|
Post by apoc2148 on Jan 14, 2019 13:42:11 GMT
I play a bit of legion, and Kallus double AA list never even made it to the table for me. The list just doesn't make sense to me. Kallus2 doesn't have the melee potential to kill a caster camping anything. But anyways. . .
I'm still surprised how much you use the dracodile as a mobile blind spray platform. It is a tactic that I think I need to try and work into my game play.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 14, 2019 13:55:17 GMT
Well, the assassination run was because I didn't leave him with anything else. My understanding is that the list is designed to be able to shoot Judicators off the table or something. It's a pretty specific build tailored to that player's principle opponent I think (he's friends with a Protectorate player). But I haven't really taken the time to learn the ins and outs of it really, just wanted to see it in action. I can't help but feel that Cinerators would do a number on it and those aren't exactly uncommon right now.
I generally feel with the Sturm list that it is better to get a little something for nothing every turn than it is to commit the Dracodile and expose it to retaliation, even if it means a big reward. This is the first list I've ever played where "attrition to the bottom of Turn 7" is a legitimate tactic, and so I often find the rough game plan is to chip away at my opponent's lists by cheating piece trades until Turn 4-5 and then, once they're whittled down to a manageable level, go in to remove the last big threats. Getting better on clock with the list is the biggest priority ahead of CanCon, Australia's biggest Warmachine event, which is in a hair under two weeks, but I'm taking comfort in how much clock my opponents tend to burn working out if they are even able to do anything.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 16, 2019 0:20:56 GMT
More games to report! The first one was into this Merc player who is obsessively trying to get Gastone to work. Since we fully established just how one-sided the Sturm and Drang match-up was, I agreed to play Arkadius. Probably worthwhile getting used to playing him on clock again anyway in advance of CanCon. The lists were: Arkadius -War Hog -War Hog -Road Hog -Road Hog -Gun Boar -Splatter Boar -Gorax -Targ Mire -Wrastler Mist Speaker Kwaak and Gub Witch Doctor Gobber Chef vs Gastone -Toro -Toro -Nomad -Reinholdt Max Steelhead Halberdiers Max Steelhead Halberdiers Alexia and the Risen Aiyana and Holt Max Press Gangers Max Idrians -UA Ragman Hutchuck Deployment I won the starting roll and took first. My opponent let me deal with the table side loaded with forests, which I was happy enough to do. I set up with my gun lights and Gorax on the left, Mire and the Wrastler on the right, and the rest of the heavies with Arkadius in the middle. My opponent had Steelheads on either flank, Alexia skewing a little left and Gastone a little to the right. One Toro and the Nomad were on the left, the other Toro on the right. And the Press Gangers and Idrians started mingled together in the middle. I forgot to take a picture. The Idrians chose my left flank War Hog as their Prey target. Both objectives are Fuel Caches. Pigs Turn 1 I had my Splatter Boar give the Gun Boar Lucky Shot and charge forward. The Gun Boar ran to stand 9" in front of Targ. Targ moved up and used Ancillary Attack to lob a shot at the AD line. It scattered where it would have clipped a couple of models, but sadly they were in a trench and the centre of the AOE was not. Arkadius then cast Guardian Beast and put Forced Evolution on the Idrians' prey target. He advanced, repositioned forward. Kwaak put Enliven on the two Road Hogs. Everything else ran. Mercs Turn 1 Gastone put Dauntless Resolve on the Idrians and Lifebound on the Press Gangers. The Idrians advanced, shot one two-man CRA at the Forced Evo'd War Hog and did a solid seven damage. The rest of the army ran. Pigs Turn 2 The Forced Evo'd War Hog received Pathfinder from the Fuel Cache and just went and hid in the forest. The Splatter Boar gave itself Lucky Shot and lobbed out a Smoke Bomb, which scattered to clip a single Idrian and Press Ganger. Dauntless Resolve meant I didn't break armour on the Idrian, and the Press Ganger Toughed. Arkadius then went, Maltreated the one Fury from the Splatter Boar, used Raw Adrenaline on both Road Hogs, and cast Lucky Shot on the Gun Boar. He used Psycho Surgery as well to heal most of the damage he'd inflicted on his own Warbeasts and that the War Hog had suffered from the Idrians. The Road Hogs then yo-yo'd in and out of the massive infantry clumps, focussing their attention on the centre where they could each clip Alexia. Both attacks on Alexia hit her and killed her through all her Risen in the end, along with about half a dozen other miscellaneous infantry. The Gun Boar fired a shot at a clump of infantry out of range, allowing me to scatter the shot without worrying about Shield Guards. It clipped a pair of Idrians and killed them. Mire summoned a cloud to cover the central models and I ran my Gorax to plug a LOS hole between the two Road Hogs. One War Hog ran to contest the right zone. Mercs Turn 2 Gastone had enough souls to do his thing, so he moved up and shot the War Hog on the right down to about half health. He Feated too. The infantry ran to jam, one Idrian dying to the Splatter Boar's gun from Guardian Beast while the Gun Boar missed his attack. His jacks moved up behind the front line, but because Gastone had moved to the right to shoot my War Hog there his Nomad was now out of control. Since all the Steelheads had (barely) managed to make it into the left zone, the score went to 0-1 in my opponent's favour. Pigs Turn 3 This turn burned out almost all my clock, as Arkadius Feat turns are wont to do. Forced Evo'd War Hog received Pathfinder from the Fuel Cache. I used one Road Hog and the Splatter Boar to unjam the second Road Hog and the Gun Boar on the left. I tried to have the Gun Boar lob a shot into the biggest Steelhead clump on the left, and then my opponent pointed out that he had Stealth so the shot missed. Oops. And I had the Mist Speaker there to fix the problem and everything. Still killed three Halberdiers with the blast. Mire and the Wrastler put Rage on the Forced Evo'd War Hog and the unjammed Road Hog. Mire also summoned a cloud on the objective to give Arkadius some cover, because Arkadius's turn involved burning out all his Fury. He moved up, used Raw Adrenaline on the Gun Boar and Road Hog, cast Psycho Surgery (restoring the aspects of the War Hog on the right and returning the Forced Evo'd War Hog to full health), and Feated. Feat attacks cleared out most of the jamming infantry and sent the Road Hog who had already activated into the Toro on the right. That procced counter charge from the other Toro, who hit and rolled a 15 for damage to remove half the Road Hog's health in one go. I didn't get the Crit Knockdown on the second Toro with the Road Hog's frenzy attack either, only doing a few points of damage. I also burned out Raw Adrenaline uselessly by frenzying both the Gun Boar and Road Hog into enemy models (killing a Steelhead on the left and the Idrian Guide in the process). Finally, Arkadius used the last of his Fury to kill one of the Idrians jamming the Forced Evo'd War Hog. On the plus side, I now had the means to remove both Toros. Even though he already had Pathfinder, I gave the Forced Evo'd War Hog Ghostly so that he could walk around the Press Ganger engaging him without taking a free strike. He trivially killed the damaged Toro (crippling the Shield on the first swing, allowing him to destroy the 'jack with just his initials at dice+5), killed the Press Ganger he'd walked around to Overtake into the second one, and removed about half its health with two bought attacks. The Raged Road Hog then finished the job comfortably enough. I only had the War Hog on the right left after that, and was down to about 15 minutes. I opted to just have him Overtake his way through some infantry, boosting to hit with his initials to remove three Steelheads from the right-hand unit. The Mist Speaker and Gorax used Summon Vortex and ran base to base with the objective respectively to block off access to Arkadius. Targ used Ancillary Attack on the Gun Boar to kill a few more Steelheads. The score remained 0-1 in my opponent's favour. Mercs Turn 3 Again, Gastone was loaded up on souls. Aiyana tagged the Forced Evo'd War Hog with Kiss of Lyliss, and Holt managed to hit him once for a few points of damage. The one Thrall Warrior Alexia had made ran to engage the damaged Road Hog and Forced Evo'd War Hog. Ragman used over and used Death Field to debuff both them, and the damaged War Hog on the right. Gastone then aimed, since he'd be shooting into combat, and killed the War Hog in his first two shots. He tried to hit the Forced Evo'd War Hog, missed, and randomised onto the half-health Road Hog instead. Decided to focus on it with the second shot, and left that Road Hog on just four health in Spirit. He cast Dauntless Resolve on himself and Ghostly on the Steelhead Halberdiers, who piled into the Forced Evo'd War Hog, hit all bar one attack, and left it clinging to life. In spite of being out of control, the Nomad and a Halberdier on the left were enough to kill the Gun Boar. The score remained 0-1 in my opponent's favour. Pigs Turn 4 I tried to prevent the Forced Evo'd War Hog from frenzying by leeching three from it and four from the untouched Road Hog. Sadly, even with just one Fury on it, I rolled high enough for the War Hog to go berserk and kill the Thrall Warrior. The Gorax also frenzied into the objective, rolling double sixes for damage to leave it on 9 boxes. Since I could easily get LOS to Gastone, I decided to just kill him this turn. The Mist Speaker gave Guidance to the undamaged Road Hog, because the Splatter Boar was about to risk blocking LOS with a cloud. The Splatter Boar then gave itself Lucky Shot and put a boosted Smoke Bomb shot into my opponent's Fuel Cache. Did seven damage. Targ activated and used Ancillary Attack for a second one and did four more. Arkadius activated. He used Primal on the badly crippled Road Hog, put a Primal Shock into the objective to finish it off, and hit Ragman with a Primal Shock to clear a throw path. The Primal'd, crippled Road Hog moved across and used its only aspect, Spirit, to make a throw attack boosted to hit on the Halberdier. Hit him and launched him right into Gastone. I then planned to have Mire or his Wrastler move across and Rage the second Road Hog, but instead jumped the gun and activated that Road Hog without doing so. He charged Gastone. The assault spray set him on fire and rolled high for damage, but the remaining attacks were lacklustre damage-wise and I ended up leaving Gastone on two boxes thanks to the combination of Dauntless Resolve and me forgetting to cast Rage. Mercs Turn 4 Fire stayed up. I needed to roll and 8 to kill Gastone. Got a 9. Some stupid mistakes there, honestly, and the clock was worryingly low by the end of the game. I may have been playing so much Sturm and Drang lately that I've been neglecting Arkadius. And it turns out Gastone hits a lot harder when you're not trivially removing Lifebound and don't have Deceleration and Shield Guards out to make life difficult. The fire damage roll saved me at the end, so better lucky than good I guess... I think I'll need to play a few more Arkadius games between now and the big event though, just to get back into the swing of things.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 16, 2019 3:05:39 GMT
