Heretic bump SR report back

Thanks for the reports! It takes a lot of time to write things up, I appreciate you putting in the effort.

While I'm still pretty convinced that Piggybacks aren't something I plan to play competitively, you may have convinced me that I shouldn't just hide mine and pretend I don't own them so I don't have to paint them. Curse and Bless you sir!

OK, time for game #3 (finals).

This time I'm up against Vindictus, against a player that has been strategising all day for my bumpy Heretic. He's playing Vindy in exemplar interdiction, which looks like this:

Vindictus
Reckoner
Melee heavy (the one that collects souls)
full vengers
knights exemplar + CA
knights exemplar
full arrants + CA
full errants + CA
exemplar solo (the guy that gets back up if you kill an exemplar within 10" of him after you've taken him down)

So I've faced this list before with other armies, and I've seen just how crazy aggressive it is. We're playing the championship belt, and I'm hanging all my hopes on the scenanario game. (as tanky as my list is, he has an entire army of weaponmasters and he outnumbers me almost 2-to-1, so I don't fancy my chances of winning the attrition war). That said, I have a great control advantage with Wall of Fire against all his single-wound infantry, so I'm going to look to really abuse that. I choose pandemonium because it's a really obvious choice against all of his infantry, especially when I'm looking to weather weaponmaster charges on piggies. I pick Ruin for the second, wanting to maybe deny his speed buff but mostly just to use the threat of it to bully Vindy far away from the scenario elements. I luck out again and get first turn.

Deployment is pretty key here. I place one pig unit and the hollow men on my left flank, opposite his objective, backed up by a single gorehound that I'd like to go claim his zone if possible. I place the heretic and his buddies central with a pig unit and a gorehound off to the right flank to play defensive. Depending on his deployment, the cage rager can choose a side to suit my needs. He deploys heavily favouring the right flank, with only the non-CA exemplars and one errant unit taking the left flank.

Turn #1, and I decide on a strategy. I want to secure the left flank as soon as possible, while playing a defensive holding action on the right in order to gain a control point advantage that I can hold throughout the game. A nice central building means I can hide the Heretic behind it and extend his CTRL far out to get as much opportunity for Arcana as possible. I push up far with the Hollowmen and run the piggies behind them, while getting aggressive with the gorehound to pressure the left flank. I pull the usual preparation on the right, running piggies and getting the death knell and crabbits into poition to claim corpses and protect important pieces respectively.

His turn, and I am horrified to watch him shoot out 5 of my hollow men with his errants on the left. He puts defender's ward on the right-side errants, admonition on the (sanctifier?) and puts Penitence on the left errants. He then pulls a very impressive little trick - he starts shooting at the right-hand piggies with those errants, but he doesn't finish off any pigs. He uses the non-shield-wall opportunity to to put 3 wounds on my frontmost 3 piggies, all of whom are out of range of the twilight sisters. It's a really strong tactic, and a good way around the inevitable shield-wall that denies me the revive-and-heal option from the twilight sisters, and also denies me corpse tokens (although the dead hollow men gave me a couple of those). He feats as well, and this is looking rough - he has done moderate damage to me, while I've done nothing to him and cannot hurt him due to his feat. He's also kept his venger unit leader way back so I can't drop Pandemonium on the vengers.

I decide that this turn needs to be a position-and-hold turn (as if I have much choice). Thankfully, the piggies are the perfect unit to eat a timewalk feat with. I back up with the hollow men, and a gorehound gets stuck in and kills two errants. both piggy units move into zones and shieldwall for glory, the left unit digging in quite far while the right unit hangs back a bit, holding the edge of my side of the left zone. The right gorehound walks up and kills a Venger, triggering battle-driven. I stick a wall of fire in front of the right-hand piggies, preventing the errants or exemplars from getting any real work done on the them. I completely forget about Rebuke which should have been tossed at his exemplars. The corpse cart maintains a useful poition and shoves two corpses on to the cage rager. I realise the importance of the hollowmen on the left flank, and back them up and give them concealment, while the twilight sisters bring two of them back.

His turn, now he tries to commit. On the left, the exemplars try to charge but I play Pandemonium, so they cannot get the charge bonus and they can only reach 2 of the piggies. They really can't do much though, bouncing off the super-tought piggies. The errants kill 3 more hollow men, but now they're losing ground a bit. On the right he gets 2 Vengers into the piggies, and kills two pigs while the errants shuffle about and the exemplars try but fail to kill the gorehound.

