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Post by Azahul on Sept 17, 2018 14:45:04 GMT
Hey guys. The WTC has wrapped up for the year, Australia won (sure, not my team, but I offered moral support!), and did you really think I wasn't going to write up some battle reports? I had the honour of being captain of Team Wobbegong, and the joy of achieving our objective of confusing poor European and American players with our choice of team name. We didn't quite manage to do as well as I was hoping, but I'm still immensely proud of my teammates and it was a joy to brainstorm, plan, practice, and travel with them for the event. Some of the games we lost were absolute nail-biters that went right down to the wire, like a teammate who played into a disadvantaged match-up and only lost by two measly army points destroyed. They really helped make the event for me, and I couldn't be happier. For myself, I went with the Arkadius and Midas lists I'd been practicing with for several months. Arkadius as my all-comers list, and Midas as an answer to certain defence and armour skews that I was worried I wouldn't be able to efficiently deal with using Arkadius. The lists, for anyone who hasn't seen them already, are: Doctor Arkadius -War Hog -War Hog -Road Hog -Road Hog -Gun Boar -Gun Boar -Gorax -Gorax -Razor Boars -Targ Bellows Crew Hutchuck Kwaak and Gub Mist Speaker Witch Doctor Midas -Splatter Boar -Splatter Boar -Splatter Boar -Splatter Boar Max Brigands -Warlord Max Brigands -Warlord Min Bone Grinders Slaughterhousers Slaughterhousers Valkyries Valkyries Lanyssa Round One - Canada Goose (Jon Fairs) - Mirage We were a bit worried to draw a Canadian team right off the bat, so we were going to be grinding out some tough games from round one. On the plus side, this was a team that we felt quite confident into on the match-up level. We won the roll-off and actually elected to allow our opponents to pick the most match-ups, figuring that we'd be better off securing the right tables to turn a sea of "yellow" match-ups to our advantage. One decision we did get to make was to put me into Crucible Guard. My team was drawn from across three different Australian metas, and I was the only one who'd had any practice into CG. I dropped Arkadius, he dropped Syvestro with the following: Syvestro -Retaliator -Vindicator -Vindicator Max Assault Troopers Max Assault Troopers Max Rocketmen -UA Min Shocktroopers Dragon's Breath Rocket Dragon's Breath Rocket Trancer Trancer Hutchuck Anastasia Deployment My opponent won the starting roll, obviously. He opted to go first, I secured a good table side with a sheltered central flag. He anchored his flanks with the Assault Troopers, battlegroup in the centre, and the Rocketmen behind the central building. I deployed with one of each Warbeast on each flank, planning to use War Hogs to mop up his Assault Troopers quickly and the Road Hogs to try and deal with the Rocketmen using Raw Adrenaline sprays. I believe both objectives heal. Crucible Guard Turn 1 Syvestro gives a Vindicator Admonition, puts Transmutation on the Rocketmen, everything else runs forward. Pigs Turn 1 Because the Rocketmen aren't actually immune to blast damage right now I'm able to sneakily drop one by running a Gun Boar up on the left and scattering a shot forwards with Targ's Ancillary Attack. I put Forced Evolution on the right flank War Hog, Guardian Warbeast on Arkadius, Enliven on the right-hand War Hog and Road Hog, and run everything up. All my solos, from Targ on the left to the Mist Speaker on the right and Kwaak in the centre, are lined up so that they'll be able to run to flags in my next turn. Crucible Guard Turn 2 The Admonition'd Vindicator advances and shoots my Forced Evo'd War Hog for a decent chunk of damage, prompting it to advance over towards the zone. The Rocketmen use Defensive Action to get to Def 18 and immune to blast damage. A few on the right roll a whole lotta sixes when shooting the Gun Boar there and take off half its health. The rest of his army just advances up behind the Rocketmen screen. Pigs Turn 2 I do some counting. If I can kill one Trancer, one Assault Trooper on the left, and almost all the Rocketmen then I can score all three flags and send a War Hog to smash the objective. I don't know if doing so is entirely reasonable, but at minimum I'll put my opponent under massive scenario pressure and hopefully render it impossible to contest my zone. I Primal my left-hand War Hog with a Gorax, and the right-hand Road Hog with the other. The Road Hog walks into some Rocketmen. It kills two using its three boosted attacks, triggering dodge only on the last one. Arkadius activates and hits the one that Dodged out of combat with Crippling Grasp. He uses Raw Adrenaline on the Road Hog in front of him, Primals the War Hog with Forced Evolution on the right, and Feats. Feat attacks drop a couple of Rocketmen and get the fully buffed War Hog close enough to charge the objective, but my opponent triggers Admonition off of the Primal'd Road Hog killing a nearby Rocketman and moves to block the charge lane. I now need to charge it and Overtake into the objective, which I do. Dice go very much my way and I smash the objective comfortably along with the Vindicator. Over on the left, Hutchuck has ambushed in and knocked down the contesting Assault Trooper with Quake Bomb, doing no damage. My other War Hog tramples across two Rocketmen and the Trancer. He boosts to hit the Rocketmen, killing both, but misses the unboosted 5 to hit the Trancer. He buys an attack on the knocked down Assault Trooper and kills it. The Gun Boar on the left aims and shoots to kill the Trancer. There is now just one Rocketman contesting. I Full Boar the Raw Adrenaline'd Road Hog and move it across to spray it. Need an 11 to hit. Get the 11. I run Targ onto my opponent's flag, Kwaak to the centre one, and the Mist Speaker to the right-hand flag to win. Score 5-0 in my favour. A lot of pretty 50/50 boosted attacks went my way that turn, from hitting the Crippling Grasp to a lot of the initial melee attacks to the spray. All up I only missed one Rocketman with an attack all turn, needing 8s-11s to hit on 3d6 every time. Had I left a couple alive though, I think I would still have been in a good position. We talked it over after the game and while Arkadius was on zero camp, the only threat to him would have been some Rocketmen attacks and my opponent would have struggled to prevent me from getting ahead on scenario in subsequent turns. My team managed to just eke out a win this round, going 3-2. Edit: Hahaha, 666 posts as of this one.