The other game I played was into Circle. He had a Krueger2/Wurmwood pair. We'd played the Sturm and Drang vs Krueger2 game in the finals of the most recent tournament, so we were curious to see how the Wurmwood game would play out. His list was: Wurmwood -Ghetorix -Feral Warpwolf Max Ravagers -Chieftain Max Ravagers -Chieftain Max Bloodtrackers -Nuala Shifting Stones Boil Master and Spirit Cauldron Lord of the Feast Wolf Rider Champion Deployment I won the starting roll and took first turn. He grabbed the table side with all the forests (playing on the same table as the last game). I deployed the Dracodile more central than normal, planning on running it to one flank depending on how his deployment shook out while the rest of the army focussed on the other flank. My opponent's deployment was simple, just sticking a Tharn unit on each flank with the Bloodtrackers and battlegroup in the middle. Both objectives are Stockpiles. The Dracodile is the prey target of the Bloodtrackers. Pigs Turn 1 Sturm casts Deceleration, Vision on Skarath, Polarity Shield on the Dracodile, and walks forward. The Soul Slave TK's him a little further forward. Dahlia casts Haunting Melody and moves up, Brun casts Stonehold and charges up. The rest of the army runs, with the Dracodile swinging left. Circle Turn 1 Lord of the Feast has a few options, particularly if he Hellmouths them forward. If he's willing to risk a Puppet Mastered 8 to hit he could try to tag Eilish on the hill, out of range of any of the Shield Guards, and try to see how much damage he can do to the Dracodile by proxy through swinging on Mire. He'd also take out Eilish and Orin in the process, which would not be good. He could also try to hit the Battle Boar on the left (or the Dracodile and get Shield Guarded out there) which would let him swing away on Brun. Ultimately though, he decides to play it safe. Cassius kills a few Bloodtrackers to build a forest wall on the right, and Wurmwood summons a forest on the left. The rest of his army bunkers behind it, with the Feral and Ghetorix trampling/attacking a few Bloodtrackers to fuel up Wurmwood. The Spirit Cauldron loads up Lord of the Feast. Pigs Turn 2 I can't get to anything in his army but I don't feel too bad since he's killed half his Bloodtrackers without me doing anything. I don't see any harm in triggering Vengeance on the left flank Tharn with the one Ravager that's been sent forward to die, so the Dracodile moves to be a hair over 14" away from Ghetorix (11" trample threat plus 3" from Hellmouth shenanigans) and sprays down that Ravager. Skarath moves into the zone on the right and puts up Counterblast, while Dahlia lurks behind the Burning Earth with Haunting Melody up. I kinda trip over myself with the rest of my placements, trying to create a nice Shield Guard chain in case of Lord of the Feast and trying to reposition Brun and Lug and the Battle Boar from the left to be more central. Not some of my best play sadly. Circle Turn 2 My opponent figures that if he ports Ghetorix forward and uses Hellmouth twice with his 10 Fury he can get onto the Dracodile. The Bloodtrackers run to set it up. It requires three of them in total. Two to be Hellmouthed, and one to make sure that the second Bloodtracker doesn't get pushed into the Hellmouth and killed by the first Hellmouth. Cassius runs to get within 2" of them all so that the second one being in melee with the Dracodile doesn't raise its defence. Ghetorix gets ported forward. The Spirit Cauldron gives Wurmwood Puppet Master. He hits both Hellmouths, leaving Cassius on one health from the blast damage and dragging Ghetorix in to within 2" of the Dracodile. Wurmwood uses Dark Path to pull Cassius back and then Feats. He then realises he forgot to Primal, so the Feral Warpwolf warps Speed and comes forward to Primal Ghetorix. Ghetorix activates and Warps Strength and swings on the Dracodile. He gets five swings at dice +1, doesn't roll particularly high or low, leaves the Dracodile with about 16 boxes in Spirit. Most of the Ravagers lurk back within Wurmwood's protection, but one from each unit comes forward to offer me the chance to trigger Vengeance. Pigs Turn 3 Mire activates and puts Weald Secrets on the War Hog. Lug activates, charges Ghetorix with Bear Hands, knocks him down with a boosted charge attack roll, then Returns back to Lug. The Battle Boar on the left Primals the War Hog and he kills Ghetorix with two Fury to spare. The Dracodile moves a little and sprays at the Ravager and Feral on the left, hits the Ravager and kills him. Skarath does the same to the Ravager on the right, which was probably a mistake since I've got Counterblast and Vision up and Dahlia within 8" so he's not a big threat and Vengeance will let that unit actually be problematic next turn. He makes his Tough check. Sturm moves up and Feats on the Feral (probably should have done this before killing Ghetorix to force Wurmwood to cut more) and casts Deceleration, camping three. Everything else mills around trying to be safe from Lord of the Feast. Circle Turn 3 My opponent has a lot of options here, and after all the Hellmouth shenanigans of the previous round is starting to run low on clock. He tries to line up a good assassination run but three transfers it a fair bit. Instead he takes his Vengeance moves, including one or two swings on the War Hog with the left flank Ravagers, and opts to play attrition. Between the Wolf Rider Champion, Nuala (who swaps Prey to the War Hog), and the left Ravagers he kills the War Hog. Cassius runs to stand outside of Sturm's Control Area and Wurmwood hits the Dracodile with Curse of Shadows and a boosted Stranglehold because I went and left Orin more than 3" away from the Dracodile in the clump. Does one damage to the Dracodile. The Feral then walks in, warping for movement, and manages to kill the Dracodile with its initials. It riles up to one. The other Ravager unit mostly charge and kill my objective and Sturm. The two attacks on Sturm both roll high, forcing transfers of about 15 damage onto each Battle Boar, so the one Ravager who charged a Battle Boar is able to kill it. Lord of the Feast just runs to the left flank for want of any great targets. My opponent has now scored from my objective and with the two Bloodtrackers in the left zone, so the CP total is 0-2 in his favour. Pigs Turn 4 My opponent is pretty low on clock, so I basically just need Sturm to not die this turn. That ideally means eliminating the remaining threats to him. I keep Sturm in control and use Mire to kill the two Ravagers engaging him. The Soul Slave TK's Skarath over, and Dahlia runs to catch most of the right-hand Ravager unit in her control. Skarath charges the Chieftain and... misses. Luckily, my opponent doesn't roll any successful Tough checks, so he is able to kill two Ravagers. I run the Gobber Chef up behind him, because Dahlia is on three camp in case of spells but if Skarath survives I do want him operational. Over on the left, Brun aims and shoots to kill the Wolf Rider Champion. Lug receives Primal from the Battle Boar and charges in to kill a Ravager and the Feral. Orin receives Guidance and hits Nuala with a Chain Lightning. Boosts the damage roll on the Ravager beside her and rolls the 13 he needs to kill them both. Sturm casts Polarity Shield on himself to minimise the threat from the remaining Ravagers and sprays the last Ravager in melee with Skarath, knocking him down. I'm unable to score, so the score remains 0-2. Circle Turn 4 Lord of the Feast finally commits, using his Raven to get into melee with Brun and swinging on Brun and Eilish. Thankfully, Brun's one transfer absorbs the biggest hit (boosting damage) and the second swing (likewise) does just four damage. Stonehold rules. Lug then dies to three charging Ravagers. The other three Ravagers swing away at Skarath and get him down to about 10 boxes. The last Bloodtracker charges and kills my Battle Boar but can't Quick Work because she's in Orin's melee range. My opponent clocks out during this turn, but we decide to keep on playing to see how the attrition would fare. He scores the left zone, so the score is now 0-3 in his favour. Pigs Turn 5 I think I have enough tools to finish off the Ravagers. Brun drops Stonehold, cuts for two Fury, and kills Lord of the Feast with a Fury to spare. Should have upkept Stonehold. Mire also cuts for a couple of Fury and kills two Ravagers from the left-hand unit. Dahlia heals Skarath's crippled body and he kills two of the Ravagers. The third one Toughs. Sturm moves Vision to himself (probably should have gone on Skarath, Sturm's not that likely to die to a couple of Strangleholds) and sprays the last Ravager on the left to death. Orin moves into the back of the last bloodtracker and boosts a swing to hit with his last Power Token using his staff, killing her. The Soul Slave moves up and puts a Bone Shaker into the knocked down Ravager, flubs the damage roll and it ends up on more health than it started with because of Rapid Healing. Score still 0-3 in his favour. Circle Turn 5 Cassius runs over, Wurmwood puts a boosted Stranglehold into Skarath and rolls high, leaving him on four boxes. A second Stranglehold kills Mire. The Ravager stands and takes a swing on Skarath. Needs a 7 to hit and an 8 to kill. Gets it. Wurmwood ports into the centre zone. Score goes to 0-4 in his favour. Pigs Turn 6 Brun cuts down to 2 Fury and shoots Cassius dead. Sturm runs to the right zone. Dahlia runs into the left zone. The Soul Slave uses Mental Force on a charge attack on the Ravager, who Toughs. I score the right zone, so the score is now 1-4. Circle Turn 6 Wurmwood gets ported into the left zone, where he Hellmouths Brun to kill Brun and Orin (really should have had them 3" apart). The Ravager in the centre zone stands and swings at the Soul Slave, knocking him down to two boxes. I forget to take a picture. We each score a zone, so the score is now 2-5. Pigs Turn 7 Sturm walks out of the zone, sprays to kill the last Ravager. The Soul Slave tries to kill the Boil Master with a Mental Forced Bone Shaker but leaves him one box. The Soul Slave dies to his Mental Force damage. Dahlia runs to contest the left zone. Sturm scores the right zone, so the score goes to 3-5. Circle Turn 7 Wurmwood kills Dahlia with a Stranglehold. Stones port into the middle zone. Score goes to 4-6. Hoo boy that was a tight game. My opponent didn't have a lot of games under his belt with Wurmwood, so the clock loss on Turn 4 isn't something I'll be able to count on once he has a bit more practice under his belt. I really enjoyed playing this out though, it went right down to the wire. I think having Orin boost to hit the Bloodtracker with his last token was probably unnecessary, and would have saved him and Brun to let them keep contesting the left zone. If I'd cast Vision on Skarath instead of Sturm the turn before Skarath died, I could have both saved Skarath from Stranglehold and kept him alive. Small play areas in the closing there. I also think I positioned really poorly during the opening stages of the game. Just kept tripping over my own feet really. Thinking about it, there's a few core principles I need to remember about positioning my backline against the Lord of the Feast/Wurmwood Hellmouth combo. 1) The majority of my solos have ways to get stealth. Those that do not either need to be more than 3" away from everything else (this is probably the Gobber Chef's role) or be behind a cloud (whether from Mire or a Mist Speaker). 2) Orin should be the leadmost solo. Arcane Vortex will work on enemy models if Wurmwood tries to yank a good solo like Eilish forward to kill with a Hellmouth, but by having Orin out in the lead they should have difficulty finding any way to pick apart the Orin bubble. 3) If the solos are unable to be targets, I can relax a bit with my Shield Guards and just use them to control Lord of the Feast's landing zones. If I flank hard with Brun and Lug and Dahlia and Skarath then I really only need to make sure I can dump a Raven shot at the Dracodile somewhere irrelevant. I do want more practice into this match-up specifically, it's a bit more challenging than the more linear Tharn forces because of its ability to muck with my backline so well, and I'll need games actually putting the above principles into practice before I have them down pat I think.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 23, 2019 0:04:43 GMT
