match-up was a lot worse than I originally considered it, that Thags list was a lot of meat that was going to be hard for me to chew through and he had the firepower to completely dictate the pace of the game. Just the Archangel on its own virtually shot Sturm's battlegroup off the table in two rounds. Really interesting to see some new Legion builds coming out at last in the post-Oblivion world. I've always been impressed by Thagrosh1, and I think this kind of build (all-Warbeast, run in Primal Terrors just to steal some free Hellmouths) is a very solid list. It certainly put me at enough of a disadvantage that I couldn't afford to just waste a turn the way I did on my Turn 2, so stealing a win out with an assassination on Thags wouldn't have been representative I think of how this match-up should go. Fortunately, the rest of my team carried us to victory and made up for my poor showing.
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Post by Azahul on Oct 21, 2019 6:08:49 GMT
Round 2 - Anarchy For the second and final round I was paired against Infernals for the first time! Very exciting. My opponent had an Agathon/Zaateroth pair. I plumped for Arkadius, he went for Agathon, running: Agathon -Soul Stalker -Soul Stalker -Foreboder -Foreboder -Foreboder Min Cultists -3 Dark Sentinels -Orin Midwinter2 Max Croe's Cutthroats Valin Hauke Eilish Garrity1 Hermit of Henge Hold Saxon Orrik Wretch Wretch Wretch Umbral Guardian Infernal Gate So, because I was reasonably confident that I'd be running up against Infernals at some point this tournament, I spent a lot of time reading up on how they work and getting a feel for their models and working out how to play against them. I figured Arkadius, with his ability to reach deep into my opponent's back lines and capacity for controlling the game with his high threat ranges, would be an excellent drop. But in all this reading, I somehow managed to neglect to read how Summoning actually works. I spent this entire game thinking that Horrors still had their combat actions on the turn they were summoned, and put a great deal of thought beforehand and brainpower in-game into how to mitigate that ability. ...turns out they can't make combat actions on the turn they come in though. So this entire game basically had me playing needlessly conservative to avoid slingshotted Horrors that couldn't actually play like that. Deployment I won the starting roll, which felt like a huge deal against a 'caster with the assassination potential of Agathon. I immediately went for the first turn, since I wanted to be able to run all my Warbeasts and drop Fury on Arkadius without worrying about just dying. I had an Acid Pool not far out of my deployment, so the majority of my army ended up deployed to the right of it while a War Hog and Mire with his Wrastler went on the left. My opponent meanwhile deployed with his Gate basically inside his regular deployment zone so that Arkadius couldn't take it out too quickly, a Soul Stalker on either flank, and Croe's Cutthroats hewing to the right-hand side. He chose to deploy the Umbral Guardian because he felt I didn't have very many guns, which was definitely a mistake all things considered. I forgot to take a picture. My objective is a Fuel Cache, while my opponent's is a Stockpile. The Cutthroats chose Boomhowler as their Prey target, wanting to get his Cacophany off the table so that Arkadius couldn't be screened by it. Pigs Turn 1 Kwaak used Enliven on the Road Hogs. Both Hogs then used Full Boar and ran up the board, trying to stake out control of the centre. The Gorax ran next, giving Arkadius a Fury she could Maltreat off. She then moved up, casting Aggravator because I got confused and thought Agathon had a way to turn my models around to enable the Cutthroats' backstab rule, Psycho Surgery to heal the self-damage, and Forced Evolution went on the War Hog on the right. Mire put Weald Secrets on the War Hog on the left. Everything else ran up the board, with Boomhowler running and using Cacophany. Infernals Turn 1 Saxon ran forwards. Agathon moved up and popped him into a Tormentor, which then actually backed up. Agathon chose to camp on six Essence, topped up to seven by the Hermit. Everything else chose to run, the Croes not wanting to risk triggering a potential 10" move on the Road Hogs by shooting them. The Soul Stalker on the left tried to make sure it was more than 17" away from my War Hog so that I wouldn't be able to get it if I Feated. Pigs Turn 2 I figured that even though both Road Hogs could get to Agathon, and even though Agathon had some of the squishiest stats I've ever seen, and even though I could remove most of his transfer targets before going for the kill, I should probably not try for the assassination. For one, I wanted to actually learn if I could play attrition into Infernals, and for two I felt the free spell that would trigger when a Cutthroat died would just be too hard to plan for. So instead Kwaak moved up and Enliven'd the Road Hogs again. My Gun Boars moved up and took pot shots at the Cutthroats, killing a couple. I had Arkadius upkeep her spells, then move up and Raw Adrenaline a Road Hog. The Road Hog charged a Cutthroat on the right, kill him and a second Cutthroat with the spray (this triggered Agathon's free spell, which he used to actually teleport forward now that Arkadius's Feat threat was out of the way so that he could use Tether to slingshot a Soul Stalker forward in his next turn), punch a third Cutthroat dead, then sprint back to safety. The second Cutthroat sprayed another two Cutthroats down, so by the end of the turn I think there were only two Cutthroats left on the table. Everything else moved up. I did make the mistake of moving the Gorax behind the Road Hogs, blocking them in and limiting their Enliven options, which is definitely something I'll need to work on. The Hermit ran up the most aggressively, putting himself in a position where I hoped to get his Whispers at the Gate into play next round. Boomhowler used Cacophany again and laid out a Covering Fire template. As per that thing I mentioned about playing as if Summoned Horrors could activate the turn they came on, I was a bit worried about losing a heavy on the left flank but hoped that I could deal with it with the second heavy and that Enliven and Mad Visions on the right flank would allow my Road Hogs to survive on the right if he went in that direction. So much angst and preparation, planning around my opponent needing to summon within 9" of the Cultists to fuel the Horror the turn it came on and generally being just far too cautious. Infernals Turn 2 Agathon sacrificed a Cultist to refuel. The Hermit topped him and the Soul Stalker up on Essence. Agathon moved up to pull the Soul Stalker forward with Tether. He then threw Curse of Shadows on the Road Hog, and Teleported back, choosing to camp his remaining Essence