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Post by Ianassa on Sept 26, 2017 8:43:20 GMT
If you want to skip straight to the matches, skip this postHi there loremachinists. I had a blast at the WTC weekend, and thought I’d share my experience with you guys. First a fairly long disclaimer: So I’ve been applying for several years now, mostly always as just a joke since my tournament performances rarely reach the top. I still enjoy writing those over the top hyperbolic messages about my feats, knowing and trusting that our small community knows this to be just that. And even though Mk3 was good for ret and I got better results (3rd place in Finnish masters championship tourney, not to be confused with PPs masters event), I had no expectations to actually be selected. This is partly due to me living in North Karelia near the Russian border, which is very far away from where most of the Finnish warmachine community lives. However, after a turn of events that I don’t personally understand, Finland got a third team to the WTC after Scotland apparently dropped one. We of course accepted and then we had two weeks to scramble together a third team and announce it. One of our electorates called me and asked me to join, I said “dude I’ve played like 5 games this year, are you sure can’t you find someone less out of practice?”, he said “meh, who cares you’re a good guy and no one expects the third team to perform miracles anyway.” So I agreed to attend. Our team was literally “Finland leftovers”, and all five of us lived in opposite ends of the country, and we were all more or less out of practice. We had two months less time to figure out our lists and never found time to meet each other before the actual event, and to 4/5 this was the first WTC event. Needless to say, our expectations weren’t that high. I thought our captain was mad when he placed a 3-3 result as our goal. As for my lists: I had one list that I did fairly well with last year, which was before the themes came out. After some discussion with our team captain, we agreed that it would be better if everyone played within their comfort zone, rather than building new hot lists and then not having any touch with it on the board. For me, this meant a non-tier Kaelyssa list. For the second, I got the honor of being our Cryx/Cygnar drop and take on the horrors of Ghost Fleet and the Haley’s. We figured Issyria in Shadows of Retribution would be our best pick to counter these, as that list has lot’s RFP, ignores clouds and stealth on demand, has a threat extender and wrecks warjacks pretty well. So the lists looked like this: - Kaelyssa:
-Banshee -Sphinx - Eiryss 1
- Arcanist
- Arcanist
- Elara 1
-Discordia - max Sentinels
-UA - Shyeel Bottle Mages
- 3-man lightning bolt hockey team
this is an allrounder list where everything is meant to work in harmony together. I can have all heavies going back and fort with refuge if needed, I can stationary/disrupt two of my opponent’s jacks in a turn to deny a flank while the sentinels work on clearing the other. The mages provide a possible threat extender which is something Kaelyssa natively lacks, and the electromancers can clear infantry pretty fast if the opponents tries to swarm me. Even though it is a remnant of last years SR, it still has 3 jacks, 3 units and 4 solos to have solid scenario presence in SR17. It’s major weaknesses are lack of pathfinder and that evething want to work in synergy with each other which makes the list a bit clumsy. Also, it’s not in theme so I’m surrendering 10-16 points right away.- Issyria
-Phoenix -Hemera
- Arcanist
- Narn
- Eiryss 2
- Mage Hunter Assassin
- Soulless Voidchick
- Soulless Voidchick
- max Strikeforce
-UA -Soulless escort - max Strikeforce
-UA -Soulless escort - max Infiltrators
- Spears of Scyrah
Nothing special here, I took two Voidbabes rather than a second assassin to get more throwaway solos to place on flags and to have more magical weapons to counter the ghosts.I tried to get as many training matches as I could, but with both my and the other guy’s in my meta’s lives being quite busy, we got just 2½ games in total. To summarize, I set my personal goals fairly low and decided that as long I can pull off at least 1 win and avoid the infamous “Kuha” award (goes to the worst performing Finn in any international event, and the holder award must wear a pink Dracula cape until someone else gets the reward. The trip Blankenberge went pretty smoothy, apart from missing a train due to our former train getting stuck on traffic, so I arrived with my team captain later than expected. We were among the few to arrive on Thursday, so we had plenty of time to work on a “drunken shield” so that the coming binge drinking during the weekend would not render our gameplay. It must also be noted that the Swedes backed off the Finland-Sweden grudge match on Friday, which was truly a shame, but it also means that Finland won! SUOMI PERKELE!