I feel like I've actually been getting a little rusty with Arkadius, what with all these Sturm and Drang games. Last night was an effort in scraping off some of the barnacles. Played Arkadius with the following: Arkadius -War Hog -War Hog -Road Hog -Road Hog -Gun Boar -Splatter Boar -Gorax -Targ Mire -Wrastler Mist Speaker Kwaak and Gub Witch Doctor Gobber Chef I'm still not convinced this is the optimal build to go for, but it'll probably have to carry me through CanCon at least before I make any changes. I think the biggest potential change is swapping the Mist Speaker out for Hutchuck, because boy am I missing Hutchuck... but unless Sturm proves himself a good Grymkin drop (hard to test, not a lot of Grymkin locally) it's probably still too important for enabling Arkadius to play that match-up. Boy do I hate in having to use a solo slot on that guy in both lists in my pair though. Anyway, the first game of the day was into my Merc friend trying to get Gastone2 to work. His list was unchanged from its previous iteration, running: Gastone -Nomad -Toro -Toro -Reinholdt Max Press Gangers Max Steelhead Halberdiers Max Steelhead Halberdiers Max Idrians -UA Alexia and the Risen Aiyana and Holt Hutchuck Ragman Deployment I won the starting roll and took first. We had one table side stacked with cover with a trench, wall, and rubble, while the other just had a couple of hills. My opponent grabbed the cover-laden side. I set up with my heavies and Arkadius central, gun lights centre-left, and Mire and his Wrastler on the right. My opponent skewed his jacks to the left flank and his AD units focussed a bit more on the left than right. Both objectives are Fuel Caches. The Idrians chose the left Road Hog as their Prey target. Pigs Turn 1 I had the Splatter Boar Lucky Shot the Gun Boar and charge forward. The Gun Boar ran up. Targ used Ancillary Attack and the shot scattered onto part of my opponent's AD line, killing two Idrians. Everything else ran up, but rather more cautiously than normal to avoid Idrians. Mire used Caustic Mist to cloud wall the Road Hogs. Arkadius put Forced Evolution on the War Hog on the left, since it'd have to deal with two heavies, and put Guardian Beast on himself. Mercs Turn 1 Alexia made two thralls with the dead Idrians. Gastone put Lifebound on the Press Gangers, Dauntless Resolve on the Idrians, and cast Ghost Walk on the right flank Steelheads. He moved up. The rest of his army ran, save Alexia who moved up and turned a thrall into a Warrior and charged the Forced Evo'd War Hog. Needed an 8 to hit, got it, did nine damage to the War Hog. The Idrians used their Mini-Feat as well. Pigs Turn 2 The Splatter Boar advanced into the left zone and killed an Idrian with an Acid Bomb, also corroding the UA. The Wrastler charged the Lifebound Press Ganger in my zone and killed him, using Snacking to deny Gastone a soul. I forgot that Lifebound also granted Shield Guard, so a shot at a Dug In Idrian that would have killed two Steelheads with blast damage was instead Shield Guarded where it could only kill a single Press Ganger. The Gorax killed the Thrall Warrior, while Arkadius and Targ healed the War Hog back to just shy of full health. Arkadius also stuck the Press Gangers with Crippling Grasp. The Preyed Road Hog killed two Idrians with a spray. Mire advanced again to cloud wall around the objective. The War Hog on the right moved into the edge of the zone there. I forgot to activate my second Road Hog. Mercs Turn 2 I'd forgotten about Hutchuck. He ambushed in, walked up, and tried to hit Targ with a Quake bomb. He needed a 7 to hit him on the hill and missed. Gastone activated and Feated and tossed Dauntless Resolve on himself. He charged the Idrians and a second Thrall Warrior into the War Hog and left it on about half its health with no aspects crippled. My opponent scores 1 CP from his zone, making the score 0-1. Pigs Turn 3 I decide that I have an easy enough assassination, I just need to engage the rightmost Toro and clear some of the intervening Idrians and Press Gangers. I drop Forced Evolution and upkeep Guardian Beast and Crippling Grasp. Mire puts Rage on the left War Hog and the leftmost Road Hog and adds Weald Secrets to the War Hog. The Gorax clears the Thrall Warrior and one of the Idrians off the War Hog on the left. Kwaak takes two Venom sprays to kill another two Idrians. The Wrastler activates and kills the remaining Idrians in the way. At this point I needed to activate the War Hog or a solo or something and run to engage the Toros to stop Countercharge, but instead Arkadius activates and Feats. The Road Hog I need to use for the assassination goes forward, and the centremost Toro Countercharges to block the following charge lane. The other Road Hog goes into a Press Ganger, who Toughs. Arkadius then kills that Press Ganger with a Primal Shock. The other frenzies kill some irrelevant infantry. Targ and the Gun Boar work together to remove all bar two of the remaining infantry blocking my path. The War Hog on the left kills the intervening Toro. Unfortunately I now lack the tools to kill the last Press Ganger preventing my second Road Hog from throwing a Steelhead into Gastone to knock him down. I have to charge the assassin Road Hog in and hope he does the job on his own. With Raw Adrenaline giving a free boosted attack roll (I choose to forgo the assault spray to save Raw Adrenaline for that), Forced Evolution, and Rage, he manages to roll a Crit hit on Gastone and knock him down. Damage rolls spike high too, so he dies to the second attack. Honestly without the crit and the spiking damage rolls that could have gone very badly. Just choked up a bit when it came to tying up the Toros. If Mire hadn't moved quite so far across I could have run the Gobber Chef through to engage, or I could have trampled/run the War Hog on the left over to lock down both Toros instead of saving it for... something that wouldn't be relevant with the assassination run.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 23, 2019 1:59:43 GMT
The second game was into Ret. My opponent had a Goreshade4/Issyria pair, with Legion of Dawn and Shadows of the Retribution respectively. I probably lean a little towards Sturm and Drang for the match-up since I can bypass a lot of Goreshade's Feat, but decided to play some more Arkadius to continue shaking the rust off. His list was: Goreshade -Phoenix -Phoenix Max Destors Max Invictors -UA Max Sentinels -UA Lyss Healer Destor Thane Sentinel Scyiir Artificer Arcanist Mechanik Deployment This time my opponent won the starting roll. I opted to take the same table edge, which was probably a mistake in retrospect. He set up his single wound infantry all on the right flank, and his Destors on the left. I actually chose to split the Gun Boar and Splatter Boar unusually, with the Splatter Boar on the right flank where its Acid Bombs could annoy the Sentinels and the Gun Boar on the left flank where it could threaten Destors. Ret Turn 1 Goreshade put Dauntless Resolve on the Destors, and the Artificer gave them Force Barrier. They ran up, most of the unit hanging back in case I feated Bottom of 1 but two of them putting themselves forward. One of them lurked behind a cloud as screening. Everything else in the army rushed forward, the Sentinels clearing the shallow water with the help of Ghostly. Pigs Turn 1 I ran my heavies forward to create a clear path from my Splatter Boar to the Gun Boar. The Splatter Boar moved over and gave the Gun Boar Lucky Shot, then scattered a smoke blast straight forward in front of the Phoenix on the left. The Mist Speaker gave it Guidance. The Gun Boar moved up and shot the Destor behind the cloud. He spiked high and forced a Tough roll. Arkadius moved over and used Raw Adrenaline, put Forced Evolution on the left flank War Hog and Guardian Beast on himself. Targ used Ancillary Attack. I chose to shoot a second Destor over on the left instead of the knocked down one, which was probably a mistake in its own right, since I hadn't realised quite how good the Lyss Healer would be at... well, healing. Would have been better to just finish the job I'd started and force Goreshade to consider Revive. I did two damage to the second Destor. To finish my turn, Mire moved across to cloud up the front of my heavies and Kwaak ran base to base with the Wrastler so that a Destor wouldn't be able to slip around behind me and kill Mire. Ret Turn 2 The Destors were a little timid on the left, needing to stay close enough to benefit from Goreshade's Feat later in the turn. One snuck forward to try and kill Kwaak, but left him on two boxes. The other two with range shot at the Wrastler, doing about eight damage in total. The Artificer gave them Force Barrier, and the Lyss Healer healed the one who'd Toughed to bring him back to 4 boxes. The rest of the army ran up behind them. Goreshade tossed out a few random clouds and Feated. I think the Sentinels used their Mini Feat as well. Pigs Turn 2 I decided to bide my time and wait out the Feat, even though it'd mean ceding a pretty substantial scenario swing to my opponent. In retrospect I could have pressed the Gobber Chef forward on turn one to give me a contesting piece for my opponent's zone, that'd have made things rather less dire. I had Arkadius tag a Destor with Crippling Grasp, then killed the one in my zone with a Gun Boar, a second shot with Raw Adrenaline via Targ, and a Road Hog spray. A second Road Hog spray left a Destor one two boxes and on fire. A Splatter Boar shot on the right managed to get two Sentinels corroded. I ran the Gobber Chef into the zone on the right. The Wrastler on the left charged into the Destor who was out of control, killed him, and used Overtake to get to one inside Goreshade's Control. I killed that one too and used Snacking to deny Goreshade a soul, but he was rendered stationary. Mire spent all his Fury clouding up my battlegroup. Without any contesting going on, we each scored our respective zones to make the score 1-1. Ret Turn 3 Fire on the Destor went out but both Sentinels died to corrosion. My opponent had two Sentinels charge the Gobber Chef to clear the right zone and most of the rest ran into the central forest. The Invictors used their Mini Feat to allow four of their number to take pot shots at the Gorax and moved up into the right-hand zone. Goreshade activated, Revived one of the dead Destors, and had a full health one enter my zone. The Lyss Healer healed the Revived Destor before it moved. The Destor Thane moved up and killed Mire. The Phoenixes shot the objective and left it on 1 box. The Artificer gave the Destors Force Barrier again. With the Wrastler having gone Wild and no longer contesting, my opponent scored his zone and both circle zones to make the score 1-4 in his favour. Pigs Turn 3 I had a lot of ground to make up. The Gun Boar cleared out the contesting Destor with an aimed shot. Targ had it take a second, unboosted shot at a Destor on the far left but I missed. The Gorax and Arkadius Primal'd both War Hogs, and Arkadius Feated. Feat attacks kill a second Destor with the Primal'd, Forced Evo'd War Hog on the left, as well as clearing out four Sentinels. I also did about six damage to the Destor Thane with the Gun Boar's frenzy. Arkadius then advanced and used his Raw Adrenaline needle on one of the Road Hogs, before Repositioning to cover the entire left-hand side of the zone with his Guardian Beast aura. My Primal'd, Forced Evo'd War Hog killed the Phoenix and the last Destor with an attack to spare. The other War Hog killed the second Phoenix and two more Sentinels. The Raw Adrenaline Road Hog moved over to the right using Full Boar and killed four Invictors with the spray. The other Road Hog charged the Scyiir, boosted to hit him over the wall, and used Overtake to get to the objective and engage the Lyss Healer. Left the objective on three boxes. I score my zone,, so the score is 2-4. Ret Turn 4 My opponent just needs to kill my objective, contest, and score two zones. He figures Goreshade and the Artificer can