rather than summon a Horror. The Soul Stalker charged into the Road Hogs, thankfully left room for the Road Hogs to escape through, and managed to hit but not back armour with its tail attack by rolling triple ones. The Road Hog took about six points on the head attack, and I blocked the Free Strike as I moved out of melee with the Mad Visions. The other Road Hog chose to stand and take the three bought attacks from the Soul Stalker, losing about ten boxes all up. The rest of his army mostly milled around. The Cultists topped up the Tormentor on Essence and the surviving Cutthroats screened Agathon so that he would get a teleport if I went for the assassination. My opponent scored his flag with his Umbral Guardian, taking the score to 0-1 in his favour. Pigs Turn 3 Arkadius Feat turn, I figured. Arkadius dropped Aggravator. I had Boomhowler put Reposition on the Hermit and run out of the way. The Hermit advanced, used Whispers at the Gate, and Repositioned onto my opponent's flag. Kwaak found a spot where he could Enliven both War Hogs. Mire put Rage on the left War Hog but I was scared about Mire being assassinated so he camped his remaining Fury. I had the left-hand Gun Boar go next to get some Fury on the board, shooting some Cultists dead and casting Counterblast. Arkadius then activated, Maltreated that Gun Boar, and charged the Soul Stalker in my face. She rendered that Soul Stalker stationary and Feated. The Gorax went into the Soul Stalker and began the first of a series of ballistic damage rolls. The left-hand Gun Boar frenzied into the Tormentor to prevent any Counter Charge shenanigans, but took a hefty free strike from the Umbral Guardian in the process that took off about half its health. A Road Hog frenzied into one of the last Cutthroats, prompting Agathon to teleport and hide behind the Hermit. The War Hog on the left Frenzied up, angling towards the Gate, while I had a Road Hog frenzy in the same direction to clear out the intervening objective. I think Arkadius ended her activation camping four Fury after spending a couple restoring lost aspects on the Road Hogs. She Repositioned across to the left to give my War Hog there some more room to play with. The Gorax then activated, destroyed the Stationary Soul Slave with its initials, and put Primal on a Road Hog. I wasn't sure if I would need it, but figured I was going to destroy enough this round that I could afford to be down a heavy this round and better to be safe than sorry. That Road Hog then used its initials to kill the Umbral Guardian (avoiding a Defensive Strike by moving into its back arc) and a Cultist, ending up in melee with the Tormentor and destroying it with three attacks. I then Sprinted that Road Hog back off towards Agathon. My Gun Boar moved up and shot at Orin, killing a Cultist and forcing Orin to remove a Dark Sentinel to stay alive. The Road Hog then charged the objective and killed both remaining Dark Sentinels by forcing Orin to Sacrifice the last one to stay alive, leaving Orin fire and with no one left to Sacrifice. The Road Hog also destroyed the objective, but it took one attack too many and he couldn't sprint out of the way. That forced the War Hog to charge one of the last Cultists and Overtake into the Gate, but it wasn't the biggest deal in the world because it destroyed the Gate with two Fury to spare. I think a Wretch or two died from blast damage or being caught in sprays amidst all this. My poor Forced Evo'd War Hog had nothing to do, so he just walked forwards to bully Agathon. I scored the right-hand zone with the Bellows Crew, my opponent's flag, and my opponent's objective, to bring the score to 3-1 in my favour. Infernals Turn 3 Orin burned to death, which was nice. My opponent felt he basically had to go for an assassination at this point. Hermit gave Agathon an extra Essence. Eilish added Puppet Master. Agathon then charged the Gun Boar, Feated, and threw something like five Dark Fires at Arkadius. With four camp, Arkadius foisted most of them off and ended up sitting on eight health. Agathon then stuck a needle in the Gun Boar and Banished it into melee with Arkadius. Without any other attacks, a few models ran to prevent the War Hog on the left from using Enliven and then the Soul Stalker walked in and hit him a few times. With an Ancillary Attack from a Wretch and a charge from a Foreboder I think the War Hog still stood on two health by the end. Eilish is contesting my flag and a Foreboder in the right-hand zone, the score remained 3-1 in my favour. Pigs Turn 4 Arkadius leached in most of the Fury. One Road Hog frenzied because of Primal, the other had two Fury on it but passed its Threshold check, and the Gorax ate the Gobber Chef. I only needed to kill Eilish and run Arkadius into the left-hand zone, so I did that. My opponent used his free spell from Eilish dying to try and kill some points with a Hellmouth into the Gorax (which had walked up and Primal'd my War Hog) but only killed a Gobber from the Bellows Crew. Arkadius healed up her War Hogs' crippled aspects and ran into the left zone. Targ then moved up to extend her Control Range, and the War Hog killed Agathon for good measure. After the game I asked my opponent about how he thought I had planned around summoned missiles and discovered then how I really, really should have read the Summoning rules before the game Anyway, really interesting learning experience. Infernals are squishy as all heck, and I think Arkadius is an excellent counter to just about everything they bring. Omodamos is the only Master who can consistently prevent a War Hog from being able to down multiple Horrors in an activation (Zaateroth's Feat, like most defensive Feats on 'casters with inconsistent threat range increases, feels like it should be easy enough to wait out), and even then killing two Tormentors with a single Hog should be feasible with enough buffs. Just being able to control the table and put everything in the army under pressure goes a long way to preventing the Infernal game plan from working. Agathon is a brutally strong assassin too, but Warlocks never need to be too scared from a spell assassination. I was starting to worry though that the same thing that happened in round one would happen again, as my transfer targets were all getting to pretty low health by the end, but it was never quite that dire. So I'd call that a thoroughly successful outing. Real psyched to get some more games into this faction, they feel so much less oppressive now that I'm no longer theory machining around them spawning killer heavy missiles from across the table. My team won this round as well too, and technically won the entire event, though as the main focus was just encouraging new players to come along that wasn't really the biggest deal. My team's Crew member won all his games though, which was pretty awesome for a guy who had just started the game!