I'm pretty happy with how well I've weathered his alpha, so now it's time to start clawing back. Longfellow does nothing shooting at errants (I forgot to give him Wraithbane), but the piggies and hollow men start doing a number on the left flank. Important note is that I never charge with piggies - I walk up in shield wall every turn, wanting to keep the reslilience as I don't need the extra damage to kill infantry. Twilight sisters bring back dead piggies, as I settle in for a long attrition war on the right hand side, and the Heretic adjusts the wall of fire for maximum annoyance value. Once again, I forget about rebuke. The hollow men are getting slightly healthier now after killing a couple of errants, and Penitence means every hollow man that shoots an errant dies but also replace himself. Witchwood inserts himself into the fray on the right behind the fire wall, clogging the access to the piggies. The piggies eat the committed vengers, so only 2 remain.

getting frustrated with the resilience of the piggies, he charges the remaining 4 exemplars into the piggies on the left. He kills 2, and I trigger the reckoning. The errants don't accomplish much. On the right he's still struggling to reach the piggies, but he gets in a couple of errants. Again, fairly insignificant losses occur that can be fixed by the twilight sisters. He finishes off the gorehound on the right, securing the flank (I just have a glimmer imp behind a house and that's all) but still fighting the piggies to get the zone. The sanctifier murders witchwood and glares at me from behind the safety of admonition.

My turn #4, and it's reckoning time. I manage it poorly by activating the hollow men first (should have been pigs), and killing three exemplars plus a couple of errants. Hollow men are almost full strength now, only 2 dead. The piggies finish off the exemplars, move reckoning to the remaining 2 errants, and eat them as well. I wanted to move Reckoning on to the objective, but losing attacks thanks to poor activation order meant I couldn't trust the gorehound to kill it without help from a couple hollowmen, so I move Reckoning on to the right errants. On the right I kill 2 errants with a blessed cage rager, then I arc hex blast on the an errant, stripping away defender's ward, and finally remember to toss rebuke on to the right-hand exemplars. The piggies proceed to kill a couple of errants and snack up some health, while the twilight sisters do their usual thing. The gorehound tries to kill the objective, but leaves it on 1 health, denying me 2 control points. I've also really pushed my clock hard here, having 10 minutes left.

My opponent is quite happy with my poor management of the Reckoning, and even happier at my badly-managed clock. He's less thrilled with the collapsed left flank. He tries to budge out my pigs, but fails. He does kill my objective, scoring one point. The exemplars try to hurt the cage rager, but losing their charging bonus really hurts.

My turn, and now it's time to make all the prep work pay off. The gorehound kills his objective, and holds the right zone. My pigs on the left start to move up, while hollow men kill some choir boys and a vassal. On the right the cage rager kills a couple of infantry to slow down his attrition, and I blunder with the remaining pigs and do not keep them base-to-base while trying to play around admonition. The fire wall stays in play, crippling the usefulness of the errants. 2-1 to Grymkin. The real problem is that I now have 1:32 left on my clock, while my opponent has a fortune of clock time left.

His turn, the sanctifier plus some remaining troops finally kill the piggies. He does very little to the cage rager, and runs a solo to the left zone to contest. Still 2-1 Grymkin.

I have 1:32 to play 2 turns. All I want is to hold the left zone, so off I go. Hollow men apparate and shoot the solo dead. Piggies run into his right hand zone. death knell moves into right hand zone, and I pass the turn with 0:52 left on my clock. 3-1 to Grymkin.

He has nothing left to contest my zone, so he has an all-or nothing to clear the right hand zone. He gives it a valiant effort, but just fails after a pair of tough rolls from the piggies. Grymkin go to 4-1, and my opponent concedes.

Whew. Very tough game. I've never had to forego my activations before due to time pressure, and it's not something that I enjoyed. I really need more practice so I don't find myself in that mess again. What was really interesting was that my opponent outplayed me tactically this game, but I outplayed him strategically and that secured the win.

Overall I'm really happy with how the list plays. I know double-piggies is popular with the old witch in order to double down on the recursion, but the damage output that the heretic gets out of them is imo more important.

-und_ed

Witchwood was incredible. Far outperformed my expectations.

Glimmer imps are imo essential. We have a real accuracy problem, and they’re our only reliable answer.

The gore hounds were so-so, but at 6 points a pop very much worthwhile. I also don’t think I played them very well, so I’ll revisit them after more games.

-und_ed