kill the Forced Evo'd War Hog, and the three remaining Sentinels plus some Invictor shots should down the Road Hog. The Sentinels Vengeance to set up some charges. The Lyss Healer dies to a free strike from the Road Hog so that the Invictors can CRA. They drop the Road Hog to about 20 boxes and then the Sentinels charge in. The first two leave the Road Hog on 5 boxes, the third attack rolls snake eyes to miss. The Artificer, meanwhile, charges the War Hog and combo smites him into the wall, instantly dropping him to half health. Goreshade chooses to kill the Road Hog instead of the War Hog. The Arcanist runs to contest and dies to the Guardian Beast attack from the second War Hog. The Destor Thane shoots the objective dead. My opponent scores his zone and the objective, but I score my zone. Score goes to 3-6. Honestly, had my opponent made assault shots instead of CRAs with the Invictors and run one to engage my zone on the right, he probably could have won this turn (at least without bad luck like the snake eyes). Pigs Turn 4 The Gun Boar kills the Destor Thane after Kwaak fails. The Gorax kills three Invictors by charging into their back arc and the Splatter Boar finishes off the objective with a Smoke Bomb. Arkadius Raw Adrenalines the Gun Boar and Repositions into the left zone. Targ kills two Sentinels with an Ancillary Attack. The Road Hog kills the Sentinel Officer with a spray. The Mist Speaker runs to contest. I score my zone and the left zone to bring the score even at 6-6. Ret Turn 5 Goreshade kills the Mist Speaker and tries to kill the War Hog, leaving it with just three boxes in Spirit. The remaining Invictors shoot the Splatter Boar and leave it with just its Mind intact. The Sentinel standard bearer runs into my rectangular zone. He scores his rectangular zone, I score the left zone to keep the score level at 7-7. Pigs Turn 5 The War Hog shakes stationary. The Gun Boar frenzies on Arkadius and misses, the Splatter Boar passes his Threshold check, and the Gorax frenzies towards the Invictors but doesn't make contact because of the shallow water. The Witch Doctor charges and kills the Sentinel Standard Bearer. Arkadius heals the War Hog's crippled aspects with a Psycho Surgery (giving it enough health to survive a Maltreatment), uses Maltreatment to strip the one Fury off of it to give it a full activation, and then reheals the newly crippled Body with that Fury. The War Hog activates and gets the Crit Knockdown on Goreshade with the first attack, killing him handily. Technically I think I score the left zone my zone so the score finishes at 9-7 in my favour. Close game, but I think I largely played it correctly. If I'd just had something positioned my opponent's zone on my Turn 2 (the Gobber Chef being the obvious choice) I think I could have avoided that one turn of being in danger of losing.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 25, 2019 1:11:38 GMT
Had time for some last minute practice games yesterday before the convention on the weekend. The first was into a Kolgrimma/Madrak1 pair run by a pretty new player, so the priority for me was more about practicing my backline placements for the Wurmwood game I had lined up next. Our lists were: Sturm and Drang -War Hog -Battle Boar -Battle Boar -Soul Slave Mire -Dracodile Dahlia -Skarath Brun -Lug Orin Eilish Mist Speaker Gobber Chef Madrak1 -Mountain King -Bomber -Runebearer Max Champions -Skaldi Max Fennblades -UA Max Krielstone -Elder Deployment I won the starting roll and took first. My opponent grabbed the table side with a beautifully placed trench on top of a flag. I set up the Dracodile skewing towards the left, avoiding the big obstruction in the middle of the table. Dahlia and Skarath and the Gobber Chef also aimed for that zone (the Chef more for his ability as a contesting/scoring piece for the opposing flag). Brun and Lug with their native Pathfinder were happy to set up in the rubble on the right, and the War Hog also aimed to support that zone. My opponent set the Fennblades up on the left to jam, with the Mountain King opposite the Dracodile. The Champions and Bomber aimed for the centre, without anything really aiming for the right-hand zone. My opponent has a fair few proxies, with Kriel Warriors and a pair of Eaters as the Fennblades/UA and Valka standing in for Skaldi. I think his Elder was being represented by a Northkin Elder as well. Both objectives are Stockpiles. Pigs Turn 1 I consider shifting my Dracodile away from the Mountain King, but figure its real value would be standing on the left zone and being immune to Fennblades. Dahlia and Skarath though I wanted more to the right, both so that I could get Vision onto Skarath (currently impossible) and so that Skarath could line up against the Champions to get some Paralysis going. I ran Skarath as far as I could and still be close enough for Dahlia to get him back in Control by walking. Sturm put Polarity Shield on the Dracodile, advanced, and put Vision on Skarath. He cast Deceleration as well. The Soul Slave advanced to base to base with him and used TK to push him a little further forward as well. The Dracodile and Lug ran up. Brun cast Stonehold on himself and charged a Champion to get into the Rubble. Eilish ran up behind the Dracodile. Orin advanced and gave himself stealth. The Mist Speaker ran, staying within 5" of where Mire would be and within 10" of my flag. Mire advanced, summoned a Caustic Mist to block LOS to the solo blob (not necessary against this list, but I was practicing) and put up Floodwaters. Trolls Turn 1 Madrak cast Even Ground and charged forward, dumping the rest of his Fury into the stone. The rest of his army ran, save the stone which Awakened for three more Fury. Pigs Turn 2 My opponent had pretty minimal Pathfinder access, so I decided the best play would be to eliminate the Fennblade officer and cast Floodwaters with the Dracodile. Eilish gave him Puppet Master, because to avoid maxing out the Dracodile on Fury I was going to need to roll a hard 7 on damage. He boosted to hit, got the hit, and rolled the 7 for damage. The Fennblade officer made his Tough roll, so Skarath moved up and finish the job (putting up Counterblast as well) after receiving Mist Walker from Dahlia so that he could move through the water unimpeded. I then TK'd Skarath back with Sturm, cast Deceleration, and had Mire summon a cloud on him. Over on the right, I ran Brun and Lug out behind the forest where they'd be able to threaten the Champions or Countercharge if they tried to move into or past the forest. The Mist Speaker ran onto the flag, hanging out within 5" of Mire. Trolls Turn 2 The Fennblades Vengeanced forwards and ran to jam up the Dracodile. Two of them died to the Counterblast spray from Skarath. They left the Mountain King without a landing zone on the other side of the flag, however, so it was unable to contribute anything this turn. I think the Bomber ended up having to run. The Champions moved into the right zone, hanging out on the other side of the forest to Lug. Madrak cast Even Ground again and put a boosted Rathrok into the Dracodile, doing a few points of damage. He Feated to avoid assassination from Skarath in return. With my flag uncontested, I scored this turn to bring the score to 1-0 in my favour. Pigs Turn 3 The Dracodile killed a few Fennblades, two of whom were out of Madrak's Control, and used Snacking to largely heal the damage from Rathrok. Lug received Primal from a Battle Boar. The Soul Slave TK'd him forward. Lug walked in between the two ranks of Champions and killed three, maxing himself out on Fury in the process, leaving just Skaldi unscathed (well, lightly scathed from Sanguine Bond). I decided not to Primal Skarath to finish the job, which was probably a mistake. Sturm TK'd him forward, cast Deceleration, and Feated on the Mountain King and Bomber. Skarath missed his first two attacks, including a Puppet Master reroll, failed to do enough to damage to kill on the third attack, the Champion Toughed the fourth attack, and I decided I didn't want Skarath on max Fury when Dahlia had run so far upfield to get the Champions in her Control. Mire summoned another cloud to screen my War Hog from the Fenns after the War Hog moved over to threaten the Mountain King. Skaldi is still contesting the right-hand zone, but I score my flag to make the score 2-0 in my favour. Trolls Turn 3 The Fenns Vengeance out of the way. The Mountain King runs to engage the Dracodile. Madrak moves over onto the flag and casts Jackhammer five times. One attack misses and the other four roll pretty average, leaving the Dracodile on a bit below half health. On the right, Skaldi and a Champion walk to engage Lug (Dahlia has the entire unit in Control) and the other Champion closes in with Skarath. The regular Champion manages to miss both swings on Lug and Skaldi only chips him a bit. The other Champion misses Skarath entirely. The Bomber uses Far Strike on himself and tosses a single bomb at the Battle Boar on the right, doing about eight points of damage. We both score our flags, so the score goes to 3-1 in my favour. Pigs Turn 4 I consider going for a scenario play, but honestly it's safer to continue grinding attrition. The War Hog receives Primal from the right-flank Battle Boar and lays into the Mountain King, dropping him to about a third of his boxes. I decide I don't need the Dracodile to be Primal'd to finish the job, and he kills the Mountain King comfortably along with two Fennblades, which heals him back to about half hit boxes. Both Skarath (he was on 3 Fury while Dahlia was camping 3, probably unnecessarily) and Lug frenzied, killing the remaining Champion grunts. I have my Soul Slave move up and TK Skarath to contest the left flag. Sturm just casts Deceleration and camps out in the middle of the table. I score my flag, so the score is now 4-1 in my favour. At this point my opponent and I agreed that there wasn't really anything he could do to come back from there, so he concedes.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 25, 2019 2:12:51 GMT
My final practice game was a real mind bender. Wurmwood vs Sturm and Drang. We've played this match-up before (though he's changed his list a little since then), and I've been theorymachining my positioning a lot. Lord of the Feast isn't ordinarily a big problem for me, I just shield guard him to oblivion, but the addition of Hellmouth into the equation makes things hard. Sturm has the tools to manage the issue still, but it requires brutally precise positioning and most of my solos need to use their Stealth-granting effects every turn. Mire also probably needs a Caustic Mist in play every round. With that in mind, there were a lot of mistakes in this game and we usually adjusted the positioning of models after big mistakes had been identified, so you may note my pieces move about between pictures when it's not my turn. And, more rarely, the same thing happen to my opponent's models. My Sturm list was the same of course, his Wurmwood list was: Wurmwood -Feral -Stalker Max Ravagers -UA Max Ravagers -UA Max Bloodtrackers -Nuala Shifting Stones Shifting Stones Boil Master and Spirit Cauldron Tharn Shaman Lord of the Feast Deployment My opponent won the starting roll. He had come to the decision that Wurmwood was basically ok with going second and shooting for a bottom of seven scenario win, so I ended up first and on the same table side as last game. Which I didn't hate, the water was great for my solos but a bit inconvenient for my pigs and led to me splitting Sturm off from the solo bunch alongside the War Hog and Brun and Lug on the right. That was my first big mistake, turns out he really needs to be hiding in among the solos, but this had to get corrected through the course of play. Otherwise, the only other element of note was that I deployed Skarath more centrally on the left so that I didn't need to run him across to receive Vision. My opponent deployed his list basically symmetrically, with a Ravager unit aiming for each zone. Both objectives