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Post by charlzheimer on Oct 21, 2019 9:54:44 GMT
infernals are atrocious in attrition fights and need to finish up ASAP. they need to come in fast and get the kill fast. agathon is also pretty abysmall vs hordes for basicly the reasons you stated. zaatherox is overall the safest and strongest of the trio due to her spell list and feat but needs horrors to crack.
right now infernals need their "entire" faction to start playing. i don't plan on playing them untill howlers are out.
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Post by Azahul on Oct 21, 2019 13:08:31 GMT
Yeah, I certainly intend to get some games into the faction in non-tournament settings so that we can proxy the full faction and get a good grasp of how they'll play as a whole.
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Post by charlzheimer on Oct 21, 2019 14:38:23 GMT
Yeah, I certainly intend to get some games into the faction in non-tournament settings so that we can proxy the full faction and get a good grasp of how they'll play as a whole. got a 2 games in with a specific list using omodamos and 2 units of howlers. and let me tell you...those boys are thanky and hit hard.
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Post by Azahul on Oct 23, 2019 0:08:58 GMT
Alrighty, first game with (proxied) Void Archons since CID! I'm currently running this as my Arkadius build: Arkadius -War Hog -War Hog -Road Hog -Road Hog -Gun Boar -Gun Boar -Gorax -Targ Bellows Crew Void Archon Void Archon Witch Doctor Kwaak and Gub Boomhowler2 Hermit Gobber Chef I've lost Mire, so my Pathfinder access has diminished a little from a few months back when I would have both Mire and the Witch Doctor in my lists, but I think the Void Archons add quite a lot to Arkadius's kit. They can keep up with his army reasonably well so long as your opponent has put a model they can kill within 16" (Boomhowler giving one Reposition allows it to move 6", teleport 8", Reposition 3", and then engage an opponent to apply Dark Shroud from 17" away), they have bonkers assassination threat potential, and they can even serve as effective homing beacons for the Feat by using souls to turn Incorporeal for precision Feat targets at no risk to yourself. Anyway, a played a game against one of the local Merc players who was waiting for another opponent to show up. He had the Fiona list I've played against a couple of times, running: Fiona -Toro -Toro -Toro Max Steelhead Halberdiers Max Steelhead Halberdiers Steelhead Cannon Steelhead Cannon Steelhead Volley Gun Steelhead Volley Gun Alexia2 Stannis Anastasia Boomhowler2 Eiryss1 Sergeant Nic Steelhead Ironhead Deployment My opponent won the starting roll. In spite of him having a +1 to go first, I think that may be the first time I've gone second into this list. Not a great feeling given its ability to comfortably shoot a heavy off the table each turn. He deployed his artillery together on the left flank, along with a Toro and Fiona's Cultists (the unpainted unit of Halberdiers). The other two Toros and Steelhead Halberdiers ended up on the right. I deployed pretty symmetrically, which I think was a mistake. Learning to juggle the extra large base and the rising number of solos who want to play somewhat forward in this list is going to be a trick, I think I'm going to have to run a few different variations of it. As my only animii 'casting Warbeast, the Gorax should probably play behind the centre of the line instead of on the deployment line out on a flank, for example, and I should have had both Gun Boars on the left to trade fire with the artillery even though my opponent has started taking advantage of Girded on the Ironhead to keep his artillery safe after a few successful attempts at sniping them out. Both objectives are Fuel Caches. Anastasia is ambushing. My Primal Archons are standing in for Void Archons. Mercenaries Turn 1 My opponent ran pretty much everything forward. Fiona put Occultation on her cultists and Roth's Mercy on the right-flank Halberdiers. Nic ended up pretty badly out of position I think, because the Steelhead units were so far apart and he ended up between them the left unit, at minimum, was too far away for him to reinforce. Pigs Turn 1 I played this pretty conservatively, not wanting to lose a heavy to my opponent's guns. Boomhowler gave the Bellows Crew reposition, moved up and laid down a Covering Fire template himself. The Road Hogs just walked forward, everything else ran with the Gun Boar on the left moving into the trench and being the only model to really put itself into range of the cannons. That was itself probably a mistake, since I wasn't actually gaining much from it being so far forward. My Void Archons were themselves hiding from the guns quite carefully, since I didn't want to risk losing them early in my first game. Mercenaries Turn 2 The Cultists run up, and Fiona spends most of her stack using Befuddle on the Gun Boar and then tagging it with Curse of Shadows. She lurks behind the forest barely outside of Killbox. The Ironhead bumps the cannon forward a tad and the cannon and Volley Gun shoot the Gun Boar off the table. Two of the Toros move up into the forest in range of my heavies if I Feat, the other hangs back outside of my threat range