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Post by Azahul on Sept 17, 2018 15:21:36 GMT
Round Two - Canada Goose (Tim Banky) - Mirage Of course, the only possible way to follow-up some lovely Canadians is some more lovely Canadians, so we were matched into Canada Beaver for round two. We lost the roll-off and they opted to pick match-ups. I had the choice between Tim Banky's Trolls or Charles Soong's Mercs, and having played a fair few games into Charles in recent months I decided to take the path less travelled. I dropped Midas into Tim's Madrak1, running the following: Madrak -Mauler -Bomber -Runebearer Max Champions -Skaldi -2 Ice Sorcerers Max Krielstone -Elder Max Fennblades -UA Min Long Riders Fell Caller Chronicler Deployment I won the starting roll and plumped to go first, which meant I ended up saddled with a shocklingly poor table side with a giant acid bath right in front of my zone. My biggest mistake of the game was probably deploying one of the Brigand units wide on the left flank to try and navigate the pool, rather than setting them up centrally with the Splatter Boars behind the water. My opponent placed his Fennblades out on the right and Long Riders on the left, with Madrak, Warbeasts, and the Champion brick placed centrally. My objective granted Pathfinder, I believe his healed. Prey targets for the right-hand Brigand unit are the Fennblades, for the left-hand unit it's the Champions. Pigs Turn 1 Death March went on the right-hand Brigands and I ran stuff up the board, Midas dropping a Fury in the process. Trolls Turn 1 Madrak cast Even Ground, the stone used Combat Warding and awakened, and the Fennblades received Concealment from the Chronicler. The three units ran up. Pigs Turn 2 My Splatter Boars shifted out of the way for Midas, injuring one of the Long Riders with their shots. I charged a Slaughterhouser into the Long Rider while the rest of the unit just shuffled around, and managed an almighty zero damage. Midas tagged the Champions with Calamity and the right-flank Brigands made some shots into the Champions, which they spread around. Without Prey I was struggling a little to hit and dod damage, because the left flank unit had to content themselves with running some more. My biggest mistake of the turn though was having the Warlord, out of range of the Champions, take some pot shots at the Fennblades because I forgot about Vengeance. She (one of my new War Valkyries) managed to hit the Def 16 Fennblade and trigger Vengeance. Yaaay. Trolls Turn 2 Fenns came forward. They received Guided Hand from Madrak's Runebearer and cleared the right-hand Brigands from the zone. The one saving grace was that he ended up with a single Fennblade too far away to get into the zone. The Champions killed a Splatter Boar and the objective. The Bomber tried to kill the Fennblade outside of the zone but my opponent proved very good at rolling Tough checks. Madrak killed a knocked down Brigand with Thrown Rathrok to cast Even Ground for free. My opponent scored 2 this turn, in the central zone and from killing my objective, making it 0-2 in his favour. Pigs Turn 3 At least Madrak had forgotten to Feat. Midas Cursed the Champions, threw an unboosted Calamity at them, gave the Valkyries near the centre zone Battle Lust, and backed up. The Valkyries could only get to the Long Rider, but they cleared it from the zone. This time I was able to get some shots from the left flank Brigands into the Champions, and between them and some Slaughterhouser charges I cleared most of the Champions. The remaining Brigands on the right did a Hog Wild charge and killed four or five Fennblades, and the Valkyries on that side came in and helped. I threw a Psychoactive Gas onto the Mauler to add an extra Fury to the board. With no way to clear the Long Riders, the score stat at 0-2. Trolls Turn 3 The Fennblades finished off the Brigands, mostly with Vengeance moves. A lot of them then died to free strikes from the Valkyries as they deliberately ran out of melee range to let the Bomber clear the zone. Unfortunately, my opponent's dice failed him completely. The first shot was Shield Guarded to a Valkyrie outside of the zone, who survived the unboosted damage roll. The second shot was boosted to hit, and again, the unboosted damage roll left the Valkyrie in the zone standing. The Mauler, who passed his Threshold check, hung back as the last Champions cleared the zone with the help of the Fell Caller. Madrak Feated this turn, healing up the Champions. Score went to 0-3 in my opponent's favour. Pigs Turn 4 Frustratingly, without charges I really couldn't clear a zone to score anything. I put Battle Lust on one of the Slaughterhouser units but they couldn't actually reach any Long Riders. The last Champions were killed, the Valkyries on the right almost finished off the Fenns, and I used Psychoactive Gas on the Mauler again. On the left I moved to engage the Long Riders and the two Valkyries there killed the