are Stockpiles. The Dracodile is the Bloodtrackers' Prey target. Pigs Turn 1 Sturm put Vision on Skarath, Polarity Shield on the Dracodile, cast Deceleration, and for some absurd reason chose to charge forward and trigger the first end turn rewind. I.e. he was well inside Lord of the Feast's threat range, all Wurmwood had to do was pull the War Hog away from the Battle Boar to stop Shield Guard and he'd be able to kill Sturm pretty easily. Other than that, the Warbeasts all ran up without any problems. Mire and the other non-lesser solos (barring the Gobber Chef, who just went somewhere where my opponent couldn't use him to get to better stuff) all bunkered up behind the Dracodile. Lord of the Feast couldn't get to them because they were all either Stealth or behind a cloud, and Orin pushing forward meant Hellmouth would have limited utility. And here is where Sturm actually needed to be: Circle Turn 1 My opponent showed me the Lord of the Feast assassination, which he really should not have needed to do, and we rewound a bit to account for it. We also move the Battle Boar on the left base to base with the Dracodile so he can't be Hellmouthed out of Shield Guard range, which would let Lord of the Feast just kill all my solos. Everything on his side ran up, with Wurmwood and Cassius building a forest wall by killing two Bloodtrackers and casting Wild Growth. The Feral killed another two, giving Wurmwood two souls to play with. The Spirit Cauldron loaded Lord of the Feast up with corpses. Pigs Turn 2 I'm pretty flustered at this point and make a real hash of things. Mire casts Weald Secrets on the War Hog, meaning no Caustic Mist this turn. The War Hog receives Primal from a Battle Boar, Puppet Master from Eilish, TK from the Soul Slave, and charges waaaaaaay outside of Sturm's Control Range to kill three Ravagers and then end his activation. At least they all fail their Tough checks. Sturm then casts Deceleration and TKs himself to hide behind the Dracodile because he'll die anywhere else, needing TK to get out of the killbox. Skarath sprays the flanking Ravager on the left to trigger Vengeance, but this guy does Tough. He casts Counterblast. Battle Boars run to block LOS. Circle Turn 2 Amidst all the panic I had actually managed to leave Orin over 3" away from the Dracodile so... going good. Wurmwood gets ported forward. He hits the Dracodile with Curse of Shadows, then Strangleholds him. Eilish's Arcane Void does 5 damage to Wurmwood during this process. He then Feats and uses his last Fury to Wild Growth in front of Skarath. One of the left Ravagers charges Skarath, gets knocked down by the Counterblast and blocks any others from finding landing zones. The rest of the unit charges the objective. One of them kills it on his own, the others (including one Ravager loaded up to three corpses by the Spirit Cauldron) put about 20 damage into the Dracodile. Lord of the Feast moves to camp my opponent's flag. The Ravagers and Stalker on the right conspire to kill my War Hog, and the Stalker sprints back to threaten the Dracodile afterwards. One Ravager from the right-hand unit runs forward to contest my flag and force me to trigger Vengeance if I want to score. My objective and his flag make the score 0-2 in his favour. Pigs Turn 3 We push back Wurmwood a little and drop Wild Growth to give him some camp because it turns out Skarath is able to Overtake into the zero camp Wurmwood with enough attacks left to put him in the dirt. Or, well, we roll it out and Wurmwood survives on three boxes, but then Eilish uses Unbinding on the Dracodile and rolls a 3 for damage and kills him. Moving back to the attrition play, Skarath kills some Tharn on the left, the Dracodile sacrifices movement and kills a few Tharn in the centre and manages to restore a whole three health with three Snackings. He also slams a Ravager into Nuala, killing her. Lug finishes the job, dropping the Tharn around the flag on the right. The Mist Speaker runs to the flag. Eilish uses Unbinding on the Dracodile, this time only rolling one for damage. Sturm advances, Feats on the two Warpwolves, and casts Deceleration. The Soul Slave TK's him back. Everyone else bunkers up behind the Dracodile, properly this time, with Mire summoning a Caustic Mist to hide everyone safely. ...or so I though. We both score our respective flags, so the score is now 1-3. Circle Turn 3 After talking through some Hellmouth shenanigans, we move the Caustic Mist so that it's actually underneath the Battle Boars and base to base with the Dracodile. Because Sturm is firmly within Floodwaters, it also only needs to be 1.5" away from him as that's the whole distance he can be dragged by a Hellmouth. So basically there's now no way for him to be pulled into the cloud and assassinated. Wurmwood has to cut for three, but the Stockpile heals him for three. He charges the last two Ravagers on the left into Skarath. I save Counterblast, worried that Lord of the Feast might charge in and then Raven into the squishy solos that way, and Skarath loses about half his boxes to the two Ravagers even after Vision absorbs the Chieftain's charge. The rest of his army teleports or runs to the right flank. Wurmwood burns through all his Fury summoning a wood, missing a Curse of Shadows on Lug, then hitting a second Curse of Shadows. The Ravagers charge and kill Lug, and the Chieftain kills the Mist Speaker with a Chain Lightning that needs an 11 to kill, and gets it. My opponent scores the right-hand zone and flag, bringing him to just shy of a victory at 1-5. Pigs Turn 4 I actually feel relatively happy about my prospects this turn. Brun upkeeps Stonehold and charges into Chieftain on the right, missing the charge attack. Kills the Bloodtracker instead and does just two damage to the Chieftain with the rest of his Fury, which the Chieftain heals. The Soul Slave walks onto the flag and uses Bone Shaker and Mental Force to kill one Ravager, who walks across and forces a Tough roll on the Shaman. The Shaman succeeds and gets knocked down. Skarath kills the two Ravagers on the left, the Dracodile moves across with Puppet Master from Eilish and kills the Shifting Zone contesting the left zone and leaves Lord of the Feast on two boxes, blind, and corroded after the Puppet Master reroll. Sturm Primals the second Battle Boar and casts Deceleration. The Battle Boar charges in and kills the Chieftain and fails to kill the other Ravager. Mire just tosses out a cloud to protect Sturm. I score the left zone and the right flag, bringing the score to 3-5. Circle Turn 4 Corrosion goes out on Lord of the Feast and he just advances into the zone, along with the remaining shifting stones from the left unit. Wurmwood cuts down to 11 health. My opponent then trips over himself a bit clearing the right-hand zone. Cassius, the Ravager, and the Bloodtracker kill the Battle Boar. Wurmwood then ports himself forward to try and kill Brun and the Soul Slave. Unfortunately a boosted Stranglehold just bounces straight off of Brun's Arm 17 Stonehold combo and he only does five damage to the Soul Slave, leaving it on one box. He uses his last Fury to port back into the forest. Pigs Turn 5 I'm almost out of time on the clock, so I just go for the assassination. Wurmwood has one soul, so Arm 19, and is on zero camp. Sturm walks over, TKs himself further, TKs Brun out of combat with the Ravager, and TKs the Soul Slave forward. He sprays Wurmwood, doing two more damage with a boosted damage roll. The Soul Slave TKs Wurmwood out of the forest and kills himself by Mental Forcing the roll. The Dracodile receives Puppet Master and walks over and does five more damage to Wurmwood, leaving him on four boxes. Brun walks into melee with Wurmwood and makes two boosted POW 10s and one unboosted (in retrospect should have boosted the initial and then cast Frosthammer and boosted the damage roll for the extra POW, would have killed Wurmwood then). Does one damage on the first attack, two on the next, none on the unboosted attack. Orin edges across and tags Wurmwood with a Chain Lightning, boosting the attack and damage roll. It breaks armour, killing Wurmwood. Super informative game. I probably would have had the time to go for an attrition/scenario play had I not run down my clock proxying out fake assassinations and learning how to protect myself from the return ones, but that was actually a pretty reasonable assassination odds-wise I think. My opponent and I were both really interested in how each other's armies worked, and he's given me a lot to think about. Sturm has the tools to deal with Wurmwood's insane shenanigans, but you really do need everything bunkered up behind the Dracodile. Mire needs to have a Caustic Mist in play every turn, and basically everything that can be needs to be stealthed until Lord of the Feast is dead. Oh, and the Battle Boar needs to be base to base with the Dracodile (and you need a second one post-turn 1 when Wurmwood is playing with 10 Fury, base to base being optional) to be effective. Tons of stuff to remember, and I could certainly play this match-up better. Turn 2 for me was just a litany of mistakes. The War Hog was probably fine hanging back and trying to force the Ravagers to commit, and sending him in tore up my brick and made me play rather poorly in other ways. If I had to have any game before a convention, I'm glad it was this one. I learnt an absolute truckload and had a lot of fun. Fingers crossed the actual event is half this interesting
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 29, 2019 3:07:46 GMT
Australia had its biggest wargaming convention over the weekend, CanCon, which included two Iron Gauntlet qualifying events (a Masters and a Champions event) and a host of smaller tournaments, Iron Arena goodies, and other fun stuff. I had an absolute blast, played a whopping 13 games over the weekend, and did substantially better than I have at any previous CanCon. I don't know what it is about that event in particular, but historically I've always flaked out around round 2-3 of the big tournaments. This may take a little while to write up, just as a heads-up. I think I recorded all the games I played and there's a loooot of battle reports and analysis to get through. I took just my practiced pair, Arkadius and Sturm and Drang, down with me to play in each of the tournaments. The lists, for reference, were: Arkadius -War Hog -War Hog -Road Hog -Road Hog -Gun Boar -Splatter Boar -Gorax -Targ Mire -Wrastler Witch Doctor Mist Speaker Kwaak and Gub Gobber Chef And Sturm and Drang -War Hog -Battle Boar -Battle Boar -Soul Slave Mire -Dracodile Dahlia -Skarath Brun -Lug Eilish Orin Mist Speaker Gobber Chef MastersRound one - Standoff I get paired up against a Merc player who I'm familiar with, a guy I know as another Arkadius player. He has a weird pairing, featuring MacBain and a second list that I'm afraid I can't remember. I decide either of my lists would be fine, and choose Sturm and Drang. Meanwhile, he's taken one look at my lists, scoffed, and gone, "Yeah, you're playing Arkadius". He chose MacBain, and then had to ask for my army lists back when I revealed Sturm and Drang so that he could, you know, actually read the list. This happened a lot the first day of the weekend. His list was: MacBain -Galleon Max Press Gangers Max Press Gangers Min Boomhowlers Alexia and the Risen Kayazy Eliminators Devil Shadow Mutineers Hawk Eilish Kell Eiryss1 Deployment My opponent won the starting roll. I took a table side with some nicely placed forests, good for hiding my solos behind. His list deployed with Eiryss and a Press Ganger unit on the left, the other Press Gangers and Kell on the right. The Galleon skewed a little right, Boomhowlers and Alexia in the centre. I had my Dracodile skewing a little left, on the other hand, with Dahlia and Skarath aiming to lock down the right-hand zone and Brun and Lug looking forward to playing with the left zone. Picture taken after my opponent's Boomhowlers had started activating. Both objectives are Stockpiles. The picture