so that at most I'll be able to take two Toros. Steelheads move into the zones on either side. Pigs Turn 2 Losing the Gun Boar for nothing hurts, since it hasn't even really put the artillery in range for some easy kills. I know from experience that killing two Toros and some Halberdiers isn't enough to feel comfortable on attrition into this list while Fiona still has her Feat in reserve. That said, she's on one camp, so I feel like I have an assassination run. Kwaak Enlivens my War Hog on the left and I run him up to the forest and face him so that the closest model he can see is Eiryss. The Void Archon on the left runs to serve as a Feat beacon for my remaining ranged Warbeasts to pull them off onto the left flank where they'll be able to shoot Fiona. My War Hog on the right charges in and kills a single Halberdier, giving the right flank Void Archon a Soul. Arkadius activates and Feats, sending most of her battlegroup left towards the Void Archon and allowing the War Hog to frenzy naturally into Eiryss. Some real payoff for Mark 2 practice there The War Hog frenzying into Eiryss triggers a counter charge from a Toro, who charges to block line of sight to Fiona. However, it also hits its charge attack, triggering Enliven, and the War Hog walks through the forest (it received Pathfinder from my Fuel Cache at the start of the round) to engage the second Toro and regain Line of Sight to Fiona. Arkadius then walks up to put the War Hog back in Control and zaps away with two Primal Shocks, hitting both, dropping Fiona's Fury, and doing 10 damage. I have my Gun Boar walk up and shoot Alexia on the left, tagging Fiona with the blast damage and killing her. Some good dice to kill Fiona so quickly, but I still had three sprays in my back pocket and an unboosted Ancillary Attack from Targ that probably wouldn't have done anything. While I didn't end up activating it, you can see the proxy bases laid out on the right showing where the Void Archon there could get to. Had I planned a bit more carefully I could have Frenzied the Gorax up as well and had him feed the Archon another soul by throwing a Halberdier down towards the Archon (probably would have had to be a throw to avoid Roth's Mercy playing havoc), but even with only one soul the Archon had pretty good odds of carrying out the run. It would have charged a Halberdier, had two melee attacks (needing an unboosted 8 and 6) with which to kill it, wouldn't have cared about Roth's Mercy because of Entropic Force, and then used Void Walk to get right down the field and spray Stannis to tag Fiona with a fully boosted Rat 6 POW 14. Had I finangled that one extra soul then one of those melee attacks could have been boosted to hit for the extra guarantee. That capacity to support an assassination run from the absolute other end of town is a big point in the Archon's favour, I feel. I'm used to Arkadius being able to assassinate a Warcaster from 20+ inches away even if that 'caster is heavily screened and lurking behind a forest, but for a solo to be able to directly contribute to that kind of run feels huge. I'm really excited to get some more games in with these models (and for the actual models to come out!).
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Post by charlzheimer on Oct 23, 2019 9:02:24 GMT
arkadius feats are always a chore to pull off propperly.
any tips on positioning your beasties?
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Post by Azahul on Oct 23, 2019 9:59:48 GMT
Oh boy so many. It's one of those things where you kind of want to be thinking about it from deployment onwards, but seeing as the list has pretty reasonable firepower you also want to know when not to Feat just 'cos sometimes it's better to just sit back and shoot down your opponent as they approach. You typically want your Road Hogs to be standing somewhere where Arkadius can Raw Adrenaline both of them before the Feat for a fully boosted spray, though if you do that you do need to make sure they won't be attacking anything when they Frenzy. Keeping a space between the Road Hogs (like what I didn't do in that Fiona game) can be useful to let you to get a bit further forward before you Feat and target your frenzies more precisely. I think it's worth angling your flanking models from time to time as well so that they're facing a bit towards the outer edges of the board. I can be a bit sloppy about doing this myself, but because the outer edge models are the ones most likely to have to Frenzy in at an angle towards the centre of the table because you can't spread your Control Area out far enough to pick their Frenzy targets, being able to default to the regular Frenzy rules and still use their Frenzy for threat extension is useful.
Above all, I think if you're having trouble with the Feat then I strongly recommend taking the triple Feralgeist Requisition option in WWFF. Incorporeal models are a huge boon to Arkadius because he can pick them as Frenzy targets for his Warbeasts for ultra precise threat extension, and you can then activate the Warbeasts and charge them through the Incorporeal model without any penalty. It's a tool I make do without, but I sometimes wish I had in my back pocket (and am happy that the Void Archons are capable of providing a similar sort of ability if I need it).