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Post by Ianassa on Sept 26, 2017 8:43:35 GMT
Day One
Match 1 vs Texas (Tom Guan): Issyria (Shadows) vs Coven (Infernal Machine) Scenario: Breakdown
I didn’t know these guys from before (which was also the case with all my other matches), but loads of people around me reassured me with smiles that the meta in Cowboy land is non-existent and that this Tom is a total nobody. I was slightly worried that everybody knew him though, and that there was obvious sarcasm in their voices. I obviously dropped Issyria, and he chose the no-ghost fleet list. He had double Soulhunters, 3 seethers and a unit of mechanithralls in ambush.
I won the roll and chose to go first. Right from the first turns you could see the effects of me being out of practice: I forgot about the unit in ambush, spent loads of time looking at my own cards as I kept forgetting my own rules, didn’t remember seethers have countercharge, and to make matters worse I lost my phoenix on 2B to a Texas Jedi Mind Trick, where Tom convinced me that I don’t want to use admonition with my phoenix when the seether charged in for the kill. Long story short, I wiped the floor with him and won 5-0 on scenario on the bottom of turn 4, or was it the other way around?
My team didn’t perform any better, apart from our merc player who won on secondary tiebreakers against CoC after the game ended on round 7 with both having 1 scenario point and him having 1 second left on his clock. So the team lost 1-4, my record was now 0-1 and so was my team’s.
Match 2 vs Italy Raffaello (Andrea Contrino "Madsystem"): Issyria (Shadows) vs Denny 1 (Ghost Fleet) Scenario: standoff
Our pairings went well in the second round and I was successfully thrown under the ghost fleet killing train. Both of Andreas lists were in Ghost Fleet so Issy was an autopick for me. We (our team that is) anticipated this to be an even match, but this was going to be my first ever match against this dreaded theme so I was slightly nervous. Andreas battlegroup was 2 bonejacks and 2 stalkers. He also had one wraith engine.
I lost the roll and got to pick my table side, I chose the side with a nice big forest on my zone, allowing Issyria to stay behind that and score points for me with little fear of assassination.
Turns 1A-2A-1B were mostly positioning and staredowning the opponents. From my point of view, the blackbanes were coming from the right so I sent my spears of Scyrah there to meet them, and the wraith engine was in the middle, so that’s where my phoenix went. On the left the stalkers and some pirate zombies were advancing behind a large building, where my Hemera and the infiltrators waited to meet them.
My turn 2B is when things started happening. I measured that with crusaders call my assassin can reach the wraith engine, so I decided to launch the missile. First it must be said that I derped and forgot to place Issyria on my zone so that’s 1 scenario point lost for no reason. I gave the assassin magical weapons from my objective and off she went to put a solid 20 points of damage right of the batt into the engine, which spawned a beautiful 30 second piece of music composed solely of Italian swear words.
To make matters worse for Andrea, he failed in return to turn the assassin into a wraith engine machine wraith, which could have cost me a heavy. So my gamble was arguably not the right move, but I got away with it. Denegra put parasite on Hemera after his stalkers jump around the building and tried to kill it, but I had inviolable resolve on her and she was spared with all systems still intact. His turn ends and it could be 2-0 for me but it’s still 0-0.
My turn. He didn’t feat so I’m thinking now or never, move Issyria finally in the zone, cast crusaders call and feat. Hemera headbutts one stalker, after which my infiltrators finish them both off. I intended to send my phoenix in to finish the engine off, but I forgot that he doesn’t have pathfinder and there’s a rubble in between so I send him to take out the objective instead. It’s alright I still had Narn who had no trouble putting in the final 8 points on the engine with the feat. Mage hunters charge some pirates and removes a couple from play but most stay still behind. I clear the left right zone with my spears of scyrah and score 3 points.