Fell Caller. Trolls Turn 4 The Bomber failed a Threshold check, killing a Krielstone member. Madrak cleared a few Bone Grinders with Thrown Rathrok and cast Even Ground with Blood Boon. The Mauler went in to throw a Bone Grinder into a Slaughterhouser and missed the throw. He killed the neighbouring Splatter Boar with three bought attacks. The only problem was a Valkyrie. He charged the Krielstone in, but they couldn't hit Def 13. The Long Riders activated, swung on the Valkyrie, rolled the hard 9 or something that he needed to kill it. The score goes to 0-5 in my opponent's favour. This was a really entertaining game, but boy could I have done some things better. The attrition game went largely the way I expected it to, slowly swinging into Midas's favour, but the terrain hurt me way more than I was expecting. It was enough that I almost wonder if I should have gone second, through the Fenns would have been in no way as inconvenienced by the Acid Pool as I was thanks to Combat Warding and the Fell Caller. It's almost enough to make me consider adding Commandos to the list so I can get some extra board presence, though of course "adding Commandos" is a truly dire recourse and not done lightly. My team lost this round 1-4, and Canada Beaver continued to gnaw their way up through the rankings until their dams were set alight by the Flamin' Galahs in the semi-finals. So at least we managed to get some good SOS out of it
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Post by Azahul on Sept 17, 2018 15:38:08 GMT
Round 3 - Team Wales Fford y Cigfran (Hywel Morgan) - Invasion For the final round of day one, I paired off with the Retribution of Scyrah. I believe it was to spare my Grymkin player from seeing it, but I honestly can't recall the rationale. I dropped Arkadius, since my opponent's lists would probably both mince Midas, and he dropped Vyros1 with the following: Vyros -Sphynx -Banshee -Imperatus Max Mage Hunter Infiltrators -Soulless Escort Max Mage Hunter Infiltrators -Soulless Escort Spears of Scyrah -Eiryss3 -Soulless Escort Narn Lanyssa Arcanist Mechanik Arcanist Mechanik Arcanist Mechanik Deployment My opponent won the starting roll and took first, I took a table side with a really nicely positioned building for Arkadius to cower behind and avoid all those gun shots ignoring all other terrain types. He had Vyros and Imperatus in the centre, the Banshee on the right, Sphynx on the left, with each of those 'jacks supported by an Infiltrator unit. I lined up pretty conventionally, just skewing Targ a bit out onto the left for some Ancillary Attack action. My objective provides Pathfinder, his heals. Ret Turn 1 Hallowed Avenger goes on Imperatus, Vyros casts Mobility, everything runs up the table. Pigs Turn 1 I Raw Adrenaline the left-flank Gun Boar, put Forced Evolution on the right-flank War Hog, cast Guardian Warbeast, and Reposition behind the building. The Mist Speaker gives the left-flank Gun Boar Guidance. It runs up, and Targ uses Ancillary Attack to kill a Spear and two Infiltrators. This triggers Hallowed Avenger on Imperatus, so suddenly the threat ranges in his list get a little obscene, but I trust in the inviolability of my objective for this turn and the wedge provided by the building to keep me safe. Everything else shuffles out of my deployment zone somewhat. Ret Turn 2 Vyros and Imperatus lurk behind his objective, sure enough. The Infiltrators on the left run up and one charges the Gun Boar, doing a solid spike of damage. Everything else just spaces out and takes up board presence. Pigs Turn 2 I'm pretty confident I can kill Vyros. My Gorax Primal both Road Hogs. The Witch Doctor gives one Ghostly. Arkadius Primals the Forced Evo'd War Hog (which has received Pathfinder from the objective) and uses Raw Adrenaline on the Road Hogs. He feats everything up the table. It turns out I should have checked my landing zones because one Road Hog ends up stuck behind the objective, making Primal pointless. A Gun Boar is able to clear out an intervening Mage Hunter, so the lead Road Hog is able to pick up a second one and throw it into Vyros (angled very carefully so that it would breeze past his objective and gently graze Vyros's side). The War Hog charges the objective, kills it on the second initial, overtakes into Vyros and kills him. Score 1-0 in my favour as well, for what it's worth. Boy, the threat ranges of that list kind of took me off guard. It's about 15-18" (including Hallowed Avengers), so it can just about go toe to toe with Arkadius and has way better play with terrain than I do. That made the match-up considerably more scary than I expected, and if I leave any of the heavies alive then his Feat turn was going to be brutal. Fortunately, in my opponent's words, "I baited you in for an assassination and the one flaw in my plan was that you took the bait." My team won this round as well 5-0, giving us a nice note to end the day on with us going to an overall score of 2-1.