quality is going to be pretty poor for this game I'm afraid, took me a while to get the settings right for the hall. Mercenaries Turn 1 Countermeasures went on the right-hand Press Ganger unit, Fail-Safe on the Galleon. Eliminators ran down the left flank. Everything else basically ran straight forward. Pigs Turn 1 Polarity Shield on the Dracodile, Vision went on Skarath, and I put up Deceleration. Ran everything up, with the Dracodile swinging more towards the left to avoid the run+Jackhammer nastiness from the Galleon. Dahlia and Brun put their respective upkeeps in play. Mercenaries Turn 2 I believe Eiryss advanced and shot Brun to strip his Fury, doing no damage. The Devil's Shadow flanked wide. Kell advanced and shot at Skarath, I can't recall if he landed the shot or not. The Galleon rolled up a bunch of shots and drifted AOEs until he clipped Orin and killed him. MacBain Feated, rolled a pretty low number of models, picking Boomhowler, the two Eliminators, and a handful of screening Press Gangers as the invulnerable models. Pigs Turn 2 Brun cut to replace the Fury he'd lost to the Disruptor Bolt. The Dracodile took a spray across an Eliminator, a Press Ganger, and Boomhowler, hitting them all. Only did four damage to Boomhowler but the other two survived solely because of the Feat. Lug used Bear Hands and punched the other Eliminator, knocking her down, and then threw her out of the zone. The Mist Speaker gave Brun Guidance, Eilish gave him Puppet Master, and he advanced over to the left and shot Eiryss dead with a Blunderbuss shot. Skarath sniped out Kell as well on the right flank. I believe Sturm Feated this turn. I think we both scored our respective zones, bringing the score to 1-1. Mercenaries Turn 3 The Kayazy Eliminator died to Corrosion and the Stockpile healed Boomhowler back to six hit boxes. He activated first to stand up everyone who had been knocked down. The Devil's Shadow took some shots at Skarath, rather ineffectually. The Galleon took some shots at Skarath, and I think I used Vision on the Harpoon Gun. About five Press Gangers charged Skarath and left him on just a few boxes. The other unit jammed my zone. Aiyana and Holt advanced into the left zone. The last Eliminator charged past the warbeasts to kill Eilish. He scored his zone, bringing the score to 1-2 in his favour. Pigs Turn 3 The various pig Warbeasts cleared my zone of Press Gangers, excepting one in the far-right corner. I had to adjust the positioning of my models to give the Dracodile room to charge across and kill it, and he caught Alexia in the spray. The damage burned through all bar two Risen. Dahlia then moved up to get Alexia in her control, allowing Skarath to spray a Press Ganger engaging him and kill Alexia. I had to choose whether I wanted to get Lug into Aiyana and Holt or TK the Gobber Chef to allow me to contest, and decided contesting was more important. I think Mire killed the last Eliminator. I scored my zone, bringing the score to 2-2. Mercenaries Turn 4 Hawk charged past Lug to attack Brun, leaving Brun on two boxes and having transferred about ten damage to Lug. Aiyana used Kiss on Lug, and one Press Ganger plus Holt took him down to single digit health. The Boomhowlers cleared their zone and moved forward to contest mine and jam. The Press Gangers on the right killed Skarath and positioned themselves around Dahlia, allowing the Galleon to start lobbing shots at them. He eventually hit one and killed Dahlia with boosted blast damage. I believe he forgot to activate the Devil's Shadow this turn. The Press Ganger Lass on the left used Seduction to get the Gobber Chef out of the zone. He scored his zone and the right, bringing the score to 2-4 in his favour. Pigs Turn 4 A Battle Boar, Primal'd the turn before, frenzied and killed the Gobber Chef. The Dracodile edged into the right zone and used its spray to help clear a path to my opponent's zone. Brun killed Hawk in melee, while Lug took out Holt and the Press Ganger. I think I could have found a way to clear the left zone entirely, but I'd have had to run Sturm to score it and figured that wasn't worth it. With the help of TK I was able to get my War Hog onto my opponent's objective, Overtake, kill Boomhowler (eventually, he kept passing his Tough rolls) and take a swing at the Press Ganger lass which missed. I scored my zone, combined with the objective that brought us level again at 4-4. Mercenaries Turn 5 My opponent was running out of clock a lot faster than I was. He dropped all his upkeeps this turn. The Galleon ran to engage the Dracodile. MacBain moved up behind it and made six Jackhammer attacks, leaving the Dracodile on something like two boxes. Zira was able to finish it off after the Press Gangers flailed ineffectually. Aiyana ran off to the left to contest at a later date. My opponent scored the right-hand zone, bringing the score to 4-5. Pigs Turn 5 I moved Sturm into the left zone. Lug killed the Press Ganger lass and Returned back to the left zone. Brun shot Aiyana dead to stop her contesting. Bone Shaker killed the Press Ganger contesting my zone, and a Battle Boar moved in to score it. Mire ran to contest the right-hand zone. My War Hog can't quite bulldoze the last Boomhowler to a spot where he can overtake through the Risen and clear the zone. I score my zone and the left zone, bringing the score to 6-5 in my favour. Mercenaries Turn 6 I'm at under ten minutes now, but my opponent is nearly out and probably can't stop me from winning on scenario at the end of this game. The Devil's Shadow aim to clear Mire but can't actually see him. MacBain uses Jackhammer to clear him instead. Galleon moves over and makes some shots at Sturm. The Harpoon gets Shield Guarded and the Battle Boar only gets dragged into base to base with the Soul Slave. I think Sturm might have taken a couple of points from the cannons. The Press Gangers charge my objective and my opponent clocks without killing it. A pretty unusual match-up. I was looking to deathclock as my main win condition from about turn three onwards. It turns out when both players have hilariously unkillable armies, it's the person playing with quadruple the models that has to worry.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 29, 2019 4:45:02 GMT
Round 2 - The Pit II Faced off against Circle Orboros this round. Again, had the pleasant experience of a play staring at my lists and saying out loud, "What should I play against Arkadius?" when I'd already resolved to play Sturm and Drang. He had Iona/Wurmwood, both in Devourer's Host. I was rather dreading the Wurmwood game, since it's exhausting and difficult albeit very winnable, but thankfully he dropped Iona instead. The only wrinkle there is while I felt super confident against Iona on paper (her kit is just a whole lot of things that Sturm doesn't care about, plus a Feat that I've played into just fine on Damiano a dozen times before), all the local Circle players consider her too linear and boring to be a compelling choice in their pairings so I hadn't actually played the match-up before. Of course, my opponent hadn't ever seen my list in action either, and I think he was rather more in the deep end than I was as a result. His list was: Iona -Ghetorix -Gnarlhorn Max Wolf Riders Max Ravagers -UA Max Ravagers -UA Brighid and Caul Shifting Stones Wolf Rider Champion Wolf Rider Champion Tharn Ravager Shaman Eilish Garrity Deployment My opponent won the starting roll again and took first. I took a table side with two forests more to make sure that he couldn't hide anything behind them, though I'm sure they wouldn't have been relevant. He set up with Brighid and Caul on the right flank, Ravagers on each flank, and the battlegroup a little on the left. I set up my Dracodile and Brun and Lug on the right, Dahlia and Skarath out on the left, and Sturm with his War Hog and solos in the middle. Both objectives are Stockpiles. I believe Brighid and Caul's Prey target is the Dracodile. Circle Turn 1 Iona put Sure Foot on the Wolf Riders and charged forward. She might have cast Phantasm too, but it wasn't exactly a relevant spell in this match-up. The Wolf Riders rushed up, with the Champions onto the terrain on each flank. The Ravagers rushed up around them. Pigs Turn 1 The Dracodile receives Puppet Master from Eilish and assaults the closest Wolf Rider. He misses. I bunker up everything behind him, save Dahlia and Skarath. Dahlia, with Haunting Melody up, is refreshingly immune to... literally every model in his list? The Ravager shaman could tag her with Chain Lightning, but that was about it. Sturm cast Vision on Skarath and Polarity Shield on the Dracodile and put up Decel, and I made sure to give him a couple of Shield Guards just in case. Circle Turn 2 The Tharn advanced a bit more cautiously this turn, not wanting to put too many bodies into my threat range. The Wolf Riders threw a few inconsequential javelins about and repositioned to be just over 11" away from Eilish. I think one of them triggered a counter charge-return combo from Lug which failed to hit anything. Pigs Turn 2 Dahlia ran into the left zone, contesting it and making sure that Ravager unit wouldn't be up to much. She left Skarath trailing behind her, spending his efforts killing the Wolf Rider Champion toeing the zone on the left. In the centre, those Wolf Riders who were just over 11" from Eilish were comfortably inside 13", so the Soul Slave TK'd him and he was able to strip Sure Foot. That let me kill one of them with a Dracodile spray, and a second one with Lug's Charge + Return combination. I basically maintained my brick, blocking some LOS to Eilish in the front with a cloud from Mire that I then had the Mist Speaker walk into and use Summon Vortex so that anything toeing that cloud would be engaged by him. Circle Turn 3 Stuck as they were, the Ravagers on the left just milled around. Eilish moved up behind them so that next turn he might be able to strip Haunting Melody. Iona recast Sure Foot and moved around behind the forest. Ghetorix advanced a little bit further forward, getting the Dracodile within 11" for his trample threat range next round. The Wolf Riders advanced into melee with Lug, one by one, and jumped over him into melee with the Gobber Chef. He was only able to get two shots onto my Eilish, and one of them missed anyway. The other was Shield Guarded onto the War Hog. The melee attacks killed the Gobber Chef though, and the Wolf Riders Repositioned back. Brighid and Caul ran up to my objective on the right, and I think my opponent forgot what turn it was because they didn't attack it or anything. The Gnarlhorn ran into the right-hand zone. Pigs Turn 3 Dahlia runs up to get Eilish within 8". Skarath moves up and sprays him, plus two of the Ravagers. Kills Eilish (barely) and casts Counterblast. My Eilish strips Sure Foot from the Wolf Riders in my backline. The Soul Slave TKs a Lug so that he's engaging a Wolf Rider, allowing Brun to benefit from Flank and kill it. The Dracodile sprayed down the Ravager and tagged Caul too. Mire and a Battle Boar kill the last two Wolf Riders. The Dracodile has enough room to back up ever so slightly so that Ghetorix can't get to him with a Trample, so I still have my Feat in reserve. I run the Mist Speaker to engage the Gnarlhorn. Lug charges a Ravager, kills him, overtakes into Caul and kills him too. At this point my opponent concedes. As he points out he'll never be able to score enough to concede. Dahlia has that entire left flank locked down on her own, and the Ravagers can't realistically kill Skarath between needing to walk, losing one guy to Counterblast on the approach, and having Vision absorb the first hit from the only other Ravager in range. The Dracodile is under no real threat from the Gnarlhorn, and Ghetorix won't realistically ever be able to get into combat with it. Rather than drag out the experience, he'd rather go and get lunch. He did give me full props for turning a caster he had entirely dismissed out of hand into "an absolutely miserable play experience" though