The opponent feats and we grind a couple of turns, but he can’t bring anything to contest my zone while I can easily contest his on my turn so I eventually win 6-1 on scenario.
I was really happy to win my first Ghost Fleet match, but sadly the rest of the team struggled and we went 1-4 again. My record was now 1-1 and the team’s 0-2. Also, I pulled off my first WTC win, something I didn’t expect to do, so that was something to celebrate too!
Match 3 vs Belarus (Evgenii Mikhailovskii): Kaelyssa vs Baldur 1 Scenario: Recon II
I got paired into Circle, not my favorite match, but fortunately it hadn’t been a good day good day for the White Russians either. Both of Evgenii’s lists had a fair amount of shooting, so I wasn’t sure if I should default to Kaelyssa, but in the end I figured 3 heavies and sentinels are better than a swarm of pow 10’s against hordes. Evgenii had bloodtrackers and reeves and the giant stone monkey and a pureblood warpwolf.
This game had a giant obstruction in the middle which divided the entire battle to two individual flanks. My right flank saw my battlemages, electromancers (with blur) and the sphinx face off against the reeves, the war wolves and the bloodtrackers, while the left flack was for the heavyweights: the worldwrath and the pureblood against my sentinels, Discordia and Banshee. It should also be noted that I got to choose the table and picked the one with no forests since I knew that would pretty much take the forest teleport option off Baldur.
The story of my left right flank was like this: I feated on turn 1B to allow me to advance forward, and the battlemages charged the bloodtrackers to keep the electromancers safe. He shot combined attack on my sphinx who in turn slowly grinded its way across the front. To my luck the damage was spread and no systems were taken out. Kaelyssa helped on the flank and refuged back to safety. Slowly but surely I began scoring on that flank and even reached the objective with my sphinx and took it out, but the situation on my left was not as good.
On this side of the game, the first turns were a stalemate. All combatants had a 10” melee threat which we both respected. I would refuge with Discoria and aim with the Banshee toeing the zone and slowly add some points on the gargantuan while the sentinels waited behind a wall to jump out with vengeance should one die. I messed up with my positioning and he broke the stalemate by trading the pureblood for 5-6 sentinels, after which he advanced with the cover of Baldurs feat. Not good. A few turns later he began scoring on this side of the board, and took the scenario lead. We kept grinding and clearing our zones with our casters sitting on the flags, but turn 7 was closing in and it seemed that he was going win with 1 or 2 points. I cleared mine with Kae and swarmed his side with the rest (which was just Elara and the crippled banshee. He took the banshee out with the woldwrath, but Baldur had to step in to finish Elara off, and it took him all his fury to do the job since she was camping all 4 and he missed a couple attacks.
He would have won on scenario, but it was at this moment when my sphinx had finished its long grind around the board, and now it had a clear charge lane into Baldur’s back arc, and he was empty. I went all in with every model I had left, which was Eiryss, Kaelyssa and the myrmidon. Eiryss missed her shot, but Kaelyssa did enough damage to let the sphinx finish the caster kill with his charge attack.
Our team won all the games, so moral was high at the end of the day. My record was 2-1 and team Finland Leftovers sat at 1-2. My personal goals had already been reached, and our captain’s 3-3 goal was still possible.
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Post by Ianassa on Sept 26, 2017 8:43:47 GMT
I’m fairly certain that I was still drunk on the morning, which was good news because a good big breakfast was a good way to avoid a crippling hungover at this state. Sadly our entire team was not so lucky: one guy looked like he had gone through a world war and suffered from shell shock. We had major concerns if he could even play, but he pulled it off with good old Finnish sisu.