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Post by Azahul on Sept 17, 2018 16:55:16 GMT
Round 4 - Belgium Sweet, Salty, and Sexy (Xavier Adriaens) - The Pit II I went into Trolls again for this round, into a Madrak2/Kolgrimma pair that I felt I couldn't play Midas into. Arkadius looked fine into either at least, so I ended up playing Arkadius vs Kolgrimma. He was running: Kolgrimma -Rok -Winter Troll -Pyre Troll -Rune Bearer Max Champions -Skaldi Fire Eaters Fire Eaters Bears Bears Min Krielstone -Northkin Elder Mist Speaker Fell Caller Valka Deployment I won the starting roll. My opponent skewed pretty heavily to the left in response to my own deployment, which I figured was a ploy to make sure that the bears would have no problem coming in on the right and destroying my objective. The blue circles are his snow drifts and the objectives are Pathfinder for me, Healing for him. Pigs Turn 1 Arkadius puts Forced Evolution on the left War Hog, Guardian Warbeast on himself. Kwaak Enlivens both Road Hogs. I have a weird brainfart and when running everything straight up the table forget to put my Road Hogs together for Raw Adrenaline. Trolls Turn 1 Krielstone comes forward for +1 Speed. The Pyre Troll sets all six Fire Eaters on fire. They take some charges and do a few points of damage on the Gun Boar and War Hog on the left, and spike damage on the Razor Boar there to kill it in a single shot. Everything else runs up and Kolgrimma lays out a cloud wall. Pigs Turn 2 I really should have tried to play this on attrition, but Kolgrimma was sitting there on zero camp and calling to me. I Primal'd my heavies on the left flank, ran my right-flank Road Hog up and into the clouds to use as a Feat Beacon, and gave the other Road Hog Guidance. I Feated everything up. The Road Hog with Guidance slammed Rok back over Kolgrimma. Rolled a 1 for slam distance. Least disturbance pushed her too far away for the War Hog to get to. Literally any other result and she was a goner Ah well. I tried to salvage what I could but my Road Hogs had already activated and without Raw Adrenaline sprays I couldn't hurt the Champions much. I killed Rok with the buffed War Hog and did some damage to the Champions. Hutchuck came on this turn and managed to kill one member of the Krielstone unit and knock the stone and one other guy down. Trolls Turn 2 Bears all piled in on the left. The Winter Troll and Kolgrimma froze all my heavies bar the right-flank with Crit Sprays and Kolgrimma Feated so that the Champions would easily get charge bonuses. All the frozen heavies died bar the Road Hog, which survived with two health in Spirit. The Bears killed Hutchuck and a Gorax on the left. Valka solo'd a Gorax on his own (a triple six damage roll was involved). Pigs Turn 3 Things were pretty grim, so I decided to try and stall out for a scenario win at the bottom of 7. I healed my Road Hog with a Psycho Surgery and got Crippling Grasp onto the Champions using a Ghostly Arkadius. A Gun Boar charged my opponent's objective and rolled magnificently, killing it. The Road Hog killed a couple of champions but Skaldi was still in the central zone. My War Hog had to content itself with killing Valka and Overtaking back into the zone. I went to 2-0. Trolls Turn 3 Bears killed Targ and the Gun Boar on the left. The Winter Troll and Kolgrimma killed the Road Hog. Mist Speaker ran to contest the right zone. The Champions moved up to body block. The Pyre Troll ran into the left zone. I think I forgot to take a picture. Score went to 2-1. Pigs Turn 4 Gun Boar shot and killed the Mist Speaker. Arkadius gave the War Hog Forced Evolution. Kwaak landed a Mudfoot and Venom spray on the Champions, doing no damage but applying Corrosion to everyone bar Skaldi. At this point they are all on 1 health. The Witch Doctor runs to contest the left zone. Score goes to 3-1 in my favour. Trolls Turn 4 Bears kill the Witch Doctor. The Champions kill Kwaak. The combined firepower of Kolgrimma and the lights leave the War Hog on half health. The Rune Bearer runs to engage but dies to the Guardian Warbeast attack. Owl's Wisdom finally strips Crippling Grasp as Kolgrimma loses her fear of a spell assassination. The score goes to 4-2 in my favour. Pigs Turn 5 I don't believe the War Hog can survive another round of that. Arkadius heals him up. He goes in and kills both lights, thanks to the Gun Booar shooting the Krielstone off the table. He overtakes back a little bit but he's still in full view of some bears. The remaining Swamp Gobber runs to contest. Score goes to 5-2 in my favour. Trolls Turn 5 One Champion dies from the Corrosion. Bears kill the War Hog and Kolgrimma kills the Gobber. The other runs to contest and dies to the Guardian Warbeast strike from the Gun Boar. Skaldi runs to