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Post by Azahul on Oct 28, 2019 2:55:27 GMT
So finally got to put a Helga list I've wanted to try out for a while on the table. I was running this: Helga -Road Hog -Road Hog -Battle Boar -Soul Slave Valkyries Valkyries Valkyries Void Archon Void Archon Dahlia -Skarath Totem Hunter Lanyssa River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider Gobber Chef The original plan was to have three Feralgeists instead of Lanyssa, but I only actually own one Feralgeist and figured that Lanyssa probably brought some value to the list overall. I wouldn't call this an optimised list by any stretch, but it has some good anti-infantry in its five boostable 10" sprays, it's reasonably easy to deliver the key components given their decent to good threat ranges and nine Shield Guards, and while the armour-cracking isn't stratospheric it's at least serviceable on the two Road Hogs. Plus it has some pretty great assassination threats. I think the Void Archons go a long, long way to improving Helga's game plan too. My opponent had his own strange list to try out, a Wild Hunt list led by Morvahna1. Morvahna -Brennos -Wold Warden -Wold Warden Max Skinwalkers -Alpha Min Wolves of Orboros -Chieftain and Standard Death Wolves Shifting Stones Boil Master and Spirit Cauldron Wolf With No Name War Wolf War Wolf War Wolf Lord of the Feast Blackclad Stoneshaper Well of Orboros The combination of the Wolf With No Name being able to trigger Sic 'Em on War Wolves makes for a pretty nasty shot on the face of it, and I was very happy to be swimming in Shield Guards and able to shut that nonsense down. On the other hand, the armour-buffed recurring Skinwalkers backed by Brennos for healing was a bit troubling, my best solution there I figured was to use the Feat to knock them down and get in the damage I could and otherwise use Dahlia to control the unit until I could focus my heavies on it. Deployment My opponent won the starting roll and took first, I took a table side with a nice set of trenches to hide my more important models in. He deployed his Skinwalkers on the left, supported by Brennos, the Well on the right with the Woldwardens, and Death Wolves with the Boil Master in the centre. I set up a front line mostly consisting of my large and medium base models, and had the Valkyries and River Raiders tuck themselves in the back because I kinda ran out of space. My objective is a Treasure Chest, because there was only a 50/50 chance that I'd end up on the table side where Eyeless Sight would be useful (and while that did happen, my opponent placed his Well somewhere where I'd at least always have a charge target through the cloud). My opponent's is a Stockpile, and the Wolves of Orboros are ambushing. The Totem Hunter's Prey is Morvahna, because I figured I wouldn't be using it for damage against much else (everything was either too high armour or too easy to kill already). The Wolf With No Name's Prey is the right flank Road Hog. Circle Turn 1 Morvahna casts Harvest, puts Restoration on the Skinwalkers, and walks up. The Spirit Cauldron makes a single corpse and gives it to a Death Wolf. Everything else runs. The Well summons a Blackclad Wayfarer. Pigs Turn 1 Helga puts Defender's Ward on Skarath, casts Dash, and charges. Her army runs, most of them close enough to receive the benefit of Dash but not really able to make too much use of it. I put both Void Archons in the forest on the right, but it causes me some other problems with the movement of my Road Hogs. I end up having one on the far right using Full Boar and running up the field to threaten the Well, relying on the cloud to keep it safe from the Woldwardens. Unfortunately, it's so far forward that only one Valkyrie can get close enough to protect it with Shield Guard. I make sure to screen the Valkyrie from any ambushing Wolves since I can't position it outside of their Ambush threat. Everything else in my army ends up in range of multiple overlapping Shield Guards, so I'm pretty secure elsewhere. Circle Turn 2 My opponent correctly identifies that forward Road Hog as the weak link in my set-up, and hoo boy what a weak link. The Wolves ambush in on the right. One Wold Warden moves up and nails the one Valkyrie close enough to Shield Guard with a boosted Eruption of Life, killing her. Blast damage rolls box cars on the Void Archon took, tearing away a chunk of health. The other Wold Warden moves up and tags the Road Hog with Mortality. The Cauldron rolls up three corpses for Lord of the Feast, who then hits the Road Hog with his Raven and teleports in behind the Road Hog so that he can't see the heavy. The Lord then kills the wounded Archon and leaves the other on two health, luckily missing two of his swings. The War Wolves run to within charge range of the Road Hog. Wolf With No Name walks up and shoots the Road Hog, getting Finisher because of the Full Boar damage, and cranks a ton of damage into the Hog. Two of the Wolves then go in, leaving the Road Hog on a handful of boxes. The Wayfarer finishes the job with his spray. The Wolves of Orboros charge into the River Raiders, kill two of them (giving their souls to the remaining Void Archon) and reposition forward to jam. Over on the left flank, the Skinwalkers just run up to jam and Brennos moves up to support them. Morvahna sits amidst the Shifting Stones at the back, prepared to use them as Sac Pawn targets. Pigs Turn 2 Ouch. Losing the Road Hog on its own would have been nasty, but I think I could have pulled through. Losing the Void Archon, who I think I would have used to clear up the Wolves on my right flank, left me feeling like I needed to gun for an assassination. It was a bit rough seeing as Morvahna was on one camp, but I could see a way through it. If I slammed the Wold Warden over her (needing a 3+ for slam distance) with Helga's Feat I'd get a free hit from the Road Hog at Strength 13. Then the Void Archon could charge the Wayfarer, kill him