Day Two
Match 4 vs Australia Bin Chicken (Rob van der Wal): Kaelyssa vs Vladimir 3 Scenario: Spread the net
We won the toss and elected to choose tables, but the Aussies were good in pairings and most of us did not walk into favorable matchups. I thought Rob would pick the Butcher and was concerned if my mage hunters could deal with 4 Khador heavies and the B-man after having grinded through his Kayazy swarm, so I elected for Kaelyssa. He again expected me to pick Issyria, so we got a strange match were neither could say to have won the list chicken, if there ever was one. His Vlad list sported double eliminators, full outriders, some solos including Eiryss1 and three heavies: Behemoth, Ruin and a Juggernaut on Malakov.
Now on our table there was a huge (8-10” in diameter) forest right in the middle of the board which made this game interesting. I could see through the forest on demand but he had more pathfinder. There was also going to be a classical Eiryss standoff. I lost the beginning roll and had to go second which was really bad because his outriders got so far this way. Right from the start I had to worry how I was going to deal with those magical sprays coming to my face on 2A. I decided to protect the sentinels, which together with the sphinx went on my right side, with banishing ward rather than blur, because I figured the extra defense would only save a couple when he had hand of fate, but the positioning tricks he would need to worry about to get around banishing ward would also save a few, plus he would be in a worse spot this way. I protected Eiryss with Discordia and the banshee, making her safe against both magic and blasts.
The outriders came in as expected and took out maybe 4-5 sentinels, including the commander, so I lost my minifeat right away. It was definitely a mistake not to use it turn one, since after this salvo they were only going to be facing heavies and anatomical precision anyway, but oh well I guess. He also put his guard dog on his flag. On my turn I took as my objective to really put on some scenario pressure. The sentinels vengeanced forward and charged the outriders taking 2 or three out and I also reached the dog and killed it too and contested his flag and my sphinx controlled my rightside zone. On the left side of the board my battlemages pulled/pushed the behemoth out of his zone, Kaelyssa made it stationary and also shot the opposing Eiryss of the board, Elara took my flag and Discordia advanced into his zone controlling it. The electromancers toed the center zone and finally my banshee attempted to shoot the last contesting outrider off the board but a 4 on the damage roll left him on a couple of health so I had to settle on an early 3-0 lead rather than a 4-0.
Rob really felt the pressure, and he quickly flooded the all the zones he could with as much stuff as possible. I had the chance to finish the game on my 3rd turn but forgot to go contest his flag again so the game went into a bloody grind (to be fair it’s quite possible I could not have got there even if I had remembered). He rolled over my left flank faster than I could finnish his heavies on the left side, because I elected to go the safer route of making his heavies stationary and slamming/throwin them away rather than trying to destroy them, although I dealed damage too along the way. Soon it was clear I wasn’t going to win with a 5 point lead so the questin was could I keep the lead all the way to the seventh turn. It was really intense and both of us played really careful and well though out turns. Vlad even allowed himself to be shot by my Eiryss a couple of times to just keep scoring. Fast forward to his 7th turn and neither of us are sure how it’s going to end, but he ran out of his clock. I had 34 seconds left on mine. GG
Gotta say, this was my favourite match of the weekend, and not just because I won. I really enjoyed every challenge presented on each turn, and how both of us (to my mind) played solid turns each round. His biggest mistake was to allow me so many points early on relatively easily, mine was forgetting the minifeat on the sentinels and probably not jamming harder to make it impossible for him to contest my zones (might have cost me some heavies earlier but would have been worth if it had meant I win).
Sadly, the rest of my team lost all their games, so Finland Leftovers were now 1-3 and I was 3-1
Match 5 vs The Netherlands Deathclog (Harm Kleijnen): Issyria (Shadows) vs Goreshade 3 (Dark Host) Scenario: I don’t remember
This one was slightly embarrassing for us. The Duch had a dropout, and the judges ruled that it meant an automatic victory for us. Even better news, the drop was to my mind my worst matchup, which left me with only Cryx as a bad one. We also got to choose more matches (or had to since it was now clear that choosing tables was better in this event), and somehow we still ended up with lots of bad matches. Harm’s Gore3 ran a kraken, a wraith engine, two sets of baneriders, some bane warriors and Darragh.