contest. I forgot to cast Counterblast sadly, which might have given me a low odds shot of killing him. Doesn't really matter, the other Bear unit also runs in. Score goes to 5-3 in my favour. Pigs Turn 6 I put Forced Evolution on the Gun Boar and kill Skaldi with a Primal Shock. The Gun Boar actually kills the Bear in the zone. Score becomes 6-3 in my favour. Trolls Turn 6 My opponent kills the Gun Boar with the Bear unit and contests my zone with most of his army. He scores the central zone and his zone, making the score 6-5. Pigs Turn 7 Arkadius kills the Fell Caller in melee but sadly that's the end of it. I can't stop him from scoring twice in my turn, twice in his turn. The score is, technically, 6-9 in his favour at the end. Ah well, dice happen I guess, but we went down this game 2-3 as a team and I hadn't actually realised that a 1 would render my assassination run impossible at the time. Given how hard-fought that ended up being, I also can't help but think that had I just played attrition I'd like have managed to swing it pretty convincingly in my favour. In spite of a Feat turn of doing no work I would have had that game had it ended just one round earlier. My opponent was lovely and this was one of the most terrifically tense games I've ever played, but it's sad to let the team down on something like that.
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Post by Azahul on Sept 17, 2018 19:20:42 GMT
Round 5 - Italy Mario (Daniele Diaspro/Emanuiel) - Standoff Boy, Standoff was right. I dropped into Skorne because no one else on the team had played the Rasheth match-up. I was lucky enough to have spent my entire last game day before shipping out of the country doing nothing but playing that match-up. I dropped Arkadius, he dropped Rasheth, running the following: Rasheth -Agoniser -Archidon -Titan Sentry Max Reivers -UA Min Slingers Min Paingiver Beast Handlers Flayer Cannon Venator Dakar Willbreaker Soulward Soulward Animantarax Animantarax Deployment He won the starting roll sadly, so I had to content myself with taking a table side with a good forest to lurk behind. His army mostly bricked up in the centre around the Agoniser, with the Flayer Cannon and Dakar flanking wide on the left and the Reivers hard on the right. I responded by stacking my Gun Boars on the right flank, but otherwise kept things basically symmetrical. Skorne Turn 1 Everything runs up, staying out of my melee threat ranges. Pigs Turn 1 Ok, simple stuff. Stay more than 13" from the Animantarax and more than 20" from Rasheth (actually somewhat less, thanks to the positioning of the wall and objective a couple of inches in front of that tubby dude). I put up Forced Evolution out on the left War Hog and cast Guardian Warbeast. I ended up running the heavies and Razor Boar on the left well outside of my control area, taking advantage of the hill there. Kwaak gave them some love with Enliven. The rest of the army packed in behind the forest on the right with the Bellows Crew providing some additional cloud support. Skorne Turn 2 My opponent decided that the most important thing was to eliminate my scoring potential, so a Slinger ran up for Rasheth to toss out a Breath of Corruption. Killed both Bellows Crew members. The Reivers ran up, the Flayer Cannon ran to toe the left zone, the Animantarax lurked where they were just out of my threat range. Pigs Turn 2 Ooooh, this is going to be one freaking cagey game. Rasheth hasn't really come forward much, so I just do some shuffling around. Hutchuck comes in on the left and tries to Quake Bomb the Flayer Cannon. Misses, naturally, and scatters somewhere irrelevant. I put some token models in the zones I can reach, but the only way to contest my opponent's zone is by running the left flank Razor Boar and for that I need Targ so I end up running Targ out into the open to get the Razor Boar where I want it. The Razor Boar and Gun Boars on the right each put up their animii, kill a couple of Reivers, and contest the zone over there. I put one of the Gun Boars close enough to run to engage my opponent's zone next round in case we're still being cagey. I score my zone, making the score 1-0 in my favour. Skorne Turn 3 The Flayer Cannon aims and shoots Hutchuck dead. The Animantarax on the left kills the Razor Boar in the zone with it and repositions back to where it was just out of threat range. Rasheth hangs out where he is, sacrificing one Slinger to snipe out Targ with a Sunder Spirit and the other to Blood Mark my objective. The Reivers kill the Razor Boar on the right flank after a couple of shots. The Animantarax on the right shoots the Gun Boar in the forest but my opponent forgot to hand out Guidance first and misses most of his shots. The one that does connect takes off about a third of