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 29, 2019 5:17:40 GMT
Round three - Invasion Mercs again. What takes me off-guard though is that this guy is literally mono-listing Ossrum Hammerstrike. No second list. With only sixteen players undefeated, almost all of them WTC players (a not-small percentage of which being winning WTC players), that's actually a pretty impressive feat. 'jack heavy Ossrum is probably a windmill slam Arkadius game. I've always felt it was a 50/50 and I think the addition of Mire and a Wrastler tips it reasonably into my favour. But my opponent's list is... not that. I figure Sturm and Drang have game and they've had a good day so far. His list is: Ossrum -Earthbreaker -Blaster Max Forge Guard Max Forge Guard Artillery Corps Artillery Corps Herne & Jonne Thor Siege Crawler Deployment I win the roll-off. I figure I'll stick my Dracodile on the left where it can artificially extend the forest out to block LOS to the rest of the army, and where Mire can expand the cloud on the right to block LOS on the other side. Dahlia and Skarath set up to lock down that zone, while Brun and Lug and the War Hog deploy more centrally. Pigs Turn 1 Polarity Shield on the Dracodile, Vision on Skarath, Decel gets cast generally, and Sturm charges up the board. Brun and Dahlia cast their respective upkeeps and everything else runs. In a rather silly move, I only put one Shield Guard near the Dracodile. Mercenaries Turn 1 The Siege Crawler advanced and shot at the Dracodile. Scored the Critical Stagger on the first shot, which I shield guarded, but thankfully didn't get it on the second. Ossrum put Fire for Effect on one Artillery Corp, and they both moved up and shot the Dracodile. I think all the shots did ~10 damage in total. Arm 22 was screwing with the Artillery Corp. Forge Guard ran up to screen the huge bases. Pigs Turn 2 My Stockpile healed the Dracodile a few points. The Siege Crawler was close enough for the War Hog to get to, so I figured that was an acceptable trade. I Primal'd him with a Battle Boar. I Puppet Master'd him with Eilish. Mire gave him Weald Secrets. The Soul Slave TK'd Lug into the forest and I used him to Overtake through a few screening Shield Guard and out of the way. Skarath sprayed a fair few more Forge Guard and Dahlia moved to get the unit leader in her control area to blunt the retaliation. Sturm activated, TK'd the War Hog into the forest, Feated, and cast Deceleration. The War Hog went in and, thanks to Puppet Master, killed the Siege Crawler. The Dracodile sprayed a few Forge Guard on the left and got Blind on the Earthbreaker. Mercenaries Turn 2 The first Fire for Effect'd Artillery Corp shot was Shield Guarded. Ossrum activated and Feated, swapping Fire for Effect to the other one and casting Bullet Dodger on himself. He then realised he'd forgotten to shake Blind from the Earthbreaker back in his Control phase. The Forge Guard moved up with their newfound speed and took some swings on the Dracodile, doing a few points of chip damage. The second Artillery Corps added another couple of points, pretty sure he rolled poorly. Without charges the Forge Guard on the right only did a little bit of damage to the War Hog, and the Basher missed its attacks. The Earthbreaker advanced behind the Forge Guard to be close enough to engage the Dracodile next round. Pigs Turn 3 The Stockpile healed the Dracodile again. It then activated and ate basically all the remaining Forge Guard on the left, and healed all bar two damage with Snacking. Mire activated and spent Fury to heal the last two damage, bringing it back to full health. Brun killed the couple of Forge Guard engaging Lug with two boosted, Flanked damage rolls. Lug then moved across, killed the objective, and used Overtake to jam the Earthbreaker. The Battle Boar ran to help block it in on the other side. Sturm moved into the left zone and cast Deceleration. The second Battle Boar made sure he was in Shield Guard range of the Dracodile. Skarath coated a few more Forge Guard in corrosion and cast Counterblast. Eilish flanks hard with his walk and Gate Walker ability, hoping to be able to get into a spot where he can strip some upkeeps next turn. With the left zone and the objective, I go to 2-0 on CP. Mercenaries Turn 3 Ossrum loads up the Earthbreaker and spends his Focus to make his battlegroup have Bulldoze. The Earthbreaker pushed forward into melee with the newly fresh Dracodile and does about 40 damage to it. I Shield Guard the Artillery Corps shots away. The last few Forge Guard hammer away ineffectually on heavies that don't really care. Herne and Jonne run to contest. Score still 2-0 in my favour. Pigs Turn 4 I run up the CP score a little before going for an assassination by using Skarath to kill Herne and Jonne and Brun's melee attack and Frost Hammer spell to remove the last two Forge Guard in the centre zone, but the second one Toughs. Then the Soul Slave TKs Eilish to allow him to negotiate the Earthbreaker's reach range and strip Bullet Dodger. Lug walks in with Bear Hands up and knocks down Ossrum. I leave him on a few boxes and activate the War Hog, kill the knocked down Forge Guard, Overtake into Ossrum and finish the job. So I didn't super rate this list when I was playing against it, though it must be noted that in 19-20 Tough rolls my opponent only made one all game right at the end there. That's, like, half a unit of Forge Guard he really should still have on the table. His damage rolls weren't super hot either. With the Forge Guard unable to charge they were never able to work over any of my heavies too badly. This list ended up going 3-1 though, so a part of me still counts myself lucky that I ran into it on an off-week. I do think Sturm had this game largely on lockdown, though forgetting my opponent had bulldoze did lead to me being a bit too cavalier about my options to prevent the Earthbreaker from reaching the Dracodile...
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 29, 2019 5:52:46 GMT
Round four - Spread the Net For the last game of day one, I finally ran into something Sturm and Drang couldn't handle. I honestly can't recall what my opponent's second list was, the point was that he had Harbinger and he dropped Harbinger so I made the right choice by playing Arkadius. His list was: Harbinger -Judicator Max Cinerators -UA Max Cinerators -UA Max Vengers Min Choir Gravus Exemplar Warder Deployment My opponent won the starting roll and took first. I was regrettably playing against a Judicator on an open board so I took the table side with all the walls even though they were too far up the board to be useful. Probably the right choice anyway. He set up with Vengers on the left and the Judicator and Cinerators more central. I deployed with Arkadius and his heavies in the centre, the gun lights hanging out a bit on the right, and Mire and his Wrastler on the left where there was a forest to hide behind. Protectorate Turn 1 Everything ran up, save Gravus who Desperate Paced some Cinerators first. I'll say this for Harbinger, she's easy to write Turn One synopses for. Pigs Turn 1 Arkadius cast Forced Evolution on the left War Hog, Guardian Beast on himself, and he and three of the heavies fled to the left-hand side of the board where Mire built them a cloud bunker to protect them from the Vengers. The Gun Boar advanced and shot a Cinerator from the lead unit, failing to force out a Martyr. I was rather hoping to pull that unit so far forward that Harby would either need to leave them out of command or put herself under assassination threat. Targ hung back so that I could use him to bridge the open space gap between the two halves of Arkadius's battlegroup next turn. Protectorate Turn 2 The Judicator shot the Gun Boar off the board, so the Cinerators didn't have to move to get their revenge. Both Cinerator units moved up in Shield Wall, two of them getting into my zone on the right. Pigs Turn 2 Mire cast Rage on a few things and put Weald Secrets on the Wrastler. The Wrastler charged in and killed two Vengers, getting into my opponent's zone. The Gorax Primal'd the War Hog on the right and moved somewhere it would frenzy into the Cinerators. The Forced Evo'd, Raged War Hog received Shadow Walk from the Witch Doctor. Arkadius activated and Feated, sending the War Hogs and remaining Lights into Cinerators on the right and the Vengers on the left. The two Road Hogs frenzied at enemy models in a way that set them colliding harmlessly into the War Hog. That let Arkadius move up and Raw Adrenaline them both. He then tried to tag a surviving Venger with Crippling Grasp, but I didn't want to boost to hit and rolled the 4 I needed to miss. He then Repositioned back. The post-Feat activations saw Targ run to get the stuff on the right into control. The War Hog on the right began to burn through most of Harbinger's Martyrdoms on the Cinerators, killing the ones in the zone (including the UA) plus a third. My opponent was cognizant of the two Raw Adrenaline sprays I had lined up on his caster and figured he needed 8 health left to be safe, so when a Martyrdom took him to 7 he promptly stopped using the ability. The fully buffed War Hog on the left walked into melee with the Judicator and smashed it to pieces. The first Road Hog charged a Cinerator, got an assault spray off that left Harby on four boxes and set her on fire, and bought attacks that finished off the Vengers and killed one Cinerator from the centre unit. Triggering Vengeance there was unfortunate. The cloud stopped me at least killing a couple more Cinerators from that unit with the second Road Hog, so instead it used Full Boar to walk somewhere it could spray Harby. It hit her as well and dropped her to two boxes. I score his zone, my zone, and his flag. He scores his flag. The score goes to 3-1. Protectorate Turn 3 Fire stays up on Harby. I need to roll a 9 to kill her through her Focus. I roll a 9. ...turns out my opponent was bang on when he said he needed 8 boxes left on Harby. After this the Masters event cut to the top four, who would play a semi-finals and finals the next night. As one of the four undefeated players, I was in this draw alongside a Grymkin player (Dreamer/King of Nothing), and two Circle players (Krueger2 Bones/Wurmwood Devourer's Host and Grayle Devourer's Host/Iona Devourer's Host). I'll need to do the write-ups for those games tomorrow.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 29, 2019 6:01:44 GMT
Because that ending was a tad on the dumb side (hit both sprays, rolled the hard 9 to kill Harby), we did play out how the next round would have gone if the fire had gone out or not done as much or something. Harby runs to the side of the board and heals to about ten boxes. The Cinerators kill the War Hog on the right with Vengeance + Regular Attacks plus two attacks from Gravus. The Cinerators in the centre kill one Road Hog and do a little to the other. After that I think I can either comfortably grind out a scenario or attrition win or still assassinate Harby, depending on how my opponent Martyrdoms. Probably pull back the Gorax because he'll only be able to kill Cinerators if I buff the heck out of him and Crippling Grasp the unit. Use Targ to jam and contest the zone/flag over there. The Forced Evo'd War Hog and the surviving Road Hog should be able to clean out the Cinerators in the centre zone with the help of a Crippling Grasp this turn. I have the Wrastler in reserve, and should be able to consistently score his zone. Certainly playable, the "assassination" run in this game had always been about deterring Martyrdoms more than
If I could have avoided triggering Vengeance on the centre unit, or else been able to commit the second Road Hog to them and kill another two or three, I think the attrition goes my way a lot better too as he starts to struggle to kill any of my heavies on the left. Probably should have just left Harby on four boxes on fire and walked into melee with the Cinerators, using Raw Adrenaline to help mulch my way through a few more of them.