I lost the roll again and his stuff moved forward. I learned that his Kraken could deviate a turn 1 blast to my AD so I had most of my mage hunters clustered behind a large cloud and the rest spead widely. His blast caught my assassin and I lost her on turn 1A. Not good.
So basically I had a turn 1B dilemma. If I moved forward at all, I would be in range of his riders but if I didn’t, I would basically auto loose on scenario. I could feat and take out 2-4 riders (they would come back because Gore has recursion or whatever) and move forward without loosin my army, but I needed it against the colossal. Not sure if I made the right call, but I feated turn one and took out stealthed 3 riders. After this came the well expected uphill battle of grinding against a much tougher foe, now boldened because I already used my feat. My phoenix which had admonition to protect it went in to clear some riders to help the mage hunters press forward because I badly needed to contest his stuff, but this turned out to be the game where dice were against me and boosted 6’s were too much to ask for. To be fair I have zero doubts that even dice could have saved me because Harm played too well.
My phoenix got trapped to a recursioned bane rider and I lost him too, and the charges of my mage hunters only scratched the paint on the Kraken’s armor. The spears of Scyrah couldn’t hit anthing and in return their def 17 weren’t enough against charging cavalry. One bane rider contesting my flag/zone defied the odds and survived wave after wave of troops and jack I sent for him, but I guess it’s only a good thing because it meant the game ended sooner. Good game to my opponent! While I do think that the matchup was clearly in his favor, there must be no doubt that the better player took this one home.
Sadly, my game ended up being the deciding one, and even with the one auto-win our team lost 2-3. My record was 3-2 and the team sat on 1-4.
Match 6 vs Greece Prime (Zuzana Kelecsényiová): Issyria (Shadows) vs Terminus (Infernal Machine) Scenario: Outlast (probably)
So I wasn’t exactly thrilled to play a fourth game into Cryx but when you are the team’s Cryx drop what can you do? Compared to the first Infernal machine game I now had 4 advantages though: 1) I now knew my list better (or so I thought). 2) I wasn’t going to forget about ambush this time. 3) The board was full of large pieces of rubble and I had all the pathfinder and she had none. 4) No seethers to make me worry about counter charge and just 1 unit of soulhunters in her list.
I won the roll (go +1 to starting roll of the theme) and elected to go first. I went forward full throttle and her stuff struggled to move up to meet me.
Then I made the mistake that should have cost me the game. Spoilers I thought I had a Mk2 Eiryss2 with me rather than a Mk3 one. Terminus was within charge range of Narn and within shooting range of nearly everything else in my army, and he only had 4 models in sac pawn range. YOLO I said to myself in my mind. Let’s end this quickly I thought and went on a balls in 2A assassination. Issy feats and casts blinding light on the mechanithralls in front of Terminus because she had the focus. Hemera shoots and crits on a brute thrall, also catching Terminus and dispelling malediction. I thought “yeii cool” because I still thought my Eiryss has Mk2 rules. My first unit of strikeforce clear the remaining sac pawns and then put a couple of points into terminus, just as planned. The it’s Eiryss’ turn and I shoot and then I learn that Mk3 Eiryss2 indeed has Mk3 Eiryss2 rules, and that she does not remove focus anymore. Woooooops.
I do what there is left to be done to salvage the horrible situation, move infiltrators on the flank and face the board edge, shoot the assassin into the Kraken while the feat is still alive and make a stunning 2 points of damage, and then position my spears round issyria and move a voidtracer on my flag.
My opponent had now a chance to shoot with the Kraken (because my all in assassination mind didn’t think about blinging it), and she could easily get 12 or so clustered mage hunters under the blast. The weekend must have taken it’s toll on Zuzana though, cause she redirected her assassination attempt vengeance on Issyria instead and scored a direct hit, which allowed me to shield guard it for minimal damage.