the Gun Boar's health. I'm still contesting the right zone, and my opponent blew up the only model he had contesting my zone, so the score goes to 2-2 as he scores the left zone and his zone and I score my own. Pigs Turn 3 I've noticed by this point that my recent experience with the match-up is paying some major dividends, my opponent is starting to get low on clock and isn't managing to secure any kind of win condition. Kwaak Enlivens the heavies on the left and bumps them up into the zone on the right, hanging outside of Rasheth's Feat range. Arkadius heals up the Gun Boar with a Psycho Surgery and they gun down a couple more Reivers. I totally space and forget to Shadow Walk and run the one close enough to contest his zone. The score becomes 3-3. Skorne Turn 4 My opponent's noticed the clock problem too and decides that he needs to try and get some scenario work done this turn. The Animantarax on the right comes forward to shoot my objective, rolls just two shots, proceeds to two-shot the Blood Marked objective. The Agoniser comes forward flush against the wall and wails to try and cover the two Animantarax. The Flayer Cannon shoots at the Forced Evo'd War Hog, connects for just one damage, triggers Enliven, and I push up a little since Rasheth has already activated at this point so that I'll be able to charge the second Animantarax, staying just over 13" away. It chooses to curl in to get completely under the Agoniser's aura rather than shoot me. The Reivers CRA on the right and drop the damaged Gun Boar. My opponent scores with my objective and his zone, making the score 5-3 in his favour. Pigs Turn 4 Ok, Lamentation was cast at some point amid all that edging around threat ranges during the preceding turns, so my Gorax go first while outside of Rasheth's Control Area and Primal the two War Hogs (the one on the left has to walk laterally towards Arkadius to get into my own Control Area). Next, Arkadius strolls out into the open and Feats everyone forward. One of the Road Hogs proceeds to charge the Agoniser behind the wall and kill it and my opponent's objective. This opens a landing zone for the second Road Hog, now standing somewhat in the burning earth in the centre of the board, to charge Rasheth. He's camping like four Fury and I only force three transfers, but it helps get his Warbeasts down some damage and leaves Rasheth somewhat scored on 3 health. With the Agoniser gone the two War Hogs comfortably kill the Animantarax and overtake to attack the Sentry on the left and the Archidon on the right. Don't kill either, but both have aspects crippled at this point. My Gun Boar on the left and Gorax have frenzied into spots to block the Reivers from doing much, and I believe the Gun Boar's gun shot this turn sniped out the officer. Out in the open and only on three camp has me feeling a little bit nervous, but I'm still somewhat confident that Rasheth can't assassinate me. With his objective and my zone, I take the score to 5-5. Skorne Turn 5 My opponent activates the Flayer Cannon and proceeds to roll a ten for damage against the Gorax there, plus some chip from the other attacks, followed by a triple from the Dakar and kills the light on the spot. He runs down his clock working out if there's a way to similarly damage my ones on the right and remove them as transfer targets, can't see anything. Rasheth activates and instead Blood Marks one of the Road Hogs standing almost on top of him. He throws out a Sunder Spirit for good measure, does some damage. Beast Handlers heal the Sentry and Enrage both heavies. My opponent realises he forgot to Feat. He swings on the closest Road Hog with the Sentry, who is in its back arc, but Enliven allows me to avoid his second and third initials and change my facing so that he needs 6s to hit, and I survive the Sentry's activation as a result. A Soulward aims and boosts a shot into the combat, killing the Road Hog. The other Soulward attempts to do the same at the second Road Hog, misses, hits an engaging Beast Handler in the back and kills him. And at around this point my opponent clocks. Boy having practiced this match-up payed off big time here. It's a freaking cagey game and my opponent played it better than any of my practice opponents had managed, but the fact that he needed to recalculate my threat ranges and run the numbers on his end during the game really showed as the clock crept down and I breezed through my turns. Going into Turn 4 he had just 15 minutes left to my 25, and had to start taking some risks to get the game to winnable stage for him. Sadly, the rest of my team didn't fair so well. We lost this round 2-3. From memory we had managed to arrange all five of us to play 50/50 match-ups, and it just didn't quite pay off the way it had in previous rounds.