|
|
|
Post by shicato on Jan 29, 2019 19:17:50 GMT
Cheers for the write ups, always good to hear more of the reasoning behind the solo choices especially in minions, we have so many amazing options I'm always torn about which ones to use.
|
|
|
Post by Azahul on Jan 30, 2019 1:57:40 GMT
Yeah, it's a tough one. I think I'm going back to the drawing board with Arkadius, at least as far as solo choices are concerned. I think I can now more or less safely drop the Mist Speaker from that list and rely on Sturm and Drang to handle anything that requires Guidance. That lets Hutchuck sneak back in, but I'll be playing around with Warbeast loadouts a little to find out if I can squeeze in some Bone Shrines or something. Anyway, this next bit is out of chronological order a little. The semi-finals were held on the evening of the next day. I'd already spent the day playing in the Champions event, so I had four games under my belt going in. Round 5 - Mirage The two Circle players duked it out in one game, while the non-Circle players squared off. My Grymkin opponent had a Dreamer/King pair. I haven't had a single game with Sturm against Grymkin, and I know Arkadius typically beats Dreamer, but on paper the match-up looked reasonable after reading the Ruin Arcana a few times. Plus I'd been playing Sturm all day and felt confident, and would be playing him against next round regardless of the result. My opponent dropped Dreamer, running: Dreamer -Skin and Moans -Skin and Moans -Cage Rager -Cage Rager -Cage Rager -Gorehound -Gorehound -Gorehound -Crabbit -Crabbit Gremlin Swarm Gremlin Swarm Gremlin Swarm Gremlin Swarm Death Knell Deployment My opponent won the starting roll and took first. He deployed basically symmetrically, with two Gorehounds on the left and only one on the right. I set up Dahlia and Skarath on the right, Brun and Lug on the left with the forest, and the Dracodile in the centre. Both objectives are Stockpiles. Grymkin Turn 1 Mirage went on one of the left flank Gorehounds, Dreamer tossed out an Artifice of Deviation for the heck of it, and everything ran. Pigs Turn 1 Polarity Shield went on the Dracodile, Vision on Skarath, I cast Deceleration for the heck of it (bit of casting spells the other person didn't care about this game) and ran my stuff up. Dahlia and Brun cast their respective upkeeps. I hung back a bit with Skarath and the War Hog to let me bully with the Dracodile. Grymkin Turn 2 Dreamer cast Manifest Destiny before sending a Gorehound into the Battle Boar lurking out on the left flank. Left it on four boxes. She swapped Mirage to the right-flank Skin and Moans. The Cage Ragers pushed forward and both Skin and Moans (Skin and Moanses?) hung back for a counter punch. Pigs Turn 2 I cast Puppet Master on the Dracodile and my opponent opted not to use Ruin. Lug moved up through the forest on the left and punched the Gorehound there with Bear Hands, knocking it down and nearly killing it with his two initials, before using Grab and Smash to toss it into the second Gorehound. This killed the first one and knocked down the second. The Dracodile charged in and killed the Cage Rager on the right, tagging the Miraged Skin and Moans with Blind. Skarath killed the knocked down Gorehound, and the War Hog received Primal from a Battle Boar and charged the second Cage Rager to kill it. Sturm killed a Gremlin Swarm with a boosted spray and Feated across all the remaining Warbeasts bar the Gorehound on the right. My Battle Boar moved up to contest my opponent's flag, the Gobber Chef ran to contest his zone, and my Mist Speaker ran to score the centre flag. I score two control points, bringing the score to 2-0 in my favour. Grymkin Turn 3 Only one Skin and Moans can get to the Dracodile and it has to spend a Fury to shake Blind. Dreamer uses Wraithwalker. She activates, casts Manifest Destiny, and tosses Enfeeble on the Dracodile because she can. His Cage Rager and Skin and Moans on the left work together and kill the War Hog, spawning the large Phantasm which bulldozes in to contest my zone. The other Skin and Moans walks in and hits the Dracodile twice for a little bit of damage. A Crabbit kills my Gobber Chef. My opponent scores his zone, so the score is now 2-1 in my favour. Pigs Turn 3 I'm reasonably confident I can kill a Skin and Moans and a Cage Rager this turn and have the game locked down. With that in mind I Primal both the Dracodile and Lug, since the Dracodile's opponent is at max corpses. I then have Eilish activate and cast Puppet Master on the Dracodile instead of removing Enfeeble, because I had just straight up forgotten it was in play. Doing so probably costs me the game on the spot, though it isn't helped by the Dracodile then going in against the Skin and Moans and missing seven out of its eight attack rolls (counting the Puppet Master reroll, I didn't max it out because I wasn't going to kill the Skin and Moans and wanted Mire to be able to transfer damage). Because I haven't done much to the Arm 21 Skin and Moans and have gotten a little flustered I move Skarath in and attack the other Skin and Moans, doing a little bit of damage. Lug then gets TK'd forward and charges into the Cage Rager, leaving it on four boxes. I do clear my zone, using a Mental Force'd Bone Shaker on the large Phantasm and Sturm kills the contesting Gremlin Swarm with his spray. At some point in all this Ruin is triggered and removes all my upkeeps. I score my zone to bring the score to 3-1. Grymkin Turn 4 Dreamer upkeeps Enfeeble, activates and casts Manifest Destiny, and backs up. The fully loaded Skin and Moans goes to town. It leaves the Dracodile on about six boxes. The Gorehound does another two. Then a Crabbit goes in and rolls the 16 it needs to kill the Dracodile, respawning the large Phantasm. The other Skin and Moans kills Skarath in something like three attacks and then kills the Mist Speaker to spawn the Small Phantasm for good measure. The Cage Rager's spirit is crippled, but it rolls like the blazes against Lug and leaves the bear on about eight boxes with just two swings. My opponent scores his zone, so the score is now 3-2. Pigs Turn 4 Things are getting pretty hopeless, but if I can bring down one Skin and Moans I think I have a shot. Lug frenzies on the Cage Rager, doing nothing because his body is crippled. Eilish Puppet Masters Mire. Sturm TK's Lug across, and because my opponent doesn't know what I'm doing he allows me to set up a Flank with Brun rather than Arcane Void it. I then heal the Battle Boar on the left, who goes in and tries to kill the Cage Rager. He fails to break armour on any of his attacks. Brun and Mire drop the second Skin and Moans to single digit boxes but can't kill him. My Battle Boar on the right hurts the Gorehound a bit. I only score 1 CP from the flag on the top. Eilish used Gatewalker to get into his zone and I've ignored the Phantasms in mine. Score is now 4-2 in my favour. Grymkin Turn 5 The Gorehound frenzies. His heavies finish off Lug and kill Brun and Mire and clear Eilish out of the zone. The small Phantasm moves in to score the middle flag. He contests with the Cage Rager on the left. Score is now 4-4. Pigs Turn 5 I switch to Drang so that I can at least remove the badly damaged Skin and Moans and Cage Rager. Drang does the job comfortably, with three transfers to spare. The last transfer target, the Battle Boar, manages to kill the Gorehound without maxing himself out. Orin runs to contest and jam. I score the left flag, bringing the score to 5-4. Grymkin Turn 6 Dreamer moves up and makes Drang stationary. The last Skin and Moans moves in and kills Drang, doing enough damage to kill the Battle Boar with five overspill on its second initial so there's not even a chance that Tough will save me. I'll be kicking myself for this game for a while. Had this game entirely in the bag. I the Dracodile had downed the Skin and Moans, which it surely would have done minus Enfeeble (as if to tease me, all bar one of those misses was a 5 or a 6...), then Skarath and Lug together should have brought down the Cage Rager. My opponent might have been able to kill the Dracodile with everything he had left, but since he only really had one heavy on the table at the end I'm confident I'd have been able to finish the job, even if it meant going to Drang in the end. That said, even after I derped on Enfeeble, I could have played it better. If I'd finangled a way to get Skarath to the Skin and Moans then I could have killed it with the Dracodile regardless, and that should have been enough. And if my opponent had rolled just a little bit worse and left the Dracodile clinging to life then I think I had a scenario win on the cards. Still, it was nice to see just how much game Sturm and Drang had into this list. This was entirely my game to lose, so it continues to prove itself as having an extremely strong place in the meta.
|
|