with the spray, teleport into melee with Morvahna, and take two swings at her knocked down at dice plus two rolling 3-4 dice depending on whether I could set up something to slam her into. That seemed like a reasonable assassination run, and I could probably up my odds by having Helga try for an unboosted Muzzle as well. First things first though, I needed to get rid of that Wolf in the centre blocking the Road Hog from getting to the Wold. I figure that the Totem Hunter is a nice expendable model that won't be doing too much this turn and should be able to remove the War Wolf without blocking the charge lane, so I send him in. Unfortunately, he misses his polearm attack and needs a six to kill with his buckler but only gets a 5... leaving my charge lane more blocked than it was at the start of the turn. Skarath tries to remove the both of them, but flubs his damage roll on the Totem Hunter and only does a few points of damage. The War Wolf at least dies. A Valkyrie then shoots the Totem Hunter in the back, but misses. Helga decides to try and finish this herself and Cyclones up, but leaves the Totem Hunter alive on one health. She Feats, casts Dash, and moves off to try and land her Muzzle on Morvahna, but misses that attack. A second Valkyrie finally kills the Totem Hunter... only for Morvahna to gain a Fury from Harvest to put her on two transfers. Ok, ok, not great, but still not the end of the world. If I can use my River Raiders on the left to slam Brennos out of Morvahna's admittedly lengthy Control Range, I can send my Road Hog into the Wold Warden and try to do a ton of damage and basically shut down her transfers that way. The first River Raider goes up, hits his harpoon gun, hits his melee attack, but only rolls a 2 for slam distance... reduced to about 1" because of the water Brennos is standing in (he does clear Brennos from the water at least). The second River Raider goes up and shoots Brennos, rolls a 1 for slam distance, and that means all the other River Raiders are ~1-2 inches shy of being able to get to Brennos themselves. That means that the assassination is basically off the table, but I feel like if I can slam Morvahna away from the stones somewhat I might finangle an extra attack or something. Unfortunately, I do so poorly. The Void Archon ends up going into the Wold Warden and slamming it over Morvahna, doing a few points of damage. I then spray the Blackclads on the right to death after realising that this means I won't have a melee attack left when I Void Walk up to Morvahna to slam her with, and run the Road Hog to at least ostensible screen Helga. Lord of the Feast and a few Wolves get killed out on the right flank and I brace for the repercussions. Circle Turn 3 Morvahna hits the Road Hog in front of Helga with Mortality. One Wold Warden walks up to the Road Hog and ends up slamming it over Helga with its Chain Attack. The other Wold Warden walks into melee with Helga and kills her. Ok, so obviously that could definitely have gone better. There's an alternate universe somewhere where the Totem Hunter kills the War Wolf, sprints out of the way, Skarath kills or badly injures Brennos, and maybe Helga goes and charges the Wold Warden to max it out on Fury with Inflict Pain. Still, sometimes dice happen. This list did impress me in its flexibility at least, I kept getting second chances and fall back options when the assassination run started going wrong, and I did make a terrible mistake in sitting my Void Archons next to a Road Hog that Lord of the Feast could get to so it can't all be blamed on dice. My opponent punished me pretty brutally for my mistake in putting a Road Hog so far forward with so few Shield Guards, Oh, and Void Archons continue to impress. Another game where they didn't actually get to do anything, per se, but the sheer threat of them being able to reach so deep into my opponent's back line was truly impressive.
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Post by Azahul on Oct 30, 2019 1:59:13 GMT
Played another Helga game on request last night, this time into Mercs. Fair warning, there were a lot of proxies in this game. My list was: Helga -Road Hog -Road Hog -Battle Boar -Soul Slave Valkyries Valkyries Valkyries Dahlia -Skarath Void Archon (using a Primal Archon as a proxy) Void Archon (using a Primal Archon as a proxy) Totem Hunter Lanyssa River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider River Raider Gobber Chef My opponent's list was: Gastone2 (using Rahera for a proxy) -Mariner (using a Toro as a proxy) -Mariner (using a Toro as a proxy) Max Precursor Knights (using Steelhead Halberdiers as proxies) -Officer and Standard Bearer (using a Trencher Officer and Sniper as proxies) -3x Battle Priests (using Steelhead Artillery Crews as proxies) Max Legion of Lost Souls (using Trencher Infantry as proxies) -3x Battle Priests (using Steelhead Artillery Crews as proxies) Thamarite Archon (using a Steelhead Volley Gun as the proxy) Thamarite Archon (using a Steelhead Volley Gun as the proxy) Morrowan Archon Morrowan Archon Deployment I won the starting roll and took first. Figuring out deployment with this list is tricky, so many little individual decisions to make and there really isn't enough room in the front row for everybody, so I ended up with Valkyries and River Raiders mostly in the back ranks again (though I made some effort to give some of each space out near the front of the army). Dahlia and Skarath took the left flank where they would have a forest to operate in, and the Totem Hunter balanced things out on the right flank. My opponent covered his left with the Precursors, and had the Legion on his right, while one of each Archon supported them and Gastone's battlegroup took the centre. My objective is a Fuel Cache. I think my opponent's is a Stockpile, but I can't recall. Pigs Turn 1 Helga put Defender's Ward on Skarath, cast Dash, and charged up the board. Dahlia cast Haunting Melody and moved up. Everything else ran. I