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Post by Azahul on Sept 17, 2018 19:44:11 GMT
Round 6 - Team Belgium In My Day (Christoph van der Schoot) - Spread the Net Basically the same situation as last round occurred, where I ended up playing into Skorne because my teammates hadn't played the match-up and weren't as confident. I dropped Arkadius into Zaal1 Immortals, running: Zaal -Mammoth Max Immortals -UA Max Immortals -UA Max Immortals Hakaar the Destroyer Ancestral Guardian Ancestral Guardian Ancestral Guardian Soulward Deployment My opponent won the starting roll and allowed me to go first, which made me very happy indeed. I skewed my regular deployment a little to the left so that I wouldn't make the mistake of splitting my Road Hogs again, relying on the Witch Doctor to help me deal with the house. My opponent set up with the unit without the UA on the right, and the Mammoth aiming for his zone on the left together with most of the Immortals. Pigs Turn 1 I raced everything up the board, sending both War Hogs away to the left to face the Mammoth. Forced Evolution went on the right-hand one and Arkadius also cast Guardian Warbeast. Skorne Turn 1 Everything ran up, save Zaal who walked a bit more sedately behind his lines of Immortals. He put Inviolable Resolve on the Mammoth. Pigs Turn 2 Ok, so after some measuring I think Zaal is just barely outside of my threat range. Good thing there're so many infantry to Overtake off of! The Gorax Primal both my War Hogs. The Witch Doctor gives the Forced Evo'd War Hog Shadow Walk. Arkadius activates, Primals one of the Road Hogs, gives both Raw Adrenaline. He Feats everyone up the table and Primal Shocks one of the intervening Immortals to death. Targ activates and uses Ancillary Attack to send a spray through my Forced Evo'd War Hog, doing about two damage, that just about clears a path to Zaal. I still need Hakaar to die, so the left-hand War Hog walks in and kills Hakaar in two swings. He then Overtakes into the Mammoth and chips off about a third of its health. The Primal'd Road Hog activates and walks up, boosts a throw power attack on an Immortal, and tosses it into Zaal (killing the Immortal and leaving Zaal on 10 health). It is then close enough to swing on the Ancestral Guardian next to it (with a fully boosted attack because of Raw Adrenaline), killing it and allowing the Road Hog to sprint out of the way. The Forced Evolution'd War Hog then charges an Extoller Soulward standing next to Zaal. Misses the charge attack with the gore, connects with the cleaver, overtakes into Zaal with four attacks into Zaal's four transfers. The Mammoth dies on the third attack with enough damage to wrap around and kill Zaal as well. The white proxy base in front of Zaal is the War Hog's actual position. Whole game was over within 30 minutes. I was actually pretty confident in the attrition game there as well, I just needed to force him to come to me and spray him down as he did so, but this felt very reliable and I didn't have to worry about least disturbance nonsense this time around. I still had a Gun Boar shot and a Road Hog spray in reserve in case Zaal survived the War Hog, but in the end I didn't have to worry. My team won this round 4-1, putting us at a 3-3 total for the event and letting us take 32nd overall. I won't deny that I had been hoping to get a bit higher than that (with our SOS we felt we had reasonable odds of scraping the top 10 if we had beaten Italy and whoever we played after them), but our opponents were an absolute pleasure to play against and I had a fantastic time at this year's WTC. Unlike the last time I went to the WTC, I don't even have any regrets. I believe I dropped the correct list into each match-up, so the two losses were just poor luck in one and being outplayed in the other.
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Post by Azahul on Sept 17, 2018 20:02:11 GMT
Wrap-up Okie dokies, so I ended up playing something of a support role for my team at this event. Rather than taking on the big meta-benders, aka the Ossrums, the Gaspy3s, the Anamags, I instead mostly found myself playing the match-ups my teammates were uncomfortable with from lack of experience. Definitely interesting to note that in retrospect. I just managed to pick my last minute practice games correctly and my list pair (well, Arkadius) proved consistently flexible enough to drop wherever it was needed. As for Midas, I'm 50/50 on whether the list needs some work. It may have only been played once, and lost, but it's not like I lost that game on list build or anything. On the contrary, I was chewing through Madrak's army at a steady pace, I was just playing the scenario game poorly and my opponent was successfully locking me out of any scoring opportunities. I firmly believe that the game was entirely winnable with some different plays, rather than by changing the build, but I think I will take the time now that the WTC is done to test some alternative variations. Commandos will sadly almost have to be involved, just to give the list some forward threat presence. I'll need to think about it and do some testing, because I'm worried that it is very possible to make the Midas list a better list overall while simultaneously weakening it into precisely the match-ups I need it to take care of. They might be match-ups that I avoided largely thanks to my team, but for regular steamrollers I won't have that luxury. In case my moaning about luck in Round 4 was a bit much, I did feel like the dice were pretty consistently on my side for most of the tournament. Shouldn't have hit quite so many Rocketmen in Round 1, shouldn't have survived Kolgrimma's counter-punch in Round 4 with quite so many heavies (my opponent's dice definitely were on the low side there), and some of those damage rolls Zaal had to transfer to the Mammoth were just absurd. Sure, I was rolling dice+6, but even so 16 damage transfers are a bit much. It's all too easy to get caught up in perspective biases and focus on that one bad roll, but I definitely had my fair share of good moments with the dice as well. The Round 2 game was probably the perfect example, with the Mauler missing the throw power attack on a bone grinder but the Long Rider getting the hard 9 to kill the Valkyrie contesting the zone. Anyway, it was an absolute joy to play at the WTC this year. I got to fly in a week early and spend a full nine days hanging out with the rest of the Australian teams, exploring Warsaw, playing an utterly ridiculous number of practice games on boards at the hostel (most of which are recorded and may go up in my regular battle report thread if I find the time to write them), and met all kinds of awesome people from around the world who play this great game. I always worry a little after events like this that I'll leave them feeling a bit burnt out on the game, but instead I feel quite the opposite. It'll be a couple of weeks before I'm able to play games again, but I'm itching for it already and have flights booked for the next tournament I want to travel to already If any of my opponents happen to read this, thank you so much for six fantastic games and for being such lovely people. It was my pleasure.
