List Pair for weekend steamroller

I figured I would write up a brief report of my Tournament this weekend. I ended up taking the both of the lists I posted earlier and placed 2nd out of 16 players. I played against Legion, Cryx, Grymkin, and Retribution in that order.

    Round 1 I played against a brand new player with two Identical lists running Vale 1&2. I believe it was his first tournament and he wasn’t overly familiar with his models. I don’t think he ever cast admonition or boundless charge once. I played Morghoul2 and was able to remove almost his entire army and win 8/1 on scenario. The game was pretty one sided so I won’t go into a lot of detail for this round.

    Round 2 I was up against cryx. My opponent had Terminus in ghost fleet and Aspyxious in Dark host with all the banes. It ended up being a bit of a list chicken scenario but I felt (probably incorrectly) that my Xerxis list had game into both his lists and I had more practice time with him so I picked Xerxis. Luckily my opponent picked ghost fleet, the scenario was break down.
    I went First and and my opponent gave me the side with to walls. I’m assuming he was planning on ghost shooting through them but they still helped me alot with blocking in his heavies. Xerxis and my battlegroup deployed centrally with the cetrati on the right and the ferox on the left. Turn 1 the cetrati got tac/sup and moved behind the right wall. The Ferox got defenders ward and ran into the zone behind the left wall. Barathrum counter charged one of my ferox but had to swing over the wall and missed. Xerxis zaadesh and the heavies moved up towards the central zone.
My opponent started his turn attempting to assassinate xerxis. After failing to do any damage with his hellslinger he gave up on the plan and moved back to attrition. Barathrum killed one of my ferox and move dragged bellow over to engage to more. He moved two units of revenant crew into the ferox zone and attempted to CRA with the rifles but with both the wall and the krea aura he was unable to hit them. On the other side Agrimony moved up in front of the cetrati and used black waters. The other unit of revenant crew took a few pot shots at the cetrati to little effect. On my turn xerxis upkeeps both his upkeeps. Tiberion charges a bonejack that had been moved forward for the aborted assassination attempt killed it with his initials and overtook to the hellslinger and squashed him. The ferox leaped over Barathrum and killed a handful of pirates and repositioned deeper to engage more. Zaadesh’s gladiator charged his other arc node but failed to kill it with its high defense. The Cetrati shield waled and advanced into the right zone and Vorkesh killed agrimony(my opponent forgot his spear was magical). Xerxis moves up behind the right wall near tiberion. On my opponent's turn Terminus cast Malediction feated and charged and killed tiberion. Barathrum charges the gladiator but with only his power up focus is unable to kill it. The Revenant crew are unable to get past the the obscenely high defensive stats of both of my units and my opponent ended his turn with only one soul and no focus 6 inches in front of Xerxis. Xerxis activates drops his upkeeps, pops his feat and kills terminus with 2 fury to spare.
I didn’t have a chance to score any control points or kill much of his army but I believe my matchup advantage and strong attrition potential forced him to push for risky assassination attempts rather than risk slowly losing the attrition/scenario game.

    Round 3 was against Grymkin on the outlast scenario. My opponent had two Dark menagerie lists. The wanderer with a bunch of beasts and two units of Rots.The other list was the child with a death knell 3 skin and moans, two cage ragers, a gorehound and max gremlins and assorted support. He picked The child and Picked Morghoul 2 not wanting to fight that wall of meat up close. My opponent picked sacrifice and fortunes path as his two alternate arcana. I’m not sure why he didn’t pick shroud but It might have been because I already had so much access to anti-stealth in the list.
My opponent went first and I took the side with a wall right next to my flag. My opponent deployed everything in a central brick. I put Morghoul, his battle group, and the turtle in the middle and spread the units out on the flanks in front of the zones. He abuses several of his beasts and runs up the middle aggressively. Keeping most of his army in the death knell aura. I start my turn and release two of his skin and moans are in advance and shoot range of my battle engine. I have a shamen craft talisman morghoul and he advances behind the central wall and casts mortality on the near skin and moans. I move my turtle,roll max shots and almost box the skin and moans. Unfortunately, in my excitement I forget to reposition my turtle out of range of the other skin and moans before moving on to a new model. The rest of my battle group finishes off the skin and moans and o my right venators put some damage on one of the ragers. I run my left unit of reivers in an attempt to block my turtle but rough terrain prevents me from fully blocking it off. My opponent abuses the closer skin and moans and it charges my turtle. Thanks to its tanky stats, only one corpse, and some low rows it survives with about 10 boxes. He charges my archidon with the gorehound but does negligible damage. He moves the rest of his heavies into the middle of the board to threaten my battle group while under the knells aura. He runs his gremlins into my lines to spread around annoyance and contest both zones. Morghoul upkeeps shadow play on himself and attempts to cast mortality on the third skin and moans but he uses vortex on a nearby rager. He pops his feat to blind the gremlins and all his heavies and camps two behind the wall. My extoler gives the turtle magic weapons, The turtle kills the skin and moans that charges him with his tail/mount attacks and kills a gremlin with his spears. He puts his last couple of ranged shots into the cage rager for solid damage. My shamans each kill another swarm. The raider and the rest of my guns manage to finish off the cage rager and the archidon mauls the gorehound. My opponent is massively behind on attrition and attempts an assassination run on morghoul with his last skin and moans. Moves the child up front and abuses and enrages the skin and moans. The skin and moans charges morghoul but with his high defense and the wall is only able to hit morghoul twice and I transfer the damage to my battle group. He doesn’t have much of his army left and the child is camping 2 fury with the sacrifice arcana available 8 inches in front of my army. I have Marketh mortality the child and My reivers cra him for a few points of damage. He shield guards one shot to a crabit to trigger sacrifice but it only saves him about 7 HP. I put the Turtle into her next and finishes her off without having to send in morghoul. I win on assasination with 2 CPs.
The game end a lot like my last round. A solid attrition advantage forced my opponent to make a risky assassination play that ended up backfiring. The dice were pretty in my favor for most of the game (hot for me cold for him) but I feel my idea to focus fire his heavies to limit sacrifice was a solid plan.

    My fourth round was against a retribution player and went about the same as round one but in the opposite direction. I played Xerxis and he had Ravyn with Helios, 2 AFGs and some stormfall archers. The scenario was spread the net. Long story short, Snipe feat go is still a thing. He went first and ran his army up. I advance my army about 5 inches out of my deployment zone and clumped them up as much as possible to prevent his movement shenanigans. He still managed to pull xerxis out of his phalanx and the krea aura and blasted him down with the AFG’s boosted shots. I probably shouldn’t have dropped my stack to put my upkeeps out I didn’t think he could get at me that deep and he would have picked apart my army otherwise. I don’t think either of my lists had a decent matchup into this list so I should probably look for something to include that resists mass movement shenanigans.

    Other than my short last round I think most of my games went really well. I thought the pair covered most of my opponents lists fairly well but I may need to tweak the pair to help cover stealth lists like dark hoast and ranged lists that can pick apart my xerxis brick. I might look at building xerxis with a lot of cheap units instead of two expensive elite ones. Sorry for the wall of text. Next time I’ll try to take some photos to break the report up a bit.