was trying to keep just about everything important (particularly my own Archons) in range of at least three Archons, just in case of Thamar's Teeth shots or something nasty like that, but only ended up with two in range for the Archon on the right. Both Road Hogs used Full Boar as part of their runs, only taking a single damage apiece. Mercenaries Turn 1 The Mariners moved up and opened fire on the Road Hog to my right. I Shield Guarded the first shot, and the Valkyrie who took the shot made her Tough check. Blast damage also clipped a River Raider but my opponent actually failed to break armour, so no souls for my Void Archon and no Thamar's Teeth for the Thamarite Archon. One of those rare occasions when both players get disappointed by one model failing to die The second shot I allowed to hit the Road Hog, the damage roll spiking high to do 11 damage. Everything else in the army only moved up slowly, the infantry units advancing in Shield Wall while Gastone actually opted to back up after putting his upkeeps in play. Dauntless Resolve went on the Legion, while Lifebound went on the Precursors. Pigs Turn 2 I couldn't really see myself getting much value in return for the risk of putting anything in range to actually make attacks this turn. Killing Precursors would just give Gastone souls, while killing the Legion would give them Vengeance and seriously increase their board presence. I opted to just advance just about everything (keeping my Void Archons back where they were), get better Valkyrie coverage across my army, and set up for a scenario play next round. One River Raider ran up to contest my opponent's flag, while the others generally tried to make sure they weren't too close to my heavies because I didn't want Thamarite Archons getting cute and trying to Death Driver River Raiders in to apply Weakness to my models. Mercenaries Turn 2 Gastone was rather reluctantly going to have to step up into my threat ranges to avoid the kill box in his turn. He decided to focus his attention on bringing down the damaged Road Hog. Both Mariners and both Thamarite Archons unloaded into it. I had five Shield Guards in play, though one Valkyrie died before she could get to Shield Guard thanks to a lucky blast damage roll from the Mariner. The last shot managed to kill the Road Hog to the box. The units advanced again, staying in Shield Guard, and the Precursors reluctantly killed my contesting River Raider to feed the Void Archon on that flank a soul. The Morrowan Archons moved up in support of the units, and Throne gave the Precursors Tough. Gastone Feated and sat on his remaining two Focus. With both flags uncontested, the score went to 1-1. Pigs Turn 3 Ok, so I could either go for an assassination run with the Archons and a few other attacks, or I could play scenario. I opted for the latter. There were about four Legion in the right-hand zone, which should be easy enough to handle. I then had to get Throne, a Thamarite Archon, and a Morrowan Archon either dead or away from the flag on the left, as well as killing most of the Precursors. Fair warning, this turn took me a full hour to play out. The number of options I had to clear out each obstacle was kind of absurd in its own right and it took forever to work out where to begin and what models to commit where. My Fuel Cache gave my remaining Road Hog Pathfinder. I ran Lanyssa out of the way, Gastone's Feat would effectively prevent her from contributing. The purple Valkyrie unit charged the objective, dropping it down to eight health. Helga then activated, cast Primal on Skarath, Feated, walked out around the forest, and Cycloned into a knot of Precursors engaged by a Valkyrie. She hit them in spite of the nearby Morrowan Archon and killed them all with a Fury to spare. My Void Archon on the left charged into a Precursor, missed the charge attack thanks to the nearby Morrowan Archon in spite of boosting with its one soul, hit with the unboosted second attack, killed the Precursor to clear the left zone and teleport behind a group of six Precursors contesting the flag while facing so that it couldn't see the Morrowan Archon. Missed two of the Precursors with its spray but killed the other four. The Void Archon on the right flank charged into the Legion, killed one with its spray to allow it to teleport over to the left into melee with the Thamarite Archon and Throne (again angled so that it couldn't see the Morrowan Archon) and boosted attack rolls on both, managing to slam them both out of range of the flag. Dahlia moved up to within 8" of the Morrowan Archon and gave Skarath Mist Walker, allowing Skarath to kill the Morrowan Archon but sadly rolled poorly on slam distance and couldn't quite kill any of the last three remaining contesting Precursors with collateral damage. Skarath then used Overtake to get into melee with the objective, kill it, and Overtake again to get out of the way of the Road Hog. The Road Hog then charged the Precursors and I needed to hit at least two out of three hard 7s to kill them all. I managed it and Overtook my way back into the left-hand zone. A River Raider ran to score the flag. Finally, out on the right flank, the Totem Hunter managed to kill three of the four Legion contesting by getting into their back arcs and slamming them into one another. The last Valkyrie from the Grey unit killed the last of the Legion in the zone and the Battle Boar ran in to score. The last unit of Valkyries managed to destroy the objective. With both zones, my opponent's objective, and both flags, I took the score to 6-1 and won. I'm genuinely having a fair bit of fun with this list. The sheer number of options it has on Feat turn is kind of mind boggling, and it was pretty hard for me to visualise where everything would end up at the end of it all. It's certainly a vast improvement on my experiences with Helga pre-Void Archon, and I think it genuinely has a fair bit of mileage so long as it can avoid too many huge bases and the like.