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Post by Gaston on Sept 17, 2018 23:06:51 GMT
WE LOVE YOU AZAHUL!!!!
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WTC Recap
Sept 18, 2018 4:23:58 GMT
via mobile
Post by galiman on Sept 18, 2018 4:23:58 GMT
Thanks for the awesome write ups! Minions did a solid 50-52% overall. So I’d chalk that up as a win for us!
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Post by qc on Sept 18, 2018 6:34:52 GMT
First - Congrats! I am sad cos this year I couldn't be in Warsaw before WTC, I would like to play with you! Second - It's insane that you write report so quickly, and they are so good still! Fenomenal
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Post by Azahul on Sept 18, 2018 7:58:51 GMT
Thanks for the awesome write ups! Minions did a solid 50-52% overall. So I’d chalk that up as a win for us! Ooh, I'm glad to hear it. Outside of my teammates, I didn't actually get to see how any other Minions players went. I am a bit sad that I didn't get to meet Rickard. Pretty sure I saw his models a few times, but there never seemed to be anyone around. First - Congrats! I am sad cos this year I couldn't be in Warsaw before WTC, I would like to play with you! Second - It's insane that you write report so quickly, and they are so good still! Fenomenal Haha, I had a 12 hour train trip right after the WTC. Gave me a lot of time to think over the games and formulate the reports. The Rasheth game is probably the most interesting one to think about in detail. It's so dicey. Thanks to Enliven and terrain you can usually position so that it's impossible for the Animantarax to shoot a War Hog off the board without Rasheth's Feat, so you spend the entire game keeping this 20" circle around Rasheth wide open and trying to find some way to make your opponent commit an Animantarax somewhere where it can't Reposition back out of the threat range of the War Hogs. I honestly wonder if it might have been better for my opponent to Feat defensively and make it less likely that I'd kill the Animantarax, but I doubt a Rasheth player would ever normally conceive of that idea. Really glad it was a game I'd had the opportunity to practice beforehand.
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Post by sledger on Sept 18, 2018 8:03:07 GMT
awesome write up. a really good read
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Post by DoktorGrym on Sept 18, 2018 10:47:27 GMT
Sweet as usual, I can say you do us proud. Too bad you missed Rikard, he is nice person to chat with. As you mentioned about swapping out brigands for commandos, the sweet combo that has really worked well for me is teaming them with hutchuck. This combo allowed me to win a 12 person tourney, the combination of their abilities work well. The back of a commando can be a nice target.
KSW
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WTC Recap
Sept 18, 2018 12:35:15 GMT
via mobile
Post by albertairish on Sept 18, 2018 12:35:15 GMT
Great write ups. Thanks very much.
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Post by Azahul on Sept 18, 2018 13:38:47 GMT
Thanks for taking the time to read them guys Sweet as usual, I can say you do us proud. Too bad you missed Rikard, he is nice person to chat with. As you mentioned about swapping out brigands for commandos, the sweet combo that has really worked well for me is teaming them with hutchuck. This combo allowed me to win a 12 person tourney, the combination of their abilities work well. The back of a commando can be a nice target. KSW I'll likely put Hutchuck back in the list as well. I guess you were using them as a homing beacon for Rust Bombs? Just a shame the Commandos wouldn't be contributing to the damage at that point. Although I won't be ambushing them, I don't think, since what I want from them is the board presence rather than to serve as Hutchuck's supporting act. I'm undecided yet on whether I should be swapping them out for Brigands, or if the better route is to trade the Slaughterhousers out for them and a unit of Valkyries. I'm leaning towards the latter, though losing the Slaughterhousers does make me nervous in terms of playing the list as a way to crack the likes of Madrak1 and Gaspy3.
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