After this we grinded away, and I had a clear advantage against her mechanithralls. My theme canceled her tough, she needed 9’s to hit and I needed 4’s with my infiltrators. I also started rolling like a god and didn’t miss a single swing, while she couldn’t score any hits and never succeeded in a tough roll when she was allowed to roll one. And just good laughs my strikeforce along with the remaining spears took out the Kraken in record time, I spiked almost every damage roll. And, while this was going on, my lone soulless voidbabe scored points for me on the flag. She was unable to get anything to contest in the bad terrain and my swarm of mage hunters, and I won on scenario 5-0.
Mine and Zuzana’s game being the last to finish, which made me really glad because we won 3-2. This meant that Finland leftovers final standing was 57/64 with a 2-4 record and not a very impressive SoS. We still had things to be proud off, none of us went 0-6, our team did not loose any rounds 0-5, and two of our first timers got a 4-2 record, me included. And while we were the worst Finnish team, the Kuha award did not go to us. This award went to Juho Dahlman, the reigning Finnish Champion who lost every game with his Hellyna/Ossyan pairing.
This also means that don’t have to be humble: I was the best Finnish ret player! And while we are at the business of shamelessly bragging, I have never lost to Ghost Fleet and MY Kaelyssa has never been defeated on international stages!
If you got this far, thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed. I don’t feel like I’m good enough to give any deeper analyzes about the games or where ret stands on competitive levels, but I’ve noticed that people seem worried about how badly ret went overall in this tournament. I feel compelled to say that at least our “Kuha” had a really bad weekend which can happen to anyone, and then there is the fact that the Dutch had auto losses with their ret player. The stats are not rosy, but they don’t tell the entire story.
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Post by Tom_Bombadil_ on Sept 26, 2017 22:30:03 GMT
Great Read! Sounds like you had a great time and a respectable personal showing as well!
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SeBM
Junior Strategist
Posts: 102
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Post by SeBM on Sept 27, 2017 0:29:43 GMT
Thanks for taking the time to write this, very enjoyable and we need more posts like this to give some life to the Retribution subforum.
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tanan
Junior Strategist
Posts: 209
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Post by tanan on Sept 27, 2017 6:34:51 GMT
If everyone in our team would have played as well as you and I... Seriously speaking, I felt that I had our captains ear when it came to getting favorable matchups, which is kinda the point when you are playing a team tournament. You got cryx and still managed to squeeze the same amount of wins. That's impressive! Based on your experiences, I'm starting to build a RoS anti-ghostfleet/Dark host drop.
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Post by Dirhavel on Sept 27, 2017 7:04:04 GMT
Awesome report, thanks for writing it all!
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Post by fdesrochers on Sept 27, 2017 19:08:44 GMT
Huzzah, and congrats on pulling out some great games!
A side note, I snorted out a mouthful of coffee reading the first paragraph of your first match - Tom is a total nobody. At that point, you could have gone 0-6 and I would have read to the end. Great read!
FCD (Francois)
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Post by adakai on Sept 27, 2017 20:50:22 GMT
Grats man! So cool to hear you living the ret dream at the WTC!! Way to represent man, awesome - especially for a first time showing.
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zich
Junior Strategist
Posts: 690
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Post by zich on Sept 28, 2017 10:36:49 GMT
That was a fun read.
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farau
Baby's First Wargame
Posts: 7
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Post by farau on Sept 28, 2017 18:30:22 GMT
nice! if only more people that played in the wtc posted =)
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Post by fedeii on Sept 28, 2017 19:38:18 GMT
Thanks for sharing your WTC experience, it certainly was an interesting read.
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Post by crippler on Oct 4, 2017 11:53:59 GMT
Thanks for the great write up! I really enjoyed reading it.
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Post by darrwood on Oct 9, 2017 15:27:17 GMT
As a heads up Tom was right that you didn't want to admonition your seether. If you admonition away, it countercharges you, effectively getting two charge attacks.
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Post by Ianassa on Oct 13, 2017 11:13:27 GMT
As a heads up Tom was right that you didn't want to admonition your seether. If you admonition away, it countercharges you, effectively getting two charge attacks. He would have tricked you too. My phoenix has a 2" reach while his seether only has 1"
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