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Post by Azahul on Nov 6, 2019 0:52:19 GMT
I've been getting a lot of games into this Merc player lately. We were both in at the store early, so we set up a Gastone vs Arkadius game. The lists were: Arkadius -War Hog -War Hog -Road Hog -Road Hog -Gun Boar -Gun Boar -Gorax -Targ Bellows Crew Void Archon (using a Primal Archon as a proxy) Void Archon (using a Primal Archon as a proxy) Witch Doctor Kwaak and Gub Hermit Boomhowler2 Gastone (using Rahera as a proxy) -Mariner (using a Nomad as a proxy) -Rover (using a Toro as a proxy) -Rover (using a Toro as a proxy) -Reinholdt (using a Steelhead Artillery Crew with a spyglass as a proxy) Max Zealots (using Steelhead Halberdiers as proxies) -Monolith Bearer (using Sergeant Nic as a proxy) Max Cinerators -Officer Thamarite Archon Thamarite Archon Morrowan Archon (using a Void Archon as a proxy) Gibbs (using Kovnik Joe as a proxy) Ragman Taryn Gobber Tinker Deployment I won the starting roll and took first. My opponent gave me what I think was actually my preferred table side as well, since it gave me easy access to the central flag and the curvature of the forest offered some real protection against his shooting. I'm still figuring out how to deploy this list, but I figured that Boomhowler didn't need to be on the front lines and made sure to find room to squeeze one of the Bellows Crew Gobbers and the Hermit in next to Arkadius. Everything else deployed pretty much symmetrically. My opponent skewed his deployment more to the right-hand side, with both his units taking up that flank while Gastone and his 'jacks deployed centrally. A Thamarite Archon was really the only model gunning for the left flank. My objective is a Fuel Cache, his is a Stockpile. I realised after taking this picture that I'd forgotten to deploy the Gorax, so I tossed him down in my backline. Pigs Turn 1 The Road Hogs used Full Boar and ran. The Gorax ran. Arkadius Maltreated the Gorax, used Psycho Surgery to heal both Road Hogs and leave the Gorax with one damage still on it (the stars don't usually align quite that beautifully), puts up Guardian Beast and throws Forced Evolution on the right flank War Hog since I could see it needing to break through the armour buffed Cinerators sometime in the near future. Arkadius walked and Repositioned forward. Everything else ran, save the left flank War Hog which received Reposition from Boomhowler and Trampled and Repo'd forward instead. Unnecessary really since I was also making sure the Mariner couldn't get a Turn 1 shot, and that meant I didn't use the extra 1" of movement I had available... Mercenaries Turn 1 The units moved up, Cinerators advancing in Shield Wall while the Zealots ran and made themselves immune to fire. The Thamarite Archon on the left flank ran to the right, hiding behind the Morrowan Archon. Gastone lurked behind the two of them, putting Dauntless Resolve on the Cinerators and Lifebound on the Zealots. Reinholdt ran up behind the forest, while the 'jacks mostly headed out towards the left flank. I think my opponent forgot to activate Taryn entirely. Pigs Turn 2 With the Zealots having made themselves immune to fire, I figured I could some cheap and easy ways to get free damage onto the Morrowan and Thamarite Archons. I ran my Forced Evo'd War Hog into the right-hand zone. Arkadius activated, Maltreated it, spent two Fury (thanks to a miss) putting Raw Adrenaline on the two Road Hogs, and then cast Psycho Surgery (sadly repairing that Gorax back to full health, as well as everyone else). She then camped her remaining two Fury. The two Road Hogs then each used Full Boar and charged a Zealot, lining sprays up on the Morrowan and Thamarite Archons. Both sprays managed to hit the Thamarite Archon, killing it, and the one spray that hit the Morrowan Archon spiked damage and did like six points of damage. Both Road Hogs then killed the Zealots they had charged for sprint (not having to worry that the assault spray would kill my sprint target was a huge boon in this) and used Overtake and sprint to get back to more or less where they were at the start of the turn. I was messing around trying to work out what else to try and do this turn (I was considering having Boomhowler give the left flank Void Archon Reposition so that it could walk up, probably miss Taryn, and then Repo into the trench, but felt its odds of dying to Taryn and the Mariner were still uncomfortably high and that Boomhowler's Covering Fire could be better used on the right with the Zealots) and had just run the Hermit onto the Flag so that he could be relevant next turn when my opponent decided to concede. In a nutshell, with the Archon gone he wasn't likely to be able to do much damage in his turn without Gastone going into overdrive, but I wasn't going to give him enough souls to fuel Gastone up to a super shooter, the Morrowan Archon stood a real chance of dying before I gave him any more souls which meant that my Void Archons might be able to start getting the souls before Gastone and preventing him from ever getting a fully fuelled turn, and he just didn't expect to have the pieces to swing attrition back after my Feat. Which, fair enough, that was pretty much my analysis of the game state too. I am happy to have had the practice with unpacking this list. I think the Gorax and Boomhowler sitting on the second line instead of taking the increasingly valuable front line real estate is a good idea, whereas Hermit being deployed up front is pretty important. The Archons taking the flanks isn't 100% ideal, it's the safest spot for them but it lowers the odds of them getting Dark Shroud into play, but it does mean that they deploy next to the War Hogs which are the models they're probably aiming to support anyway. So even if this game didn't play out to conclusion, I'm pretty happy to feel like I took something concrete away from that. We had plenty of time in the bag for a second game, so I swapped to Helga and he decided to proxy out a new list of his own.
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